Les Misérables
Javert replied, his face incorruptible, and as melancholy as ever:—
“Mr. Mayor, the truth is the truth. I am sorry; but that man is Jean
Valjean. I recognized him also.”
M. Madeleine resumed in, a very low voice:—
“You are sure?”
Javert began to laugh, with that mournful laugh which comes from
profound conviction.
“O! Sure!”
He stood there thoughtfully for a moment, mechanically taking pinches
of powdered wood for blotting ink from the wooden bowl which stood on
the table, and he added:—
“And even now that I have seen the real Jean Valjean, I do not see how
I could have thought otherwise. I beg your pardon, Mr. Mayor.”
Javert, as he addressed these grave and supplicating words to the man,
who six weeks before had humiliated him in the presence of the whole
station-house, and bade him “leave the room,”—Javert, that haughty man,
was unconsciously full of simplicity and dignity,—M. Madeleine made no
other reply to his prayer than the abrupt question:—
“And what does this man say?”
“Ah! Indeed, Mr. Mayor, it’s a bad business. If he is Jean Valjean, he
has his previous conviction against him. To climb a wall, to break a
branch, to purloin apples, is a mischievous trick in a child; for a man
it is a misdemeanor; for a convict it is a crime. Robbing and
housebreaking—it is all there. It is no longer a question of
correctional police; it is a matter for the Court of Assizes. It is no
longer a matter of a few days in prison; it is the galleys for life.
And then, there is the affair with the little Savoyard, who will
return, I hope. The deuce! there is plenty to dispute in the matter, is
there not? Yes, for any one but Jean Valjean. But Jean Valjean is a sly
dog. That is the way I recognized him. Any other man would have felt
that things were getting hot for him; he would struggle, he would cry
out—the kettle sings before the fire; he would not be Jean Valjean, _et
cetera_. But he has not the appearance of understanding; he says, ‘I am
Champmathieu, and I won’t depart from that!’ He has an astonished air,
he pretends to be stupid; it is far better. Oh! the rogue is clever!
But it makes no difference. The proofs are there. He has been
recognized by four persons; the old scamp will be condemned. The case
has been taken to the Assizes at Arras. I shall go there to give my
testimony. I have been summoned.”
M. Madeleine had turned to his desk again, and taken up his docket, and
was turning over the leaves tranquilly, reading and writing by turns,
like a busy man. He turned to Javert:—
“That will do, Javert. In truth, all these details interest me but
little. We are wasting our time, and we have pressing business on hand.
Javert, you will betake yourself at once to the house of the woman
Buseaupied, who sells herbs at the corner of the Rue Saint-Saulve. You
will tell her that she must enter her complaint against carter Pierre
Chesnelong. The man is a brute, who came near crushing this woman and
her child. He must be punished. You will then go to M. Charcellay, Rue
Montre-de-Champigny. He complained that there is a gutter on the
adjoining house which discharges rain-water on his premises, and is
undermining the foundations of his house. After that, you will verify
the infractions of police regulations which have been reported to me in
the Rue Guibourg, at Widow Doris’s, and Rue du Garraud-Blanc, at Madame
Renée le Bossé’s, and you will prepare documents. But I am giving you a
great deal of work. Are you not to be absent? Did you not tell me that
you were going to Arras on that matter in a week or ten days?”
“Sooner than that, Mr. Mayor.”
“On what day, then?”
“Why, I thought that I had said to Monsieur le Maire that the case was
to be tried to-morrow, and that I am to set out by diligence to-night.”
M. Madeleine made an imperceptible movement.
“And how long will the case last?”
“One day, at the most. The judgment will be pronounced to-morrow
evening at latest. But I shall not wait for the sentence, which is
certain; I shall return here as soon as my deposition has been taken.”
“That is well,” said M. Madeleine.
And he dismissed Javert with a wave of the hand.
Javert did not withdraw.
“Excuse me, Mr. Mayor,” said he.
“What is it now?” demanded M. Madeleine.
“Mr. Mayor, there is still something of which I must remind you.”
“What is it?”
“That I must be dismissed.”
M. Madeleine rose.
“Javert, you are a man of honor, and I esteem you. You exaggerate your
fault. Moreover, this is an offence which concerns me. Javert, you
deserve promotion instead of degradation. I wish you to retain your
post.”
Javert gazed at M. Madeleine with his candid eyes, in whose depths his
not very enlightened but pure and rigid conscience seemed visible, and
said in a tranquil voice:—
“Mr. Mayor, I cannot grant you that.”
“I repeat,” replied M. Madeleine, “that the matter concerns me.”
But Javert, heeding his own thought only, continued:—
“So far as exaggeration is concerned, I am not exaggerating. This is
the way I reason: I have suspected you unjustly. That is nothing. It is
our right to cherish suspicion, although suspicion directed above
ourselves is an abuse. But without proofs, in a fit of rage, with the
object of wreaking my vengeance, I have denounced you as a convict,
you, a respectable man, a mayor, a magistrate! That is serious, very
serious. I have insulted authority in your person, I, an agent of the
authorities! If one of my subordinates had done what I have done, I
should have declared him unworthy of the service, and have expelled
him. Well? Stop, Mr. Mayor; one word more. I have often been severe in
the course of my life towards others. That is just. I have done well.
