Les Miserables (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (25 page)

This personage, grave with an almost threatening gravity, was one of those who, even in a hurried interview, command the attention of the observer.

His name was Javert, and he was one of the police.

He exercised at M—sur M—the unpleasant, but useful, function of inspector. He was not there at the date of Madeleine’s arrival. Javert owed his position to the protection of Monsieur Chabouillet, the secretary of the Minister of State, Count Anglès, then prefect of police at Paris. When Javert arrived at M——sur M——the fortune of the great manufacturer had been made already, and Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine.

Certain police officers have a peculiar physiognomy in which can be traced an air of baseness mingled with an air of authority. Javert had this physiognomy, without baseness.

Javert was born in a prison. His mother was a fortune-teller whose husband was in the galleys. He grew up to think himself without the pale of society, and despaired of ever entering it. He noticed that society closes its doors, without pity, on two classes of men, those who attack it and those who guard it; he could choose between these two classes only; at the same time he felt that he had an indescribable basis of rectitude, order, and honesty, associated with an irrepressible hatred for that gypsy race to which he belonged. He entered the police. He succeeded. At forty he was an inspector.
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In his youth he had been stationed in the galleys at the South.

Before going further, let us understand what we mean by the words human face, which we have just now applied to Javert.

The human face of Javert consisted of a snub nose, with two deep nostrils, which were bordered by large bushy sideburns that covered both his cheeks. One felt ill at ease the first time he saw those two forests and those two caverns. When Javert laughed, which was rarely and terribly, his thin lips parted, and showed, not only his teeth, but his gums; and around his nose there was a wrinkle as broad and wild as the muzzle of a wild beast. Javert, when serious, was a bull-dog; when he laughed, he was a tiger. For the rest, a small head, large jaws, hair hiding the forehead and falling over the eyebrows, between the eyes a permanent central frown like an angry star, a gloomy look, a mouth pinched and frightful, and an air of fierce command.

This man was a compound of two sentiments, very simple and very good in themselves, but he almost made them evil by his exaggeration of them, respect for authority and hatred of rebellion; and in his eyes, theft, murder, all crimes, were only forms of rebellion. In his strong and implicit faith he included all who held any function in the state, from the prime minister to the constable. He had nothing but disdain, aversion, and disgust for all who had once overstepped the bounds of the law. He was judgmental, and admitted no exceptions. On the one hand he said: “A public officer cannot be deceived; a magistrate never does wrong!” And on the other he said: “They are irremediably lost; no good can come out of them.” He shared fully the opinion of those extremists who attribute to human laws an indescribable power of making, or, if you will, of determining, demons, and who place a Styx at the bottom of society.
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He was stoical, serious, austere: a dreamer of stern dreams, humble and haughty, like all fanatics. His stare was cold and as piercing as a gimlet. His whole life was contained in these two words: waking and watching. He marked out a straight path through the most tortuous thing in the world; he was aware of his utility, conscientious in his duties, and he was a spy as others are priests. Woe to him who should fall into his hands! He would have arrested his father escaping from the galleys, and denounced his mother for violating her restraining order. And he would have done it with that sort of interior satisfaction that springs from virtue. His life was a life of privations, isolation, self-denial, and chastity: never any amusement. He was implacable duty incarnate, the police understood as the Spartans understood Sparta, a pitiless detective, an intransigent honesty, a marble-hearted informer, Brutus united with Vidocq.
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The whole being of Javert expressed the spy and the informer. The mystic school of Joseph de Maistre, which at that time enlivened what were called the ultra journals with high-sounding cosmogonies, would have said that Javert was a symbol. You could not see his forehead which disappeared under his hat, you could not see his eyes which were lost under his brows, you could not see his chin which was buried in his cravat, you could not see his hands which were drawn up into his sleeves, you could not see his cane which he carried under his coat. But when the time came, you would see spring all at once out of this shadow, as from an ambush, a steep and narrow forehead, an ominous look, a threatening chin, enormous hands, and a monstrous club.

