#maybe that's why he's specifically referencing his description of waterloo rather than his description of petit-picpus

[coquelicoq]

889 pages after the waterloo digression and he gives you this look:

Qu'on nous permette de recourir, pour la clarté du récit, au moyen simple déjà employé par nous pour Waterloo. (t. II, IV, 12, I, p. 438)

uh-oh. don't do it vicky! we just had 26 pages on the historical day 5 june 1832, we don't need another waterloo (70-page play-by-play commentary on a historical event in which our characters barely feature) on top of that!

Les personnes qui voudront se représenter d'une manière assez exacte les pâtés de maisons qui se dressaient à cette époque près la pointe Saint-Eustache, à l'angle nord-est des halles de Paris, où est aujourd'hui l'embouchure de la rue Rambuteau, n'ont qu'à se figurer, touchant la rue Saint-Denis par le sommet et par la base les halles, une N dont les deux jambages verticaux seraient la rue de la Grande-Truanderie et la rue de la Chanvrerie et dont la rue de la Petite-Truanderie ferait le jambage transversal. (ibid., pp. 438-439)

oh, so it was just a reference to his method of describing the relative locations of a bunch of streets by comparing them to a capital letter of the alphabet.

saying this, she casually threw a large cobblestone at la garde municipale.

#actually the last time he did this was when he was describing the streets around the convent. which was after waterloo #he loves using this device which is great for me because it actually helps!!! usually when i read written descriptions of relative #locations in space it does nothing for me. but apparently taking a bird's-eye view and tracing a giant letter over the top is #the secret sauce #the battlefield of waterloo was an A and the streets around the convent were a Y and now the streets around this barricade are an N #interesting that this time it's an N since usually in this book when he talks about the letter N he's talking about napoleon #maybe that's why he's specifically referencing his description of waterloo rather than his description of petit-picpus #les mis #lm 4.12.1 #my posts #f #unfortunately while i do think i understand the location of these three streets and possibly how they relate to la rue Saint-Denis #i don't really understand where les halles are in all of this. and then he brings la rue du Cygne and la rue des Prêcheurs into it #and i'm like stop stop that's too many streets!!! #like i thought saint-denis was at the top of the N running perpendicular and les halles were doing the same thing at the bottom? #but then sometimes it sounds like les halles are on la rue saint-denis? #no wait i just reread that part and i think he's saying if you leave la rue saint-denis via la rue de la Chanvrerie eventually you will get #to les halles. so yeah they're on opposite sides of the N. still don't know what's up with la rue du cygne and la rue des prêcheurs though