1.C.5.10. WHICH EXPLAINS HOW JAVERT GOT ON THE SCENT
THE events of which we have just beheld the reverse side, so
to speak, had come about in the simplest possible manner.
When Jean Valjean, on the evening of the very day when
Javert had arrested him beside Fantine's death-bed, had escaped
from the town jail of M. sur M., the police had supposed
that he had betaken himself to Paris. Paris is a maelstrom
where everything is lost, and everything disappears in this
belly of the world, as in the belly of the sea. No forest hides a
man as does that crowd. Fugitives of every sort know this.
They go to Paris as to an abyss; there are gulfs which save.
The police know it also, and it is in Paris that they seek what
they have lost elsewhere. They sought the ex-mayor of M.
sur M. Javert was summoned to Paris to throw light on their
researches. Javert had, in fact, rendered powerful assistance
in the recapture of Jean Valjean. Javert's zeal and intelligence
on that occasion had been remarked by M. Chabouillet,
secretary of the Prefecture under Comte Angles. M. Chabouillet,
who had, moreover, already been Javert's patron, had the
inspector of M. sur M. attached to the police force of Paris.
There Javert rendered himself useful in divers and, though the
word may seem strange for such services, honorable manners.
He no longer thought of Jean Valjean,— the wolf of to-day
causes these dogs who are always on the chase to forget the
wolf of yesterday,— when, in December, 1823, he read a newspaper,
he who never read newspapers; but Javert, a monarchical
man, had a desire to know the particulars of the triumphal
entry of the "Prince Generalissimo" into Bayonne. Just as
he was finishing the article, which interested him; a name, the
name of Jean Valjean, attracted his attention at the bottom of
a page. The paper announced that the convict Jean Valjean
was dead, and published the fact in such formal terms that
Javert did not doubt it. He confined himself to the remark,
"That's a good entry." Then he threw aside the paper, and
thought no more about it.
Some time afterwards, it chanced that a police report was
transmitted from the prefecture of the Seine-et-Oise to the
prefecture of police in Paris, concerning the abduction of a
child, which had taken place, under peculiar circumstances, as
it was said, in the commune of Montfermeil. A little girl of
seven or eight years of age, the report said, who had been intrusted
by her mother to an inn-keeper of that neighborhood,
had been stolen by a stranger; this child answered to the name
of Cosette, and was the daughter of a girl named Fantine, who
had died in the hospital, it was not known where or when.
This report came under Javert's eye and set him to thinking.
The name of Fantine was well known to him. He remembered
that Jean Valjean had made him, Javert, burst into
laughter, by asking him for a respite of three days, for the
purpose of going to fetch that creature's child. He recalled
the fact that Jean Valjean had been arrested in Paris at the
very moment when he was stepping into the coach for Montfermeil.
Some signs had made him suspect at the time that
this was the second occasion of his entering that coach, and
that he had already, on the previous day, made an excursion
to the neighborhood of that village, for he had not been seen in
the village itself. What had he been intending to do in that
region of Montfermeil? It could not even be surmised. Javert
understood it now. Fantine's daughter was there. Jean
Valjean was going there in search of her. And now this child
had been stolen by a stranger! Who could that stranger be?
Could it be Jean Valjean? But Jean Valjean was dead.
Javert, without saying anything to anybody, took the coach
from the Pewter Platter, Cul-de-Sac de la Planchette, and
made a trip to Montfermeil.
He expected to find a great deal of light on the subject
there; he found a great deal of obscurity.
For the first few days the Thenardiers had chattered in their
rage. The disappearance of the Lark had created a sensation
in the village. He immediately obtained numerous versions of
the story, which ended in the abduction of a child. Hence the
police report. But their first vexation having passed off,
Thenardier, with his wonderful instinct, had very quickly comprehended
that it is never advisable to stir up the prosecutor of
the Crown, and that his complaints with regard to the abduction
of Cosette would have as their first result to fix upon himself,
and upon many dark affairs which he had on hand, the
glittering eye of justice. The last thing that owls desire is to
have a candle brought to them. And in the first place, how
explain the fifteen hundred francs which he had received? He
turned squarely round, put a gag on his wife's mouth, and
feigned astonishment when the stolen child was mentioned to
him. He understood nothing about it; no doubt he had
grumbled for awhile at having that dear little creature "taken
from him" so hastily; he should have liked to keep her two or
three days longer, out of tenderness; but her "grandfather"
had come for her in the most natural way in the world. He
added the "grandfather," which produced a good effect. This
was the story that Javert hit upon when he arrived at Montfermeil.
