第 四十五 章 · VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON

Little by little, and in the course of time, all this opposition

subsided. There had at first been exercised against M. Madeleine, in

virtue of a sort of law which all those who rise must submit to,

blackening and calumnies; then they grew to be nothing more than

ill-nature, then merely malicious remarks, then even this entirely

disappeared; respect became complete, unanimous, cordial, and towards

1821 the moment arrived when the word “Monsieur le Maire” was

pronounced at M. sur M. with almost the same accent as “Monseigneur the

Bishop” had been pronounced in D—— in 1815. People came from a distance

of ten leagues around to consult M. Madeleine. He put an end to

differences, he prevented lawsuits, he reconciled enemies. Every one

took him for the judge, and with good reason. It seemed as though he

had for a soul the book of the natural law. It was like an epidemic of

veneration, which in the course of six or seven years gradually took

possession of the whole district.

One single man in the town, in the arrondissement, absolutely escaped

this contagion, and, whatever Father Madeleine did, remained his

opponent as though a sort of incorruptible and imperturbable instinct

kept him on the alert and uneasy. It seems, in fact, as though there

existed in certain men a veritable bestial instinct, though pure and

upright, like all instincts, which creates antipathies and sympathies,

which fatally separates one nature from another nature, which does not

hesitate, which feels no disquiet, which does not hold its peace, and

which never belies itself, clear in its obscurity, infallible,

imperious, intractable, stubborn to all counsels of the intelligence

and to all the dissolvents of reason, and which, in whatever manner

destinies are arranged, secretly warns the man-dog of the presence of

the man-cat, and the man-fox of the presence of the man-lion.

It frequently happened that when M. Madeleine was passing along a

street, calm, affectionate, surrounded by the blessings of all, a man

of lofty stature, clad in an iron-gray frock-coat, armed with a heavy

cane, and wearing a battered hat, turned round abruptly behind him, and

followed him with his eyes until he disappeared, with folded arms and a

slow shake of the head, and his upper lip raised in company with his

lower to his nose, a sort of significant grimace which might be

translated by: “What is that man, after all? I certainly have seen him

somewhere. In any case, I am not his dupe.”

This person, grave with a gravity which was almost menacing, was one of

those men who, even when only seen by a rapid glimpse, arrest the

spectator’s attention.

His name was Javert, and he belonged to the police.

At M. sur M. he exercised the unpleasant but useful functions of an

inspector. He had not seen Madeleine’s beginnings. Javert owed the post

which he occupied to the protection of M. Chabouillet, the secretary of

the Minister of State, Comte Anglès, then prefect of police at Paris.

When Javert arrived at M. sur M. the fortune of the great manufacturer

was already made, and Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine.

Certain police officers have a peculiar physiognomy, which is

complicated with an air of baseness mingled with an air of authority.

Javert possessed this physiognomy minus the baseness.

It is our conviction that if souls were visible to the eyes, we should

be able to see distinctly that strange thing that each one individual

of the human race corresponds to some one of the species of the animal

creation; and we could easily recognize this truth, hardly perceived by

the thinker, that from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to the

tiger, all animals exist in man, and that each one of them is in a man.

Sometimes even several of them at a time.

Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices,

straying before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows

them to us in order to induce us to reflect. Only since animals are

mere shadows, God has not made them capable of education in the full

sense of the word; what is the use? On the contrary, our souls being

realities and having a goal which is appropriate to them, God has

bestowed on them intelligence; that is to say, the possibility of

education. Social education, when well done, can always draw from a

soul, of whatever sort it may be, the utility which it contains.

This, be it said, is of course from the restricted point of view of the

terrestrial life which is apparent, and without prejudging the profound

question of the anterior or ulterior personality of the beings which

are not man. The visible _I_ in nowise authorizes the thinker to deny

the latent _I_. Having made this reservation, let us pass on.

Now, if the reader will admit, for a moment, with us, that in every man

there is one of the animal species of creation, it will be easy for us

to say what there was in Police Officer Javert.

The peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every litter of wolves

there is one dog, which is killed by the mother because, otherwise, as

he grew up, he would devour the other little ones.

Give to this dog-son of a wolf a human face, and the result will be

Javert.

Javert had been born in prison, of a fortune-teller, whose husband was

in the galleys. As he grew up, he thought that he was outside the pale

of society, and he despaired of ever re-entering it. He observed that

society unpardoningly excludes two classes of men,—those who attack it

and those who guard it; he had no choice except between these two

classes; at the same time, he was conscious of an indescribable

foundation of rigidity, regularity, and probity, complicated with an

inexpressible hatred for the race of bohemians whence he was sprung. He

entered the police; he succeeded there. At forty years of age he was an

inspector.

During his youth he had been employed in the convict establishments of

the South.

Before proceeding further, let us come to an understanding as to the

words, “human face,” which we have just applied to Javert.

