بخش 1 کتاب 8

BOOK EIGHT

AFTERSHOCK

I. IN WHAT MIRROR MONSIEUR MADELEINE LOOKS AT HIS HAIR

DAY WAS BEGINNING to dawn. Fantine had had a night of fever and insomnia—full of happy images, though; in the morning, she fell asleep. Sister Simplice, who had watched over her, took advantage of her sleep to go and prepare a fresh solution of quinine. The worthy sister had been in the dispensary only a few minutes, hunched closely over her drugs and her vials so as to see them in the mist that dawn spreads over things. Suddenly she turned her head and let out a low cry. Monsieur Madeleine stood before her. He had come in without a sound.

“It’s you, Monsieur le maire!” she cried.

He replied in a low voice: “How is the poor woman doing?”

“Not bad just now. But we were very anxious, I can tell you!”

She explained what had happened, how Fantine had been very bad, indeed, the day before, and how now she was doing better, because she believed Monsieur le maire had been to get her little girl from Montfermeil. The sister did not dare question Monsieur le maire, but she could see very well from his look that that was not where he had been.

“That’s all good,” he said, “you were right not to disabuse her.”

“Yes,” the sister replied, “but now, Monsieur le maire, when she sees you and she does not see her child, what will we tell her?” He remained pensive for a moment.

“God will inspire us,” he said.

“But we can’t lie to her,” murmured the sister under her breath.

Bright sunshine streamed into the room. It struck Monsieur Madeleine’s face head on. Luck would have it that the sister looked up right then.

“My God, Monsieur!” she cried. “What’s happened to you? Your hair is all white!”

“White!” he exclaimed.

Sister Simplice did not have a mirror; she rummaged through a chest and pulled out a little mirror the infirmary doctor used to check if a patient was dead, no longer breathing. Monsieur Madeleine took the mirror, studied his hair, and said: “Look at that!” He tossed those words off casually, as though his mind was on something else.

The sister felt chilled by something unfamiliar that she detected in all this. He asked: “Can I see her?” “Isn’t Monsieur le maire going to go and get her child back for her?” said the sister, scarcely daring to risk a question.

“Of course, but it will take at least two or three days.”

“If she does not see Monsieur le maire before then,” she went on timidly, “she won’t know Monsieur le maire is back; it will be easy to make her be patient and when the child arrives she will naturally think Monsieur le maire has arrived with the child. We won’t have to tell any lies.” Monsieur Madeleine appeared to be turning this over for a few moments, but then he said with his customary calm gravity: “No, sister, I must see her. I may not have much time, perhaps.”

The nun didn’t seem to notice that word perhaps, which lent an obscure and odd meaning to Monsieur le maire’s words. She replied, lowering her eyes and her voice respectfully: “In that case, she is resting, but Monsieur le maire may go in.” He commented on a door that wouldn’t shut properly and the noise it made, which was enough to wake the patient up; then he went into Fantine’s room, went over to the bed, and pulled back the curtains a fraction. She was sleeping. Her breath was coming out of her chest with that tragic wheezing sound characteristic of such diseases, which breaks the hearts of poor mothers staying up all night watching over their doomed and sleeping children. But this laboured breathing scarcely ruffled the ineffable serenity that was spread over her face, transfiguring her in her sleep. Her pallor had turned to whiteness; her cheeks were rosy. Her long blond eyelashes, the sole remnant of beauty that had stayed with her from the days of her virginity and her youth, fluttered while remaining closed. Her whole body trembled as if from some indescribable deployment of wings ready to fan out and carry her away, which you could feel quivering, but which you could not see. To see her like this, you would never have thought that she was so sick they despaired of her. She looked more like she was about to fly away than about to die.

When a hand approaches the stem to pluck a flower, the stem shivers and seems both to shrink back and to offer itself at once. The human body undergoes something of this quivering as the moment arrives when the mysterious fingers of death are about to gather the soul.

Monsieur Madeleine stayed motionless for a while close to the bed, letting his eyes wander over the patient and the crucifix, looking from one to the other in turn, as he had done two months earlier when he came to see her in this refuge for the very first time. They were both still there in the same position, she sleeping, he praying; only now, two months later, her hair was grey and his hair was white.

