بخش 1 کتاب 6

BOOK SIX

JAVERT

I. THE BEGINNING OF REST

MONSIEUR MADELEINE HAD FANTINE carried to the infirmary he had set up in his own home. He put her in the hands of the sisters, who put her to bed. A burning fever had come on. She spent part of the night ranting deliriously but ended up getting off to sleep.

The next day at around noon, Fantine woke up and heard someone breathing very close to her bed; she pulled the curtain aside and saw Monsieur Madeleine standing gazing at something above her head. His gaze was full of pity and anguish and supplication. She followed its direction and saw that he was addressing a crucifix nailed to the wall.

Monsieur Madeleine was from that moment transfigured in the eyes of Fantine. He seemed to her enveloped in light. He was absorbed in a kind of prayer. She watched him for a long time without daring to interrupt. Finally she spoke timidly to him: “What are you doing here, then?” Monsieur Madeleine had been on the spot for an hour. He was waiting for Fantine to wake up. He took her hand, felt her pulse, and answered: “How are you?” “Good, I slept,” she said. “I think I’m getting better, it’s nothing.”

He went on, answering the first question she had asked him as though he had just heard it: “I was praying to the martyr up above.” And he added in his thoughts: “For the martyr here below.”

Monsieur Madeleine had spent the night and the morning gathering information. He knew everything now. He knew Fantine’s story in all its poignant details. He went on: “You have suffered very greatly, you poor woman. Oh, but don’t complain, you now share the lot of the chosen ones. This is the way men turn into angels. It’s not their fault; they don’t know how else to go about it. You see, this hell you’ve just come out of is the first step to heaven. You had to start there.” He gave a deep sigh. She, however, smiled at him with that sublime smile in which two teeth were missing.

That same night Javert had written a letter. He himself took the letter to the post office in Montreuil-sur-mer the following morning. It was destined for Paris and was addressed: Monsieur Chabouillet, secretary to the prefect of police. As the business at the police station was the talk of the town, the woman who ran the post office and a few others who saw the letter before it was whisked away, recognizing Javert’s handwriting from the address, thought he was sending in his resignation.

Monsieur Madeleine promptly wrote to the Thénardiers. Fantine owed them a hundred francs. He sent them three hundred francs, telling them to pay themselves from out of this sum and to bring the child immediately to Montreuil-sur-mer, where her sick mother was calling for her.

This knocked old man Thénardier out. “Christ!” he said to his wife. “We better hang on to that kid. The little mouse looks like turning into a money-spinner after all. I think I get it. Some sucker’s fallen for the mother.” He responded with a bill for over five hundred francs meticulously drawn up. This bill featured two incontestable memoranda for more than three hundred francs’ worth of fees, one from a doctor, the other from an apothecary, who had both looked after and medicated Éponine and Azelma during two protracted bouts of illness. Cosette, as we’ve said, had not been sick. It was a matter of a little name change. At the end of the bill Thénardier had put: “Received in part payment three hundred francs.” Monsieur Madeleine immediately sent off another three hundred francs and wrote: “Hurry up and bring Cosette.” “Like hell we will!” said old man Thénardier. “We’re not letting go of that kid.”

Fantine, meanwhile, was not getting any better. She was still in the infirmary.

At first the sisters had taken in and cared for “that girl” only with repugnance. Anyone who has seen the bas-reliefs at Rheims1 will remember the pouting bottom lips of the levelheaded virgins as they glare at the dizzy virgins. This antique scorn of the vestals for the flute-playing courtesans, their fallen sisters, is one of the deepest instincts of feminine dignity; the nuns had had a double dose of it, thanks to religion. But in a few days Fantine had disarmed them completely. She spoke so humbly and sweetly and the mother in her was so very moving. One day the sisters overheard her talking in her feverish delirium: “I have been a sinner, but when I have my child back with me, that will mean God has forgiven me. While I was still in sin, I wouldn’t have wanted to have my Cosette with me, I wouldn’t have been able to bear her sad, bewildered eyes. And yet it was for her that I did wrong, and that’s why God forgives me. I’ll feel the good Lord’s blessing when Cosette is here. I’ll feast my eyes on her, it’ll do me good to see that innocent little girl. She knows nothing at all. She is an angel, you see, my dear sisters. At that age, the wings haven’t yet fallen off.” Monsieur Madeleine went to see her twice a day and each time she would ask him: “Will I see Cosette soon?” He would reply: “Maybe tomorrow morning. She’ll arrive any moment, I’m expecting her.”