Now, if I were not severe towards myself, all the justice that I have
done would become injustice. Ought I to spare myself more than others?
No! What! I should be good for nothing but to chastise others, and not
myself! Why, I should be a blackguard! Those who say, ‘That blackguard
of a Javert!’ would be in the right. Mr. Mayor, I do not desire that
you should treat me kindly; your kindness roused sufficient bad blood
in me when it was directed to others. I want none of it for myself. The
kindness which consists in upholding a woman of the town against a
citizen, the police agent against the mayor, the man who is down
against the man who is up in the world, is what I call false kindness.
That is the sort of kindness which disorganizes society. Good God! it
is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just. Come! if
you had been what I thought you, I should not have been kind to you,
not I! You would have seen! Mr. Mayor, I must treat myself as I would
treat any other man. When I have subdued malefactors, when I have
proceeded with vigor against rascals, I have often said to myself, ‘If
you flinch, if I ever catch you in fault, you may rest at your ease!’ I
have flinched, I have caught myself in a fault. So much the worse!
Come, discharged, cashiered, expelled! That is well. I have arms. I
will till the soil; it makes no difference to me. Mr. Mayor, the good
of the service demands an example. I simply require the discharge of
Inspector Javert.”
All this was uttered in a proud, humble, despairing, yet convinced
tone, which lent indescribable grandeur to this singular, honest man.
“We shall see,” said M. Madeleine.
And he offered him his hand.
Javert recoiled, and said in a wild voice:—
“Excuse me, Mr. Mayor, but this must not be. A mayor does not offer his
hand to a police spy.”
He added between his teeth:—
“A police spy, yes; from the moment when I have misused the police. I
am no more than a police spy.”
Then he bowed profoundly, and directed his steps towards the door.
There he wheeled round, and with eyes still downcast:—
“Mr. Mayor,” he said, “I shall continue to serve until I am
superseded.”
He withdrew. M. Madeleine remained thoughtfully listening to the firm,
sure step, which died away on the pavement of the corridor.
BOOK SEVENTH—THE CHAMPMATHIEU AFFAIR
CHAPTER I—SISTER SIMPLICE
The incidents the reader is about to peruse were not all known at M.
sur M. But the small portion of them which became known left such a
memory in that town that a serious gap would exist in this book if we
did not narrate them in their most minute details. Among these details
the reader will encounter two or three improbable circumstances, which
we preserve out of respect for the truth.
On the afternoon following the visit of Javert, M. Madeleine went to
see Fantine according to his wont.
Before entering Fantine’s room, he had Sister Simplice summoned.
The two nuns who performed the services of nurse in the infirmary,
Lazariste ladies, like all sisters of charity, bore the names of Sister
Perpétue and Sister Simplice.
Sister Perpétue was an ordinary villager, a sister of charity in a
coarse style, who had entered the service of God as one enters any
other service. She was a nun as other women are cooks. This type is not
so very rare. The monastic orders gladly accept this heavy peasant
earthenware, which is easily fashioned into a Capuchin or an Ursuline.
These rustics are utilized for the rough work of devotion. The
transition from a drover to a Carmelite is not in the least violent;
the one turns into the other without much effort; the fund of ignorance
common to the village and the cloister is a preparation ready at hand,
and places the boor at once on the same footing as the monk: a little
more amplitude in the smock, and it becomes a frock. Sister Perpétue
was a robust nun from Marines near Pontoise, who chattered her patois,
droned, grumbled, sugared the potion according to the bigotry or the
hypocrisy of the invalid, treated her patients abruptly, roughly, was
crabbed with the dying, almost flung God in their faces, stoned their
death agony with prayers mumbled in a rage; was bold, honest, and
ruddy.
Sister Simplice was white, with a waxen pallor. Beside Sister Perpétue,
she was the taper beside the candle. Vincent de Paul has divinely
traced the features of the Sister of Charity in these admirable words,
in which he mingles as much freedom as servitude: “They shall have for
their convent only the house of the sick; for cell only a hired room;
for chapel only their parish church; for cloister only the streets of
the town and the wards of the hospitals; for enclosure only obedience;
for gratings only the fear of God; for veil only modesty.” This ideal
was realized in the living person of Sister Simplice: she had never
been young, and it seemed as though she would never grow old. No one
could have told Sister Simplice’s age. She was a person—we dare not say
a woman—who was gentle, austere, well-bred, cold, and who had never
lied. She was so gentle that she appeared fragile; but she was more
solid than granite. She touched the unhappy with fingers that were
charmingly pure and fine. There was, so to speak, silence in her
speech; she said just what was necessary, and she possessed a tone of
voice which would have equally edified a confessional or enchanted a
drawing-room. This delicacy accommodated itself to the serge gown,
finding in this harsh contact a continual reminder of heaven and of
God. Let us emphasize one detail. Never to have lied, never to have
said, for any interest whatever, even in indifference, any single thing
which was not the truth, the sacred truth, was Sister Simplice’s
distinctive trait; it was the accent of her virtue. She was almost
renowned in the congregation for this imperturbable veracity. The Abbé
Sicard speaks of Sister Simplice in a letter to the deaf-mute Massieu.
However pure and sincere we may be, we all bear upon our candor the