The sister had not come in with him. He stayed standing close by the bed, a finger over his mouth, as though there were someone in the room who had to be hushed.

She opened her eyes, saw him, and said with a peaceful smile: “And Cosette?”

II. FANTINE HAPPY

SHE DID NOT jump with surprise, or with joy; she was joy itself. That simple question, “And Cosette?” was made with a faith so profound, with so much certainty, with such a total lack of anxiety and doubt, that he could find no words. She continued: “I knew you were there, I was sleeping, but I could see you. I’ve been able to see you for a long time. I followed you with my eyes all night. You were in a cloud of glory and you had all kinds of heavenly figures all around you.” He raised his eyes to the crucifix.

“But, tell me,” she went on, “where is Cosette? Why haven’t you put her in my bed so that I’d see her the moment I opened my eyes?” He trotted out something he could no longer recall later. Luckily the doctor, who had been alerted, stepped in and came to Monsieur Madeleine’s rescue.

“My child,” said the doctor, “calm down. Your little girl is here.”

Fantine’s eyes lit up and covered her face in brightness. She brought her hands together with an expression that held all the violence and all the gentleness that prayer can hold.

“Oh!” she cried. “Carry her in!”

Touching maternal illusion! In Fantine’s eyes, Cosette was still a baby that you carry.

“Not yet,” the doctor went on, “not just now. You still have a bit of fever. The sight of your child will agitate you and set you back. You have to get better first.” She cut him off anxiously.

“But I am better! I tell you I’m better; is he all there, this doctor? I want to see my child right now! Now!!” “You see,” said the doctor, “how carried away you get. As long as you’re like this, I won’t let you have your daughter. It’s not enough just to see her, you’ve got to live for her. When you behave yourself, I’ll bring her in to you myself.” The poor mother hung her head.

“Monsieur le docteur, I beg your pardon, I really do beg your pardon. Once, I would never have spoken like I just did, so many bad things have happened to me that I don’t know what I’m saying anymore, at times. I understand, you’re worried about the emotion, I’ll wait as long as you like but I swear to you that it would not have set me back to see my daughter. I have seen her, I haven’t taken my eyes off her, since last night. Do you know? If you brought her in to me now, I’d simply speak to her very softly. That’s all. Isn’t it perfectly natural for me to want to see my little girl after they went and got her for me in Montfermeil? I’m not angry. I know very well that I’m going to be happy. All night I saw white things and people smiling at me. When Monsieur le docteur wants to, he’ll bring me my Cosette. I don’t have a fever anymore, because I’m better; I can feel that there’s nothing wrong with me anymore at all. But I’ll act like I’m still sick and I won’t budge, to please the ladies here. When they see I’m perfectly calm, they’ll say: We must give her her little girl.” Monsieur Madeleine had sat down on a chair beside the bed. She turned to him; she was visibly making an effort to appear calm and “well behaved,” as she said, in this stage of the disease that resembles infancy, the patient is so weak, so that, seeing her so peaceful, they would not make a fuss about bringing her Cosette. Yet, though restraining herself, she could not prevent herself from firing a whole host of questions at Monsieur Madeleine.

“Did you have a good trip, Monsieur le maire? Oh, how good you are to have gone and got her for me! Just tell me how she is. Did she cope well with the travel? Alas! She won’t recognize me! After all this time, she will have forgotten me, poor little mite! Kids! They have no memory. They’re like birds. Today it sees something and tomorrow something else, and it doesn’t think about anything anymore. Only, did she have clean clothes? Did those Thénardiers look after her properly? How did they feed her? Oh, how I’ve suffered, if you only knew! Asking myself all those questions in the days when I was so poor! Now it’s over! I’m so happy! Oh, how I long to see her! Monsieur le maire, do you think she’s pretty? She’s beautiful, isn’t she, my daughter? You must have been cold as anything in that coach. Couldn’t they bring her in just for a second? They can take her away again straight after that. Tell me! You’re the mayor, you can do it!” He took her hand: “Cosette is beautiful,” he said. “Cosette is doing well, you’ll see her soon, just be quiet now. You’re talking too fast and you’ve taken your arms out from under the covers, and it’s making you cough.” Indeed, coughing fits were interrupting Fantine at very nearly every word.

