Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  Then she fainted.

  Book Six

  Javert

  I

  The beginning of repose

  MONSIEUR MADELEINE had Fantine taken to the factory infirmary where she was placed in the charge of the nursing sisters. She now had a raging fever and for part of the night was delirious, talking in a loud voice. Eventually, however, she fell asleep.

  When she awoke about midday she heard the sound of breathing at her bedside, and drawing back the curtain, saw Monsieur Madeleine standing with his eyes fixed in an expression of anguished supplication on something above her head. Looking up, she saw that there was a crucifix nailed to the wall.

  Monsieur Madeleine had been so transformed in the eyes of Fantine that now he seemed to her to be bathed in light. His lips were moving. She watched for a long time without venturing to interrupt him, but at length she asked timidly:

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He had been standing there for an hour waiting for her to awaken. He took her hand, felt her pulse and asked:

  ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘I’m feeling better. I’ve slept well. I’m sure I’m better. It was nothing serious.’

  He then answered her question.

  ‘I have been praying to the martyr above your head,’ he said, and added in his thoughts, ‘For the martyr at my side.’

  He had spent the night and morning ascertaining the facts, and now he knew the whole tragic story of Fantine. He went on:

  ‘You have suffered very greatly, my poor child, but you must not complain, for now you have your recompense. This is how men create saints, and it is useless to blame them because they cannot do otherwise. The hell you have endured is the doorway to Heaven, through which you had to pass.’

  He sighed deeply. But she smiled up at him, that poignant smile lacking two teeth.

  In the course of the same night Javert had written a letter, and had himself taken it to the post office that morning. It was a letter to Paris, addressed as follows: ‘To Monsieur Chabouillet, secretary to the Prefect of Police’. The story of the scene in the police post had already become known, and the postmistress and certain other persons, seeing the letter and recognizing Javert’s handwriting, concluded that he was sending in his resignation.

  Monsieur Madeleine wrote at once to Thénardier. Fantine owed the couple a hundred and twenty francs. He sent them three hundred, instructing them to use the balance of this sum to bring the child immediately to Montreuil-sur-mer, where her mother lay ill.

  Thénardier was amazed. ‘By God,’ he said, ‘we aren’t going to let the brat go, she’s turned into a gold-mine. I can guess what has happened. Some rich joker has taken a fancy to the mother.’

  He replied with a circumstantial demand for a total of over five hundred francs, substantiated by authentic bills from the doctor and apothecary who had attended Éponine and Azelma during long illnesses. Cosette, as we have said, had not been ill. It was simply a matter of changing the names, and he formally acknowledged receipt of the three hundred francs.

  Monsieur Madeleine promptly sent an additional three hundred francs, requesting them to bring Cosette without delay.

  ‘The devil we will!’ said Thénardier.

  Fantine, meanwhile, remained in the infirmary; she was not recovering.

  The nursing sisters had at first treated her with dislike. Anyone who has seen the bas-reliefs at Rheims will recall the pouting lower lip of the wise virgins confronting the foolish virgins. The immemorial scorn of vestals for loose women is among the deepest instincts of respectable femininity, and in the case of the sisters it was enhanced by their religious vocation. But Fantine soon disarmed them with her humility and gentle manners, and their hearts were further touched by the fact that she was a mother. She said to them in a bout of fever: ‘I have sinned, but when my child is restored to me it will be a sign that God has forgiven me. I could not have her with me while I was living a bad life because I could not have endured the look in her eyes. I was wicked for her sake, and that is why God has forgiven me. I shall feel God’s blessing when she is here. I shall be strengthened by her innocence. She knows nothing of what has happened. She is truly an angel, dear sisters; at that age we have still not lost our wings.’

  Monsieur Madeleine visited her twice daily, and she invariably asked, ‘When shall I see Cosette?’

  He would answer, ‘Tomorrow, perhaps. She may be here at any moment,’ and this would cause her face to light up.

  But, as we have said, she was not getting better. Indeed, as the weeks passed her condition grew worse. The handful of snow rubbed on her bare back had, it seemed, dealt a shock to her system which caused the disease that had long been dormant within her to break out in a virulent form. The method of auscultation devised by Professor Laennec for the diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary disease was then coming into use, and the doctor examined her by this means.

