Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (knowledgeable books to read txt) 📕
BOOK SEVENTH.--PARENTHESIS
I. The Convent as an Abstract IdeaII. The Convent as an Historical FactIII. On What Conditions One can respect the PastIV. The Convent from the Point of View of PrinciplesV. PrayerVI. The Absolute Goodness of PrayerVII. Precautions to be observed in BlameVIII. Faith, Law
BOOK EIGHTH.--CEMETERIES TAKE THAT WHICH IS COMMITTED THEM
I. Which treats of the Manner of entering a ConventII. Fauchelevent in the Presence of a DifficultyIII. Mother InnocenteIV. In which Jean Valjean has quite the Air of having readAustin CastillejoV. It is not Necessary to be Drunk in order to be ImmortalVI. Between Four PlanksVII. In which will be found the Origin of the Saying: Don'tlose the CardVIII. A Successful InterrogatoryIX. Cloister
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Javert was just getting out of bed when the messenger handed him the order of arrest and the command to produce the prisoner.
The messenger himself was a very clever member of the police, who, in two words, informed Javert of what had taken place at Arras. The order of arrest, signed by the district-attorney, was couched in these words: “Inspector Javert will apprehend the body of the Sieur Madeleine, mayor of M. sur M., who, in this day’s session of the court, was recognized as the liberated convict, Jean Valjean.”
Any one who did not know Javert, and who had chanced to see him at the moment when he penetrated the antechamber of the infirmary, could have divined nothing of what had taken place, and would have thought his air the most ordinary in the world. He was cool, calm, grave, his gray hair was perfectly smooth upon his temples, and he had just mounted the stairs with his habitual deliberation. Any one who was thoroughly acquainted with him, and who had examined him attentively at the moment, would have shuddered. The buckle of his leather stock was under his left ear instead of at the nape of his neck. This betrayed unwonted agitation.
Javert was a complete character, who never had a wrinkle in his duty or in his uniform; methodical with malefactors, rigid with the buttons of his coat.
That he should have set the buckle of his stock awry, it was indispensable that there should have taken place in him one of those emotions which may be designated as internal earthquakes.
He had come in a simple way, had made a requisition on the neighboring post for a corporal and four soldiers, had left the soldiers in the courtyard, had had Fantine’s room pointed out to him by the portress, who was utterly unsuspicious, accustomed as she was to seeing armed men inquiring for the mayor.
On arriving at Fantine’s chamber, Javert turned the handle, pushed the door open with the gentleness of a sick-nurse or a police spy, and entered.
Properly speaking, he did not enter. He stood erect in the half-open door, his hat on his head and his left hand thrust into his coat, which was buttoned up to the chin. In the bend of his elbow the leaden head of his enormous cane, which was hidden behind him, could be seen.
Thus he remained for nearly a minute, without his presence being perceived. All at once Fantine raised her eyes, saw him, and made M. Madeleine turn round.
The instant that Madeleine’s glance encountered Javert’s glance, Javert, without stirring, without moving from his post, without approaching him, became terrible. No human sentiment can be as terrible as joy.
It was the visage of a demon who has just found his damned soul.
The satisfaction of at last getting hold of Jean Valjean caused all that was in his soul to appear in his countenance. The depths having been stirred up, mounted to the surface. The humiliation of having, in some slight degree, lost the scent, and of having indulged, for a few moments, in an error with regard to Champmathieu, was effaced by pride at having so well and accurately divined in the first place, and of having for so long cherished a just instinct. Javert’s content shone forth in his sovereign attitude. The deformity of triumph overspread that narrow brow. All the demonstrations of horror which a satisfied face can afford were there.
Javert was in heaven at that moment. Without putting the thing clearly to himself, but with a confused intuition of the necessity of his presence and of his success, he, Javert, personified justice, light, and truth in their celestial function of crushing out evil. Behind him and around him, at an infinite distance, he had authority, reason, the case judged, the legal conscience, the public prosecution, all the stars; he was protecting order, he was causing the law to yield up its thunders, he was avenging society, he was lending a helping hand to the absolute, he was standing erect in the midst of a glory. There existed in his victory a remnant of defiance and of combat. Erect, haughty, brilliant, he flaunted abroad in open day the superhuman bestiality of a ferocious archangel. The terrible shadow of the action which he was accomplishing caused the vague flash of the social sword to be visible in his clenched fist; happy and indignant, he held his heel upon crime, vice, rebellion, perdition, hell; he was radiant, he exterminated, he smiled, and there was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous Saint Michael.
Javert, though frightful, had nothing ignoble about him.
Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice,—error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic in the full flood of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously venerable radiance. Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in his formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face, wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the good.
CHAPTER IV—AUTHORITY REASSERTS ITS RIGHTS
Fantine had not seen Javert since the day on which the mayor had torn her from the man. Her ailing brain comprehended nothing, but the only thing which she did not doubt was that he had come to get her. She could not endure that terrible face; she felt her life quitting her; she hid her face in both hands, and shrieked in her anguish:—
“Monsieur Madeleine, save me!”
Jean Valjean—we shall henceforth not speak of him otherwise—had risen. He said to Fantine in the gentlest and calmest of voices:—
“Be at ease; it is not for you that he is come.”