Fantine didn’t even murmur, she feared that she had overstepped the mark with her few overimpassioned pleas and compromised the confidence she hoped to inspire, and she suddenly changed tack.

“It’s quite pretty, Montfermeil, isn’t it? In summer, people go there for picnics. What about the Thénardiers? Is their business going well? They don’t get a lot of people passing through in those parts. That inn is just a fleapit.” Monsieur Madeleine held her hand and watched her with anxiety; it was clear he had come to tell her things he was now hesitant to say. Having paid his visit, the doctor had now withdrawn. Only Sister Simplice remained with them.

But in the middle of the silence, Fantine yelled: “I can hear her! My God! I can hear her!” She shot her arm up to demand silence around her. Held her breath and strained to listen, rapt.

There used to be a little girl who played in the courtyard; the child of the concierge or of one of the women from the workshop. It was one of those coincidences that are always cropping up and that seem to be part of the mysterious staging of funereal events, that this little girl was, right then, running up and down outside to keep herself warm and laughing and singing out loud as she did so. Alas! There is nothing the games of children do not get caught up in! It was this little girl that Fantine could hear singing.

“Oh!” she squealed. “It’s my Cosette! I recognize her voice!”

The little girl vanished as she had come, the voice died, Fantine strained to hear a little longer, then her face clouded and Monsieur Madeleine heard her mutter: “Fancy that rotten doctor not letting me see my daughter! He’s got a mean face, that man!” But the laughing thought at the back of her mind pushed to the fore once more. She went on talking to herself, her head on the pillow: “How happy we will be! We’ll have a small garden, to start with! Monsieur Madeleine promised me one. My daughter will play in the garden. She must know her letters by now. I’ll teach her how to spell. She’ll chase butterflies in the grass. I’ll watch her. And then she’ll make her first communion. As for that—when will she make her first communion?” She began to count on her fingers.

“… One, two, three, four … She’s seven. In five years. She’ll have a white veil, the latest stockings, she’ll look like a proper little lady. Oh, my good sister, you don’t know what an idiot I am, here’s me thinking about my daughter’s first communion!” And she began to laugh.

He had let go of Fantine’s hand. He listened to her words the way you listen to the wind blowing, eyes on the ground, mind plunged into unfathomable thoughts. Suddenly she stopped talking and her head shot up from the pillow. Fantine had become frightening.

She no longer spoke, she no longer breathed; she half sat up in bed, one thin shoulder poking out of her nightgown, her face, radiant only a moment before, was livid, and she seemed to be staring at something horrifying in front of her, at the back of the room, her eyes grown huge with terror.

“My God!” he cried. “What’s the matter, Fantine?”

She did not reply, she did not take her eyes off whatever the object was that she seemed to see; she touched his arm with one hand and, with the other, signalled to him to look behind him.

He turned round and saw Javert.

III. JAVERT SATISFIED

THIS IS WHAT had happened.

Half past midnight was ringing out when Monsieur Madeleine left the circuit courtroom in Arras. He had gone back to his inn just in time to leave again by the mail coach in which, you’ll remember, he had booked a seat. A bit before six o’clock in the morning, he arrived in Montreuil-sur-mer, and his first concern had been to post his letter to Monsieur Laffitte, then to get to the infirmary and see Fantine.

But scarcely had he left the courtroom of the circuit court than the public counsel for the prosecution, having recovered from the initial shock, had taken the floor to deplore the crazy action of the honourable mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer and to declare that his convictions were in no way altered by this bizarre incident, which would be illuminated forthwith, and that he, meanwhile, called for the condemnation of this Champmathieu, obviously the real Jean Valjean. The persistence of the prosecutor clearly went against the feeling of all—public, judges, and jury. The defence counsel had little trouble refuting his harangue and establishing that, following the revelations of Monsieur Madeleine, that is, of the real Jean Valjean, the whole case had been turned on its head and that the jury no longer had anyone under their noses but an innocent man. The counsel for the defence had drawn from this a few epiphomena, unfortunately not new, on judicial errors, etc., etc.; the presiding judge, in his summing up, had joined the defence counsel and the jury and in a few minutes had put Champmathieu out of the running, fully acquitting him.