  ‘Well?’ asked Monsieur Madeleine.

  ‘Hasn’t she got a child she wants to see?’

  ‘Yes, a small daughter.’

  ‘You’d better get her here as soon as possible.’

  Madeleine was dismayed, but when Fantine asked what the doctor had said he forced himself to smile.

  ‘He says we must get your daughter here as soon as possible, and then you’ll get well.’

  ‘He’s right,’ she said. ‘Why are the Thénardiers keeping Cosette? But she will come, won’t she? And then I shall be happy again.’

  But the Thénardiers held on to Cosette, adducing a hundred dishonest reasons. She was not yet well enough to travel during the winter; there were still minor debts to be settled for which they were awaiting accounts; and so on.

  ‘I shall have to send someone to fetch her,’ said Madeleine. ‘If necessary I’ll go myself.’

  He wrote the following letter at Fantine’s dictation and then got her to sign it.

  Monsieur Thénardier,

  You will hand Cosette over to the bearer.

  Everything owing will be paid.

  I send you my regards.

  Fantine

  But at this point a most serious thing happened. Do what we may to shape the mysterious stuff of which our lives are composed, the dark threads of our destiny will always re-emerge.

  II

  The honesty of javert

  On a morning when Monsieur Madeleine was busy in his office, disposing of urgent business in case he should find it necessary to go to Montfermeil, he was informed that Inspector Javert wished to speak to him. The name affected him disagreeably. Since their encounter in the police post he had not seen Javert, who had been more careful than ever to avoid him.

  ‘Show him in,’ he said, and Javert entered.

  Monsieur Madeleine stayed seated at his desk, pen in hand, intent on the report he was reading of certain minor infringements of the law. He received Javert with deliberate coldness, being unable to forget Fantine.

  Javert respectfully saluted the mayor’s back while the latter, without looking up, continued to make notes in the margin of the document in front of him. The inspector advanced a few steps into the room and then waited in silence.

  An observer with some knowledge of Javert’s character, one who had studied that barbarian in the service of civilization, that bizarre composite of Roman and Spartan, monk and army corporal, that spy incapable of falsehood, that Simon-pure watchdog; a physiognomist aware of his long-standing secret aversion for Madeleine and of the recent clash between them, would have been bound to ask, as he now looked at him, ‘What has happened?’ To anyone familiar with that upright, honourable, inflexible, and ruthless conscience it would have been apparent that Javert had passed through a serious personal crisis. There could be nothing in his soul that was not depicted on his countenance. Like all men of violence he was subject to abrupt changes of mood. Never had his demeanour been more strange or mystifying. He had bowed to Monsieur Madeleine on entering with an expression in which there was no rancour, anger, or
defiance, and then, halting a few paces from his chair, he had stood rigidly upright in what was almost a parade-ground attitude, with the naïve, chilly uncouthness of a man who has never been gentle but always patient. Without speaking or moving, in true humility and silent resignation, calm, serious, with his hat in his hand and his eyes downcast, his posture midway between that of a soldier in the presence of his officer and a guilty person confronting his judge, he stood waiting until the mayor should see fit to notice him. All trace of the feelings and recollections one might have expected to see had vanished from that simple, rocklike countenance except for its look of sombre melancholy. His whole being expressed subjection and doggedness, a sort of gallantry in defeat.

  At length the mayor put down his pen and half turned towards him.

  ‘Well, Javert, what is it?’

  Javert paused for a moment as though to collect his thoughts. Then he said in a sad and solemn voice that was not without ingenuousness:

  ‘Monsieur le maire, a serious breach of discipline has been committed.’

  ‘What breach?’

  ‘An inferior member of the public service has shown the utmost disrespect for a magistrate. I have come, as in duty bound, to inform you of the fact.’

  ‘Who is the offender?’ asked Madeleine.

  ‘Myself,’ said Javert,

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And who is this magistrate who has been disrespectfully treated?’

