1.F.8.3. JAVERT SATISFIED
THIS is what had taken place.
The half-hour after midnight had just struck when M.
Madeleine quitted the Hall of Assizes in Arras. He regained
his inn just in time to set out again by the mail-wagon, in
which he had engaged his place. A little before six o'clock
in the morning he had arrived at M. sur M., and his first care
had been to post a letter to M. Laffitte, then to enter the
infirmary and see Fantine.
However, he had hardly quitted the audience hall of the
Court of Assizes, when the district-attorney, recovering from
his first shock, had taken the word to deplore the mad deed of
the honorable mayor of M. sur M., to declare that his convictions
had not been in the least modified 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's
persistence was visibly at variance with the sentiments
of every one, of the public, of the court, and of the
jury. The counsel for the defence had some difficulty in
refuting this harangue and in establishing that, in consequence
of the revelations of M. Madeleine, that is to say, of
the real Jean Valjean, the aspect of the matter had been
thoroughly altered, and that the jury had before their eyes
now only an innocent man. Thence the lawyer had drawn
some epiphonemas, not very fresh, unfortunately, upon
judicial errors, etc., etc.; the President, in his summing up,
had joined the counsel for the defence, and in a few minutes
the 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,
the district-attorney shut himself up with the President.
They conferred "as to 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 the district-attorney's, written with
his
own hand, on the minutes of his report to the attorney-general.
His first emotion having passed off, the President
did not offer many objections. Justice must, after all, take
its course. And then, when all was said, although the President
was a kindly and a tolerably intelligent man, he was, at
the same time, a devoted and almost an ardent royalist, and
he had been shocked to hear the Mayor of M. sur M. say the
Emperor, and not Bonaparte, when alluding to the landing
at Cannes.
The order for his arrest was accordingly despatched. The
district-attorney forwarded it to M. sur M. by a special messenger,
at full speed, and entrusted its execution to Police
Inspector Javert.
The reader knows that Javert had returned to M. sur M.
immediately after having given his deposition.
Javert was just getting out of bed when the messenger
handed him the order of arrest and the command to produce
the prisoner.
The messenger himself was a very clever member of the
police, who, in two words, informed Javert of what had taken
place at Arras. The order of arrest, signed by the district-attorney,
was couched in these words: "Inspector Javert will
apprehend the body of the Sieur Madeleine, mayor of M. sur
M., who, in this day's session of the court, was recognized as
the liberated convict, Jean Valjean."
Any one who did not know Javert, and who had chanced to
see him at the moment when he penetrated the antechamber
of the infirmary, could have divined nothing of what had
taken place, and would have thought his air the most ordinary
in the world. He was cool, calm, grave, his gray hair was
perfectly smooth upon his temples, and he had just mounted
the stairs with his habitual deliberation. Any one who was
thoroughly acquainted with him, and who had examined him
attentively at the moment, would have shuddered. The
buckle of his leather stock was under his left ear instead of at
the nape of his neck. This betrayed unwonted agitation.
Javert was a complete character, who never had a wrinkle
in his duty or in his uniform; methodical with malefactors,
rigid with the buttons of his coat.
That he should have set the buckle of his stock awry, it was
indispensable that there should have taken place in him one
of those emotions which may be designated as internal
earthquakes.
He had come in a simple way, had made a requisition on
the neighboring post for a corporal and four soldiers, had left
the soldiers in the courtyard, had had Fantine's room pointed
out to him by the portress, who was utterly unsuspicious,
accustomed as she was to seeing armed men inquiring for the
mayor.
On arriving at Fantine's chamber, Javert turned the handle.
pushed the door open with the gentleness of a sick-nurse or a
police spy, and entered.
Properly speaking, he did not enter. He stood erect in the
half-open door, his hat on his head and his left hand thrust
into his coat, which was buttoned up to the chin. In the bend
of his elbow the leaden head of his enormous cane, which was
hidden behind him, could be seen.
Thus he remained for nearly a minute, without his presence
being perceived. 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 that was in his soul to appear in his countenance.
The depths having been stirred up, mounted to the surface.
The humiliation of having, in some slight degree, lost the
scent, and of having indulged, for a few moments, in an error
with regard to Champmathieu, was effaced by pride at having
so well and accurately divined in the first place, and of having
for so long cherished a just instinct. Javert's content shone
forth in his sovereign attitude. The deformity of triumph
overspread that narrow brow. All the demonstrations of
horror which a satisfied face can afford were there.
Javert was in heaven at that moment. Without putting the
thing clearly to himself, but with a confused intuition of the
necessity of his presence and of his success, he, Javert, personified
justice, light, and truth in their celestial function of
crushing out evil. Behind him and around him, at an infinite
distance, he had authority, reason, the case judged, the legal
conscience, the public prosecution, all the stars; he was 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 his victory a remnant of defiance and of combat.
Erect, haughty, brilliant, he flaunted abroad in open day the
superhuman bestiality of a ferocious archangel. The terrible
shadow of the action which he was accomplishing caused the
vague flash of the social sword to be visible in his clenched
fist; happy and indignant, he held his heel upon crime, vice,
rebellion, perdition, hell; he was radiant, he exterminated,
he smiled, and there was 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
things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but
which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the
majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in
the midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice, —
error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic in the full flood
of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously venerable
radiance. Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in his
formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant
man who triumphs. Nothing could be so poignant and so
terrible as this face, wherein was displayed all that may be
designated as the evil of the good.