Editing Les Misérables (section)

===The narrator===
Hugo does not give the narrator a name and allows the reader to identify the narrator with the novel's author. The narrator occasionally injects himself into the narrative or reports facts outside the time of the narrative to emphasize that he is recounting historical events, not entirely fiction. He introduces his recounting of [[Battle of Waterloo|Waterloo]] with several paragraphs describing the narrator's recent approach to the battlefield: "Last year (1861), on a beautiful May morning, a traveller, the person who is telling this story, was coming from Nivelles&nbsp;..."{{sfn|Brombert|1988|loc=pp. 198–199; Vol. 2, Book 1, Chapter 1}} The narrator describes how "[a]n observer, a dreamer, the author of this book" during the 1832 street fighting was caught in the crossfire: "All that he had to protect him from the bullets was the swell of the two half columns which separate the shops; he remained in this delicate situation for nearly half an hour." At one point, he apologizes for intruding—"The author of this book, who regrets the necessity of mentioning himself"—to ask the reader's understanding when he describes "the Paris of his youth&nbsp;... as though it still existed". This introduces a meditation on memories of past places that his contemporary readers would recognize as a self-portrait written from exile: "You have left a part of your heart, of your blood, of your soul, in those pavements." He describes another occasion when a bullet shot "pierced a brass shaving-dish suspended&nbsp;... over a hairdresser's shop. This pierced shaving-dish was still to be seen in 1848, in the Rue du Contrat-Social, at the corner of the pillars of the market." As evidence of police double agents at the barricades, he writes, "The author of this book had in his hands, in 1848, the special report on this subject made to the Prefect of Police in 1832."