But the counsel for the prosecution needed a Jean Valjean and, not having Champmathieu anymore, latched onto Madeleine.

Immediately after the release of Champmathieu, the counsel for the prosecution shut himself up with the judge. They conferred on “the necessity of seizing the person of Monsieur le maire of Montreuil-sur-mer.” This phrase, in which there are a lot of ofs, is from Monsieur, the counsel for the prosecution, entirely written in his hand in the minutes of his report to the public prosecutor. The first wave of emotion having subsided, the presiding judge made little objection. Justice must indeed take its course. And then, to tell the truth, although the judge was a good man and smart enough, he was at the same time a committed and almost ardent royalist, and he had been shocked that the mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer, in speaking of the landing in Cannes, had used the word emperor and not Buonaparte.

The order for the arrest was thus promptly dealt with. The counsel for the prosecution sent word to Montreuil-sur-mer via a courier, who was not to spare the horses, tasking Inspector Javert with the job.

We know that Javert had immediately returned to Montreuil-sur-mer after having given his testimony.

Javert got to his feet the moment the courier handed him the order for the arrest and the summons. The courier was himself a policeman and very much in the know and he quickly brought Javert up to speed with what had happened in Arras. The order for the arrest, signed by the counsel for the prosecution, was couched in these terms: “Inspector Javert will apprehend Sieur Madeleine, mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer, who, in the hearing of this day, was recognized as being the convict Jean Valjean.” Anyone who did not know Javert and who had seen him as he marched into the antechamber of the infirmary would not have had an inkling of what was afoot and would have thought he looked perfectly normal. He was cold, calm, grave, wore his grey hair plastered down flat against his temples, and had just mounted the stairs at his usual slow pace. Anyone who knew him well and had studied him closely would have quivered in their boots. The buckle of his leather collar, instead of lying flat on his neck, was curled up over his left ear. This revealed an agitation never before seen.

Javert was the genuine article: He never allowed a wrinkle to ruffle his duty or his uniform; methodical with crooks, rigid with the buttons of his coat. For him to have done his collar buckle up incorrectly, he had to have been experiencing one of those emotions we might call internal earthquakes.

He had simply come, had grabbed a corporal and four soldiers from the neighbouring police station. Had left the soldiers in the courtyard and had himself directed to Fantine’s room by the concierge, who did not smell a rat, accustomed as she was to seeing armed men asking for Monsieur le maire.

Once he reached Fantine’s room, Javert turned the key, pushed the door as gently as any male nurse, or spook, and walked in.

To tell the truth, he did not walk in. He stood in the half-open doorway, his hat on his head, his left hand over his redingote, which was buttoned up to his chin. In the crook of his elbow you could see the lead knob of his enormous walking stick, which disappeared behind him.

He stood there for a minute without anyone’s being aware of his presence. Suddenly Fantine looked up, saw him, and made Monsieur Madeleine look round.

The instant Madeleine’s eyes met Javert’s, Javert, without moving, without stirring, without coming a step closer, became truly terrible. No human feeling ever manages to be quite as appalling as gloating joy.

His was the face of a demon who has come to collect his doomed victim. The certainty of at last holding Jean Valjean in his hands, captive, sent all that he had in his soul rushing over his physiognomy. The murky bottom had been stirred up and rose to the surface. The humiliation of having lost the scent somewhat and of having been mistaken momentarily about this Champmathieu was wiped out by the pride of having been so right to start with and having so long had the right instinct. Javert’s satisfaction exploded in his superior attitude. A contorting triumph rippled and bloomed across that narrow forehead. There, revealed, was the full panoply of ghastliness that only the smuggest of faces can offer.

Javert was at that moment in seventh heaven. Without being fully aware of it, yet with a confused intuition of his own indispensible status and of his success, he personified—he, Javert—justice, enlightenment, and truth in their heavenly function of crushing evil. He had behind him and around him, at infinite depth, authority, reason, precedent, the conscience of the law, the vengeance of the law, all the stars in the firmament; he protected order, he called forth the thunder of the law, he avenged society, he came to the aid of the absolute; he stood erect in a blaze of glory; there was in his victory a trace of defiance and of combat; standing tall, arrogant, resplendent, he displayed, out in the open, for all the world to see, the superhuman bestiality of a bloodthirsty archangel, the fearful shadow of the act he was performing made visible in his clenched fist with the dull flashing of the social sword; happy and outraged, he held crime, vice, revolt, perdition, hell, pinned beneath his heel; he shone, he exterminated, he smiled … and there was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous Saint Michael.1 Javert, though horrifying, had nothing of the ignoble about him.