The grandfather caused Jean Valjean to vanish.
Nevertheless, Javert dropped a few questions, like plummets,
into Thenardier's history. "Who was that grandfather?
and what was his name?" Thenardier replied with simplicity:
"He is a wealthy farmer. I saw his passport. I think his
name was M. Guillaume Lambert."
Lambert is a respectable and extremely reassuring name.
Thereupon Javert returned to Paris.
"Jean Valjean is certainly dead," said he, "and I am a
ninny."
He had again begun to forget this history, when, in the
course of March, 1824, he heard of a singular personage who
dwelt in the parish of Saint-Medard and who had been surnamed
"the mendicant who gives alms." This person, the
story ran, was a man of means, whose name no one knew
exactly, and who lived alone with a little girl of eight years,
who knew nothing about herself, save that she had come from
Montfermeil. Montfermeil! that name was always coming
up, and it made Javert prick up his ears. An old beggar
police spy, an ex-beadle, to whom this person had given alms,
added a few more details. This gentleman of property was
very shy,— never coming out except in the evening, speaking
to no one, except, occasionally to the poor, and never allowing
any one to approach him. He wore a horrible old yellow
frock-coat, which was worth many millions, being all wadded
with bank-bills. This piqued Javert's curiosity in a decided
manner. In order to get a close look at this fantastic gentleman
without alarming him, he borrowed the beadle's outfit
for a day, and the place where the old spy was in the habit
of crouching every evening, whining orisons through his nose,
and playing the spy under cover of prayer.
"The suspected individual" did indeed approach Javert
thus disguised, and bestow alms on him. At that moment
Javert raised his head, and the shock which Jean Valjean
received on recognizing Javert was equal to the one received
by Javert when he thought he recognized Jean
Valjean.
However, the darkness might have misled him; Jean Valjean's
death was official; Javert cherished very grave doubts;
and when in doubt, Javert, the man of scruples, never laid
a finger on any one's collar.
He followed his man to the Gorbeau house, and got "the old
woman" to talking, which was no difficult matter. The old
woman confirmed the fact regarding the coat lined with
millions, and narrated to him the episode of the thousand-franc
bill. She had seen it! She had handled it! Javert
hired a room; that evening he installed himself in it. He
came and listened at the mysterious lodger's door, hoping to
catch the sound of his voice, but Jean Valjean saw his candle
through the key-hole, and foiled the spy by keeping silent.
On the following day Jean Valjean decamped; but the noise
made by the fall of the five-franc piece was noticed by the old
woman, who, hearing the rattling of coin, suspected that he
might be intending to leave, and made haste to warn Javert.
At night, when Jean Valjean came out, Javert was waiting
for him behind the trees of the boulevard with two men.
Javert had demanded assistance at the Prefecture, but he
had not mentioned the name of the individual whom he hoped
to seize; that was his secret, and he had kept it for three
reasons: in the first place, because the slightest indiscretion
might put Jean Valjean on the alert; next, because, to lay
hands on an ex-convict who had made his escape and was
reputed dead, on a criminal whom justice had formerly
classed forever as among malefactors of the most dangerous
sort, was a magnificent success which the old members of the
Parisian police would assuredly not leave to a new-comer like
Javert, and he was afraid of being deprived of his convict;
and lastly, because Javert, being an artist, had a taste for the
unforeseen. He hated those well-heralded successes which are
talked of long in advance and have had the bloom brushed off.
He preferred to elaborate his masterpieces in the dark and to
unveil them suddenly at the last.
Javert had followed Jean Valjean from tree to tree, then
from corner to corner of the street, and had not lost sight of
him for a single instant; even at the moments when Jean Valjean
believed himself to be the most secure Javert's eye had
been on him. Why had not Javert arrested Jean Valjean?
Because he was still in doubt.
