________________________________________________
_ The events of which we have just beheld the reverse side, so to speak,
had come about in the simplest possible manner.
When Jean Valjean, on the evening of the very day when Javert had
arrested him beside Fantine's death-bed, had escaped from the town
jail of M. sur M., the police had supposed that he had betaken
himself to Paris. Paris is a maelstrom where everything is lost,
and everything disappears in this belly of the world, as in the
belly of the sea. No forest hides a man as does that crowd.
Fugitives of every sort know this. They go to Paris as to an abyss;
there are gulfs which save. The police know it also, and it
is in Paris that they seek what they have lost elsewhere.
They sought the ex-mayor of M. sur M. Javert was summoned to
Paris to throw light on their researches. Javert had, in fact,
rendered powerful assistance in the recapture of Jean Valjean.
Javert's zeal and intelligence on that occasion had been remarked
by M. Chabouillet, secretary of the Prefecture under Comte Angles.
M. Chabouillet, who had, moreover, already been Javert's patron,
had the inspector of M. sur M. attached to the police force of Paris.
There Javert rendered himself useful in divers and, though the word
may seem strange for such services, honorable manners.
He no longer thought of Jean Valjean,--the wolf of to-day causes these
dogs who are always on the chase to forget the wolf of yesterday,--when,
in December, 1823, he read a newspaper, he who never read newspapers;
but Javert, a monarchical man, had a desire to know the particulars
of the triumphal entry of the "Prince Generalissimo" into Bayonne.
Just as he was finishing the article, which interested him; a name,
the name of Jean Valjean, attracted his attention at the bottom of
a page. The paper announced that the convict Jean Valjean was dead,
and published the fact in such formal terms that Javert did not
doubt it. He confined himself to the remark, "That's a good entry."
Then he threw aside the paper, and thought no more about it.
Some time afterwards, it chanced that a police report was transmitted
from the prefecture of the Seine-et-Oise to the prefecture of police
in Paris, concerning the abduction of a child, which had taken place,
under peculiar circumstances, as it was said, in the commune
of Montfermeil. A little girl of seven or eight years of age,
the report said, who had been intrusted by her mother to an inn-keeper
of that neighborhood, had been stolen by a stranger; this child answered
to the name of Cosette, and was the daughter of a girl named Fantine,
who had died in the hospital, it was not known where or when.
This report came under Javert's eye and set him to thinking.
The name of Fantine was well known to him. He remembered that Jean
Valjean had made him, Javert, burst into laughter, by asking him
for a respite of three days, for the purpose of going to fetch that
creature's child. He recalled the fact that Jean Valjean had been
arrested in Paris at the very moment when he was stepping into the coach
for Montfermeil. Some signs had made him suspect at the time that
this was the second occasion of his entering that coach, and that he
had already, on the previous day, made an excursion to the neighborhood
of that village, for he had not been seen in the village itself.
What had he been intending to do in that region of Montfermeil?
It could not even be surmised. Javert understood it now.
Fantine's daughter was there. Jean Valjean was going there in
search of her. And now this child had been stolen by a stranger!
Who could that stranger be? Could it be Jean Valjean? But Jean
Valjean was dead. Javert, without saying anything to anybody,
took the coach from the Pewter Platter, Cul-de-Sac de la Planchette,
and made a trip to Montfermeil.
He expected to find a great deal of light on the subject there;
he found a great deal of obscurity.
For the first few days the Thenardiers had chattered in their rage.
The disappearance of the Lark had created a sensation in the village.
He immediately obtained numerous versions of the story, which ended
in the abduction of a child. Hence the police report. But their first
vexation having passed off, Thenardier, with his wonderful instinct,
had very quickly comprehended that it is never advisable to stir up
the prosecutor of the Crown, and that his complaints with regard
to the abduction of Cosette would have as their first result to fix
upon himself, and upon many dark affairs which he had on hand,
the glittering eye of justice. The last thing that owls desire
is to have a candle brought to them. And in the first place,
how explain the fifteen hundred francs which he had received?
He turned squarely round, put a gag on his wife's mouth,
and feigned astonishment when the stolen child was mentioned to him.
