"One Sunday evening, Maubert Isabeau, the baker on the Church Square at Faverolles, was preparing to go to bed, when he heard a violent blow on the grated front of his shop.... The arm seized a loaf of bread and carried it off. Isabeau ran out in haste; the robber fled at the full speed of his legs. Isabeau ran after him and stopped him. The thief had flung away the loaf, but his arm was still bleeding. It was Jean Valjean.¡± (Volume I - Book Second, Chapter VI)

¡±Jean Valjean disconcerted him. All the axioms which had served him as points of support all his life long, had crumbled away in the presence of this man. Jean Valjean's generosity towards him, Javert, crushed him. Other facts which he now recalled, and which he had formerly treated as lies and folly, now recurred to him as realities.¡± (Volume V - Book Fourth, Chapter I)

Rejected by society for being an ex-convict after his release from prison, Jean Valjean meets Bishop Myriel, who changes his life by showing him mercy. Valjean determines to live as an honest man.
But Javert is never far behind, and is determined to have Valjean back in prison for breaking his parole by catching him committing a minor crime. Javert is the main antagonist to Jean Valjean, the novel's protagonist. Thenardier and his wife, who have extorted money from Fantine under the pretext of taking care of Cosette, are also pursuing Valjean for their own dishonest purposes.

Valjean adopts Cosette. Cosette grows up and falls in love with Marius, who is wounded at the barricades during an anti-monarchist uprising of Parisian students in 1832. Valjean rescues him by carrying him through the sewers of Paris. Cosette and Marius marry.

After Valjean tells Marius his past, Marius thinks of Valjean as a criminal and slowly pushes Valjean out of Cosette¡¯s life. But Marius learns that Jean Valjean is the man who carried him through the sewers to safety. ¡°Marius was bewildered. He began to catch a glimpse in Jean Valjean of some indescribably lofty and melancholy figure. An unheard-of virtue, supreme and sweet, humble in its immensity, appeared to him. The convict was transfigured into Christ.¡± (Volume V - Book Ninth, Chapter IV)

¡±He made a sign to Cosette to draw near, then to Marius; the last minute of the last hour had, evidently, arrived..... His white face looked up to heaven, he allowed Cosette and Marius to cover his hands with kisses. He was dead. The night was starless and extremely dark. No doubt, in the gloom, some immense angel stood erect with wings outspread, awaiting that soul.¡± (Volume V - Book Ninth, Chapter V)

Les Miserables, an 1862 novel by French author Victor Hugo (1802-1885), is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. It is a story about Jean Valjean who goes to prison for stealing a loaf of bread and struggles to find his redemption. It features interactions of characters over a 17-year period from 1815 to 1832.