It must be remembered that at that epoch the police was not
precisely at its ease; the free press embarrassed it; several
arbitrary arrests denounced by the newspapers, had echoed
even as far as the Chambers, and had rendered the Prefecture
timid. Interference with individual liberty was a grave
matter. The police agents were afraid of making a mistake;
the prefect laid the blame on them; a mistake meant dismissal.
The reader can imagine the effect which this brief paragraph,
reproduced by twenty newspapers, would have caused
in Paris: "Yesterday, an aged grandfather, with white hair,
a respectable and well-to-do gentleman, who was walking with
his grandchild, aged eight, was arrested and conducted to
the agency of the Prefecture as an escaped convict!"
Let us repeat in addition that Javert had scruples of his
own; injunctions of his conscience were added to the injunctions
of the prefect. He was really in doubt.
Jean Valjean turned his back on him and walked in the
dark.
Sadness, uneasiness, anxiety, depression, this fresh misfortune
of being forced to flee by night, to seek a chance
refuge in Paris for Cosette and himself, the necessity of regulating
his pace to the pace of the child— all this, without his
being aware of it, had altered Jean Valjean's walk, and
impressed on his bearing such senility, that the police themselves,
incarnate in the person of Javert, might, and did in
fact, make a mistake. The impossibility of approaching too
close, his costume of an emigre preceptor, the declaration of
Thenardier which made a grandfather of him, and, finally,
the belief in his death in prison, added still further to the
uncertainty which gathered thick in Javert's mind.
For an instant it occurred to him to make an abrupt
demand for his papers; but if the man was not Jean Valjean,
and if this man was not a good, honest old fellow living on
his income, he was probably some merry blade deeply and
cunningly implicated in the obscure web of Parisian misdeeds,
some chief of a dangerous band, who gave alms to
conceal his other talents, which was an old dodge. He had
trusty fellows, accomplices' retreats in case of emergencies,
in which he would, no doubt, take refuge. All these turns
which he was making through the streets seemed to indicate
that he was not a simple and honest man. To arrest him too
hastily would be "to kill the hen that laid the golden eggs."
Where was the inconvenience in waiting? Javert was very
sure that he would not escape.
Thus he proceeded in a tolerably perplexed state of mind,
putting to himself a hundred questions about this enigmatical
personage.
It was only quite late in the Rue de Pontoise, that, thanks
to the brilliant light thrown from a dram-shop, he decidedly
recognized Jean Valjean.
There are in this world two beings who give a profound
start,— the mother who recovers her child and the tiger who
recovers his prey. Javert gave that profound start.
As soon as he had positively recognized Jean Valjean, the
formidable convict, he perceived that there were only three of
them, and he asked for reinforcements at the police station of
the Rue de Pontoise. One puts on gloves before grasping a
thorn cudgel.
This delay and the halt at the Carrefour Rollin to consult
with his agents came near causing him to lose the trail. He
speedily divined, however, that Jean Valjean would want to
put the river between his pursuers and himself. He bent his
head and reflected like a blood-hound who puts his nose to the
ground to make sure that he is on the right scent. Javert,
with his powerful rectitude of instinct, went straight to the
bridge of Austerlitz. A word with the toll-keeper furnished
him with the information which he required: "Have you seen
a man with a little girl?" "I made him pay two sous," replied
the toll-keeper. Javert reached the bridge in season to see
Jean Valjean traverse the small illuminated spot on the other
side of the water, leading Cosette by the hand. He saw him
enter the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine; he remembered
the Cul-de-Sac Genrot arranged there like a trap, and of the
sole exit of the Rue Droit-Mur into the Rue Petit-Picpus.
He made sure of his back burrows, as huntsmen say; he
hastily despatched one of his agents, by a roundabout way, to
guard that issue. A patrol which was returning to the Arsenal
post having passed him, he made a requisition on it, and
caused it to accompany him. In such games soldiers are aces.
Moreover, the principle is, that in order to get the best of a
wild boar, one must employ the science of venery and plenty
of dogs. These combinations having been effected, feeling
that Jean Valjean was caught between the blind alley Genrot
on the right, his agent on the left, and himself, Javert, in the
rear, he took a pinch of snuff.