Probity, sincerity, candour, conviction, a sense of duty, are things that, when they go wrong, can become hideous, but that, even hideous, remain grand; their majesty, peculiar to the human conscience, persists even in horror. They are virtues that have a vice, error. The pitiless but honest joy of a fanatic in the middle of perpetrating an atrocity still preserves some mysterious radiance that is both funereal and noble. Without realizing it, Javert, in his formidable happiness, was to be pitied like any other ignoramus who triumphs. Nothing was as poignant and terrible as this face in which what we might call all the bad of good was exposed.

IV. AUTHORITY TAKES BACK ITS RIGHTS

FANTINE HAD NOT seen Javert since the day the mayor had snatched her out of the man’s clutches. Her sick brain could not make head or tail of it. Only, she did not doubt that he had come back to get her. She could not bear that ghastly face, she felt as if she were dying, she hid her face in her hands and cried out in anguish: “Monsieur Madeleine, save me!” Jean Valjean—we will call him nothing else from now on—had got to his feet. He told Fantine in his gentlest and calmest voice: “Stay calm. It is not for you that he has come.” Then he addressed Javert: “I know what you’re after.”

Javert answered: “Move it!”

There was in the tone that accompanied those two words something wild and frenzied. Javert did not say “Move it!” he said “Mout!” No spelling could render the tone in which this was uttered; it was no longer human speech, it was an animal roar.

He did not do what he usually did; he did not go into details, he did not show a summons. For him, Jean Valjean was a sort of mysterious and elusive combatant, a slippery fighter with whom he had been wrestling for five years without being able to pin him down. This arrest was not a starting point, but an endpoint. The only thing he could say was: “Move it!” In speaking, he did not make a move; he shot Jean Valjean a look that he threw like a grappling iron, the kind he was used to tugging violently to pull poor miscreants in to him. It was this look that Fantine had felt penetrate her to the very marrow of her bones two months before.

At Javert’s yowl, Fantine had opened her eyes again. But Monsieur le maire was there. What was there for her to fear? Javert advanced to the middle of the room and shrieked: “You! Are you coming?” The poor woman gazed all around her. There was no one in there but the nun and Monsieur le maire. To whom could this arrant familiarity be addressed? Only to her. She shuddered.

Then she saw something the like of which she had never seen even in the darkest days of her fever. She saw that slimy spook, Javert, grab Monsieur le maire by the collar; she saw Monsieur le maire bow his head. It seemed to her as though the world was falling apart.

Javert had, in fact, seized Jean Valjean by the collar.

“Monsieur le maire!” cried Fantine.

Javert burst out laughing, with that frightening laugh that showed all his gums.

“There’s no Monsieur le maire here anymore!”

Jean Valjean did not try to dislodge the hand that held the collar of his coat. He said: “Javert—” Javert broke in: “Monsieur l’inspecteur, to you.”

“Monsieur,” Jean Valjean continued, “I’d like a word with you in private.”

“Speak up! Speak so we can hear you!” replied Javert. “People speak up when they’re talking to me!” Jean Valjean continued, keeping his voice down: “I have a favour to ask you—”

“Speak up, I tell you.”

“But it’s something only you should hear.”

“I couldn’t care less. I won’t listen!”

Jean Valjean turned to face the man and said quickly in a voice no louder than a whisper: “Give me three days! Three days to go and get this poor woman’s child! I’ll pay whatever I have to. You can come with me, if you want to.” “You’re joking!” cried Javert. “Well! I didn’t think you were stupid! You’re asking me for three days so you can take off! And you reckon it’s to go and get this tart’s brat! Ha, ha! That’s a good one! Talk about rich!” Fantine began to shake.

“My child!” she yelled. “Go and get my child! So she’s not here! Sister, answer me, where is Cosette? I want my little girl! Monsieur Madeleine! Monsieur le maire!” Javert stamped his foot.

