Suddenly a tall man broke through the circle, seized the woman by her mud-stained satin corsage and said, ‘You come along with me.’ The woman looked round and was abruptly silent. Her eyes went glassy, and from being livid with fury she became pale and trembling with alarm. She had recognized Javert.
Monsieur Bamatabois took advantage of the interruption to hurry away.
XIII
At the police post
Thrusting aside the onlookers, Javert made rapidly for the police post on the far side of the square, dragging the unhappy woman with him. She made no resistance. Neither spoke a word. The spectators followed, hooting with delight. The utmost extremity of degradation is the obscene merriment to which it gives rise.
The police post was a low room, heated by a stove, with a barred, glass-panelled door opening on to the street. After entering with Fantine, Javert shut this door behind him, to the great disappointment of the sightseers, who stood on tiptoe and craned their necks in their effort to follow the proceedings. Curiosity is a form of gluttony: to see is to devour.
Fantine crouched down in a corner of the room, motionless and silent, huddled like a frightened animal The duty-sergeant placed a lighted candle on the table. Javert seated himself at it, and getting a sheet of officially-stamped paper out of his pocket began to write.
Under present laws women of this class are wholly at the mercy of the police. The police can do with them what they like, punish them as they see fit and, if they choose, deprive them of those two sad possessions which they term their calling and their liberty. Javert was quite impassive, his sober expression betraying no emotion. But the fact is that he was gravely and deeply exercised in his mind. This was one of those cases where he must use his formidable discretionary powers without resort to any higher authority, but with all the scruples dictated by his own rigid conscience. His office chair at that moment was a seat of justice before which the case must be tried, judgement delivered, and sentence pronounced. He summoned all the powers of his mind, all his principles, to deal with this weighty matter, and the more he studied it the more outrageous did he find it. What he had witnessed was undeniably a crime. He had seen society, in the person of a landowner and voter, insulted and attacked in the street by a creature outside society. A prostitute had assaulted a citizen. He, Javert, had seen it with his own eyes. He wrote on in silence.
When he had finished writing he signed the document, folded it and, handing it to the duty-sergeant, said: ‘Have this woman taken to the gaol under guard.’ He then turned to Fantine and said: ‘You’re getting six months.’
She uttered a cry of despair. ‘Six months. Six months in prison, earning seven sous a day! But what about Cosette? What about my daughter? And I still owe more than a hundred francs to the Thénardiers, Monsieur l’inspecteur – did you know that?’
Without getting to her feet she dragged herself across the floor, muddied as it was by the boots of many men, shuffling hastily on her knees with her hands clasped.
‘Monsieur Javert, I beg you to be merciful. It was not my fault. If you had seen how it started you would know. I swear by God it was not my fault. The gentleman, I don’t know who he was, put snow down my back. Has anyone the right to put snow down a person’s back when they’re just walking past, doing no harm? It gave me a shock. I’m not very well, you see. And then he’d been saying unpleasant things to me, how ugly I was and about my having lost my teeth, as if I didn’t know. I didn’t answer, I just thought, well if it amuses him, and I walked quietly on and that was when he put the snow down my back. Monsieur Javert, is there no one who saw what happened and can tell you? I was wrong to lose my temper but when a thing like that happens, something ice-cold pushed down your back when you aren’t expecting it, you forget yourself, you lose control. I shouldn’t have damaged the gentleman’s hat. But why did he have to run away? I’d have apologized – good God, I don’t mind apologizing! Oh, let me off just this once, Monsieur Javert. I don’t suppose you know, but all one can earn in prison is seven sous a day. It’s not the Government’s fault but that’s all it is, seven sous, and I owe a hundred francs and if I don’t pay my little girl will be turned out into the street. God help me, I can’t have her with me, the life I lead. What will become of the poor mite? It’s those people, those innkeepers, the Thénardiers, they aren’t fair, they aren’t reasonable, all they want is money. Don’t send me to prison! They’ll turn her out into the street, a child, at this time of year, mid-winter, you’ve got to think of that, Monsieur Javert. If she was older she could earn her living, but not at her age. I’m not really a bad woman. It isn’t idleness or greed that has made me what I am. I drink eau-de-vie, but from sheer misery, not because I like it but it dulls the mind. If you’d looked in my wardrobe when things were going better for me you’d have seen that I wasn’t just a light woman leading a disorderly life. I had clean, decent linen, plenty of it. Have pity on me, Monsieur Javert!’
