#yes vicky i did know about the pope but only because id read your book before

[bossuet-lesgle]

The arrest of the Pope took place, as every one knows, on the night of the 5th to the 6th of July, 1809

Damn I better study up on my French history if victor is going to be slinging around assumptions like this

Because les mis is so pervasive in the cultural zeitgeist for a mega musical from the 1980s, I think I sometimes forget just how much it is a product of its time. These events were so pervasive at the time of Hugo's writing that it would be unfathomable for someone not to know what happened to the pope in 1809. A novel that is timeless not in spite of its deep connection to history, but because of it.