In his leisure moments, which were rare, although he hated books he read; wherefore he was not entirely illiterate. This was perceptible from a certain pomposity in his speech.

He was free from vice, we have said. When he was satisfied with himself, he allowed himself a pinch of snuff. That was his link to humanity.

It will be easily understood that Javert was the terror of all that class which the annual statistics of the Minister of Justice include under the heading:
People without a fixed abode.
To speak the name of Javert would put all such to flight; the face of Javert petrified them.

Such was this formidable man.

Javert was like an eye always fixed on Monsieur Madeleine; an eye full of suspicion and conjecture. Monsieur Madeleine finally noticed it, but seemed to consider it of no consequence. He asked no question of Javert, he neither sought him nor shunned him, he endured this unpleasant and annoying stare without appearing to pay any attention to it. He treated Javert as he did everybody else, at ease and with kindness.

From some words that Javert had dropped, it was guessed that he had secretly hunted up, with that curiosity which belongs to his race, and which is more a matter of instinct than of will, all the traces of his previous life which Father Madeleine had left elsewhere. He appeared to know, and he said sometimes in a covert way, that somebody had gathered certain information in a certain region about a certain missing family. Once he happened to say, speaking to himself: “I think I have got him!” Then for three days he remained moody without speaking a word. It appeared that the clue which he thought he had was broken.

But, and this is the necessary corrective to what the meaning of certain words may have presented in too absolute a sense, there can be nothing really infallible in a human creature, and the very peculiarity of instinct is that it can be disturbed, detected, and thrown off the scent. Were this not so, it would be superior to intelligence, and the beast would be more enlightened than man.

Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by the completely natural air and the tranquillity of Monsieur Madeleine.

One day, however, his strange manner appeared to make an impression upon Monsieur Madeleine. The occasion was this:

MONSIEUR MADELEINE was walking one morning along one of the unpaved alleys of M—sur M——; he heard a shouting and saw a crowd at a little distance. He went to the spot. An old man, named Father Fauchelevent, had fallen under his cart, his horse having collapsed.

This Fauchelevent was one of the few who were still enemies of Monsieur Madeleine at this time. When Madeleine arrived in the place, the business of Fauchelevent, who was a notary of long-standing, and very well-read for a rustic, was beginning to decline. Fauchelevent had seen this mere artisan grow rich, while he himself, a professional man, had been going to ruin. This had filled him with jealousy, and he had done what he could on all occasions to injure Madeleine. Then came bankruptcy, and the old man, having nothing but a horse and cart, as he was without family, and without children, was compelled to earn his living by hauling loads.

The horse had his thighs broken, and could not stir. The old man was caught between the wheels. Unluckily he had fallen so that the whole weight rested upon his breast. The cart was heavily loaded. Father Fauchelevent was uttering doleful groans. They had tried to pull him out, but in vain. An unlucky effort, inexpert help, a false push, might crush him. It was impossible to extricate him otherwise than by raising the waggon from beneath. Javert, who came up at the moment of the accident, had sent for a jack.

Monsieur Madeleine came. The crowd fell back with respect.

“Help,” cried old Fauchelevent. “Who is a good fellow to save an old man?”

Monsieur Madeleine turned towards the bystanders:

“Has anybody a jack?”

“They have gone for one,” replied a peasant.

“How soon will it be here?”

“We sent to the nearest place, to Flachot Place, where there is a blacksmith; but it will take a good quarter of an hour at least.”

“A quarter of an hour!” exclaimed Madeleine.

It had rained the night before, the road was soft, the cart was sinking deeper every moment, and pressing more and more on the breast of the old carman. It was evident that in less than five minutes his ribs would be crushed.

“We cannot wait a quarter of an hour,” said Madeleine to the peasants who were looking on.

“We must!”

