Les Misérables
He beheld before him two paths, both equally straight, but he beheld
two; and that terrified him; him, who had never in all his life known
more than one straight line. And, the poignant anguish lay in this,
that the two paths were contrary to each other. One of these straight
lines excluded the other. Which of the two was the true one?
His situation was indescribable.
To owe his life to a malefactor, to accept that debt and to repay it;
to be, in spite of himself, on a level with a fugitive from justice,
and to repay his service with another service; to allow it to be said
to him, “Go,” and to say to the latter in his turn: “Be free”; to
sacrifice to personal motives duty, that general obligation, and to be
conscious, in those personal motives, of something that was also
general, and, perchance, superior, to betray society in order to remain
true to his conscience; that all these absurdities should be realized
and should accumulate upon him,—this was what overwhelmed him.
One thing had amazed him,—this was that Jean Valjean should have done
him a favor, and one thing petrified him,—that he, Javert, should have
done Jean Valjean a favor.
Where did he stand? He sought to comprehend his position, and could no
longer find his bearings.
What was he to do now? To deliver up Jean Valjean was bad; to leave
Jean Valjean at liberty was bad. In the first case, the man of
authority fell lower than the man of the galleys, in the second, a
convict rose above the law, and set his foot upon it. In both cases,
dishonor for him, Javert. There was disgrace in any resolution at which
he might arrive. Destiny has some extremities which rise
perpendicularly from the impossible, and beyond which life is no longer
anything but a precipice. Javert had reached one of those extremities.
One of his anxieties consisted in being constrained to think. The very
violence of all these conflicting emotions forced him to it. Thought
was something to which he was unused, and which was peculiarly painful.
In thought there always exists a certain amount of internal rebellion;
and it irritated him to have that within him.
Thought on any subject whatever, outside of the restricted circle of
his functions, would have been for him in any case useless and a
fatigue; thought on the day which had just passed was a torture.
Nevertheless, it was indispensable that he should take a look into his
conscience, after such shocks, and render to himself an account of
himself.
What he had just done made him shudder. He, Javert, had seen fit to
decide, contrary to all the regulations of the police, contrary to the
whole social and judicial organization, contrary to the entire code,
upon a release; this had suited him; he had substituted his own affairs
for the affairs of the public; was not this unjustifiable? Every time
that he brought himself face to face with this deed without a name
which he had committed, he trembled from head to foot. Upon what should
he decide? One sole resource remained to him; to return in all haste to
the Rue de l’Homme Armé, and commit Jean Valjean to prison. It was
clear that that was what he ought to do. He could not.
Something barred his way in that direction.
Something? What? Is there in the world, anything outside of the
tribunals, executory sentences, the police and the authorities? Javert
was overwhelmed.
A galley-slave sacred! A convict who could not be touched by the law!
And that the deed of Javert!
Was it not a fearful thing that Javert and Jean Valjean, the man made
to proceed with vigor, the man made to submit,—that these two men who
were both the things of the law, should have come to such a pass, that
both of them had set themselves above the law? What then! such
enormities were to happen and no one was to be punished! Jean Valjean,
stronger than the whole social order, was to remain at liberty, and he,
Javert, was to go on eating the government’s bread!
His reverie gradually became terrible.
He might, athwart this reverie, have also reproached himself on the
subject of that insurgent who had been taken to the Rue des
Filles-du-Calvaire; but he never even thought of that. The lesser fault
was lost in the greater. Besides, that insurgent was, obviously, a dead
man, and, legally, death puts an end to pursuit.
Jean Valjean was the load which weighed upon his spirit.
Jean Valjean disconcerted him. All the axioms which had served him as
points of support all his life long, had crumbled away in the presence
of this man. Jean Valjean’s generosity towards him, Javert, crushed
him. Other facts which he now recalled, and which he had formerly
treated as lies and folly, now recurred to him as realities. M.
Madeleine reappeared behind Jean Valjean, and the two figures were
superposed in such fashion that they now formed but one, which was
venerable. Javert felt that something terrible was penetrating his
soul—admiration for a convict. Respect for a galley-slave—is that a
possible thing? He shuddered at it, yet could not escape from it. In
vain did he struggle, he was reduced to confess, in his inmost heart,
the sublimity of that wretch. This was odious.
A benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict,
returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity
to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy,
saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more
nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Javert was constrained to admit
to himself that this monster existed.
Things could not go on in this manner.
