Les Misérables, page 75
CHAPTER III--JAVERT SATISFIED
This is what had taken place.
The half-hour after midnight had just struck when M. Madeleine quittedthe Hall of Assizes in Arras. He regained his inn just in time to setout again by the mail-wagon, in which he had engaged his place. A littlebefore six o'clock in the morning he had arrived at M. sur M., and hisfirst care had been to post a letter to M. Laffitte, then to enter theinfirmary and see Fantine.
However, he had hardly quitted the audience hall of the Court ofAssizes, when the district-attorney, recovering from his first shock,had taken the word to deplore the mad deed of the honorable mayor ofM. sur M., to declare that his convictions had not been in the leastmodified 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'spersistence was visibly at variance with the sentiments of every one, ofthe public, of the court, and of the jury. The counsel for the defencehad some difficulty in refuting this harangue and in establishing that,in consequence of the revelations of M. Madeleine, that is to say, ofthe real Jean Valjean, the aspect of the matter had been thoroughlyaltered, and that the jury had before their eyes now only an innocentman. Thence the lawyer had drawn some epiphonemas, not very fresh,unfortunately, upon judicial errors, etc., etc.; the President, in hissumming up, had joined the counsel for the defence, and in a few minutesthe 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, thedistrict-attorney shut himself up with the President. They conferred "asto 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 thedistrict-attorney's, written with his own hand, on the minutes of hisreport to the attorney-general. His first emotion having passed off, thePresident did not offer many objections. Justice must, after all, takeits course. And then, when all was said, although the President wasa kindly and a tolerably intelligent man, he was, at the same time, adevoted and almost an ardent royalist, and he had been shocked to hearthe Mayor of M. sur M. say the _Emperor_, and not _Bonaparte_, whenalluding to the landing at Cannes.
The order for his arrest was accordingly despatched. Thedistrict-attorney forwarded it to M. sur M. by a special messenger, atfull speed, and entrusted its execution to Police Inspector Javert.
The reader knows that Javert had returned to M. sur M. immediately afterhaving given his deposition.
Javert was just getting out of bed when the messenger handed him theorder of arrest and the command to produce the prisoner.
The messenger himself was a very clever member of the police, who, intwo words, informed Javert of what had taken place at Arras. The orderof arrest, signed by the district-attorney, was couched in these words:"Inspector Javert will apprehend the body of the Sieur Madeleine, mayorof M. sur M., who, in this day's session of the court, was recognized asthe liberated convict, Jean Valjean."
Any one who did not know Javert, and who had chanced to see him at themoment when he penetrated the antechamber of the infirmary, could havedivined nothing of what had taken place, and would have thought his airthe most ordinary in the world. He was cool, calm, grave, his grayhair was perfectly smooth upon his temples, and he had just mountedthe stairs with his habitual deliberation. Any one who was thoroughlyacquainted with him, and who had examined him attentively at the moment,would have shuddered. The buckle of his leather stock was under hisleft ear instead of at the nape of his neck. This betrayed unwontedagitation.
Javert was a complete character, who never had a wrinkle in his duty orin his uniform; methodical with malefactors, rigid with the buttons ofhis coat.
That he should have set the buckle of his stock awry, it wasindispensable that there should have taken place in him one of thoseemotions which may be designated as internal earthquakes.
He had come in a simple way, had made a requisition on the neighboringpost for a corporal and four soldiers, had left the soldiers in thecourtyard, had had Fantine's room pointed out to him by the portress,who was utterly unsuspicious, accustomed as she was to seeing armed meninquiring for the mayor.
On arriving at Fantine's chamber, Javert turned the handle, pushedthe door open with the gentleness of a sick-nurse or a police spy, andentered.
Properly speaking, he did not enter. He stood erect in the half-opendoor, his hat on his head and his left hand thrust into his coat, whichwas buttoned up to the chin. In the bend of his elbow the leaden head ofhis enormous cane, which was hidden behind him, could be seen.
Thus he remained for nearly a minute, without his presence beingperceived. 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 thatwas in his soul to appear in his countenance. The depths having beenstirred up, mounted to the surface. The humiliation of having, insome slight degree, lost the scent, and of having indulged, for a fewmoments, in an error with regard to Champmathieu, was effaced by prideat having so well and accurately divined in the first place, and ofhaving for so long cherished a just instinct. Javert's content shoneforth in his sovereign attitude. The deformity of triumph overspreadthat narrow brow. All the demonstrations of horror which a satisfiedface can afford were there.
Javert was in heaven at that moment. Without putting the thing clearlyto himself, but with a confused intuition of the necessity of hispresence and of his success, he, Javert, personified justice, light, andtruth in their celestial function of crushing out evil. Behind him andaround him, at an infinite distance, he had authority, reason, the casejudged, the legal conscience, the public prosecution, all the stars; hewas 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 hisvictory a remnant of defiance and of combat. Erect, haughty, brilliant,he flaunted abroad in open day the superhuman bestiality of a ferociousarchangel. The terrible shadow of the action which he was accomplishingcaused the vague flash of the social sword to be visible in his clenchedfist; happy and indignant, he held his heel upon crime, vice, rebellion,perdition, hell; he was radiant, he exterminated, he smiled, and therewas 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 thingswhich may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even whenhideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the humanconscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtueswhich have one vice,--error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanaticin the full flood of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriouslyvenerable radiance. Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in hisformidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man whotriumphs. Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face,wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of thegood.
