Les Misérables
foundation of rigidity, regularity, and probity, complicated with an
inexpressible hatred for the race of bohemians whence he was sprung. He
entered the police; he succeeded there. At forty years of age he was an
inspector.
During his youth he had been employed in the convict establishments of
the South.
Before proceeding further, let us come to an understanding as to the
words, “human face,” which we have just applied to Javert.
The human face of Javert consisted of a flat nose, with two deep
nostrils, towards which enormous whiskers ascended on his cheeks. One
felt ill at ease when he saw these two forests and these two caverns
for the first time. When Javert laughed,—and his laugh was rare and
terrible,—his thin lips parted and revealed to view not only his teeth,
but his gums, and around his nose there formed a flattened and savage
fold, as on the muzzle of a wild beast. Javert, serious, was a
watchdog; when he laughed, he was a tiger. As for the rest, he had very
little skull and a great deal of jaw; his hair concealed his forehead
and fell over his eyebrows; between his eyes there was a permanent,
central frown, like an imprint of wrath; his gaze was obscure; his
mouth pursed up and terrible; his air that of ferocious command.
This man was composed of two very simple and two very good sentiments,
comparatively; but he rendered them almost bad, by dint of exaggerating
them,—respect for authority, hatred of rebellion; and in his eyes,
murder, robbery, all crimes, are only forms of rebellion. He enveloped
in a blind and profound faith every one who had a function in the
state, from the prime minister to the rural policeman. He covered with
scorn, aversion, and disgust every one who had once crossed the legal
threshold of evil. He was absolute, and admitted no exceptions. On the
one hand, he said, “The functionary can make no mistake; the magistrate
is never the wrong.” On the other hand, he said, “These men are
irremediably lost. Nothing good can come from them.” He fully shared
the opinion of those extreme minds which attribute to human law I know
not what power of making, or, if the reader will have it so, of
authenticating, demons, and who place a Styx at the base of society. He
was stoical, serious, austere; a melancholy dreamer, humble and
haughty, like fanatics. His glance was like a gimlet, cold and
piercing. His whole life hung on these two words: watchfulness and
supervision. He had introduced a straight line into what is the most
crooked thing in the world; he possessed the conscience of his
usefulness, the religion of his functions, and he was a spy as other
men are priests. Woe to the man who fell into his hands! He would have
arrested his own father, if the latter had escaped from the galleys,
and would have denounced his mother, if she had broken her ban. And he
would have done it with that sort of inward satisfaction which is
conferred by virtue. And, withal, a life of privation, isolation,
abnegation, chastity, with never a diversion. It was implacable duty;
the police understood, as the Spartans understood Sparta, a pitiless
lying in wait, a ferocious honesty, a marble informer, Brutus in
Vidocq.
Javert’s whole person was expressive of the man who spies and who
withdraws himself from observation. The mystical school of Joseph de
Maistre, which at that epoch seasoned with lofty cosmogony those things
which were called the ultra newspapers, would not have failed to
declare that Javert was a symbol. His brow was not visible; it
disappeared beneath his hat: his eyes were not visible, since they were
lost under his eyebrows: his chin was not visible, for it was plunged
in his cravat: his hands were not visible; they were drawn up in his
sleeves: and his cane was not visible; he carried it under his coat.
But when the occasion presented itself, there was suddenly seen to
emerge from all this shadow, as from an ambuscade, a narrow and angular
forehead, a baleful glance, a threatening chin, enormous hands, and a
monstrous cudgel.
In his leisure moments, which were far from frequent, he read, although
he hated books; this caused him to be not wholly illiterate. This could
be recognized by some emphasis in his speech.
As we have said, he had no vices. When he was pleased with himself, he
permitted himself a pinch of snuff. Therein lay his connection with
humanity.
The reader will have no difficulty in understanding that Javert was the
terror of that whole class which the annual statistics of the Ministry
of Justice designates under the rubric, Vagrants. The name of Javert
routed them by its mere utterance; the face of Javert petrified them at
sight.
Such was this formidable man.
Javert was like an eye constantly fixed on M. Madeleine. An eye full of
suspicion and conjecture. M. Madeleine had finally perceived the fact;
but it seemed to be of no importance to him. He did not even put a
question to Javert; he neither sought nor avoided him; he bore that
embarrassing and almost oppressive gaze without appearing to notice it.
He treated Javert with ease and courtesy, as he did all the rest of the
world.
It was divined, from some words which escaped Javert, that he had
secretly investigated, with that curiosity which belongs to the race,
and into which there enters as much instinct as will, all the anterior
traces which Father Madeleine might have left elsewhere. He seemed to
know, and he sometimes said in covert words, that some one had gleaned
certain information in a certain district about a family which had
disappeared. Once he chanced to say, as he was talking to himself, “I
think I have him!” Then he remained pensive for three days, and uttered
not a word. It seemed that the thread which he thought he held had
broken.
Moreover, and this furnishes the necessary corrective for the too
absolute sense which certain words might present, there can be nothing
really infallible in a human creature, and the peculiarity of instinct
is that it can become confused, thrown off the track, and defeated.
Otherwise, it would be superior to intelligence, and the beast would be
found to be provided with a better light than man.
Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by the perfect naturalness
and tranquillity of M. Madeleine.
One day, nevertheless, his strange manner appeared to produce an
impression on M. Madeleine. It was on the following occasion.
CHAPTER VI—FATHER FAUCHELEVENT
One morning M. Madeleine was passing through an unpaved alley of M. sur
M.; he heard a noise, and saw a group some distance away. He
approached. An old man named Father Fauchelevent had just fallen
beneath his cart, his horse having tumbled down.
This Fauchelevent was one of the few enemies whom M. Madeleine had at
that time. When Madeleine arrived in the neighborhood, Fauchelevent, an
ex-notary and a peasant who was almost educated, had a business which
was beginning to be in a bad way. Fauchelevent had seen this simple
workman grow rich, while he, a lawyer, was being ruined. This had
filled him with jealousy, and he had done all he could, on every
occasion, to injure Madeleine. Then bankruptcy had come; and as the old
man had nothing left but a cart and a horse, and neither family nor
children, he had turned carter.
The horse had two broken legs and could not rise. The old man was
caught in the wheels. The fall had been so unlucky that the whole
weight of the vehicle rested on his breast. The cart was quite heavily
laden. Father Fauchelevent was rattling in the throat in the most
lamentable manner. They had tried, but in vain, to drag him out. An
unmethodical effort, aid awkwardly given, a wrong shake, might kill
him. It was impossible to disengage him otherwise than by lifting the
vehicle off of him. Javert, who had come up at the moment of the
accident, had sent for a jack-screw.
M. Madeleine arrived. People stood aside respectfully.
“Help!” cried old Fauchelevent. “Who will be good and save the old
man?”
M. Madeleine turned towards those present:—
“Is there a jack-screw to be had?”
“One has been sent for,” answered the peasant.
“How long will it take to get it?”
“They have gone for the nearest, to Flachot’s place, where there is a
farrier; but it makes no difference; it will take a good quarter of an
hour.”
“A quarter of an hour!” exclaimed Madeleine.
It had rained on the preceding night; the soil was soaked.
The cart was sinking deeper into the earth every moment, and crushing
the old carter’s breast more and more. It was evident that his ribs
would be broken in five minutes more.
“It is impossible to wait another quarter of an hour,” said Madeleine
to the peasants, who were staring at him.
“We must!”
“But it will be too late then! Don’t you see that the cart is sinking?”
“Well!”
“Listen,” resumed Madeleine; “there is still room enough under the cart
to allow a man to crawl beneath it and raise it with his back. Only
half a minute, and the poor man can be taken out. Is there any one here
who has stout loins and heart? There are five louis d’or to be earned!”
Not a man in the group stirred.
“Ten louis,” said Madeleine.
The persons present dropped their eyes. One of them muttered: “A man
would need to be devilish strong. And then he runs the risk of getting
crushed!”
“Come,” began Madeleine again, “twenty louis.”
The same silence.
“It is not the will which is lacking,” said a voice.
M. Madeleine turned round, and recognized Javert. He had not noticed
him on his arrival.
Javert went on:—
“It is strength. One would have to be a terrible man to do such a thing
as lift a cart like that on his back.”
Then, gazing fixedly at M. Madeleine, he went on, emphasizing every
word that he uttered:—
“Monsieur Madeleine, I have never known but one man capable of doing
what you ask.”
Madeleine shuddered.
Javert added, with an air of indifference, but without removing his
eyes from Madeleine:—
“He was a convict.”
“Ah!” said Madeleine.
“In the galleys at Toulon.”
Madeleine turned pale.
Meanwhile, the cart continued to sink slowly. Father Fauchelevent
rattled in the throat, and shrieked:—
“I am strangling! My ribs are breaking! a screw! something! Ah!”
Madeleine glanced about him.
“Is there, then, no one who wishes to earn twenty louis and save the
life of this poor old man?”
No one stirred. Javert resumed:—
“I have never known but one man who could take the place of a screw,
and he was that convict.”
“Ah! It is crushing me!” cried the old man.
Madeleine raised his head, met Javert’s falcon eye still fixed upon
him, looked at the motionless peasants, and smiled sadly. Then, without
saying a word, he fell on his knees, and before the crowd had even had
time to utter a cry, he was underneath the vehicle.
A terrible moment of expectation and silence ensued.
They beheld Madeleine, almost flat on his stomach beneath that terrible
weight, make two vain efforts to bring his knees and his elbows
together. They shouted to him, “Father Madeleine, come out!” Old
Fauchelevent himself said to him, “Monsieur Madeleine, go away! You see
that I am fated to die! Leave me! You will get yourself crushed also!”
Madeleine made no reply.
All the spectators were panting. The wheels had continued to sink, and
it had become almost impossible for Madeleine to make his way from
under the vehicle.
Suddenly the enormous mass was seen to quiver, the cart rose slowly,
the wheels half emerged from the ruts. They heard a stifled voice
crying, “Make haste! Help!” It was Madeleine, who had just made a final
effort.
They rushed forwards. The devotion of a single man had given force and
courage to all. The cart was raised by twenty arms. Old Fauchelevent
was saved.