She crouched there with her bosom half-bared, hands clasped together, face wet with tears while the words poured out in a low, heartrending flow broken by that small, dry cough. The extremity of grief sheds its own awful radiance to transform even the most abject. At that moment, bending forward to press the hem of the policeman’s greatcoat to her lips, Fantine was beautiful again. She might have melted a heart of stone, but nothing can melt a heart of wood.
‘Well,’ said Javert, ‘I’ve listened to you. Is that all you have to say? Then off you go. You’re getting six months, and the Eternal Father himself can’t alter it.’
The solemn mention of the Eternal Father forced her to realize that the sentence was final. She collapsed on the floor moaning:
‘Mercy!’
Javert turned his back on her and two policemen took her by the arms.
A few minutes previously a man had entered unobserved. Closing the door behind him he had remained with his back to it listening to Fantine’s despairing plea. Now, while the men were trying to drag her to her feet, he emerged from the shadows and said:
‘One moment, if you please.’
Javert looked round and saw that it was Monsieur Madeleine. Removing his hat, he bowed stiffly.
‘I beg your pardon, Monsieur le maire.’
The words had a remarkable effect on Fantine. Rising instantly from the floor like a ghost emerging from the earth, she thrust aside the two men and, before they could stop her, had planted herself fiery-eyed in front of Madeleine.
‘So you’re the mayor, are you?’
She laughed and spat in his face.
Monsieur Madeleine wiped his cheek and said:
‘Inspector Javert, this woman is to go free.’
Javert felt for a moment that he was going mad. He was beset by a confusion of the most violent emotions he had ever experienced in his life. To see a woman of the town spit in the face of the mayor was a thing so monstrous that even in his wildest imaginings he would not have dared to think it possible. And at the same time at the back of his mind he had an obscure sense of some kind of hideous connection between the woman and this man who was mayor which, to his horror, made the act intelligible. But when he saw the mayor, the magistrate, calmly wipe his face and heard him say that the woman was to go free, stupefaction overwhelmed him. Thought and words both failed him. He had passed beyond the bounds of amazement and could say nothing.
Fantine was no less astounded. Reaching out a bare arm, she clung to the nearest object available for her support – it was in fact the handle operating the damper of the stove – and staring about her began to talk in a low voice as though to herself.
‘To go free! Not to spend six months in prison. But who said it? No one can have said it. I must have misheard. It couldn’t have been that monster, the mayor. Did you say it, good Monsieur Javert, did you say that I was to go free? Look, I’ll explain everything and then you will let me go. It was all the fault of that vile creature, the mayor. He dismissed me because of the things some of the women said. Wasn’t that abo
minable, to turn away an honest working-girl? So then I couldn’t earn enough, and that was the trouble. There’s something the police should do, Monsieur Javert; they should prevent the prison contractors from injuring the poor. What I mean is this, you’re earning twelve sous a day stitching shirts, and then it’s cut down to nine and you can’t earn enough to live on. So then you have to do what you can. I had Cosette to think of, so I was forced to become a bad woman. You do see, don’t you, that it was that monster the mayor who was at the bottom of it all? And then I knocked the gentleman’s hat off outside the officers’ café, but he’d ruined my dress with his snow, and we girls, we only have one silk dress for evenings. Truly, I’ve never meant to harm anyone and I know plenty of women worse than me who are much better off. You did say, didn’t you, Monsieur Javert, that I can go? You can ask people about me, you can ask my landlord, I’m paying regularly now, they’ll tell you I’m honest … Oh, I’m sorry, I moved the damper and the stove is smoking.’
