Les Misérables, Book 2: The Great Bourgeois, Chapter 4 summary
Book 2: The Great Bourgeois, Chapter 4 of 365 · 2 min to read the chapter
In Chapter 4, M. Gillenormand treasures his school crowning by a duke, praises an eighteenth-century remedy, and declares his attachment to the Bourbons. His stories about surviving the Terror and his anger at republican praise show how strongly his memories and political loyalties shape him at ninety.
What happens
- M. Gillenormand remembers receiving school prizes from the Duc de Nivernais and regards him as the century’s greatest figure.
- He excuses Catherine the Second’s role in partitioning Poland because she buys Bestucheff’s medicinal secret.
- He enthusiastically praises the elixir of gold, which the narrator identifies as ferric chloride.
- He loves the Bourbons, hates 1789, and repeatedly describes escaping execution during the Terror through cheerfulness and cleverness.
- Republican praise enrages him, while his remarks about his age hint at a wish to reach one hundred.
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Quick check
What does the narrator identify as the actual substance of the elixir of gold?
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