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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
watchdog; 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 hated 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.
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