The human face of Javert consisted of a flat nose, with two deep

nostrils, towards which enormous whiskers ascended on his cheeks. One

felt ill at ease when he saw these two forests and these two caverns

for the first time. When Javert laughed,—and his laugh was rare and

terrible,—his thin lips parted and revealed to view not only his teeth,

but his gums, and around his nose there formed a flattened and savage

fold, as on the muzzle of a wild beast. Javert, serious, was a

watchdog; when he laughed, he was a tiger. As for the rest, he had very

little skull and a great deal of jaw; his hair concealed his forehead

and fell over his eyebrows; between his eyes there was a permanent,

central frown, like an imprint of wrath; his gaze was obscure; his

mouth pursed up and terrible; his air that of ferocious command.

This man was composed of two very simple and two very good sentiments,

comparatively; but he rendered them almost bad, by dint of exaggerating

them,—respect for authority, hatred of rebellion; and in his eyes,

murder, robbery, all crimes, are only forms of rebellion. He enveloped

in a blind and profound faith every one who had a function in the

state, from the prime minister to the rural policeman. He covered with

scorn, aversion, and disgust every one who had once crossed the legal

threshold of evil. He was absolute, and admitted no exceptions. On the

one hand, he said, “The functionary can make no mistake; the magistrate

is never the wrong.” On the other hand, he said, “These men are

irremediably lost. Nothing good can come from them.” He fully shared

the opinion of those extreme minds which attribute to human law I know

not what power of making, or, if the reader will have it so, of

authenticating, demons, and who place a Styx at the base of society. He

was stoical, serious, austere; a melancholy dreamer, humble and

haughty, like fanatics. His glance was like a gimlet, cold and

piercing. His whole life hung on these two words: watchfulness and

supervision. He had introduced a straight line into what is the most

crooked thing in the world; he possessed the conscience of his

usefulness, the religion of his functions, and he was a spy as other

men are priests. Woe to the man who fell into his hands! He would have

arrested his own father, if the latter had escaped from the galleys,

and would have denounced his mother, if she had broken her ban. And he

would have done it with that sort of inward satisfaction which is

conferred by virtue. And, withal, a life of privation, isolation,

abnegation, chastity, with never a diversion. It was implacable duty;

the police understood, as the Spartans understood Sparta, a pitiless

lying in wait, a ferocious honesty, a marble informer, Brutus in

Vidocq.

Javert’s whole person was expressive of the man who spies and who

withdraws himself from observation. The mystical school of Joseph de

Maistre, which at that epoch seasoned with lofty cosmogony those things

which were called the ultra newspapers, would not have failed to

declare that Javert was a symbol. His brow was not visible; it

disappeared beneath his hat: his eyes were not visible, since they were

lost under his eyebrows: his chin was not visible, for it was plunged

in his cravat: his hands were not visible; they were drawn up in his

sleeves: and his cane was not visible; he carried it under his coat.

But when the occasion presented itself, there was suddenly seen to

emerge from all this shadow, as from an ambuscade, a narrow and angular

forehead, a baleful glance, a threatening chin, enormous hands, and a

monstrous cudgel.

In his leisure moments, which were far from frequent, he read, although

he hated books; this caused him to be not wholly illiterate. This could

be recognized by some emphasis in his speech.

As we have said, he had no vices. When he was pleased with himself, he

permitted himself a pinch of snuff. Therein lay his connection with

humanity.

The reader will have no difficulty in understanding that Javert was the

terror of that whole class which the annual statistics of the Ministry

of Justice designates under the rubric, Vagrants. The name of Javert

routed them by its mere utterance; the face of Javert petrified them at

sight.

Such was this formidable man.

Javert was like an eye constantly fixed on M. Madeleine. An eye full of

suspicion and conjecture. M. Madeleine had finally perceived the fact;

but it seemed to be of no importance to him. He did not even put a

question to Javert; he neither sought nor avoided him; he bore that

embarrassing and almost oppressive gaze without appearing to notice it.

He treated Javert with ease and courtesy, as he did all the rest of the

world.

It was divined, from some words which escaped Javert, that he had

secretly investigated, with that curiosity which belongs to the race,

and into which there enters as much instinct as will, all the anterior

traces which Father Madeleine might have left elsewhere. He seemed to

know, and he sometimes said in covert words, that some one had gleaned

certain information in a certain district about a family which had

disappeared. Once he chanced to say, as he was talking to himself, “I

think I have him!” Then he remained pensive for three days, and uttered

not a word. It seemed that the thread which he thought he held had

broken.

Moreover, and this furnishes the necessary corrective for the too

absolute sense which certain words might present, there can be nothing

really infallible in a human creature, and the peculiarity of instinct

is that it can become confused, thrown off the track, and defeated.

Otherwise, it would be superior to intelligence, and the beast would be

found to be provided with a better light than man.

Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by the perfect naturalness

and tranquillity of M. Madeleine.

One day, nevertheless, his strange manner appeared to produce an

impression on M. Madeleine. It was on the following occasion.