“But it will be too late! Don’t you see that the waggon is sinking all the while?”

“It can’t be helped.”

“Listen,” resumed Madeleine, “there is room enough still under the waggon for a man to crawl in, and lift it with his back. In half a minute we will have the poor man out. Is there nobody here who has strength and courage? Five louis d‘ors for him!”

Nobody stirred in the crowd.

“Ten louis,” said Madeleine.

The bystanders dropped their eyes. One of them muttered: “He’d have to be devilish strong. And then he would risk getting crushed.”

“Come,” said Madeleine, “twenty louis.”

The same silence.

“It is not willingness which they lack,” said a voice.

Monsieur Madeleine turned and saw Javert. He had not noticed him when he came.

Javert continued:

“It is strength. You’d need a fearsome man to raise a waggon like that on his back.”

Then, looking fixedly at Monsieur Madeleine, he went on emphasising every word that he uttered:

“Monsieur Madeleine, I have known but one man capable of doing what you call for.”

Madeleine shuddered.

Javert added, with an air of indifference, but without taking his eyes from Madeleine:

“He was a convict.”

“Ah!” said Madeleine.

“In the galleys at Toulon.”

Madeleine became pale.

Meanwhile the cart was slowly settling down. Father Fauchelevent roared and screamed:

“I am dying! my ribs are breaking! a jack! anything! oh!”

Madeleine looked around him:

“Is there nobody, then, who wants to earn twenty louis and save this poor old man’s life?”

None of the bystanders moved. Javert resumed:

“I have known but one man who could take the place of a jack; that was that convict.”

“Oh! how it crushes me!” cried the old man.

Madeleine raised his head, met the falcon eye of Javert still fixed upon him, looked at the immovable peasants, and smiled sadly. Then, without saying a word, he fell on his knees, and even before the crowd had time to utter a cry, he was under the cart.

There was an awful moment of suspense and of silence.

Madeleine, lying almost flat under the fearful weight, was twice seen to try in vain to bring his elbows and knees nearer together. They cried out to him: “Father Madeleine! come out from there!” Old Fauchelevent himself said: “Monsieur Madeleine! go away! I must die, you see that; leave me! you will be crushed too.” Madeleine made no answer.

The bystanders held their breath. The wheels were still sinking and it had already become almost impossible for Madeleine to extricate himself.

All at once the enormous mass budged, the cart rose slowly, the wheels came half out of the ruts. A smothered voice was heard crying: “Quick! help!” It was Madeleine, who had just made a final effort.

They all rushed to the work. The devotion of one man had given strength and courage to all. The cart was lifted by twenty arms. Old Fauchelevent was safe.

Madeleine arose. He was very pale, though dripping with sweat. His clothes were torn and covered with mud. All wept. The old man kissed his knees and called him the good Lord. He himself wore on his face an indescribable expression of joyous and celestial suffering, and he looked with tranquil eye upon Javert, who was still watching him.

FAUCHELEVENT had broken his knee-cap in his fall. Father Madeleine had him carried to an infirmary that he had established for his workmen in the same building with his factory, which was attended by two sisters of charity. The next morning the old man found a thousand franc bill upon the stand by the side of the bed, with this note in the handwriting of Father Madeleine: I have purchased your horse and cart. The cart was broken and the horse was dead. Fauchelevent got well, but he had a stiff knee. Monsieur Madeleine, through the recommendations of the sisters and the cure, got the old man a place as gardener at a convent in the Quartier Saint Antoine at Paris.

Some time afterwards Monsieur Madeleine was appointed mayor. The first time that Javert saw Monsieur Madeleine clothed with the scarf which gave him full authority over the city, he felt the same sort of shudder which a bull-dog would feel who should scent a wolf in his master’s clothes. From that time he avoided him as much as he could. When the necessities of the service imperiously demanded it, and he could not do otherwise than come in contact with the mayor, he spoke to him with profound respect.