Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  ‘Sooner than that, Monsieur le maire. The case comes up tomorrow. I am catching the coach tonight.’

  Monsieur Madeleine started slightly.

  ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘Certainly not more than a day. Sentence will be passed tomorrow evening at the latest, but I don’t intend to wait for it, since there’s no doubt what it will be. I shall leave directly I’ve given my evidence.’

  ‘Good,’ said Madeleine.

  He made a gesture of dismissal, but Javert did not move.

  ‘Forgive me, Monsieur le maire. I have to remind you of something.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘That I must be dismissed from the service.’

  Monsieur Madeleine rose to his feet.

  ‘Javert, you are an honourable man and I respect you highly. You are exaggerating your offence, which in any case is a matter that only concerns myself. You deserve to go up in the world, Javert, not down. I want you to stay in your present post.’

  Javert confronted the mayor with a clear-eyed gaze in which there was the glint of a narrow conscience as rigid as it was upright. He said quietly:

  ‘Monsieur le maire, I cannot agree to that.’

  ‘I repeat,’ said Madeleine, ‘this is a matter that only affects me.’

  But pursuing his own line of thought Javert continued:

  ‘As to exaggerating, I have exaggerated nothing. This is how I see it. That I should have suspected you unjustly is not in itself important. It is our business to be suspicious, although we should be chary of suspecting our superiors. But you are a man of repute, a mayor, and a magistrate, and in a fit of anger and a spirit of revenge I denounced you, without evidence, as an ex-convict. That is very serious. I offended against authority in your person, and I am myself a representative of authority. If one of my subordinates had done this I should have said that he was unworthy to be a member of the service and have seen to it that he was dismissed. And so … Let me add one thing, Monsieur le maire. I have often been harsh in my life. I have treated others harshly, and it was right that I should do so. But if I were not now equally harsh with myself all my past acts would be unjustified. Am I to spare myself more than I spare others, to be the scourge of others and not of myself? It would be abominable and the people who talk about “that swine Javert” would be right. I do not wish for your indulgence, Monsieur le maire, I have been exasperated enough by your indulgence for others. I want none of it for myself. To me the kind of indulgence which consists in supporting a woman of the town against a respectable citizen, or a police officer against a mayor, or in any form the lower against the higher, this is false indulgence which undermines society. God knows, it’s easy to be kind; the hard thing is to be just. If you had turned out to be what I suspected, Monsieur le maire, I should have shown you no kindness! I must treat myself as I would treat any other man. I have often thought, when I was showing no mercy to evil-doers, “Well, if ever you slip up you know what to expect.” And now I have slipped, I have committed an offence, and there it is. It is right that I should be dismissed and broken. I still have my hands, I can work in the fields, it is no great matter. I must be made an example of, Monsieur le maire, for the good of the service. I request that Inspector Javert be dismissed.’

  All this was said in a tone of high-flown humility and desperate conviction that endowed the strangely honest man with a bizarre greatness.

  ‘Well,’ said Monsieur Madeleine, ‘we shall have to see.’ And he held out his hand.

  Javert started back, saying harshly: ‘That is out of the question. A magistrate does not shake hands with an informer.’ He repeated the words under his breath. ‘An informer … When I abused my powers as a police officer I became nothing else.’

  Bowing low he turned and made for the door; but here he paused and said, still with his eyes lowered:

  ‘I shall continue to perform my duties, Monsieur le maire, until I have been replaced.’

  He went out; and Monsieur Madeleine stood thoughtfully listening to the firm, decided footsteps as they died away down the corridor.

  Book Seven

  The Champmathieu Affair

  I

  Sister Simplice

  NOT ALL the events which follow became known in Montreuil-sur-mer, but the scanty report of them which reached the town created so great a stir that we are bound to describe them in detail. The reader will find among them two or three improbable circumstances which we record in the interest of truth.

  During the afternoon following his interview with Javert, Monsieur Madeleine paid his customary visit to Fantine. Before doing so he asked to see Sister Simplice, one of the two nursing sisters of the order of St Lazarus who did duty in his infirmary, the other being Sister Perpetua.

  Sister Perpetua was a plain countrywoman who had entered the service of God as she might have entered any other service, becoming a nun as she might become a cook. Such people are by no means rare, and the religious orders make no bones about accepting this raw material which can readily be shaped into a Capucine or an Ursuline. Their function is to do the rough work. The transition from farm-worker to Carmelite is an easy one, calling for no great effort; village and cloister share a common ground of ignorance which puts the countryman on a level with the monk. A few added folds turn the peasant smock into a cassock. Sister Perpetua, who came from Marines, near Pontoise, was a sturdy, patois-speaking, psalm-singing, grumbling servant of the Church who sugared the tisane according to her opinion of the sufferer, rebuked the sick and scolded the dying, almost flinging God in their faces, castigating their death-throes with angry, florid, honest and forthright prayers.