Monsieur Madeleine had listened to this with deep attention. While she was speaking he had got out his purse, opened it and found that it was empty. Putting it back in his pocket he said:
‘How much did you say you owed?’
Fantine, whose words had been addressed solely to Javert, swung round upon him.
‘Am I talking to you?’
She said to the other men, ‘You saw me spit in his face, didn’t you?’ and then to Madeleine, ‘You brute of a mayor, you’ve come here to frighten me, but I’m not afraid of you. I’m only afraid of Monsieur Javert, good Monsieur Javert.’
She turned back to the inspector.
‘The thing is, we’ve got to be fair, haven’t we? I know you’re fair, Monsieur Javert. After all, it didn’t amount to anything. A man puts a little snow down a girl’s back and it makes the officers laugh – well, they’ve got to have their fun and after all that’s what we girls are for. But then you come along and it’s your duty to keep order so you take away the girl who’s making trouble, but then, thinking it over, and because you’re kind, you decide to let me go, because of my little girl, because if I spend six months in prison I shouldn’t be able to keep her alive. “But mind you don’t come back, my wench!” you say to me. Oh, but I won’t, Monsieur Javert, I won’t; they can treat me how they like, I’ll not do a thing! Only this time, you see, it hurt me, that lump of snow that I wasn’t expecting, and so I lost my temper. I’m not very well, like I said, I cough a lot and it’s as though I had a lump burning inside me. It’s just here, you can feel for yourself, don’t be afraid.’
She was no longer weeping and her voice was gentle. Taking Javert’s large, rough hand she pressed it smiling against the whiteness of her throat. Then with sudden, rapid movements she repaired the disorder of her dress, shook out the folds of her skirt which had mounted almost to her knee, turned and marched to the door, saying with a friendly nod to the gendarmes:
‘The inspector says I can go, so now I’m going.’
She had a hand on the latch and in another instant would have been in the street.
Until that moment Javert had stood motionless staring at the floor, a mere incident in the scene, like a statue that has not yet been put in place. But the sound of the latch aroused him from his stupor. He looked up sharply with that air of aggressive authority which is the more pronounced at the lower levels, the ferocity of a wild beast, which is atrocious in a small man.
‘Sergeant,’ he cried, ‘can’t you see the woman’s walking out? Who said you could let her go?’
‘I did,’ said Madeleine.
At the sound of Javert’s voice Fantine had started back, letting go the latch as though she had been caught in the act of stealing it. When Madeleine spoke she turned to look at him, and from then on, without uttering a word and scarcely daring to draw breath, she gazed in turn from Madeleine to Javert and back, according to which of them was speaking.
Javert must clearly have been thrown quite off balance, as the saying is, for him to have barked at the sergeant as he had done after being instructed by the mayor to let Fantine go free. Had he positively forgotten that the mayor was present? Had he concluded in his own mind that it was impossible for anyone in authority to give such an order, and that the mayor had spoken in error? Or had he decided, in view of the monstrous happenings of the past hour, that the time had come when a supreme gesture must be made, when the bloodhound must turn magistrate, the police-officer assume the robes of justice, and that in this moment of utmost crisis, law and order, morality, government, the whole of society, were personified in himself, Javert?
Be that as it may, when Monsieur Madeleine spoke the words ‘I did’, police-inspector Javert was seen to turn towards him, pallid and blue-lipped, his whole body seized with a faint tremor, and with lowered eyes but in a firm voice he was heard to make the unprecedented reply:
‘Monsieur le maire, that cannot be allowed.’
‘Why not?’ asked Monsieur Madeleine.
‘The woman insulted a respectable citizen.’
‘Listen to me, Inspector Javert,’ Madeleine said in a calm, conciliatory voice. ‘I know you to be an honourable man and I am very ready to explain my actions to you. This is the truth of the matter. I was crossing the square when you took the woman away. There were still people about and I asked what had happened. I heard the whole story. The respectable citizen was at fault, and by the letter of the law it was he who should have been arrested.’
Javert persisted: ‘But she has insulted you too, the mayor of this town!’