And the mother’s pale face would brighten.

“Oh!” she would say. “How happy I will be!”

We just said that she was not getting any better. On the contrary, her state seemed to worsen from one week to the next. That handful of snow applied to the bare skin between the shoulder blades had caused a sudden suppression of perspiration as a result of which the disease she had been incubating for several years finally broke out with a vengeance. At the time people were just beginning to follow the innovative practices of Laënnec2 in the study and treatment of chest diseases. The doctor listened to Fantine’s chest with his stethoscope, accordingly, and shook his head.

Monsieur Madeleine said to the doctor: “Well?”

“Doesn’t she have a little girl she’s keen to see?”

“Yes.”

“Well, hurry up and get her here.”

A shiver ran down Monsieur Madeleine’s spine.

Fantine asked him: “What did the doctor say?”

Monsieur Madeleine forced a smile.

“He said to get your little girl here good and quick. That will get you back on your feet.”

“Oh!” she said, “too right! But what can the Thénardiers be doing keeping my Cosette from me! Oh, but she’ll come. At last I see happiness close by me!” The Thénardiers, however, “hung on to the kid” and dished out a hundred poor excuses. Cosette was a bit too off-colour to travel in winter. And then there were a number of pressing little debts run up all over the district and he was busy gathering the bills for them, and so on and so forth.

“I’ll send someone to go and get Cosette,” said father Madeleine. “If I have to, I’ll go myself.” He wrote the following letter under Fantine’s dictation and got her to sign it:

Monsieur Thénardier,

You will hand Cosette over to the bearer.

All small debts will be paid.

Yours faithfully,

FANTINE

At this juncture a serious incident occurred. We chip away as best we can at the mysterious block of marble our lives are made of—in vain; the black vein of destiny always reappears.

II. HOW JEAN CAN TURN INTO CHAMP

ONE MORNING, WHEN Monsieur Madeleine was in his office, busy settling some pressing mayoral matters ahead of time in case he did decide to travel to Montfermeil himself, someone popped in to tell him that police inspector Javert wished to speak to him. At the sound of that name, Monsieur Madeleine could not help but have a bad feeling. Since the incident at the police station, Javert had avoided him more than ever and Monsieur Madeleine had not set eyes on him again.

“Send him in,” he said.

In stepped Javert.

Monsieur Madeleine remained seated near the fireplace, a quill pen in his hand, his eye on a file he was flicking through and annotating, which contained police reports on infringements of the traffic regulations. He did not get up for Javert. He could not prevent himself from thinking of poor Fantine and he felt it was appropriate for him to be cool.

Javert respectfully saluted the mayor, who turned his back on him and, without taking any notice of him, went on making notes in his file.

Javert took two or three steps into the office and stopped without breaking the silence.

A physiognomist familiar with Javert’s nature, one who had long studied this savage at the service of civilization, this bizarre composite of Roman, Spartan, monk, and corporal, this spy who could not lie, this virgin snitch, a physiognomist who knew of his secret and long-standing aversion to Monsieur Madeleine, of his conflict with the mayor over Fantine, and who could study Javert at this moment, would have wondered: “What on earth has happened to the man?” It was evident to anyone familiar with the man’s straight, clear, sincere, righteous, austere, and ferocious conscience that Javert was emerging from some huge inner struggle. There was nothing in Javert’s soul that wasn’t written all over his face. He was, like all violent people, subject to abrupt mood swings. But his physiognomy had never been more bizarre or more startling. On entering, he had bowed before Monsieur Madeleine with a look completely devoid of bitterness, anger, defiance; he had stopped a few feet behind the mayor’s chair; and now he just stood there in an almost military pose, with the naïve and cold cloddishness of a man never soft but always patient. He waited, without a word, without a movement, in genuine humility and quiet resignation, until it should please Monsieur le maire to turn around; calm, grave, hat in hand, eyes lowered, with an expression exactly halfway between that of a soldier facing his officer and a guilty party facing his judge. All the feelings and all the recollections you would imagine him to have had evaporated. Now there was nothing more on that impenetrable and simple granitelike face than a mournful sadness. His whole person exuded abasement and steadfastness and an inexpressibly courageous dejection.

Finally Monsieur le maire put down his pen and half turned round:

“Well, what? What’s up, Javert?”

Javert remained silent for a moment as though gathering his wits; then he spoke up with a sort of sad solemnity, which was nonetheless straightforward: “What’s up, Monsieur le maire, is that a criminal act has been committed.” “What act?”