  To compare Sister Simplice and her wax-like pallor with Sister Perpetua was like comparing a taper with a church candle. Vincent de Paul has beautifully depicted the Sister of Mercy in words that express both her freedom and her servitude. ‘Their only convent is the sick-room, their only cell a hired lodging, their chapel the parish church, their cloister the streets of the town or the hospital ward, their discipline obedience, their shelter the fear of God and their veil, modesty.’ This ideal was in Sister Simplice a living reality. No one knew her age; she had never been young and it seemed that she would never grow old. She was a calm and austere person – we can Hardly say ‘woman’ – companionable but remote, who had never told a lie. She was so gentle as to seem fragile, but possessed a steely strength. She laid charmed fingers, slender and chaste, on the sufferer, and there was as it were a silence in her speech; she never spoke an unnecessary word and the sound of her voice would have graced a confessional or delighted a drawing-room. Her delicacy had adapted itself to the rough serge gown she wore, which served her as a constant reminder of Heaven. We must stress one particular. The fact that she never lied, had never spoken, for any reason or without reason, a word that was not strictly true, was the distinctive characteristic of Sister Simplice, the keynote of her virtue. Her unshakeable truthfulness had made her almost celebrated in the community, and Abbé Sicard refers to it in a letter to the deaf-mute Massieu. However honest and incorruptible the rest of us may be, our candour is always flawed by, here and there, some small, innocent falsehood. But it was not so with her. Can there be such a thing as a white lie, a little lie? The lie is the absolute of evil There can be no small lie; who lies, lies wholly. The lie is the devil’s own face. Satan has two names; he is Satan and he is Untruth. That is what Sister Simplice believed, the belief she practised; and it was the source of the purity which shone from her, even from her lips and eyes. Her smile was pure and her gaze was pure; there was no cobweb or any grain of dust on the unsullied mirror of that conscience. Upon entering the order of St Vincent de Paul she had chosen the name Simplice in memory of the saint who had let her breasts be torn off rather than say she had been born at Segesta when her birthplace was Syracuse – a lie which would have saved her.*

  Sister Simplice, when she entered the order, had two weaknesses which she gradually corrected: she liked sweets and she enj
oyed getting letters. Her only reading was a book of Latin prayers in large print. She did not understand Latin, but she understood the book.

  She had conceived an affection for Fantine, no doubt perceiving the virtue latent within her, and had taken her almost wholly in her own charge.

  Monsieur Madeleine took Sister Simplice aside and recommended Fantine to her care in a tone so earnest that later she was to remember it. Then he went in to see Fantine.

  Fantine awaited his daily visits as we await warmth and happiness. She said to the sisters: ‘I’m only alive when the mayor is here.’

  On this day she had a high fever. Directly she saw him she asked:

  ‘And Cosette?’

  He answered, smiling: ‘Very soon.’

  His manner towards her was normal except that he stayed an hour instead of his usual half-hour, much to her delight. He stressed to everyone concerned that she must go short of nothing, and at one moment his face was seen to grow very sombre. But this was explained when it became known that the doctor had murmured to him that she was sinking fast.

  Then he returned to the mairie where his clerk saw him carefully studying a road-map of France that hung in his office. He pencilled some figures on a sheet of paper.

  II

  The perspicacity of Master Scaufflaire

  From the mairie, Madeleine crossed the town to call upon a Fleming named Scaufflaer (French: Scaufflaire) who hired out horses and ‘carriages if required’. The shortest way to his establishment was along a little-frequented street in which was the presbytery of Madeleine’s own parish. The curé was said to be a worthy man and a wise counsellor. There was only one person in the street when Madeleine passed the presbytery, and this person happened to notice that after doing so he stopped, stood for a moment motionless and then, turning back, made for the presbytery door which had an iron knocker. He quickly seized hold of the knocker and raised it; but again he paused as though in thought and, after a few moments, instead of knocking, gently released it and continued on his way rather more rapidly than before.

  He found Scaufflaire mending a piece of harness.

  ‘Master Scaufflaire,’ he asked, ‘have you a good horse?’

  ‘All my horses are good, Monsieur le maire,’ answered the Fleming. ‘What exactly do you mean?’

  ‘I want a horse that can do twenty leagues in a day.’

  ‘Twenty leagues! Harnessed to a chaise?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how much rest will it get at the end of it?’

  ‘It will have to come back the next day.’

  ‘The same distance?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Love us and save us! A whole twenty leagues?’

  Madeleine produced the scrap of paper on which he had jotted down the figures 5, 6, and 8 ½.

  ‘Nineteen and a half, to be exact. Call it twenty.’

  ‘Well, Monsieur le maire,’ said the Fleming, ‘I’ve got what you want, a small white horse from the Bas-Boulonnais, a wonderful animal. They tried to make him into a saddle-horse but he threw all his riders and no one could manage him. But I bought him and put him between shafts, and it turned out that that was what he wanted – gentle as a girl and goes like the wind, provided you don’t try to get on his back. He’ll pull but he won’t carry. Everyone has their own ideas, and he seems to have got that one firmly in his head.’

  ‘And he’ll last the course?’

  ‘Forty miles? He’ll do it at a steady trot in under eight hours, provided –’

  ‘Provided what?’

