Les Misérables, Book 7: The Champmathieu Affair, Chapter 2 summary

What happens

1. M. Madeleine almost knocks at the priest’s door, but lowers the knocker and hurries away.
2. He hires Master Scaufflaer’s white horse and uncovered tilbury for a twenty-league journey, with departure set for four-thirty the next morning.
3. He avoids questions about his destination and returns to leave five hundred francs as security.
4. Scaufflaer studies the mayor’s forgotten figures and concludes that he intends to travel to Arras.
5. M. Madeleine takes a longer route home, avoiding the parsonage, and shuts himself in his room.
6. During the night, the cashier hears him pacing and notices changing light from his open window.

What to notice

Scaufflaer names the destination that the mayor refuses to disclose. The forgotten figures make the secret route legible to him.

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