Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
CHAPTER V—VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON
2081 words | Chapter 119
Little by little, and in the course of time, all this opposition
subsided. There had at first been exercised against M. Madeleine, in
virtue of a sort of law which all those who rise must submit to,
blackening and calumnies; then they grew to be nothing more than
ill-nature, then merely malicious remarks, then even this entirely
disappeared; respect became complete, unanimous, cordial, and towards
1821 the moment arrived when the word “Monsieur le Maire” was
pronounced at M. sur M. with almost the same accent as “Monseigneur the
Bishop” had been pronounced in D—— in 1815. People came from a distance
of ten leagues around to consult M. Madeleine. He put an end to
differences, he prevented lawsuits, he reconciled enemies. Every one
took him for the judge, and with good reason. It seemed as though he
had for a soul the book of the natural law. It was like an epidemic of
veneration, which in the course of six or seven years gradually took
possession of the whole district.
One single man in the town, in the arrondissement, absolutely escaped
this contagion, and, whatever Father Madeleine did, remained his
opponent as though a sort of incorruptible and imperturbable instinct
kept him on the alert and uneasy. It seems, in fact, as though there
existed in certain men a veritable bestial instinct, though pure and
upright, like all instincts, which creates antipathies and sympathies,
which fatally separates one nature from another nature, which does not
hesitate, which feels no disquiet, which does not hold its peace, and
which never belies itself, clear in its obscurity, infallible,
imperious, intractable, stubborn to all counsels of the intelligence
and to all the dissolvents of reason, and which, in whatever manner
destinies are arranged, secretly warns the man-dog of the presence of
the man-cat, and the man-fox of the presence of the man-lion.
It frequently happened that when M. Madeleine was passing along a
street, calm, affectionate, surrounded by the blessings of all, a man
of lofty stature, clad in an iron-gray frock-coat, armed with a heavy
cane, and wearing a battered hat, turned round abruptly behind him, and
followed him with his eyes until he disappeared, with folded arms and a
slow shake of the head, and his upper lip raised in company with his
lower to his nose, a sort of significant grimace which might be
translated by: “What is that man, after all? I certainly have seen him
somewhere. In any case, I am not his dupe.”
This person, grave with a gravity which was almost menacing, was one of
those men who, even when only seen by a rapid glimpse, arrest the
spectator’s attention.
His name was Javert, and he belonged to the police.
At M. sur M. he exercised the unpleasant but useful functions of an
inspector. He had not seen Madeleine’s beginnings. Javert owed the post
which he occupied to the protection of M. Chabouillet, the secretary of
the Minister of State, Comte Anglès, then prefect of police at Paris.
When Javert arrived at M. sur M. the fortune of the great manufacturer
was already made, and Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine.
Certain police officers have a peculiar physiognomy, which is
complicated with an air of baseness mingled with an air of authority.
Javert possessed this physiognomy minus the baseness.
It is our conviction that if souls were visible to the eyes, we should
be able to see distinctly that strange thing that each one individual
of the human race corresponds to some one of the species of the animal
creation; and we could easily recognize this truth, hardly perceived by
the thinker, that from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to the
tiger, all animals exist in man, and that each one of them is in a man.
Sometimes even several of them at a time.
Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices,
straying before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows
them to us in order to induce us to reflect. Only since animals are
mere shadows, God has not made them capable of education in the full
sense of the word; what is the use? On the contrary, our souls being
realities and having a goal which is appropriate to them, God has
bestowed on them intelligence; that is to say, the possibility of
education. Social education, when well done, can always draw from a
soul, of whatever sort it may be, the utility which it contains.
This, be it said, is of course from the restricted point of view of the
terrestrial life which is apparent, and without prejudging the profound
question of the anterior or ulterior personality of the beings which
are not man. The visible _I_ in nowise authorizes the thinker to deny
the latent _I_. Having made this reservation, let us pass on.
Now, if the reader will admit, for a moment, with us, that in every man
there is one of the animal species of creation, it will be easy for us
to say what there was in Police Officer Javert.
The peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every litter of wolves
there is one dog, which is killed by the mother because, otherwise, as
he grew up, he would devour the other little ones.
Give to this dog-son of a wolf a human face, and the result will be
Javert.
Javert had been born in prison, of a fortune-teller, whose husband was
in the galleys. As he grew up, he thought that he was outside the pale
of society, and he despaired of ever re-entering it. He observed that
society unpardoningly excludes two classes of men,—those who attack it
and those who guard it; he had no choice except between these two
classes; at the same time, he was conscious of an indescribable
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.
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