“There goes the other one now! Shut up, you slut! What a godforsaken place, where the galley slaves are magistrates and tarts are looked after like countesses! Well, that’s all going to change, and high time, too!” He glared at Fantine and added, grabbing a fistful of Jean Valjean’s cravat, shirt, and collar: “I’m telling you there is no Monsieur Madeleine and there is no Monsieur le maire. There is a thief, there is a crook, there is a convict named Jean Valjean! He’s the one I’ve got hold of! So that’s what there is!” Fantine sat bolt upright, leaning on both hands with her arms stiff, she looked at Jean Valjean, she looked at Javert, she looked at the nun, she opened her mouth to speak, a rattle came out from deep in her chest, her teeth began to chatter, she stretched her arms in anguish, convulsively opening her hands and groping all around her like someone drowning; then she suddenly sank back on her pillow. Her head hit the headboard and fell forward onto her chest, with her mouth gaping, her eyes open and glazed.

She was dead.

Jean Valjean placed his hand on the hand with which Javert held him and prised it open as easily as he would have opened the hand of a child; then he said to Javert: “You have killed this woman.” “That’s enough of that!” Javert shouted, furious. “I’m not here to argue. You can save all that. The guard’s below. Get cracking right now or I’ll get out the handcuffs.” There was in a corner of the room an old iron bed in a pretty poor state that served the sisters as a camp bed when they were keeping watch. Jean Valjean went over to the bed and wrenched off in a flash the already extremely dilapidated iron bar at the head of the bed, a feat that was easy with muscles like his, grabbed the rod in his clenched fist and studied Javert. Javert leaped back toward the door.

Jean Valjean, the iron bar in his fist, walked slowly over to Fantine’s bed. When he reached it, he wheeled round and said to Javert in a voice that could hardly be heard: “I advise you not to disturb me right now.” One thing is certain and that is that Javert was shaking.

He thought of running to call the guard but Jean Valjean could take advantage of that moment to get away. So he stayed put, grabbed his walking stick by the small end, and leaned against the doorjamb without taking his eyes off Jean Valjean.

Jean Valjean leaned his elbow on the bedpost at the head of the bed, his forehead in his hand, and began to contemplate Fantine, motionless and distended. He stayed there in this position, absorbed, silent, and apparently no longer thinking about a thing in this life. There was no longer anything in his face or in his attitude other than a pity beyond words. After a few moments’ reverie, he leaned over Fantine and spoke to her in a low voice.

What did he say to her? What could this outcast of a man say to that woman who was now dead? What were such words? No one on this earth heard them. Did the dead woman hear them? There are touching illusions that are perhaps sublime realities. What is beyond doubt is that Sister Simplice, sole witness to what was happening, has often recounted that the moment Jean Valjean whispered in Fantine’s ear, she distinctly saw a heavenly smile form on those pale lips and in those dull pupils, full of the wonder of the grave.

Jean Valjean took Fantine’s head in both his hands and arranged it on the pillow the way a mother would do for her child, he did up the ribbon at the neck of her nightgown and tucked her hair gently under her bonnet. That done, he closed her eyes.

Fantine’s face in that moment seemed strangely luminous. Death is entry into the light everlasting.

Fantine’s hand was dangling from the bed. Jean Valjean knelt before this hand, gently raised it and kissed it.

Then he got to his feet and turned to Javert: “Now,” he said, “I’m all yours.”

V. A SUITABLE GRAVE

JAVERT PLACED JEAN VALJEAN in the town prison.

