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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.
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