Let Them Eat Bread: The Theft That Helped Inspire 'Les Miserables'
Anyone who has read or seen Victor Hugo's masterpiece knows the plot turns on the theft of a simple loaf of bread. There was no sharper barometer of economic status in 19th-century France than bread.
On a bitterly cold day in February 1846, the French writer Victor Hugo was on his way to work when he saw something that affected him profoundly.
A thin young man with a loaf of bread under his arm was being led away by police. Bystanders said he was being arrested for stealing the loaf. He was dressed in mud-spattered clothes, his bare feet thrust into clogs, his ankles wrapped in bloodied rags in lieu of stockings.
"It made me think," wrote Hugo. "The man was no longer a man in my eyes but the specter of la misère, of poverty."
Anyone who has read or watched will recognize that wretched scene immediately. It is retold in , a new book out this month by Princeton professor David Bellos, which tells