Certainly, and we insist upon this point, he had not yielded without
resistance to that monster, to that infamous angel, to that hideous
hero, who enraged almost as much as he amazed him. Twenty times, as he
sat in that carriage face to face with Jean Valjean, the legal tiger
had roared within him. A score of times he had been tempted to fling
himself upon Jean Valjean, to seize him and devour him, that is to say,
to arrest him. What more simple, in fact? To cry out at the first post
that they passed:—“Here is a fugitive from justice, who has broken his
ban!” to summon the gendarmes and say to them: “This man is yours!”
then to go off, leaving that condemned man there, to ignore the rest
and not to meddle further in the matter. This man is forever a prisoner
of the law; the law may do with him what it will. What could be more
just? Javert had said all this to himself; he had wished to pass
beyond, to act, to apprehend the man, and then, as at present, he had
not been able to do it; and every time that his arm had been raised
convulsively towards Jean Valjean’s collar, his hand had fallen back
again, as beneath an enormous weight, and in the depths of his thought
he had heard a voice, a strange voice crying to him:—“It is well.
Deliver up your savior. Then have the basin of Pontius Pilate brought
and wash your claws.”
Then his reflections reverted to himself and beside Jean Valjean
glorified he beheld himself, Javert, degraded.
A convict was his benefactor!
But then, why had he permitted that man to leave him alive? He had the
right to be killed in that barricade. He should have asserted that
right. It would have been better to summon the other insurgents to his
succor against Jean Valjean, to get himself shot by force.
His supreme anguish was the loss of certainty. He felt that he had been
uprooted. The code was no longer anything more than a stump in his
hand. He had to deal with scruples of an unknown species. There had
taken place within him a sentimental revelation entirely distinct from
legal affirmation, his only standard of measurement hitherto. To remain
in his former uprightness did not suffice. A whole order of unexpected
facts had cropped up and subjugated him. A whole new world was dawning
on his soul: kindness accepted and repaid, devotion, mercy, indulgence,
violences committed by pity on austerity, respect for persons, no more
definitive condemnation, no more conviction, the possibility of a tear
in the eye of the law, no one knows what justice according to God,
running in inverse sense to justice according to men. He perceived amid
the shadows the terrible rising of an unknown moral sun; it horrified
and dazzled him. An owl forced to the gaze of an eagle.
He said to himself that it was true that there were exceptional cases,
that authority might be put out of countenance, that the rule might be
inadequate in the presence of a fact, that everything could not be
framed within the text of the code, that the unforeseen compelled
obedience, that the virtue of a convict might set a snare for the
virtue of the functionary, that destiny did indulge in such ambushes,
and he reflected with despair that he himself had not even been
fortified against a surprise.
He was forced to acknowledge that goodness did exist. This convict had
been good. And he himself, unprecedented circumstance, had just been
good also. So he was becoming depraved.
He found that he was a coward. He conceived a horror of himself.
Javert’s ideal, was not to be human, to be grand, to be sublime; it was
to be irreproachable.
Now, he had just failed in this.
How had he come to such a pass? How had all this happened? He could not
have told himself. He clasped his head in both hands, but in spite of
all that he could do, he could not contrive to explain it to himself.
He had certainly always entertained the intention of restoring Jean
Valjean to the law of which Jean Valjean was the captive, and of which
he, Javert, was the slave. Not for a single instant while he held him
in his grasp had he confessed to himself that he entertained the idea
of releasing him. It was, in some sort, without his consciousness, that
his hand had relaxed and had let him go free.
All sorts of interrogation points flashed before his eyes. He put
questions to himself, and made replies to himself, and his replies
frightened him. He asked himself: “What has that convict done, that
desperate fellow, whom I have pursued even to persecution, and who has
had me under his foot, and who could have avenged himself, and who owed
it both to his rancor and to his safety, in leaving me my life, in
showing mercy upon me? His duty? No. Something more. And I in showing
mercy upon him in my turn—what have I done? My duty? No. Something
more. So there is something beyond duty?” Here he took fright; his
balance became disjointed; one of the scales fell into the abyss, the
other rose heavenward, and Javert was no less terrified by the one
which was on high than by the one which was below. Without being in the
least in the world what is called Voltairian or a philosopher, or
incredulous, being, on the contrary, respectful by instinct, towards
the established church, he knew it only as an august fragment of the
social whole; order was his dogma, and sufficed for him; ever since he
had attained to man’s estate and the rank of a functionary, he had
centred nearly all his religion in the police. Being,—and here we
employ words without the least irony and in their most serious
acceptation, being, as we have said, a spy as other men are priests. He
had a superior, M. Gisquet; up to that day he had never dreamed of that
other superior, God.
This new chief, God, he became unexpectedly conscious of, and he felt
embarrassed by him. This unforeseen presence threw him off his
bearings; he did not know what to do with this superior, he, who was
not ignorant of the fact that the subordinate is bound always to bow,
that he must not disobey, nor find fault, nor discuss, and that, in the
presence of a superior who amazes him too greatly, the inferior has no
other resource than that of handing in his resignation.