I dust off my dictionary and wonder whether people still use them since smartphones and search engines. An evening drizzle slithers down the pane half-covered by his thick book stacks. I flip through Les Misérables until his wrinkled pages poke out, one last list of pithy quotations and quirky scribbles of his own.

love (lƏv) n. [Proto-Indo-European, *leubh, warm feeling of care]

SYNONYMS:

1) our cat curled in dawn’s sunbeam, pawing at a dream mouse

2) his slight blush as he pulled out a half-crushed black rose

3) his beard nestled against the small of my neck as the sun kisses our couch

4) per his favorite Hugo quotation, to see the face of God

Tucked into the pages, his last letter slips out—an editorial letter penned pleading for the poor to have justice.

		the question 
		I don’t ask God: 
		casket spray  

Publisher’s Note:

The line “To love another person is to see the face of God” is frequently attributed to Victor Hugo, but does not appear in his 1862 novel, Les Misérables. Instead, it’s from the Finale lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer in his 1985 English adaptation of the 1980 French musical, Les Misérables. Kretzmer (1925–2020), whose adaptation is an hour longer than the French musical, wrote:

“[...] there is a mass of material that is so totally reconceived and re-written that there is no longer any substantial similarity between my lyrics and the 1980 Paris model. [...] [T]he English version of Les Misérables is very much original material, different in terms of culture and reference from the original libretto. [...] Les Misérables is not a show translated or re-written, but a show reborn.”

From an article by Stuart Roberts and Vicky Westmore for University of Cambridge Libraries and Archives (2 October 2025), “‘Born under a rhyming planet’: Archive of famed Les Misérables lyricist Herbert Kretzmer has a new home at Cambridge University Library”:
https://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/stories/Kretzmer-Les-Mis-Archive

Bio: Colleen M. Farrelly