He understood nothing about it; no doubt he had grumbled for awhile
at having that dear little creature "taken from him" so hastily;
he should have liked to keep her two or three days longer,
out of tenderness; but her "grandfather" had come for her in the
most natural way in the world. He added the "grandfather," which
produced a good effect. This was the story that Javert hit upon
when he arrived at Montfermeil. The grandfather caused Jean Valjean
to vanish.
Nevertheless, Javert dropped a few questions, like plummets,
into Thenardier's history. "Who was that grandfather? and what was
his name?" Thenardier replied with simplicity: "He is a wealthy farmer.
I saw his passport. I think his name was M. Guillaume Lambert."
Lambert is a respectable and extremely reassuring name.
Thereupon Javert returned to Paris.
"Jean Valjean is certainly dead," said he, "and I am a ninny."
He had again begun to forget this history, when, in the course
of March, 1824, he heard of a singular personage who dwelt in the
parish of Saint-Medard and who had been surnamed "the mendicant
who gives alms." This person, the story ran, was a man of means,
whose name no one knew exactly, and who lived alone with a little
girl of eight years, who knew nothing about herself, save that she
had come from Montfermeil. Montfermeil! that name was always
coming up, and it made Javert prick up his ears. An old beggar
police spy, an ex-beadle, to whom this person had given alms,
added a few more details. This gentleman of property was very shy,--
never coming out except in the evening, speaking to no one, except,
occasionally to the poor, and never allowing any one to approach him.
He wore a horrible old yellow frock-coat, which was worth many millions,
being all wadded with bank-bills. This piqued Javert's curiosity
in a decided manner. In order to get a close look at this fantastic
gentleman without alarming him, he borrowed the beadle's outfit
for a day, and the place where the old spy was in the habit
of crouching every evening, whining orisons through his nose,
and playing the spy under cover of prayer.
"The suspected individual" did indeed approach Javert thus disguised,
and bestow alms on him. At that moment Javert raised his head,
and the shock which Jean Valjean received on recognizing Javert was
equal to the one received by Javert when he thought he recognized
Jean Valjean.
However, the darkness might have misled him; Jean Valjean's death
was official; Javert cherished very grave doubts; and when in doubt,
Javert, the man of scruples, never laid a finger on any one's collar.
He followed his man to the Gorbeau house, and got "the old woman"
to talking, which was no difficult matter. The old woman confirmed
the fact regarding the coat lined with millions, and narrated
to him the episode of the thousand-franc bill. She had seen it!
She had handled it! Javert hired a room; that evening he installed
himself in it. He came and listened at the mysterious lodger's door,
hoping to catch the sound of his voice, but Jean Valjean saw his candle
through the key-hole, and foiled the spy by keeping silent.
On the following day Jean Valjean decamped; but the noise made by the fall
of the five-franc piece was noticed by the old woman, who, hearing the
rattling of coin, suspected that he might be intending to leave,
and made haste to warn Javert. At night, when Jean Valjean came out,
Javert was waiting for him behind the trees of the boulevard with two men.
Javert had demanded assistance at the Prefecture, but he had not
mentioned the name of the individual whom he hoped to seize;
that was his secret, and he had kept it for three reasons:
in the first place, because the slightest indiscretion might put Jean
Valjean on the alert; next, because, to lay hands on an ex-convict
who had made his escape and was reputed dead, on a criminal whom
justice had formerly classed forever as among malefactors of the most
dangerous sort, was a magnificent success which the old members
of the Parisian police would assuredly not leave to a new-comer
like Javert, and he was afraid of being deprived of his convict;
and lastly, because Javert, being an artist, had a taste for
the unforeseen. He hated those well-heralded successes which are
talked of long in advance and have had the bloom brushed off.
He preferred to elaborate his masterpieces in the dark and to unveil
them suddenly at the last.
Javert had followed Jean Valjean from tree to tree, then from
corner to corner of the street, and had not lost sight of him for
a single instant; even at the moments when Jean Valjean believed
himself to be the most secure Javert's eye had been on him.
Why had not Javert arrested Jean Valjean? Because he was still
in doubt.
It must be remembered that at that epoch the police was not precisely
at its ease; the free press embarrassed it; several arbitrary arrests
denounced by the newspapers, had echoed even as far as the Chambers,
and had rendered the Prefecture timid. Interference with individual
liberty was a grave matter. The police agents were afraid of making
a mistake; the prefect laid the blame on them; a mistake meant dismissal.
