Les Misérables, page 51
CHAPTER V--VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON
Little by little, and in the course of time, all this oppositionsubsided. 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 thanill-nature, then merely malicious remarks, then even this entirelydisappeared; respect became complete, unanimous, cordial, and towards1821 the moment arrived when the word "Monsieur le Maire" was pronouncedat 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 tenleagues around to consult M. Madeleine. He put an end to differences,he prevented lawsuits, he reconciled enemies. Every one took him for thejudge, and with good reason. It seemed as though he had for a soul thebook of the natural law. It was like an epidemic of veneration, which inthe course of six or seven years gradually took possession of the wholedistrict.
One single man in the town, in the arrondissement, absolutely escapedthis contagion, and, whatever Father Madeleine did, remained hisopponent as though a sort of incorruptible and imperturbable instinctkept him on the alert and uneasy. It seems, in fact, as though thereexisted in certain men a veritable bestial instinct, though pure andupright, like all instincts, which creates antipathies and sympathies,which fatally separates one nature from another nature, which does nothesitate, 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 intelligenceand to all the dissolvents of reason, and which, in whatever mannerdestinies are arranged, secretly warns the man-dog of the presence ofthe man-cat, and the man-fox of the presence of the man-lion.
It frequently happened that when M. Madeleine was passing along astreet, calm, affectionate, surrounded by the blessings of all, a man oflofty stature, clad in an iron-gray frock-coat, armed with a heavycane, and wearing a battered hat, turned round abruptly behind him, andfollowed him with his eyes until he disappeared, with folded arms anda slow shake of the head, and his upper lip raised in company withhis lower to his nose, a sort of significant grimace which might betranslated by: "What is that man, after all? I certainly have seen himsomewhere. In any case, I am not his dupe."
This person, grave with a gravity which was almost menacing, was oneof those men who, even when only seen by a rapid glimpse, arrest thespectator's attention.
His name was Javert, and he belonged to the police.
At M. sur M. he exercised the unpleasant but useful functions of aninspector. He had not seen Madeleine's beginnings. Javert owed the postwhich he occupied to the protection of M. Chabouillet, the secretary ofthe Minister of State, Comte Anglès, then prefect of police at Paris.When Javert arrived at M. sur M. the fortune of the great manufacturerwas already made, and Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine.
Certain police officers have a peculiar physiognomy, which iscomplicated 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 shouldbe able to see distinctly that strange thing that each one individualof the human race corresponds to some one of the species of the animalcreation; and we could easily recognize this truth, hardly perceivedby the thinker, that from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to thetiger, 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 showsthem to us in order to induce us to reflect. Only since animals are mereshadows, God has not made them capable of education in the full senseof the word; what is the use? On the contrary, our souls being realitiesand having a goal which is appropriate to them, God has bestowed onthem intelligence; that is to say, the possibility of education. Socialeducation, when well done, can always draw from a soul, of whatever sortit may be, the utility which it contains.
This, be it said, is of course from the restricted point of view of theterrestrial life which is apparent, and without prejudging the profoundquestion of the anterior or ulterior personality of the beings which arenot man. The visible _I_ in nowise authorizes the thinker to deny thelatent _I_. Having made this reservation, let us pass on.
Now, if the reader will admit, for a moment, with us, that in every manthere is one of the animal species of creation, it will be easy for usto say what there was in Police Officer Javert.
The peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every litter of wolvesthere is one dog, which is killed by the mother because, otherwise, ashe grew up, he would devour the other little ones.
Give to this dog-son of a wolf a human face, and the result will beJavert.
Javert had been born in prison, of a fortune-teller, whose husband wasin the galleys. As he grew up, he thought that he was outside the paleof society, and he despaired of ever re-entering it. He observed thatsociety unpardoningly excludes two classes of men,--those who attackit and those who guard it; he had no choice except between thesetwo classes; at the same time, he was conscious of an indescribablefoundation of rigidity, regularity, and probity, complicated with aninexpressible hatred for the race of bohemians whence he was sprung. Heentered the police; he succeeded there. At forty years of age he was aninspector.
During his youth he had been employed in the convict establishments ofthe South.
Before proceeding further, let us come to an understanding as to thewords, "human face," which we have just applied to Javert.