The arrest of Monsieur Madeleine caused a sensation in Montreuil-sur-mer, or, more precisely, an extraordinary commotion. We are sad not to be able to conceal the fact that when they heard the words “he was a galley slave,”1 almost everyone abandoned him. In less than two hours, all the good he had done was forgotten, and he was “nothing but a galley slave.” We should add, in all fairness, that the details of the Arras episode were not yet known. The whole day conversations like the following could be heard all over town: “Don’t you know? He was a convict who’d been freed!” “Who was?” “The mayor.” “Come on! Monsieur Madeleine?” “Yes.” “Really?” “His name wasn’t Madeleine, it’s something awful, Béjean, Bojean, Boujean.” “Ah, heavens above!” “He’s been arrested.” “Arrested!” “Locked up in the town prison, waiting to be transferred.” “To be transferred! To be transferred! Where are they going to transfer him to?” “He’s going to appear in the circuit court for some highway robbery he did before.” “Well, I did have my suspicions! That man was too good to be true, too perfect, too sickly sweet. He refused the cross, he handed out sous to all the little beggars he met. I always thought there was something bad at the bottom of all that.” The drawing rooms especially were all frantically touting this view. One old lady, a subscriber to the Drapeau blanc,2 made this unfathomably deep observation: “I can’t say I’m sorry. That’ll teach the Buonapartists!” This is how that phantom once known as Monsieur Madeleine broke up and evaporated at Montreuil-sur-mer. Three or four people alone in all the town remained faithful to his memory. The old concierge who had served him was one of them.

The evening of the same day, this worthy old woman was sitting in her lodge, still quite bewildered and reflecting sadly. The factory had been shut all day, the carriage entrance was locked, the street was deserted. There were only two nuns in the house, Sister Perpetua and Sister Simplice, who were watching over Fantine’s body.

Round about the time that Monsieur Madeleine normally came home, the good old caretaker automatically rose, took the key to Monsieur Madeleine’s room out of a drawer along with the candlestick he always used to mount the stairs to his room; then she hung the key from the nail where he would normally get it and placed the candlestick to one side, as though she were waiting for him. After that she sat down again in her chair and went back to her musings. The poor old woman had done all this in her goodness, without being remotely aware of what she’d done.

It was only after a couple of hours that she snapped out of her reverie and cried: “Heavens! Lord Jesus Christ! Look at me, hanging his key on his nail!” At that moment, the window of the lodge opened, a hand moved through the opening, grabbed the key and the candlestick, and lit the candle by the light of a burning taper. The caretaker lifted her eyes and her mouth fell open, but she managed to stifle the cry that rose in her throat. She knew that hand, that arm, the sleeve of that coat.

It was Monsieur Madeleine.

It was a few seconds before she could speak, “gripped as she was,” as she herself later put it when she told her story.

“My God, Monsieur le maire,” she cried at last, “I thought you were—”

She stopped, for the end of her sentence would have been lacking in respect for the beginning. Jean Valjean was still, for her, Monsieur le maire.

He completed her thought.

“In prison,” he said. “I was. I broke a bar at the window, I dropped down from a rooftop, and here I am. I’m going up to my room. Go and get Sister Simplice for me. She is, no doubt, with that poor woman.” The old woman rushed to comply.

He did not caution her at all, knowing perfectly well that she would protect him better than he could protect himself.

No one ever knew how he managed to get into the courtyard without going through the carriage entrance. He had, and still carried on him, a master key that opened a small side door; but he should have been searched and the master key taken from him. This point has never been cleared up.

He mounted the stairs that led to his room. When he got to the top, he left his candlestick on the top step, opened his door virtually without a sound and groped his way to the window, which he then closed along with the shutter; then he came back for the candle and went back into the room.

It was just as well to take such a precaution; you’ll remember that his window could be seen from the street.

He ran his eyes around the room, over his table, his chair, his bed, which had not been slept in for three days. No trace of the chaos of the night before last remained. The caretaker had “made up the room.” Only, she had picked out of the ashes and placed carefully on the table the two ends of the iron-tipped club and the forty-sou coin blackened by the fire.

He took a sheet of paper and wrote: “Here are the two ends of my iron-tipped club and the forty-sou coin stolen from Petit-Gervais of which I spoke at the circuit court,” and he put the silver coin on the piece of paper along with the two bits of iron, so that it would be the first thing anyone saw when they entered the room. He took one of his old shirts out of a wardrobe and tore it up. This provided strips of cloth in which he wrapped up the two silver candlesticks. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry or in any agitation, and while he was wrapping up the bishop’s candlesticks, he munched on a lump of black bread. It was most likely the bread they’d given him in prison and which he’d taken with him when he escaped.

This was observed by the bread crumbs that were found on the tiled floor when the law later ordered a search.

Two soft raps sounded at the door.

“Come in,” he said.

It was Sister Simplice.

