Note 436 — Chapter XII
Reading edition
The link between the two suggested at p. 458, note, is as follows. That Victor Hugo should, as he does in the Preface to Han d'Islande and elsewhere, sneer at Pigault, is not very wonderful: for, besides the difference between canaille and caballería, the author of M. Botte was the most popular novelist of Hugo's youth. But why he has, in Part IV. Book VII. of Les Misérables selected Restif as "undermining the masses in the most unwholesome way of all" is not nearly so clear, especially as he opposes this way to the "wholesomeness" of, among others—Diderot!