The human face of Javert consisted of a flat nose, with two deepnostrils, towards which enormous whiskers ascended on his cheeks. Onefelt ill at ease when he saw these two forests and these two cavernsfor the first time. When Javert laughed,--and his laugh was rare andterrible,--his thin lips parted and revealed to view not only his teeth,but his gums, and around his nose there formed a flattened and savagefold, 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 littleskull and a great deal of jaw; his hair concealed his forehead andfell over his eyebrows; between his eyes there was a permanent, centralfrown, like an imprint of wrath; his gaze was obscure; his mouth pursedup 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 exaggeratingthem,--respect for authority, hatred of rebellion; and in his eyes,murder, robbery, all crimes, are only forms of rebellion. He envelopedin 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 thresholdof evil. He was absolute, and admitted no exceptions. On the one hand,he said, "The functionary can make no mistake; the magistrate is neverthe wrong." On the other hand, he said, "These men are irremediablylost. Nothing good can come from them." He fully shared the opinion ofthose extreme minds which attribute to human law I know not what powerof 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. Hisglance was like a gimlet, cold and piercing. His whole life hung onthese two words: watchfulness and supervision. He had introduced astraight line into what is the most crooked thing in the world;he possessed the conscience of his usefulness, the religion of hisfunctions, and he was a spy as other men are priests. Woe to the manwho fell into his hands! He would have arrested his own father, ifthe latter had escaped from the galleys, and would have denounced hismother, if she had broken her ban. And he would have done it with thatsort of inward satisfaction which is conferred by virtue. And, withal,a life of privation, isolation, abnegation, chastity, with nevera diversion. It was implacable duty; the police understood, as theSpartans understood Sparta, a pitiless lying in wait, a ferocioushonesty, a marble informer, Brutus in Vidocq.
Javert's whole person was expressive of the man who spies and whowithdraws himself from observation. The mystical school of Joseph deMaistre, which at that epoch seasoned with lofty cosmogony those thingswhich were called the ultra newspapers, would not have failed to declarethat Javert was a symbol. His brow was not visible; it disappearedbeneath his hat: his eyes were not visible, since they were lost underhis eyebrows: his chin was not visible, for it was plunged in hiscravat: 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 theoccasion presented itself, there was suddenly seen to emerge from allthis shadow, as from an ambuscade, a narrow and angular forehead, abaleful glance, a threatening chin, enormous hands, and a monstrouscudgel.
In his leisure moments, which were far from frequent, he read, althoughhe hated books; this caused him to be not wholly illiterate. This couldbe 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 withhumanity.
The reader will have no difficulty in understanding that Javert was theterror of that whole class which the annual statistics of the Ministryof Justice designates under the rubric, Vagrants. The name of Javertrouted them by its mere utterance; the face of Javert petrified them atsight.
Such was this formidable man.
Javert was like an eye constantly fixed on M. Madeleine. An eye full ofsuspicion and conjecture. M. Madeleine had finally perceived the fact;but it seemed to be of no importance to him. He did not even put aquestion to Javert; he neither sought nor avoided him; he bore thatembarrassing and almost oppressive gaze without appearing to notice it.He treated Javert with ease and courtesy, as he did all the rest of theworld.
It was divined, from some words which escaped Javert, that he hadsecretly investigated, with that curiosity which belongs to the race,and into which there enters as much instinct as will, all the anteriortraces which Father Madeleine might have left elsewhere. He seemed toknow, and he sometimes said in covert words, that some one had gleanedcertain information in a certain district about a family which haddisappeared. Once he chanced to say, as he was talking to himself, "Ithink I have him!" Then he remained pensive for three days, and utterednot a word. It seemed that the thread which he thought he held hadbroken.
Moreover, and this furnishes the necessary corrective for the tooabsolute sense which certain words might present, there can be nothingreally infallible in a human creature, and the peculiarity of instinctis that it can become confused, thrown off the track, and defeated.Otherwise, it would be superior to intelligence, and the beast would befound to be provided with a better light than man.
Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by the perfect naturalnessand tranquillity of M. Madeleine.
One day, nevertheless, his strange manner appeared to produce animpression on M. Madeleine. It was on the following occasion.
