________________________________________________
_ 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. _
Read next: VOLUME I - FANTINE: BOOK EIGHTH - A COUNTER-BLOW: CHAPTER IV. Authority reasserts its Rights
Read previous: VOLUME I - FANTINE: BOOK EIGHTH - A COUNTER-BLOW: CHAPTER II. Fantine Happy
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