Then he began the game. He experienced one ecstatic and
infernal moment; he allowed his man to go on ahead, knowing
that he had him safe, but desirous of postponing the moment
of arrest as long as possible, happy at the thought that he was
taken and yet at seeing him free, gloating over him with his
gaze, with that voluptuousness of the spider which allows the
fly to flutter, and of the cat which lets the mouse run. Claws
and talons possess a monstrous sensuality,— the obscure movements
of the creature imprisoned in their pincers. What a
delight this strangling is!
Javert was enjoying himself. The meshes of his net were
stoutly knotted. He was sure of success; all he had to do now
was to close his hand.
Accompanied as he was, the very idea of resistance was
impossible, however vigorous, energetic, and desperate Jean
Valjean might be.
Javert advanced slowly, sounding, searching on his way all
the nooks of the street like so many pockets of thieves.
When he reached the centre of the web he found the fly no
longer there.
His exasperation can be imagined.
He interrogated his sentinel of the Rues Droit-Mur and
Petit-Picpus; that agent, who had remained imperturbably
at his post, had not seen the man pass.
It sometimes happens that a stag is lost head and horns;
that is to say, he escapes although he has the pack on his very
heels, and then the oldest huntsmen know not what to say.
Duvivier, Ligniville, and Desprez halt short. In a discomfiture
of this sort, Artonge exclaims, "It was not a stag, but
a sorcerer." Javert would have liked to utter the same cry.
His disappointment bordered for a moment on despair and
rage.
It is certain that Napoleon made mistakes during the war
with Russia, that Alexander committed blunders in the war in
India, that Caesar made mistakes in the war in Africa, that
Cyrus was at fault in the war in Scythia, and that Javert
blundered in this campaign against Jean Valjean. He was
wrong, perhaps, in hesitating in his recognition of the ex-convict.
The first glance should have sufficed him. He was
wrong in not arresting him purely and simply in the old
building; he was wrong in not arresting him when he positively
recognized him in the Rue de Pontoise. He was wrong
in taking counsel with his auxiliaries in the full light of the
moon in the Carrefour Rollin. Advice is certainly useful;
it is a good thing to know and to interrogate those of the
dogs who deserve confidence; but the hunter cannot be too
cautious when he is chasing uneasy animals like the wolf and
the convict. Javert, by taking too much thought as to how
he should set the bloodhounds of the pack on the trail,
alarmed the beast by giving him wind of the dart, and so
made him run. Above all, he was wrong in that after he
had picked up the scent again on the bridge of Austerlitz,
he played that formidable and puerile game of keeping such
a man at the end of a thread. He thought himself stronger
than he was, and believed that he could play at the game of
the mouse and the lion. At the same time, he reckoned
himself as too weak, when he judged it necessary to obtain
reinforcement. Fatal precaution, waste of precious time!
Javert committed all these blunders, and none the less was
one of the cleverest and most correct spies that ever existed.
He was, in the full force of the term, what is called in venery
a
knowing dog. But what is there that is perfect?
Great strategists have their eclipses.
The greatest follies are often composed, like the largest
ropes, of a multitude of strands. Take the cable thread by
thread, take all the petty determining motives separately, and
you can break them one after the other, and you say, "That is
all there is of it!" Braid them, twist them together; the
result is enormous: it is Attila hesitating between Marcian
on the east and Valentinian on the west; it is Hannibal tarrying
at Capua; it is Danton falling asleep at Arcis-sur-Aube.
However that may be, even at the moment when he saw that
Jean Valjean had escaped him, Javert did not lose his head.
Sure that the convict who had broken his ban could not be far
off, he established sentinels, he organized traps and ambuscades,
and beat the quarter all that night. The first thing
he saw was the disorder in the street lantern whose rope had
been cut. A precious sign which, however, led him astray,
since it caused him to turn all his researches in the direction
of the Cul-de-Sac Genrot. In this blind alley there were
tolerably low walls which abutted on gardens whose bounds
adjoined the immense stretches of waste land. Jean Valjean
evidently must have fled in that direction. The fact is, that
had he penetrated a little further in the Cul-de-Sac Genrot,
he would probably have done so and have been lost. Javert
explored these gardens and these waste stretches as though
he had been hunting for a needle.
At daybreak he left two intelligent men on the outlook, and
returned to the Prefecture of Police, as much ashamed as a
police spy who had been captured by a robber might have been.