“An inferior agent of the government has shown lack of respect for a magistrate in the most serious fashion. I come, as is my duty, to bring this fact to your attention.” “Who is this agent?” asked Monsieur Madeleine.

“Me,” said Javert.

“You?”

“Me.”

“And who is the magistrate who has something to complain about in this agent?”

“You, Monsieur le maire.”

Monsieur Madeleine sat bolt upright in his chair. Javert went on, his manner serious, his eyes still cast down.

“Monsieur le maire, I have come to beg you to be so kind as to see to it that the authorities dismiss me.” Monsieur Madeleine, flabbergasted, started to open his mouth. Javert interrupted him.

“You’re going to say that I could have tendered my resignation, but that is not enough. To tender your resignation is the honourable thing to do. I failed, I must be punished. I must be discharged.” And, after a pause, he went on: “Monsieur le maire, you were unjustly severe with me the other day. Be justly so today.” “So that’s it! Why?” cried Monsieur Madeleine. “What is all this baloney? What are you trying to say? How has a criminal act been committed against me by you? What have you done to me? What wrong have you done me? You accuse yourself, you wish to be replaced—” “Discharged.”

“Discharged, all right. I just don’t get it.”

“You will, Monsieur le maire.”

Javert released a sigh from deep in his chest and went on in the same sad, frigid manner: “Monsieur le maire, six weeks ago following the episode with that woman, I was furious and I denounced you.” “Denounced me!”

“To the prefecture of police in Paris.”

Monsieur Madeleine, who laughed scarcely more often than Javert did, began to let loose.

“As a mayor encroaching on police turf?”

“As an ex-convict.”

The mayor went very white.

Javert, who had not looked up, forged on:

“That is what I thought. For a long while I’d had my suspicions. A physical resemblance, information obtained in Faverolles, your amazing strength, the episode with old Fauchelevent, your skill as a marksman, the way you limp a little in one leg, I don’t know! Rubbish like that! Whatever it was, I took you for a man who went by the name of Jean Valjean, that’s all.” “Went by the name of? … What did you say his name was?”

“Jean Valjean. He was a convict I saw twenty years ago when I was the auxiliary guard in the hulks of Toulon. When he came out of jail, this Jean Valjean, it seems, robbed a bishop’s, then went on to commit another armed robbery in a public thoroughfare, on a little Savoyard. He got away eight years ago, no one knows how, though they kept looking for him. Me, I fancied … In a word, that’s what I did! Anger made up my mind for me, and I denounced you to the prefecture.” Monsieur Madeleine, who had taken up his file again a few moments before, said in a tone of perfect indifference: “And what was their reply?” “That I was mad.”

“So?”

“So, they were right.”

“Just as well you recognize the fact!”

“I have no choice, since the real Jean Valjean has been found.”

