Les Misérables Volume 3, Chapter 2 Summary

Summary

The chapter introduces M. Gillenormand and his residence in the Marais at Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6. He owns an ancient, spacious first-floor apartment between the street and gardens, richly furnished with Gobelins and Beauvais tapestries, a vast Coromandel lacquer screen around his bed, heavy curtains, a library, and a prized boudoir with straw hangings and fleur-de-lys embroidery ordered by M. de Vivonne for his mistress. The apartment connects to a garden by a short staircase that Gillenormand climbs with surprising agility.

The narrative sketches Gillenormand’s character and appearance: he inherited the apartment from a grim maternal great-aunt who lived to a hundred and had been married twice. His manners combine a courtier’s polish and a lawyer’s formality. He is both gay and capricious, a man who in youth was frequently deceived by wives but remained irresistible to mistresses. He admires painting and keeps an enigmatic portrait by Jordaens. His dress follows the fashion of the Directory’s Incroyables—swallow-tail coat, knee-breeches, buckle shoes—and he habitually thrusts his hands into his fobs. He expresses a firm conservative judgment on recent history, declaring, “The French Revolution is a heap of blackguards.”

Key events

1. M. Gillenormand’s address and ownership of No. 6 Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire
2. Detailed description of his richly furnished first-floor apartment and boudoir
3. Connection of the apartment to a garden via a short staircase
4. Background: inheritance from a centenarian maternal great-aunt
5. Portrait by Jordaens and Gillenormand’s connoisseurship of painting
6. His clothing and manner reflect the Directory’s Incroyables style
7. His authoritative declaration about the French Revolution

Analysis

This short chapter functions as a character sketch that links personal taste to social and political identity. By describing Gillenormand’s apartment down to tapestries, lacquer screens, and a boudoir with royal motifs, the narrator shows how interior decoration embodies his conservative, aristocratic sensibilities and attachment to ancien régime signifiers (fleurs-de-lys, manufactured convicts’ work under M. de Vivonne). The physical details—the staircase to the garden, the library, the portrait by Jordaens—establish both comfort and cultivated eccentricity, while the anecdote about the great-aunt explains how wealth and habit are inherited.

Hugo uses costume and furnishing as symbolic shorthand: Gillenormand’s Incroyable attire and his habitual hand-in-fob gesture mark him as a relic of past fashions and values, resisting modern upheaval. The narrator’s amused, slightly ironic tone tempers any simple praise; Gillenormand is likable and absurd in equal measure. The chapter also performs exposition economically, situating Gillenormand within Parisian social geography (the Marais) and signaling his political stance with the blunt sentence about the Revolution. Structurally, the sketch prepares the reader for the character’s role in Marius’s story: Gillenormand will be a living embodiment of an older order, his home a microcosm where private life and public memory intersect. The narrative technique mixes concrete sensory detail with brief moral judgment, a method Hugo uses repeatedly to bind character to milieu.

Important quotes

“He lived in the Marais, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6.”

NarratorOpens the chapter by locating Gillenormand and establishing ownership and setting.

“He occupied an ancient and vast apartment on the first floor, between street and gardens, furnished to the very ceilings with great Gobelins and Beauvais tapestries representing pastoral scenes;”

NarratorConcentrated description of the apartment that reveals Gillenormand's wealth and taste.

“He said authoritatively: “The French Revolution is a heap of blackguards.””

Narrator (quoting M. Gillenormand)A blunt political declaration that summarizes Gillenormand's conservative outlook.

Characters in Volume 3, Chapter 2

• M. Gillenormand
• a grim maternal great-aunt
• M. de Vivonne
• his mistress
• Jordaens
• Louis XIV
• Louis XVI