This will come as a head-exploding shock to everyone, but Hugo actually had an editor! Who actually made him cut digressions out of Les Mis! Or maybe Hugo himself decided to strike this one, but jesus God, why do you write a forty-page digression and then just decide to ditch it?
And that is exactly what he did. He wrote a forty-page digression on prostitution that never made it to the final cut. Like all the cut scenes, it involves characters meeting in odd ways and showing up in places where they shouldn't be, which makes it read like he's writing fanfiction of his own work--although who would write a digression fic except for lulz? In any case, if I ever make it to the final chapter, you'll see who the three flowers are. Or maybe you've already seen it, or will figure it out, or will cheat and look at the last chapter of the French version that's up on my website.
The digression would have originally been chapters four (or is it five?) through eleven of Volume III, book 7: Patron-Minette.
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