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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 exconvict.
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.
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