  ‘Well, in the first place, he must have an hour’s breather half-way, and you must keep an eye on him while he’s eating to make sure the stable-boy doesn’t steal the oats. The thing I’ve found, stopping at inns, is that more oats get drunk by the stable-boys than eaten by the horses.’

  ‘I’ll see to that.’

  ‘Secondly – I take it the chaise is for yourself, Monsieur le maire, and that you know how to drive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must travel alone and without baggage, to keep down the weight.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘The charge will be thirty francs a day, including rest-days. I won’t take a penny less, and you will pay for the animal’s feed.’

  Monsieur Madeleine got three napoleons out of his purse and laid them on the table.

  ‘There’s two days in advance.’

  ‘One last thing,’ said Master Scaufflaire, ‘a chaise would be too heavy for this trip. I must ask Monsieur le maire to use my tilbury.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Mark you, it’s entirely open.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Have you considered, Monsieur le maire, that this is winter and that the weather’s extremely cold?’ Madeleine made no reply to this, and the Fleming added: ‘Or that it may rain?’

  Monsieur Madeleine merely said:

  ‘I want the horse and tilbury to be outside my door at four-thirty tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Scaufflaire. He scratched with a finger-nail at a small stain on the surface of the table and said in the off-hand manner with which the Flemish disguise their perspicacity:

  ‘It occurs to me, Monsieur le maire, that I still don’t know exactly where you’re going.’

  He had been thinking of nothing else since the beginning of the interview, but for some reason had not ventured to put the question directly.

  ‘Is this horse strong in the forelegs?’ asked Madeleine.

  ‘Yes, although you’ll need to hold him up a little on the down-slopes. Will there be many down-slopes on this journey, Monsieur le maire?’

  ‘Please be sure to have it round at my house punctually at half past four,’ said Madeleine, and went out, leaving the Fleming ‘flabbergasted’, as he later said.

  But a few minutes later the mayor returned, still with the same impenetrable, preoccupied manner.

  ‘Monsieur Scaufflaire, what value do you put on your horse-and-tilbury, taking the two together?’

  ‘Or rather, one in front of the other,’ said the Fleming, attempting a joke.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Do I understand that Monsieur le maire is proposing to buy them?’

  ‘No, but I wish to insure you against possible loss or injury. You will repay the money when I bring them back. How much?’

  ‘Five hundred francs, Monsieur le maire.’

  ‘Here you are.’

  Monsieur Madeleine laid a banknote on the table and again departed, this time not to return. Master Scaufflaire now bitterly regretted not having said a thousand. In fact, the horse and tilbury were worth about a hundred francs.

  Scaufflaire called his wife and told her the story. Where the devil was the mayor going? They talked it over. ‘He must be going to Paris,’ the lady said. ‘I don’t think so,’ said her husband. Madeleine had left behind the scrap of paper on which he had scribbled his figures. Scaufflaire studied it carefully. ‘Five – six – eight and a half – they must be post-stages.’ He looked at his wife. ‘I’ve got it.’ … ‘Where?’ … ‘It’s five leagues from here to Hesdin, six from Hesdin to Saint-Pol, and eight and a half from Saint-Pol to Arras. He’s going to Arras.’

  Monsieur Madeleine meanwhile was on his way home. This time he went a longer way round, as though deliberately avoiding the presbytery. He went up to his bedroom and shut himself in, which in itself was not unusual, for he often went to bed early. But the factory janitress, who was also his only servant, happening to notice that his light went out at eight-thirty, remarked to the cashier when he came in:

  ‘Is the mayor not well? I thought he looked a little queer.’

  The cashier occupied a room immediately below that of Monsieur Madeleine. Without paying much attention to what the janitress had said, he went to bed and to sleep. But towards midnight he was awakened by the sound of feet pacing up and down overhead, and he recognized the footsteps as those of Monsieur Madeleine. This was strange, for a
s a rule no sound came from Monsieur Madeleine’s room until he rose in the morning. Then the cashier heard what sounded like the opening and shutting of a wardrobe, followed by the shifting of a piece of furniture. After this the footsteps started again. The cashier, now wide awake, sat up in bed and saw through his window a red glow from a lighted window reflected on the wall opposite. From its direction the light could only be coming from Monsieur Madeleine’s room, and its constant flickering suggested that it was the light of a fire rather than of a lamp. There was no shadow cast by window-bars, which indicated that the window was wide open, and this, considering the coldness of the weather, was surprising. The cashier went back, to sleep, but an hour or two later he woke again. The slow, steady footsteps were still pacing up and down above him.

  The light was still reflected on the wall, but now it was pale and steady, like that of a lamp or candle. The window was still open.

  We have now to relate what was happening in Monsieur Madeleine’s room.

  III

  A tempest in a human skull

  The reader will have realized that Monsieur Madeleine was indeed Jean Valjean.

  We have already peered into the depths of that conscience and must now do so again, although we cannot do so without trembling. Nothing is more terrifying than contemplation of this kind. Nothing discernible to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidable, complex, mysterious, and infinite. There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul.