________________________________________________
_ 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. _
Read next: VOLUME II - COSETTE: BOOK SECOND - THE SHIP ORION: CHAPTER II. In which the reader will peruse Two Verses which are of the Devil's Composition possibly
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