Then he addressed Javert, and said:—
“I know what you want.”
Javert replied:—
“Be quick about it!”
There lay in the inflection of voice which accompanied these words something indescribably fierce and frenzied. Javert did not say, “Be quick about it!” he said “Bequiabouit.”
No orthography can do justice to the accent with which it was uttered: it was no longer a human word: it was a roar.
He did not proceed according to his custom, he did not enter into the matter, he exhibited no warrant of arrest. In his eyes, Jean Valjean was a sort of mysterious combatant, who was not to be laid hands upon, a wrestler in the dark whom he had had in his grasp for the last five years, without being able to throw him. This arrest was not a beginning, but an end. He confined himself to saying, “Be quick about it!”
As he spoke thus, he did not advance a single step; he hurled at Jean Valjean a glance which he threw out like a grappling-hook, and with which he was accustomed to draw wretches violently to him.
It was this glance which Fantine had felt penetrating to the very marrow of her bones two months previously.
At Javert’s exclamation, Fantine opened her eyes once more. But the mayor was there; what had she to fear?
Javert advanced to the middle of the room, and cried:—
“See here now! Art thou coming?”
The unhappy woman glanced about her. No one was present excepting the nun and the mayor. To whom could that abject use of “thou” be addressed? To her only. She shuddered.
Then she beheld a most unprecedented thing, a thing so unprecedented that nothing equal to it had appeared to her even in the blackest deliriums of fever.
She beheld Javert, the police spy, seize the mayor by the collar; she saw the mayor bow his head. It seemed to her that the world was coming to an end.
Javert had, in fact, grasped Jean Valjean by the collar.
“Monsieur le Maire!” shrieked Fantine.
Javert burst out laughing with that frightful laugh which displayed all his gums.
“There is no longer any Monsieur le Maire here!”
Jean Valjean made no attempt to disengage the hand which grasped the collar of his coat. He said:—
“Javert—”
Javert interrupted him: “Call me Mr. Inspector.”
“Monsieur,” said Jean Valjean, “I should like to say a word to you in private.”
“Aloud! Say it aloud!” replied Javert; “people are in the habit of talking aloud to me.”
Jean Valjean went on in a lower tone:—
“I have a request to make of you—”
“I tell you to speak loud.”
“But you alone should hear it—”
“What difference does that make to me? I shall not listen.”
Jean Valjean turned towards him and said very rapidly and in a very low voice:—
“Grant me three days’ grace! three days in which to go and fetch the child of this unhappy woman. I will pay whatever is necessary. You shall accompany me if you choose.”
“You are making sport of me!” cried Javert. “Come now, I did not think you such a fool! You ask me to give you three days in which to run away! You say that it is for the purpose of fetching that creature’s child! Ah! Ah! That’s good! That’s really capital!”
Fantine was seized with a fit of trembling.
“My child!” she cried, “to go and fetch my child! She is not here, then! Answer me, sister; where is Cosette? I want my child! Monsieur Madeleine! Monsieur le Maire!”
Javert stamped his foot.
“And now there’s the other one! Will you hold your tongue, you hussy? It’s a pretty sort of a place where convicts are magistrates, and where women of the town are cared for like countesses! Ah! But we are going to change all that; it is high time!”
He stared intently at Fantine, and added, once more taking into his grasp Jean Valjean’s cravat, shirt and collar:—
“I tell you that there is no Monsieur Madeleine and that there is no Monsieur le Maire. There is a thief, a brigand, a convict named Jean Valjean! And I have him in my grasp! That’s what there is!”
Fantine raised herself in bed with a bound, supporting herself on her stiffened arms and on both hands: she gazed at Jean Valjean, she gazed at Javert, she gazed at the nun, she opened her mouth as though to speak; a rattle proceeded from the depths of her throat, her teeth chattered; she stretched out her arms in her agony, opening her hands convulsively, and fumbling about her like a drowning person; then suddenly fell back on her pillow.
Her head struck the head-board of the bed and fell forwards on her breast, with gaping mouth and staring, sightless eyes.
She was dead.
Jean Valjean laid his hand upon the detaining hand of Javert, and opened it as he would have opened the hand of a baby; then he said to Javert:—
“You have murdered that woman.”
“Let’s have an end of this!” shouted Javert, in a fury; “I am not here to listen to argument. Let us economize all that; the guard is below; march on instantly, or you’ll get the thumb-screws!”
In the corner of the room stood an old iron bedstead, which was in a decidedly decrepit state, and which served the sisters as a camp-bed when they were watching with the sick. Jean Valjean stepped up to this bed, in a twinkling wrenched off the head-piece, which was already in a dilapidated condition, an easy matter to muscles like his, grasped the principal rod like a bludgeon, and glanced at Javert. Javert retreated towards the door. Jean Valjean, armed with his bar of iron, walked slowly up to Fantine’s couch. When he arrived there he turned and said to Javert, in a voice that was barely audible:—
“I advise you not to disturb me at this moment.”
One thing is certain, and that is, that Javert trembled.
It did occur to him to summon the guard, but Jean Valjean might avail himself of that moment to effect his escape; so he remained, grasped his cane by the small end, and leaned against the door-post, without removing his
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