1.F.5.5. 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 Angeles, 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 watch-dog;
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 bated 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.