  ‘You are, Monsieur le maire.’

  Monsieur Madeleine started up in his chair. Javert proceeded inexorably, with eyes still lowered.

  ‘I have come, Monsieur le maire, to ask you to recommend to the authorities that I should be dismissed.’

  The astonished Madeleine opened his mouth to speak, but Javert cut him short.

  ‘You may say that I can resign, but that would not be enough. To resign is an honourable proceeding. I have committed an offence and I must be punished for it. I must be dismissed.’ After a brief pause he added: ‘Monsieur le maire, you treated me unjustly not long ago. This time you must deal with me justly.’

  ‘But what in the world are you talking about?’ cried Madeleine. ‘In what way have you treated me with disrespect? What offence have you committed against me? What harm have you done me? You say you want to be relieved –’

  ‘Dismissed,’ said Javert.

  ‘Very well, dismissed. I don’t understand why.’

  ‘I will explain, Monsieur le maire.’

  Javert heaved a deep sigh and said in the same dispassionate, disconsolate voice:

  ‘I was so furious after our dispute six weeks ago over that woman that I denounced you.’

  ‘You denounced me?’

  ‘To the Prefecture of Police in Paris.’

  Monsieur Madeleine, who was not much more given to laughter than Javert himself, now laughed heartily.

  ‘As a mayor who had encroached on the function of the police?’

  ‘As an ex-convict.’

  Madeleine’s expression abruptly changed. Javert, who was still staring at the floor, continued:

  ‘That is what I believed. I had had the idea for a long time. A certain facial resemblance, the inquiries you caused to be made in Faverolles, the great physical strength you displayed in the Fauchelevent episode, your skill as a marksman and your slight limp… All trifles. Nevertheless I suspected you of being a man called Jean Valjean.’

  ‘What name did you say?’

  ‘Jean Valjean. He was a convict I saw twenty years ago, when I was a prison-warder at Toulon. It seems that after being released this Valjean committed a robbery at the house of a bishop and then robbed a small boy on the public highway. Efforts were made to rearrest him, but he managed to get away, and there has been no trace of him for eight years. Well, I believed … Anyway, that is what I did. In my resentment I denounced you to the Paris Prefecture.’

  Monsieur Madeleine had returned to the documents on his desk.

  He asked in an entirely casual voice:

  ‘And what did they say?’

  ‘They said I was mad.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And they were right.’

  ‘I’m glad you realize it.’

  ‘They must be right, since the real Jean Valjean has been found.’

  The sheet of paper fell from Madeleine’s hand. He looked hard at Javert and murmured expressionlessly, ‘Indeed?’

  ‘The facts are these,’ said Javert. ‘There was a man called Champ­mathieu living near the village of Ailly-le-Haut-Cloche. He was more or less destitute, one of those poor wretches of whom one wonders how they contrive to stay alive. Well, last autumn he was arrested for stealing cider apples. The evidence was clear enough. He had climbed a wall, broken branches off trees; he was even caught with some of the apples on him. So he was taken into custody. Up to that point it was no great matter, not much more than a case of petty larceny; but then things took an unexpected turn. The local lock-up was in bad repair, and so Champmathieu was transferred to the departmental prison at Arras. One of the prisoners at Arras was an old lag called Brevet who had been made a trusty for good conduct. The moment he set eyes on Champmathieu he exclaimed, “But I know this man. He’s an exconvict We were in prison together in Toulon more than twenty years ago. His name’s Jean Valjean.” Champmathieu of course denied it, saying that he had never heard of Jean Valjean, but the matter had to be followed up. It was established that thirty years before, Champmathieu had been a tree-pruner in various parts of the country, but particularly in Faverolles. There was a very long interval, but the trail was picked up again in Auvergne and then in Paris, where he claims to have been a wheelwright and to have had a daughter who became a washerwoman, none of which is proved; and finally he turned up in these parts. Well now, what was Jean Valjean before he went to prison for theft? He was a tree-pruner. And where? In Faverolles. But that’s not all. Valjean’s baptismal name was Jean, and his mother’s maiden name was Mathieu. It would be quite natural for him, when he came out of prison, to try to conceal his identity by adopting his mother’s name and calling himself Jean Mathieu. He was in Auvergne, where the local accent turns Jean into Chan – Chan Mathieu – and from that it is a very short step to Champmathieu. I am sure you follow me, Monsieur le maire. Further inquiries were made in Faverolles but no trace could be discovered of Jean Valjean’s family. Nothing unusual in that. Families of that class quite commonly vanish from sight – when they aren’t mud they’re dust. And after thirty years there was no one in the place who remembered Jean Valjean. So then they tried Toulon, and here they found two other convicts who had known him. They were men serving life-sentences, named Cochepaille and Chenildieu. They were brought to Arras and at once confirmed Brevet’s statement that the so-called Champmathieu was Jean Valjean. Same age, fifty-four, same build, same general appearance – in a word, the same man. The confrontation took place almost on the day when I posted my letter of denunciation to Paris. They wrote back saying that I was out of my wits and that Jean Valjean was in custody in Arras. I need not tell you the shock this gave me. I obtained permission to go to Arras to see this Champmathieu for myself …’

