Les Misérables Volume 4, Chapter 2 Summary

Summary

Javert’s apparent victory after the Gorbeau raid is shown to be incomplete: key criminals have escaped or been lost, and the police still lack some of the persons they sought. Montparnasse has evaded capture by slipping away with Éponine; Claquesous mysteriously disappears during transport to La Force; and Javert minimizes the importance of a frightened young man he thinks is a lawyer (Marius), while other subordinates continue the investigation.

In the Charlemagne courtyard of La Force, the magistrate deliberately releases Brujon to use him as an informant. Brujon seems stupefied and inert, but secret activity surfaces when the prison authorities discover he has paid errand-men to run messages to three dangerous prowlers at different city barriers. Later Brujon is caught writing and is put in solitary, yet a postilion message nonetheless reaches Babet in the neighboring yard: “Babet. There is an affair in the Rue Plumet. A gate on a garden.” That message sparks a chain: Babet transmits it via a network of imprisoned and released women (including a suspected agent Magnon) and Éponine, just released from the Madelonettes, is sent to reconnoiter the Rue Plumet gate. Éponine reports back with a biscuit — prison code meaning “Nothing to be done.” The plot Brujon conceived in La Force therefore miscarries, but the episode produces other consequences that will later matter. Hugo emphasizes the double life of ruffians who continue to plan crimes even while jailed, and he traces the informal channels—postilions, messengers, women in institutions, released girls—by which conspiracies attempt to live on.

Key events

1. Javert's raid leaves several criminals unaccounted for (Montparnasse, Claquesous).
2. Javert dismisses the significance of the frightened young man (Marius).
3. Brujon is released into the Charlemagne yard to be observed and used as an informer.
4. Brujon pays for three commissions that point to prowlers at city barriers.
5. Brujon writes a note in solitary; a postilion delivers it to Babet in another yard.
6. Babet's network uses Magnon and Éponine to reconnoiter Rue Plumet; Éponine reports 'biscuit' (no result).

Analysis

This chapter functions as a miniature study of criminal networks, policing, and the porous boundary between punishment and continued conspiracy. Hugo uses the confined setting of La Force to show that incarceration does not erase criminal agency; instead, prisons incubate furtive communication and maintain criminal life through coded exchanges (postilions, commissions, biscuits). The narrative contrasts Javert’s rigid, triumphalist view of law enforcement with the pragmatic, messy reality of the police and their informants. Brujon’s apparent stupor is a narrative device that subverts expectations: the seemingly docile prisoner becomes the origin point of an attempted plot, illustrating Hugo’s recurring theme that surface appearances deceive.

Symbolically, the postilion and the biscuit stand for clandestine channels and prison semiotics; the carved BRUJON, 1811 signature on the wall evokes continuity across generations of crime. The episode foreshadows how small, aborted conspiracies can have unintended consequences and how criminal and legal worlds interpenetrate—agents who might be ruffians one moment and police tools the next. Structurally, Hugo uses detailed micro-history (tariff of commissions, the chestnut watch) to ground the novel’s larger social critique in gritty institutional detail, making the prison a locus where social order, corruption, and human ingenuity collide.

Important quotes

“The assassinated man who flees is more suspicious than the assassin,”

NarratorNarrator explains why escaped victims or fugitives attract more police suspicion than the criminals they might implicate.

“BRUJON, 1811.”

NarratorInscription in the La Force yard that symbolizes the generational continuity of criminal presence in the prison.

“Babet. There is an affair in the Rue Plumet. A gate on a garden.”

NarratorText of the short postilion message that sets in motion the reconnaissance through Magnon and Éponine.

Characters in Volume 4, Chapter 2

• Javert
• Montparnasse
• Éponine
• Azelma
• Claquesous
• Marius Pontmercy
• Brujon
• Babet
• Kruideniers (alias Bizarro)
• Glorieux
• Barre-Carosse
• Magnon
• Thénardier
• Babet's mistress