The reader can imagine the effect which this brief paragraph,
reproduced by twenty newspapers, would have caused in Paris:
"Yesterday, an aged grandfather, with white hair, a respectable
and well-to-do gentleman, who was walking with his grandchild,
aged eight, was arrested and conducted to the agency of the Prefecture
as an escaped convict!"
Let us repeat in addition that Javert had scruples of his own;
injunctions of his conscience were added to the injunctions of
the prefect. He was really in doubt.
Jean Valjean turned his back on him and walked in the dark.
Sadness, uneasiness, anxiety, depression, this fresh misfortune
of being forced to flee by night, to seek a chance refuge in Paris
for Cosette and himself, the necessity of regulating his pace
to the pace of the child--all this, without his being aware of it,
had altered Jean Valjean's walk, and impressed on his bearing
such senility, that the police themselves, incarnate in the person
of Javert, might, and did in fact, make a mistake. The impossibility
of approaching too close, his costume of an emigre preceptor,
the declaration of Thenardier which made a grandfather of him,
and, finally, the belief in his death in prison, added still
further to the uncertainty which gathered thick in Javert's mind.
For an instant it occurred to him to make an abrupt demand for
his papers; but if the man was not Jean Valjean, and if this man
was not a good, honest old fellow living on his income, he was
probably some merry blade deeply and cunningly implicated in the
obscure web of Parisian misdeeds, some chief of a dangerous band,
who gave alms to conceal his other talents, which was an old dodge.
He had trusty fellows, accomplices' retreats in case of emergencies,
in which he would, no doubt, take refuge. All these turns which he
was making through the streets seemed to indicate that he was not
a simple and honest man. To arrest him too hastily would be "to kill
the hen that laid the golden eggs." Where was the inconvenience
in waiting? Javert was very sure that he would not escape.
Thus he proceeded in a tolerably perplexed state of mind, putting to
himself a hundred questions about this enigmatical personage.
It was only quite late in the Rue de Pontoise, that, thanks to the
brilliant light thrown from a dram-shop, he decidedly recognized
Jean Valjean.
There are in this world two beings who give a profound start,--
the mother who recovers her child and the tiger who recovers his prey.
Javert gave that profound start.
As soon as he had positively recognized Jean Valjean, the formidable
convict, he perceived that there were only three of them, and he asked
for reinforcements at the police station of the Rue de Pontoise.
One puts on gloves before grasping a thorn cudgel.
This delay and the halt at the Carrefour Rollin to consult
with his agents came near causing him to lose the trail.
He speedily divined, however, that Jean Valjean would want to put
the river between his pursuers and himself. He bent his head and
reflected like a blood-hound who puts his nose to the ground to make
sure that he is on the right scent. Javert, with his powerful
rectitude of instinct, went straight to the bridge of Austerlitz.
A word with the toll-keeper furnished him with the information
which he required: "Have you seen a man with a little girl?"
"I made him pay two sous," replied the toll-keeper. Javert reached
the bridge in season to see Jean Valjean traverse the small illuminated
spot on the other side of the water, leading Cosette by the hand.
He saw him enter the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine; he remembered
the Cul-de-Sac Genrot arranged there like a trap, and of the sole
exit of the Rue Droit-Mur into the Rue Petit-Picpus. He made
sure of his back burrows, as huntsmen say; he hastily despatched
one of his agents, by a roundabout way, to guard that issue.
A patrol which was returning to the Arsenal post having passed him,
he made a requisition on it, and caused it to accompany him.
In such games soldiers are aces. Moreover, the principle is, that in
order to get the best of a wild boar, one must employ the science
of venery and plenty of dogs. These combinations having been effected,
feeling that Jean Valjean was caught between the blind alley Genrot
on the right, his agent on the left, and himself, Javert, in the rear,
he took a pinch of snuff.
Then he began the game. He experienced one ecstatic and infernal moment;
he allowed his man to go on ahead, knowing that he had him safe,
but desirous of postponing the moment of arrest as long as possible,
happy at the thought that he was taken and yet at seeing him free,
gloating over him with his gaze, with that voluptuousness of the
spider which allows the fly to flutter, and of the cat which lets
the mouse run. Claws and talons possess a monstrous sensuality,--
the obscure movements of the creature imprisoned in their pincers.
