1.C.2.1. NUMBER 24,601 BECOMES NUMBER 9,430
JEAN VALJEAN had been recaptured.
The reader will be grateful to us if we pass rapidly over the
sad details. We will confine ourselves to transcribing two
paragraphs published by the journals of that day, a few
months after the surprising events which had taken place at
M. sur M.
These articles are rather summary. It must be remembered,
that at that epoch the Gazette des Tribunaux was not
yet in existence.
We borrow the first from the Drapeau Blanc. It bears
the date of July 25, 1823.
An arrondissement of the Pas de Calais has just been the theatre
of an event quite out of the ordinary course. A man, who was a
stranger in the Department, and who bore the name of M. Madeleine,
had, thanks to the new methods, resuscitated some years ago an
ancient local industry, the manufacture of jet and of black glass
trinkets. He had made his fortune in the business, and that of the
arrondissement as well, we will admit. He had been appointed mayor,
in recognition of his services. The police discovered that M. Madeleine
was no other than an ex-convict who had broken his ban, condemned
in 1796 for theft, and named Jean Valjean. Jean Valjean
has been recommitted to prison. It appears that previous to his
arrest he had succeeded in withdrawing from the hands of M. Laffitte,
a sum of over half a million which he had lodged there, and
which he had, moreover, and by perfectly legitimate means, acquired
in his business. No one has been able to discover where Jean Valjean
has concealed this money since his return to prison at Toulon.
The second article, which enters a little more into detail, is
an extract from the Journal de Paris, of the same date.
A former convict, who had been liberated, named Jean Valjean,
has just appeared before the Court of Assizes of the Var, under
circumstances calculated to attract attention. This wretch had succeeded
in escaping the vigilance of the police, he had changed his
name, and had succeeded in getting himself appointed mayor of one
of our small northern towns; in this town he had established a
considerable commerce. He has at last been unmasked and arrested,
thanks to the indefatigable zeal of the public prosecutor. He had
for his concubine a woman of the town, who died of a shock at the
moment of his arrest. This scoundrel, who is endowed with Herculean
strength, found means to escape; but three or four days after
his flight the police laid their hands on him once more, in Paris
itself, at the very moment when he was entering one of those little
vehicles which run between the capital and the village of Montfermeil
(Seine-et-Oise). He is said to have profited by this interval
of three or four days of liberty, to withdraw a considerable sum deposited
by him with one of our leading bankers. This sum has been
estimated at six or seven hundred thousand francs. If the indictment
is to be trusted, he has hidden it in some place known to himself
alone, and it has not been possible to lay hands on it. However
that may be, the said Jean Valjean has just been brought
before the Assizes of the Department of the Var as accused of highway
robbery accompanied with violence, about eight years ago, on
the person of one of those honest children who, as the patriarch of
Ferney has said, in immortal verse,
". . . Arrive from Savoy every year,
And who, with gentle hands, do clear
Those long canals choked up with soot."
This bandit refused to defend himself. It was proved by the skilful
and eloquent representative of the public prosecutor, that the
theft was committed in complicity with others, and that Jean Valjean
was a member of a band of robbers in the south. Jean Valjean
was pronounced guilty and was condemned to the death penalty
in consequence. This criminal refused to lodge an appeal. The
king, in his inexhaustible clemency, has deigned to commute his
penalty to that of penal servitude for life. Jean Valjean was immediately
taken to the prison at Toulon.
The reader has not forgotten that Jean Valjean had religious
habits at M. sur M. Some papers, among others the
Constitutional, presented this commutation as a triumph of
the priestly party.
Jean Valjean changed his number in the galleys. He was
called 9,430.
However, and we will mention it at once in order that we
may not be obliged to recur to the subject, the prosperity of
M. sur M. vanished with M. Madeleine; all that he had foreseen
during his night of fever and hesitation was realized;
lacking him, there actually was
a soul lacking. After this
fall, there took place at M. sur M. that egotistical division of
great existences which have fallen, that fatal dismemberment
of flourishing things which is accomplished every day,
obscurely, in the human community, and which history has
noted only once, because it occurred after the death of Alexander.
Lieutenants are crowned kings; superintendents improvise
manufacturers out of themselves. Envious rivalries
arose. M. Madeleine's vast workshops were shut; his buildings
fell to ruin, his workmen were scattered. Some of them
quitted the country, others abandoned the trade. Thenceforth,
everything was done on a small scale, instead of on a
grand scale; for lucre instead of the general good. There
was no longer a centre; everywhere there was competition
and animosity. M. Madeleine had reigned over all and
directed all. No sooner had he fallen, than each pulled things
to himself; the spirit of combat succeeded to the spirit of
organization, bitterness to cordiality, hatred of one another
to the benevolence of the founder towards all; the threads
which M. Madeleine had set were tangled and broken, the
methods were adulterated, the products were debased, confidence
was killed; the market diminished, for lack of orders;
salaries were reduced, the workshops stood still, bankruptcy
arrived. And then there was nothing more for the poor. All
had vanished.
The state itself perceived that some one had been crushed
somewhere. Less than four years after the judgment of the
Court of Assizes establishing the identity of Jean Valjean and
M. Madeleine, for the benefit of the galleys, the cost of collecting
taxes had doubled in the arrondissement of M. sur M.;
and M. de Villele called attention to the fact in the rostrum,
in the month of February, 1827.