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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.
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