  ‘And?’ said Madeleine.

  ‘Truth is truth, Monsieur le maire,’ said Javert with the same sombre, implacable expression. ‘I am forced to admit that that man is Jean Valjean. I, too, recognized him.’

  Madeleine asked in a very low voice:

  ‘You’re sure?’

  Javert gave a dry laugh of reluctant but absolute certainty.

  ‘Oh, yes – I’m sure.’ He was silent for some moments while mechanically he took a pinch of powdered wood from the blotting-bowl on the desk. ‘Indeed, now that I have seen the real Jean Valjean I cannot imagine how I could have thought anything else. I must beg you to accept my profound apologies, Monsieur le maire.’

  In addressing this humble request to the man who only a few weeks before had humiliated him in front of his own men, Javert, arrogant as
he was, had assumed a simplicity and dignity of which he was quite unconscious. Madeleine’s only reply was an abrupt question.

  ‘And what does the man himself say?’

  ‘Well, you see, it’s a bad business, Monsieur le maire. If he’s Valjean he’s broken parole. To climb a wall and steal apples can be a mere escapade if it’s a boy, or a minor offence in a grown man; but in the case of a convict on parole it’s a crime – breaking and entering and all the rest of it, not just a case for the magistrates but for trial at the Assizes. And the penalty is not just a few days in gaol, but life imprisonment. And then there’s the matter of the boy he robbed, the chimney-sweep, if, as I hope, he can be found. In fact, Valjean’s in a hopeless position, or would be, if it were anyone but Jean Valjean. But he’s a cunning fellow, and that’s another thing that makes me sure this is he. Where another man would be screaming the place down, ranting and raving and swearing that he had never heard of Valjean, this one behaves as though he simply didn’t understand – ”My name’s Champmathieu, and that is all I have to say” – a kind of mulish stupidity, which is much more effective. Oh, he’s clever all right. But it won’t work. The evidence is overwhelming – four people who recognize him. He’s to be tried at Arras Assizes and I have been subpoena’d as a witness.’

  Monsieur Madeleine had returned to the papers on his desk and was again poring over them and making notes with the air of a man with many things on his mind. He looked up at the inspector.

  ‘Thank you, Javert. The details do not greatly interest me, and in any case we have business to attend to. I want you to go at once to the woman Buseaupied, who keeps a herb-stall on the corner of the Rue Saint-Saulve, and tell her that she must lodge a complaint against Pierre Chesnelong, the carrier, who nearly ran her and her daughter down. He’s a reckless driver and it’s time he was taught a lesson. Then there’s Monsieur Charcelley, in the Rue Montre-de-Champigny, who complains that in heavy rain the water overflows out of his neighbour’s gutter and floods his cellar. And there are reports of the contravention of police regulations in the Rue Guibourg, at the house of the widow Doris, and at the house of Madame Renée Le Bosse in the Rue du Garraud-Blanc. They want looking into. But I’m giving you a lot to do. You say you have to go to Arras. I take it that will not be for a week or so?’