‘That is my affair,’ said Madeleine. ‘An insult to me may be said to be my property. I can do what I like with it.’
‘If you’ll forgive me, Monsieur le maire, the insult was not to yourself but to justice.’
‘Conscience is the highest justice, Inspector Javert. I heard what the woman said. I know what I’m doing.’
‘As for me, Monsieur le maire, I can’t believe my ears.’
‘Then you must be content to obey.’
‘I have to do my duty. Duty requires me to send her to prison for six months.’
Monsieur Madeleine said gently: ‘You must be quite clear about this. She will not serve a single day in prison.’
The peremptory words emboldened Javert to look Madeleine full in the face. He said, still in a tone of profound respect:
‘It distresses me deeply to take issue with Monsieur le maire. Nothing of the kind has ever happened to me before. But I must venture to remind Monsieur le maire that I am acting within the terms of my authority. We will confine ourselves to the matter of the citizen, since Monsieur le maire prefers it I was there. The woman flung herself on Monsieur Bamatabois, who is a citizen on the electoral roll and owner of the handsome house at the end of the esplanade, a three-storey stone house. Strange things happen in this world, but this is a matter of police regulations and comes within my province. I am holding the woman Fantine.’
At this Monsieur Madeleine folded his arms and said in a voice that had never before been heard in the town:
‘The regulations you refer to are those affecting the Municipal Police. Under articles Nine, Eleven, Fifteen and Sixty-six of the Criminal Code I have authority over them. I order you to release this woman.’
Javert made a last effort.
‘But, Monsieur le maire –’
‘And let me also remind you of Article Eighty-one of the Law of 13 December 1799, dealing with arbitrary detention.’
‘Allow me, Monsieur le maire –’
‘That’s enough.’
‘But-’
‘Kindly leave the post,’ said Monsieur Madeleine.
Javert received this body-blow standing as rigidly as a Russian soldier. Bowing low to the mayor, he turned and left. Fantine moved away from the door to let him pass and stared at him in stupefaction as he did so.
She too had undergone a strange upheaval. She had found herself to be in some sort an object of dispute between two opposed powers. She had witne
ssed a conflict between two men who held her liberty in their hands, her very life and that of her child; one had sought to drag her deeper into darkness, the other to restore her to light. The two contestants, in the heightened vision of her terror, had seemed like giants, one speaking with the voice of a demon, the other in the tones of an angel. The angel had won, and what caused her to tremble from head to foot was the fact that this rescuing angel was the man she abhorred, the abominable mayor whom for so long she had regarded as the author of her troubles. He had saved her after she had most outrageously insulted him! Could she have been wrong? Must she now change her very heart? … She did not know and stood trembling, listening in turmoil, gazing with distracted eyes, and feeling with every word that Monsieur Madeleine spoke the knot of hatred dissolve within her, while a new feeling took its place, heartwarming and inexpressible, a sense of deliverance, trust, and love.
After Javert had gone, Monsieur Madeleine turned to her and spoke slowly and with difficulty, in the accents of an earnest man moved nearly to tears.
‘I heard what you said. None of it was known to me, but I believe it to be true, I feel that it is true. I did not even know that you had left my employment. Why did you not appeal to me? No matter. I will pay your debts and arrange for your child to be brought here or else for you to go to her. You will live here or in Paris or where you choose. You need not work if you don’t want to. I will see to it that you have what money you need. You will become honest again in being happy again. But let me assure you of this, that if it has all been as you say – and I do not doubt it – then you have never been anything but virtuous and chaste in the eyes of God. My poor girl!’
And this was more than Fantine could bear. To have Cosette! To escape from her present life. To be free and cared for, happy and honest, with Cosette. This prospect of paradise in the depths of her misery was too much for her. She could only gaze mutely at the man addressing her and utter little whimpering cries – oh – oh – oh … Her legs gave way beneath her; she fell on her knees before Monsieur Madeleine and before he could prevent it had taken his hand and pressed it to her lips.
Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774) Page 22
