Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
Translated by Isabel F. Hapgood

VOLUME I.



FANTINE.



PREFACE


So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of
damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid
the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to
divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century--
the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman
through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light--
are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part
of the world;--in other words, and with a still wider significance,
so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature
of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.

HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, 1862.



FANTINE