by Victor Hugo
CHAPTER V.
VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON.
By degrees and with time all the opposition died out; at first therehad been calumnies against M. Madeleine,--a species of law which allrising men undergo; then it was only backbiting; then it was onlymalice; and eventually all this faded away. The respect felt for himwas complete, unanimous, and cordial, and the moment arrived in 1821when the name of the Mayor was uttered at M---- with nearly the sameaccent as "Monseigneur the Bishop" had been said at D---- in 1815.People came for ten leagues round to consult M. Madeleine; he settleddisputes, prevented lawsuits, and reconciled enemies. Everybody waswilling to accept him as arbiter, and it seemed as if he had the bookof natural law for his soul. It was a sort of contagious veneration,which in six or seven years spread all over the country-side.
Only one man in the town and bailiwick resisted this contagion, andwhatever M. Madeleine might do, remained rebellious to it, as if a sortof incorruptible and imperturbable instinct kept him on his guard.It would appear, in fact, as if there is in certain men a veritablebestial instinct, though pure and honest as all instincts are, whichcreates sympathies and antipathies; which fatally separates one naturefrom another; which never hesitates; which is not troubled, is neversilent, and never contradicts itself; which is clear in its obscurity,infallible, imperious; refractory to all the counsels of intelligenceand all the solvents of the reason, and which, whatever the way inwhich destinies are made, surely warns the man-dog of the man-cat,and the man-fox of the presence of the man-lion. It often happenedwhen M. Madeleine passed along a street, calmly, kindly, and greetedby the blessings of all, that a tall man, dressed in an iron-graygreat-coat, armed with a thick cane, and wearing a hat with turned-downbrim, turned suddenly and looked after him till he disappeared;folding his arms, shaking his head, and raising his upper lip with thelower as high as his nose, a sort of significant grimace, which maybe translated,--"Who is that man? I am certain that I have seen himsomewhere. At any rate, I am not his dupe."
This person, who was grave, with an almost menacing gravity, was oneof those men who, though only noticed for a moment, preoccupy theobserver. His name was Javert, and he belonged to the police, andperformed at M---- the laborious but useful duties of an inspector. Hehad not seen Madeleine's beginning, for he was indebted for the posthe occupied to the Secretary of Count Angle, at that time Prefect ofPolice at Paris. When Javert arrived at M----, the great manufacturer'sfortune was made, and Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine.Some police officers have a peculiar face, which is complicated by anair of baseness, blended with an air of authority. Javert had thisface, less the baseness. In our conviction, if souls were visible,we should distinctly see the strange fact that every individual ofthe human species corresponds to some one of the species of animalcreation; and we might occurred to the thinker, that, from the oysterto the eagle, from the hog to the tiger, all animals are in man, andthat each of them is in a man; at times several of them at once.Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices,wandering before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God showsthese to us in order to make us reflect; but, as animals are onlyshadows, God has not made them capable of education in the completesense of the term, for of what use would it be? On the other hand, oursouls being realities and having an end of their own, God has endowedthem with intelligence; that is to say, possible education. Socialeducation, properly carried out, can always draw out of a soul, nomatter its nature, the utility which it contains.
Now, if the reader will admit with me for a moment that in every manthere is one of the animal species of creation, it will be easy forus to say what Javert the policeman was. The Asturian peasants areconvinced that in every litter of wolves there is a dog which is killedby the mother, for, otherwise, when it grew it would devour the otherwhelps. Give a human face to this dog-son of a she-wolf, and we shallhave Javert. He was born in prison; his mother was a fortune-teller,whose husband was at the galleys. When he grew up he thought that hewas beyond the pale of society, and despaired of ever entering it. Henoticed that society inexorably keeps at bay two classes of men,--thosewho attack it, and those who guard it; he had only a choice betweenthese two classes, and at the same time felt within him a rigidness,regularity, and probity, combined with an inexpressible hatred of therace of Bohemians to which he belonged. He entered the police, got on,and at the age of forty was an inspector. In his youth he was engagedin the Southern Bagnes.
