CHAPTER V

VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON


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 Angeles, 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.