Bab Bab 69 · JAVERT SATISFIED

This is what had taken place.

The half-hour after midnight had just struck when M. Madeleine quitted

the Hall of Assizes in Arras. He regained his inn just in time to set

out again by the mail-wagon, in which he had engaged his place. A

little before six o’clock in the morning he had arrived at M. sur M.,

and his first care had been to post a letter to M. Laffitte, then to

enter the infirmary and see Fantine.

However, he had hardly quitted the audience hall of the Court of

Assizes, when the district-attorney, recovering from his first shock,

had taken the word to deplore the mad deed of the honorable mayor of M.

sur M., to declare that his convictions had not been in the least

modified by that curious incident, which would be explained thereafter,

and to demand, in the meantime, the condemnation of that Champmathieu,

who was evidently the real Jean Valjean. The district-attorney’s

persistence was visibly at variance with the sentiments of every one,

of the public, of the court, and of the jury. The counsel for the

defence had some difficulty in refuting this harangue and in

establishing that, in consequence of the revelations of M. Madeleine,

that is to say, of the real Jean Valjean, the aspect of the matter had

been thoroughly altered, and that the jury had before their eyes now

only an innocent man. Thence the lawyer had drawn some epiphonemas, not

very fresh, unfortunately, upon judicial errors, etc., etc.; the

President, in his summing up, had joined the counsel for the defence,

and in a few minutes the jury had thrown Champmathieu out of the case.

Nevertheless, the district-attorney was bent on having a Jean Valjean;

and as he had no longer Champmathieu, he took Madeleine.

Immediately after Champmathieu had been set at liberty, the

district-attorney shut himself up with the President. They conferred

“as to the necessity of seizing the person of M. le Maire of M. sur M.”

This phrase, in which there was a great deal of _of_, is the

district-attorney’s, written with his own hand, on the minutes of his

report to the attorney-general. His first emotion having passed off,

the President did not offer many objections. Justice must, after all,

take its course. And then, when all was said, although the President

was a kindly and a tolerably intelligent man, he was, at the same time,

a devoted and almost an ardent royalist, and he had been shocked to

hear the Mayor of M. sur M. say the _Emperor_, and not _Bonaparte_,

when alluding to the landing at Cannes.

The order for his arrest was accordingly despatched. The

district-attorney forwarded it to M. sur M. by a special messenger, at

full speed, and entrusted its execution to Police Inspector Javert.

The reader knows that Javert had returned to M. sur M. immediately

after having given his deposition.

Javert was just getting out of bed when the messenger handed him the

order of arrest and the command to produce the prisoner.

The messenger himself was a very clever member of the police, who, in

two words, informed Javert of what had taken place at Arras. The order

of arrest, signed by the district-attorney, was couched in these words:

“Inspector Javert will apprehend the body of the Sieur Madeleine, mayor

of M. sur M., who, in this day’s session of the court, was recognized

as the liberated convict, Jean Valjean.”

Any one who did not know Javert, and who had chanced to see him at the

moment when he penetrated the antechamber of the infirmary, could have

divined nothing of what had taken place, and would have thought his air

the most ordinary in the world. He was cool, calm, grave, his gray hair

was perfectly smooth upon his temples, and he had just mounted the

stairs with his habitual deliberation. Any one who was thoroughly

acquainted with him, and who had examined him attentively at the

moment, would have shuddered. The buckle of his leather stock was under

his left ear instead of at the nape of his neck. This betrayed unwonted

agitation.

Javert was a complete character, who never had a wrinkle in his duty or

in his uniform; methodical with malefactors, rigid with the buttons of

his coat.

That he should have set the buckle of his stock awry, it was

indispensable that there should have taken place in him one of those

emotions which may be designated as internal earthquakes.

He had come in a simple way, had made a requisition on the neighboring

post for a corporal and four soldiers, had left the soldiers in the

courtyard, had had Fantine’s room pointed out to him by the portress,

who was utterly unsuspicious, accustomed as she was to seeing armed men

inquiring for the mayor.

On arriving at Fantine’s chamber, Javert turned the handle, pushed the

door open with the gentleness of a sick-nurse or a police spy, and

entered.

Properly speaking, he did not enter. He stood erect in the half-open

door, his hat on his head and his left hand thrust into his coat, which

was buttoned up to the chin. In the bend of his elbow the leaden head

of his enormous cane, which was hidden behind him, could be seen.

Thus he remained for nearly a minute, without his presence being

perceived. All at once Fantine raised her eyes, saw him, and made M.

Madeleine turn round.

The instant that Madeleine’s glance encountered Javert’s glance,

Javert, without stirring, without moving from his post, without

approaching him, became terrible. No human sentiment can be as terrible

as joy.

It was the visage of a demon who has just found his damned soul.

The satisfaction of at last getting hold of Jean Valjean caused all

that was in his soul to appear in his countenance. The depths having

been stirred up, mounted to the surface. The humiliation of having, in

some slight degree, lost the scent, and of having indulged, for a few

moments, in an error with regard to Champmathieu, was effaced by pride

at having so well and accurately divined in the first place, and of

having for so long cherished a just instinct. Javert’s content shone

forth in his sovereign attitude. The deformity of triumph overspread

that narrow brow. All the demonstrations of horror which a satisfied

face can afford were there.

Javert was in heaven at that moment. Without putting the thing clearly

to himself, but with a confused intuition of the necessity of his

presence and of his success, he, Javert, personified justice, light,

and truth in their celestial function of crushing out evil. Behind him

and around him, at an infinite distance, he had authority, reason, the

case judged, the legal conscience, the public prosecution, all the

stars; he was protecting order, he was causing the law to yield up its

thunders, he was avenging society, he was lending a helping hand to the

absolute, he was standing erect in the midst of a glory. There existed

in his victory a remnant of defiance and of combat. Erect, haughty,

brilliant, he flaunted abroad in open day the superhuman bestiality of

a ferocious archangel. The terrible shadow of the action which he was

accomplishing caused the vague flash of the social sword to be visible

in his clenched fist; happy and indignant, he held his heel upon crime,

vice, rebellion, perdition, hell; he was radiant, he exterminated, he

smiled, and there was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous Saint

Michael.

Javert, though frightful, had nothing ignoble about him.

Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things

which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when

hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human

conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues

which have one vice,—error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic in

the full flood of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously

venerable radiance. Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in his

formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man who

triumphs. Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face,

wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the

good.