Before going further, let us explain the words "human face" which weapplied just now to Javert. His human face consisted of a stub-nose,with two enormous nostrils, toward which enormous whiskers mounted onhis cheeks. You felt uncomfortable the first time that you saw thesetwo forests and these two caverns. When Javert laughed, which was rareand terrible, his thin lips parted, and displayed, not only his teeth,but his gums, and a savage flat curl formed round his nose, such as isseen on the muzzle of a wild beast. Javert when serious was a bull-dog;when he laughed he was a tiger. To sum up, he had but little skulland plenty of jaw; his hair hid his forehead and fell over his brows;he had between his eyes a central and permanent frown, like a star ofanger, an obscure glance, a pinched-up and formidable mouth, and an airof ferocious command.
This man was made up of two very simple and relatively excellentfeelings, but which he almost rendered bad by exaggeratingthem,--respect for authority and hatred of rebellion; and in hiseyes, robbery, murder, and every crime were only forms of rebellion.He enveloped in a species of blind faith everybody in the serviceof the State, from the Prime Minister down to the game-keeper. Hecovered with contempt, aversion, and disgust, every one who had oncecrossed the legal threshold of evil. He was absolute, and admittedof no exceptions; on one side he said: "A functionary cannot bemistaken, a magistrate can do no wrong;" on the other he said: "Theyare irremediably lost: no good can come of them." He fully shared theopinion of those extreme minds that attribute to the human law somepower of making or verifying demons, and that place a Styx at thebottom of society. He was stoical, stern, and austere; a sad dreamer,and humble yet haughty, like all fanatics. His glance was a gimlet,for it was cold and piercing. His whole life was composed in the twowords, watching and overlooking. He had introduced the straight lineinto what is the most tortuous thing in the world; he was conscious ofhis usefulness, had religious respect for his duties, and was a spyas well as another is a priest. Woe to the wretch who came into hisclutches! he would have arrested his father if escaping from prison,and denounced his mother had she broken her ban. And he would havedone it with that sort of inner satisfaction which virtue produces.With all this he spent a life of privation, isolation, self-denial,chastity. He was the implacable duty, the police comprehended as theSpartans comprehended Sparta, a pitiless watchman, a savage integrity,a marble-hearted spy, a Brutus contained in a Vidocq.
Javert's entire person expressed the man who spies and hides himself.The mystic school of Joseph de Ma?stre, which at this epoch wasseasoning with high cosmogony what were called the ultra journals,would not have failed to say that Javert was a symbol. His foreheadcould not be seen, for it was hidden by his hat; his eyes could notbe seen, because they were lost under his eye-brows; his chin wasplunged into his cravat, his hands were covered by his cuffs, and hiscane was carried under his coat. But when the opportunity arrived,there could be seen suddenly emerging from all this shadow, as from anambush, an angular, narrow forehead, a fatal glance, a menacing chin,enormous hands, and a monstrous rattan. In his leisure moments, whichwere few, he read, though he hated books, and this caused him not tobe utterly ignorant, as could be noticed through a certain emphasisin his language. As we have said, he had no vice; when satisfied withhimself, he indulged in a pinch of snuff, and that was his connectinglink with humanity. Our readers will readily understand that Javert wasthe terror of all that class whom the yearly statistics of the ministerof justice designate under the rubric--vagabonds. The name of Javert,if uttered, set them to flight; the face of Javert, if seen, petr
ifiedthem. Such was this formidable man.
Javert was like an eye ever fixed on M. Madeleine, an eye fall ofsuspicion and conjectures. M. Madeleine noticed it in the end; but heconsidered it a matter of insignificance. He did not even ask Javerthis motive, he neither sought nor shunned him, and endured his annoyingglance without appearing to notice it. He treated Javert like every oneelse, easily and kindly. From some remarks that dropped from Javert, itwas supposed that he had secretly sought, with that curiosity belongingto the breed, and in which there is as much instinct as will, all theprevious traces which Father Madeleine might have left. He appeared toknow, and sometimes said covertly, that some one had obtained certaininformation in a certain district about a certain family which haddisappeared. Once he happened to say, talking to himself, "I believethat I have got him;" then he remained thoughtful for three dayswithout saying a word. It seems that the thread which he fancied heheld was broken. However, there cannot be any theory really infalliblein a human creature, and it is the peculiarity of instinct that itcan be troubled, thrown out, and routed. If not, it would be superiorto intelligence, and the brute would have a better light than man.Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by M. Madeleine's completenaturalness and calmness. One day, however, his strange manner seemedto produce an impression on M. Madeleine. The occasion was as follows.