She was pale, her eyes were red, the candle she was holding wobbled in her hand. The violent jolts of fate have this peculiar feature, which is that, however perfectly controlled or detached we may be, they drag human nature out of the depths of our entrails and force it to reappear on the surface. In all the emotional upheavals of that day, the nun had become a woman again. She had wept and she had been shaken.

Jean Valjean had just written a few lines on a piece of paper, which he handed to the nun, saying: “Sister, you will give this to Monsieur le curé.” The note was not folded. She glanced at it.

“You may read it,” he said.

She read: “I beg Monsieur le curé to take care of all that I leave here. He will pay the costs of my trial out of it as well as the burial of the woman who died today. The rest is for the poor.” The sister tried to speak, but she could barely stutter a few inarticulate sounds. Yet she did manage to say: “Wouldn’t Monsieur le maire like to see the poor unfortunate woman one last time?” “No,” he said, “they’re after me, they would simply arrest me in her room and that would upset her.” He had barely finished his sentence when a loud noise was heard on the stairs. They heard the clamour of feet ascending and the old caretaker say in a voice as loud and piercing as she could make it: “My good man, I swear to God that no one has been in here the whole day or the whole evening, I haven’t once left my door!” A man replied: “But there’s a light on in this room.”

They recognized the voice of Javert.

The room was laid out so that the door hid a corner of the wall on the right when it opened. Jean Valjean blew out the candle and stood in this corner.

Sister Simplice fell to her knees by the table.

The door opened. Javert marched in.

The whispering of several men could be heard along with the protests of the caretaker in the corridor. The nun did not look up. She prayed.

The candle was on the mantelpiece and gave only a very dim light.

Javert noticed the sister and stopped in his tracks.

You will recall that the very basis of Javert, his element, the air that he breathed, was veneration for any and all authority. He was absolutely consistent and could brook no objection, no exception. For him, naturally, ecclesiastical authority was the highest of all. He was religious, superficial and correct on this point as on all others. In his eyes, a priest was a mind that could never make a mistake, a nun was a creature that never commits a sin. They were souls inured to this world with a single door open to them, one that only ever opened to let truth out.

As soon as he clapped eyes on the sister, his first impulse was to withdraw.

Yet there was also another duty that held him in its grip and drove him imperiously in the opposite direction. His second impulse was to remain where he was and to hazard at least one question.

It was the same Sister Simplice who had never lied in her life. Javert knew this and venerated her especially because of it.

“Sister,” he said, “are you alone in the room?”

There was a horrible moment when the poor caretaker felt her legs were about to buckle. The sister looked up and replied: “Yes.” “In that case,” said Javert, “forgive me if I insist—it is my duty—you have not seen this evening a person, a man. He has escaped, we are looking for him—the man named Jean Valjean, you haven’t seen him?” The sister answered: “No.”

She lied. She lied twice in a row, one swipe after the next, without hestitating, speedily, like an old hand.

“Forgive me,” said Javert, and he withdrew, bowing low.

Oh, holy child! You are no longer of this world—have not been for many years now; you have caught up with your virgin sisters and your angel brothers in the light; may these lies be chalked up to you in paradise!

The sister’s affirmation was so decisive for Javert that he did not even notice the oddness of the candle’s having just been blown out and smoking away on the table.

An hour later, a man walking through the trees and the mists had swiftly put distance between himself and Montreuil-sur-mer in the direction of Paris. The man was Jean Valjean. It has been established, by the testimony of two or three drivers who passed him, that he was carrying a bundle and that he was dressed in a smock. Where did he get the smock from? No one ever knew. But an old labourer had died a few days before at the factory infirmary, leaving only his smock. This was, perhaps, the one.

One last word about Fantine.

We each have a mother, the earth. Fantine was given back to this mother.

The priest thought that he was doing the right thing in keeping as much of the money as possible for the poor out of what Jean Valjean had left—and maybe he was. After all, who was involved here? A convict and a prostitute. This is why he simplified Fantine’s burial and reduced it to the bare necessity known as the potter’s field.

So Fantine was buried in this free corner of the cemetery that is open to everyone and no one, where the poor are lost without a trace. Happily, God knows where the soul is. They laid Fantine in the dark earth among the first bones they stumbled across; she suffered the promiscuity of ashes. She was thrown in the common grave. Her final resting place was just like her bed.