What a delight this strangling is!
Javert was enjoying himself. The meshes of his net were stoutly knotted.
He was sure of success; all he had to do now was to close his hand.
Accompanied as he was, the very idea of resistance was impossible,
however vigorous, energetic, and desperate Jean Valjean might be.
Javert advanced slowly, sounding, searching on his way all the nooks
of the street like so many pockets of thieves.
When he reached the centre of the web he found the fly no longer there.
His exasperation can be imagined.
He interrogated his sentinel of the Rues Droit-Mur and Petit-Picpus;
that agent, who had remained imperturbably at his post, had not seen
the man pass.
It sometimes happens that a stag is lost head and horns;
that is to say, he escapes although he has the pack on his
very heels, and then the oldest huntsmen know not what to say.
Duvivier, Ligniville, and Desprez halt short. In a discomfiture
of this sort, Artonge exclaims, "It was not a stag, but a sorcerer."
Javert would have liked to utter the same cry.
His disappointment bordered for a moment on despair and rage.
It is certain that Napoleon made mistakes during the war with Russia,
that Alexander committed blunders in the war in India, that Caesar
made mistakes in the war in Africa, that Cyrus was at fault in the
war in Scythia, and that Javert blundered in this campaign against
Jean Valjean. He was wrong, perhaps, in hesitating in his recognition
of the exconvict. The first glance should have sufficed him.
He was wrong in not arresting him purely and simply in the old building;
he was wrong in not arresting him when he positively recognized him
in the Rue de Pontoise. He was wrong in taking counsel with his
auxiliaries in the full light of the moon in the Carrefour Rollin.
Advice is certainly useful; it is a good thing to know and to
interrogate those of the dogs who deserve confidence; but the
hunter cannot be too cautious when he is chasing uneasy animals
like the wolf and the convict. Javert, by taking too much thought
as to how he should set the bloodhounds of the pack on the trail,
alarmed the beast by giving him wind of the dart, and so made him run.
Above all, he was wrong in that after he had picked up the scent
again on the bridge of Austerlitz, he played that formidable
and puerile game of keeping such a man at the end of a thread.
He thought himself stronger than he was, and believed that he could
play at the game of the mouse and the lion. At the same time,
he reckoned himself as too weak, when he judged it necessary to
obtain reinforcement. Fatal precaution, waste of precious time!
Javert committed all these blunders, and none the less was one of
the cleverest and most correct spies that ever existed. He was,
in the full force of the term, what is called in venery a knowing dog.
But what is there that is perfect?
Great strategists have their eclipses.
The greatest follies are often composed, like the largest ropes,
of a multitude of strands. Take the cable thread by thread,
take all the petty determining motives separately, and you can break
them one after the other, and you say, "That is all there is of it!"
Braid them, twist them together; the result is enormous: it is Attila
hesitating between Marcian on the east and Valentinian on the west;
it is Hannibal tarrying at Capua; it is Danton falling asleep at
Arcis-sur-Aube.
However that may be, even at the moment when he saw that Jean
Valjean had escaped him, Javert did not lose his head.
Sure that the convict who had broken his ban could not be far off,
he established sentinels, he organized traps and ambuscades,
and beat the quarter all that night. The first thing he saw
was the disorder in the street lantern whose rope had been cut.
A precious sign which, however, led him astray, since it caused him
to turn all his researches in the direction of the Cul-de-Sac Genrot.
In this blind alley there were tolerably low walls which abutted on
gardens whose bounds adjoined the immense stretches of waste land.
Jean Valjean evidently must have fled in that direction. The fact is,
that had he penetrated a little further in the Cul-de-Sac Genrot,
he would probably have done so and have been lost. Javert explored
these gardens and these waste stretches as though he had been hunting
for a needle.
At daybreak he left two intelligent men on the outlook, and returned
to the Prefecture of Police, as much ashamed as a police spy
who had been captured by a robber might have been. _
Read next: VOLUME II - COSETTE: BOOK SIXTH - LE PETIT-PICPUS: HAPTER I. Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus
Read previous: VOLUME II - COSETTE: BOOK FIFTH - FOR A BLACK HUNT, A MUTE PACK: HAPTER IX. The Man with the Bell
Table of content of Les Miserables
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
