Bab Bab 91 · NUMBER 24,601 BECOMES NUMBER 9,430

Jean Valjean had been recaptured.

The reader will be grateful to us if we pass rapidly over the sad

details. We will confine ourselves to transcribing two paragraphs

published by the journals of that day, a few months after the

surprising events which had taken place at M. sur M.

These articles are rather summary. It must be remembered, that at that

epoch the _Gazette des Tribunaux_ was not yet in existence.

We borrow the first from the _Drapeau Blanc_. It bears the date of July

25, 1823.

An arrondissement of the Pas de Calais has just been the theatre of an

event quite out of the ordinary course. A man, who was a stranger in

the Department, and who bore the name of M. Madeleine, had, thanks to

the new methods, resuscitated some years ago an ancient local industry,

the manufacture of jet and of black glass trinkets. He had made his

fortune in the business, and that of the arrondissement as well, we

will admit. He had been appointed mayor, in recognition of his

services. The police discovered that M. Madeleine was no other than an

ex-convict who had broken his ban, condemned in 1796 for theft, and

named Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean has been recommitted to prison. It

appears that previous to his arrest he had succeeded in withdrawing

from the hands of M. Laffitte, a sum of over half a million which he

had lodged there, and which he had, moreover, and by perfectly

legitimate means, acquired in his business. No one has been able to

discover where Jean Valjean has concealed this money since his return

to prison at Toulon.

The second article, which enters a little more into detail, is an

extract from the _Journal de Paris_, of the same date.

A former convict, who had been liberated, named Jean Valjean, has just

appeared before the Court of Assizes of the Var, under circumstances

calculated to attract attention. This wretch had succeeded in escaping

the vigilance of the police, he had changed his name, and had succeeded

in getting himself appointed mayor of one of our small northern towns;

in this town he had established a considerable commerce. He has at last

been unmasked and arrested, thanks to the indefatigable zeal of the

public prosecutor. He had for his concubine a woman of the town, who

died of a shock at the moment of his arrest. This scoundrel, who is

endowed with Herculean strength, found means to escape; but three or

four days after his flight the police laid their hands on him once

more, in Paris itself, at the very moment when he was entering one of

those little vehicles which run between the capital and the village of

Montfermeil (Seine-et-Oise). He is said to have profited by this

interval of three or four days of liberty, to withdraw a considerable

sum deposited by him with one of our leading bankers. This sum has been

estimated at six or seven hundred thousand francs. If the indictment is

to be trusted, he has hidden it in some place known to himself alone,

and it has not been possible to lay hands on it. However that may be,

the said Jean Valjean has just been brought before the Assizes of the

Department of the Var as accused of highway robbery accompanied with

violence, about eight years ago, on the person of one of those honest

children who, as the patriarch of Ferney has said, in immortal verse,

“. . . Arrive from Savoy every year,

And who, with gentle hands, do clear

Those long canals choked up with soot.”

This bandit refused to defend himself. It was proved by the skilful and

eloquent representative of the public prosecutor, that the theft was

committed in complicity with others, and that Jean Valjean was a member

of a band of robbers in the south. Jean Valjean was pronounced guilty

and was condemned to the death penalty in consequence. This criminal

refused to lodge an appeal. The king, in his inexhaustible clemency,

has deigned to commute his penalty to that of penal servitude for life.

Jean Valjean was immediately taken to the prison at Toulon.

The reader has not forgotten that Jean Valjean had religious habits at

M. sur M. Some papers, among others the _Constitutional_, presented

this commutation as a triumph of the priestly party.

Jean Valjean changed his number in the galleys. He was called 9,430.

However, and we will mention it at once in order that we may not be

obliged to recur to the subject, the prosperity of M. sur M. vanished

with M. Madeleine; all that he had foreseen during his night of fever

and hesitation was realized; lacking him, there actually was _a soul

lacking_. After this fall, there took place at M. sur M. that

egotistical division of great existences which have fallen, that fatal

dismemberment of flourishing things which is accomplished every day,

obscurely, in the human community, and which history has noted only

once, because it occurred after the death of Alexander. Lieutenants are

crowned kings; superintendents improvise manufacturers out of

themselves. Envious rivalries arose. M. Madeleine’s vast workshops were

shut; his buildings fell to ruin, his workmen were scattered. Some of

them quitted the country, others abandoned the trade. Thenceforth,

everything was done on a small scale, instead of on a grand scale; for

lucre instead of the general good. There was no longer a centre;

everywhere there was competition and animosity. M. Madeleine had

reigned over all and directed all. No sooner had he fallen, than each

pulled things to himself; the spirit of combat succeeded to the spirit

of organization, bitterness to cordiality, hatred of one another to the

benevolence of the founder towards all; the threads which M. Madeleine

had set were tangled and broken, the methods were adulterated, the

products were debased, confidence was killed; the market diminished,

for lack of orders; salaries were reduced, the workshops stood still,

bankruptcy arrived. And then there was nothing more for the poor. All

had vanished.

The state itself perceived that some one had been crushed somewhere.

Less than four years after the judgment of the Court of Assizes

establishing the identity of Jean Valjean and M. Madeleine, for the

benefit of the galleys, the cost of collecting taxes had doubled in the

arrondissement of M. sur M.; and M. de Villèle called attention to the

fact in the rostrum, in the month of February, 1827.