The sheet of paper Monsieur Madeleine was holding slipped out of his hands, he looked up and, firmly holding Javert’s eyes, he said in an indescribable tone: “Ah!” Javert went on: “This is the story, Monsieur le maire. It seems that down there, out Ailly-le-Haut-Clocher way, there was a fellow known as old man Champmathieu. He was very poor. Nobody took any notice of him. People like that, no one knows what they live on. Recently, this autumn, old man Champmathieu was arrested for stealing apples for cider, an act committed at … Never mind! There was a theft, a wall scaled, branches of a tree broken. My Champmathieu was arrested. He still had the apple branch in his hand. The cur was put behind bars. Up to that point, it wasn’t much more than petty larceny—a matter for the magistrate. But that’s where Providence comes in. The lockup was in a bad state, so the examining magistrate feels it only right to transfer Champmathieu to Arras where the departmental prison is. In this prison in Arras there’s an old ex-con named Brevet who’s being held for I don’t know what reason and who has been made a gatekeeper at the barracks for good behaviour. Monsieur le maire, Champmathieu no sooner turns up than this Brevet cries: ‘Well, I never! I know that man! He’s an old crim. Come on, look at me, mate! You’re Jean Valjean!’ ‘Jean Valjean? Who the hell is Jean Valjean?’ Old Champmathieu plays dumb. ‘Don’t come the innocent with me,’ says Brevet. ‘You’re Jean Valjean! You were in the clink in Toulon. Twenty years ago we were in together.’ Champmathieu won’t have it. Hell! You can understand why. They dug deeper. They dug deeper into the whole business for me. And this is what they came up with: This Champmathieu, about thirty years ago, worked as a tree pruner all around the country and especially in Faverolles. There, we lose all trace of him. A long while later, we see him in the Auvergne, then in Paris, where he reckons he was a wheelwright and that he had a daughter who was a washerwoman, but there’s no proof of that; finally, he shows up in this neck of the woods. Now, before he went to jail for aggravated theft, what was Jean Valjean? A pruner. Where? In Faverolles. Another fact. This Valjean was called Jean as his Christian name and his mother’s maiden name was Mathieu. What could be more natural, when he got out of jail, than taking his mother’s name to hide behind and pass himself off as Jean Mathieu? He heads for the Auvergne. There, they pronounce Jean as Chan, so he’s known as Chan Mathieu. Our man goes along with this and suddenly he’s transformed into Champmathieu. You follow my drift, don’t you? Inquiries are made in Faverolles. Jean Valjean’s family no longer lives there. No one knows where they are now. You know, in the lower classes, families often vanish from sight like that. We look, we can’t find a thing. Those sorts of people, when they’re not mud, they’re dust. Then again, as the start of the story goes back thirty years, there’s no one left in Faverolles who knew Jean Valjean. We make inquiries in Toulon. Besides Brevet there are only two convicts who ever clapped eyes on Jean Valjean. Their names are Cochepaille and Chenildieu1 and they are now serving life sentences. We take them out of jail and bring them here. We confront them with this so-called Champmathieu. They don’t hesitate. For them, same as for Brevet, it’s Jean Valjean. Same age—he’s fifty-four, same height, same look, same man, in a word, it’s him. It was at that very moment that I sent my denunciation to the prefecture in Paris. They answered that I’m losing my mind and that Jean Valjean is in Arras in the hands of the law. You can imagine how amazed I was, since I thought I had this same Jean Valjean right where I wanted him—here! I write to the examining judge. He sends for me, they bring me Champmathieu—” “And?” Monsieur Madeleine broke in.

Javert replied, his face incorruptible and sad: “Monsieur le maire, the truth is the truth. I don’t like the fact, but that man is Jean Valjean. I, too, recognized him.” Monsieur Madeleine’s voice was barely a whisper when he went on: “Are you sure?”

Javert began to laugh with that painful laugh that springs from deep conviction: “Oh, I’m sure!” He remained reflective for a moment, mechanically taking pinches of the wood powder for drying ink from the little blotting-bowl on the table, then he added: “And more than that, now that I’ve seen the real Jean Valjean, I can’t understand how I could have thought otherwise. I beg your forgiveness, Monsieur le maire.” In addressing this grave plea to the man who, six weeks before, had humiliated him in front of the whole police station and who had told him to “get out!” Javert, that arrogant man, was unwittingly full of guilelessness and dignity. Monsieur Madeleine answered his prayer only with this abrupt question: “And what does the man say?” “Ah, heavens, Monsieur le maire, the whole thing’s a mess. If it is Jean Valjean, we’re dealing with a repeat offender. Leaping over a wall, breaking a branch, pinching apples, for a child, it’s a bit of mischief; for a man, it’s a misdemeanor; for a convict, it’s a crime. Scaling a wall and theft, it’s all there. It’s not the examining magistrate anymore, it’s the criminal court. It’s not a few days in the lockup anymore, it’s the galleys in perpetuity. And then, there’s the business with the little Savoyard, who I hope will turn up. Lord! There’s plenty to fight against, don’t you think? Yes, for anyone other than Jean Valjean. But Jean Valjean is a sly dog. And that’s also how I know him. Anyone else would feel that things were getting too hot; he’d go to great lengths to deny everything, he’d make a real song and dance, the kettle sings on top of the fire, he’d claim he wasn’t Jean Valjean, and so on, and so forth. But him, he acts like he doesn’t know what’s going on, he says: ‘I’m Champmathieu and that’s all there is to it.’ He acts amazed—even better, he acts dumb. Oh, the bastard’s cunning as a sewer rat. But it makes no difference, the evidence is there. He’s been identified by four people; the old scoundrel will be condemned. It’s gone to the criminal court, in Arras. I’ll be going there to testify. I’ve been called.” Monsieur Madeleine had sat back at his desk, taken up his file again, and was leafing through it quietly, reading and making notes, like a man with a lot on his plate. He wheeled round to Javert: “That’s enough, Javert. I’m really not interested in all the details, to tell you the truth. We are wasting our time and there are urgent matters to attend to. Javert, you will go instantly to the good woman Buseaupied who sells herbs over on the corner of the rue Saint-Saulve. You will tell her to lodge her complaint against the cart driver, Pierre Chesnelong; that man is a thug who nearly crushed the woman and her child to death. He must be punished. You will then go to Monsieur Charcellay’s, rue Montre-de-Champigny. He’s complaining that the house next door’s gutter overflows into his place when it’s raining and that it’s eroding the foundations of his house. After that you will look into the offences against police regulations that have been brought to my attention in the rue Guibourg at the widow Doris’s place and rue du Garraud-Blanc at Madame Renée le Bossé’s, and you will file reports. But I’m loading you up with work. Aren’t you going to be away? Didn’t you say you were going to Arras for that business in eight to ten days …?” “Sooner than that, Monsieur le maire.”

