Les Misérables
Nevertheless, Javert dropped a few questions, like plummets, into
Thénardier’s history. “Who was that grandfather? and what was his
name?” Thénardier 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-Médard 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 newcomer 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 _émigré_ preceptor, the declaration of Thénardier 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 Cæsar 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