“What day, then?”

“But I think I told Monsieur le maire that it was going to be tried tomorrow and that I was setting out by stagecoach tonight.” Monsieur Madeleine gave an imperceptible start.

“And how long will the trial last?”

“A day at the most. The sentence will be handed down tomorrow night at the latest. But I won’t wait for the sentence, which is not in any doubt. As soon as my testimony is given, I’ll come back here.” “Fine,” said Monsieur Madeleine.

And he waved Javert out of the room.

Javert did not budge.

“Pardon me, Monsieur le maire.”

“What else?” asked Monsieur Madeleine.

“Monsieur le maire, there is one thing I must remind you of.”

“What?”

“It’s that I have to be relieved of my duties.”

Monsieur Madeleine rose.

“Javert, you are a man of honour, and I value you. You exaggerate your mistake. Besides, it is one more offence that concerns me alone. Javert, you deserve to rise, not fall. I want you to keep your job.” Javert looked at Monsieur Madeleine with his candid eyes, in whose depths you felt you could see his conscience, unenlightened but inflexible and unsullied and he said in a calm voice: “Monsieur le maire, I can’t agree to that.” “I’ll say it again,” replied Monsieur Madeleine. “This matter is my business.”

But Javert in his single focus was not about to be sidetracked, and persisted: “As for exaggerating, I’m not. This is how I look at it. I suspected you unjustly. That’s nothing. It’s anyone’s right to be suspicious, even if there may be some abuse involved in suspecting people above your station. But without proof, and in a fit of rage, with only revenge in mind, I denounced you as a convict—you, a respectable man, a mayor, a magistrate! That is serious. Most serious. I offended authority in your person, I, an agent of authority! If one of my subordinates had done to me what I’ve done to you I would have declared him unworthy of the service and sent him packing. So, what are you waiting for? Listen, Monsieur le maire, one more thing. I have often been hard in my life. On others. It was just. I did the right thing. So now, if I weren’t hard on myself, everything I’ve ever done right would be wrong. Am I supposed to go softer on myself than on others? No. Heavens! If I was only good for chastising others and not myself, I’d be a miserable swine, indeed! And those who call me ‘that mongrel Javert’ would be right! Monsieur le maire, I don’t want you to treat me with goodness, your goodness to others has made my blood boil. I don’t want it for myself. The goodness that consists of ruling in favour of the strumpet against the bourgeois citizen, the policeman against the mayor, the underdog against the top dog, is what I call bad goodness. It’s that sort of goodness that brings society down. God, it’s as easy as winking to be good, the hard thing is to be just. Listen! If you had been what I thought you were, I wouldn’t have been good to you! Not me! You’d have copped it! Monsieur le maire, I must deal with myself the way I’d deal with anyone else. Whenever I sent wrongdoers down, whenever I locked up scoundrels, I would often say to myself: ‘You, if you ever slip up, if I ever catch you in the wrong, just look out!’ I did slip up, I did catch myself in the wrong. Too bad! So let’s go: booted out, cashiered, dismissed! Only right. I have arms, I’ll work the land. I don’t mind. Monsieur le maire, for the good of the service, make an example of me. I simply request the dismissal of Inspector Javert.” All this was said in a tone that was humble, proud, desperate, and convinced, which gave this strangely honest man an indescribably weird grandeur.

“We shall see,” said Monsieur Madeleine.

And he held out his hand.

Javert recoiled and said in a fierce voice: “Forgive me, Monsieur le maire, but that is not right. A mayor does not give his hand to a snitch.” He added between clenched teeth: “A snitch, yes; the moment I misuse my powers as a policeman, I am nothing more than a snitch.” On that note, he bowed deeply and headed for the door.

At the door, he turned and, eyes still downcast, said: “Monsieur le maire, I will continue to perform my duties until a replacement is found.” He left. Monsieur Madeleine sat musing, listening to the firm and measured tread receding down the stone corridor.