DAY WAS beginning to break. Fantine, after a restless night, but one filled with happy anticipation, had at length fallen asleep, and Sister Simplice had taken advantage of the fact to leave her bedside in order to prepare a new draught of quinine. She was bent over the array of bottles in the dispensary, obliged to peer closely at them in the misty dawn light, when suddenly she turned and uttered an exclamation. Monsieur Madeleine had silently entered the room.
‘Monsieur le maire!’
He said in a low voice: ‘How is she?’
‘She seems better at the moment, but we’ve been very worried about her.’
Sister Simplice went on to tell him that Fantine had seemed to be sinking the day before but had recovered when she came to believe that he had gone to Montfermeil to fetch her child. She did not venture to question the mayor, but she saw from his expression that this was not the case.
‘I’m glad,’ he said. ‘You were right not to undeceive her.’
‘Perhaps so,’ said the sister. ‘But what are we to say to her now that you have come back without the child?’
He stood considering. ‘God will guide me,’ he said.
The light was growing and his face was more plainly visible. She looked at him suddenly and exclaimed:
‘Merciful Heaven! Monsieur le maire, what has happened to you? Your hair is quite white.’
‘White?’
She had no glass of her own. She searched in a case of instruments for the small hand-mirror which the doctor used to confirm that the dead had ceased to breathe. He took it and inspected himself and said, ‘So!’, but absently, as though he were thinking of other things. The sister’s heart was chilled with the apprehension of events unknown to her.
He asked: ‘May I see her?’
‘Is Monsieur le maire not going to have her child brought here?’ the sister asked, scarcely daring to put the question.
‘Of course. But it will take two or three days.’
‘If she does not see you until then she will imagine that you are still away. We can persuade her to be patient. And when the child is here she will naturally suppose that you have brought her. We shall not have to tell a lie.’
Again Monsieur Madeleine paused for thought, but then he said in his calm, firm voice:
‘No, sister, I must see her now. I may perhaps have very little time.’
The sister seemed not to notice the word ‘perhaps’, which lent an enigmatic quality to this reply. She lowered her eyes and said respectfully:
‘In that case, although she is resting, Monsieur le maire may go in.’
He said something about a door that closed badly, making a noise that might disturb her, and then, going into Fantine’s room, drew back the bed-curtains. She was asleep, her breath coming in those painful gasps that are a part of her malady and rend the heart of a mother watching at the bedside of a dying child. But the laboured act of breathing scarcely troubled the serenity that had transformed her countenance, even in sleep. Her livid pallor was turned to a more gentle whiteness and there was a lustre on her cheeks. Her long, fair eyelashes, the one beauty that remained of her youth and innocence, fluttered slightly although her eyes were closed. Her whole being quivered as though at the unfolding of invisible wings making ready to spread and bear her upward. No one, seeing her, could have supposed that this was a case of desperate illness. She was more like a being about to take flight than one about to die.
When we reach out to pluck a flower the stem trembles, seeming both to shrink and to offer itself. The human body has something of this tremor at the moment when the mysterious hand of death reaches out to pluck a soul.
For some time Monsieur Madeleine stayed motionless at the bedside, looking from the sick woman to the crucifix above her head, as he had done two months before when he had come to visit her for the first time. They were in the same postures, she sleeping and he in prayer; but now her hair was grey and his was white.
The sister had not come in with him. He stood with a finger to his lips, as though there were someone present who must be enjoined to silence. And presently she opened her eyes, looked up at him, and said tranquilly, with a smile:
‘And Cosette?’
She had made no gesture of surprise or delight; she was delight itself. The simple question had been uttered in a tone of such absolute trust and certainty, so complete an absence of misgiving, that he was at a loss. She went on:
‘I knew you were here. I could see you even in my sleep. I have been seeing you for a long time, watching you all through the night. You were in a kind of radiance and there were heavenly figures hovering over you.’
He looked up at the crucifix.
‘But where is Cosette? Why did you not sit her on my bed, ready for when I woke up?’
He murmured something in reply and afterwards could not remember what he had said. Fortunately the doctor had been summoned and now came to his rescue.
‘You must keep calm, my child,’ he said. ‘Your little girl is here.’
Fantine’s eyes shone with a brilliance that lighted all her face. She clasped her hands in a gesture expressing all that is most passionate and most humble in the act of prayer.
‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘won’t someone bring her in?’
With the touching self-deception of a mother she still thought of Cosette as a babe-in-arms.
‘Not yet,’ said the doctor. ‘Not for the present. You’re still feverish and the excitement would be bad for you. First you must get well.’
‘But I am well! I’m perfectly well! How can you be so foolish? I want to see my baby!’
‘You see how quickly you become agitated,’ the doctor said. ‘So long as you are in this state I cannot let you have your child. It is not enough to see her, you have to live for her. When you are calmer I will bring her to you myself.’
She hung her head. ‘I beg your pardon, Monsieur le médicin. At one time I wouldn’t have spoken like that, but so many bad things have happened to me that now I don’t always know what I’m saying. I can understand that you don’t want me to get over-excited, and I will wait if you say I must, but I swear to you that it would do me no harm to see my little girl I can see her already, I’ve been seeing her all night. If you were to bring her to me now I would simply talk quietly to her, nothing more. It is not surprising, is it, that I should want to see her, now that she has been brought all the way from Montfermeil. But I’m not angry. I know I’m going to be happy. All through the night I saw brightness and smiling faces. You will bring Cosette to me when you think it right. I’m not feverish any more, I’m getting better and I feel sure that there is nothing seriously wrong with me: but I’ll pretend to be ill and keep quite still to please the ladies here, and when they see how calm I am they’ll say, “Now she can have her child.”’
Madeleine had seated himself on a chair by the bed. She turned towards him, making a palpable effort to appear calm – ‘to be good’, as she termed it in the weakness of her sick state, which is like a return to childhood – so that they would make no difficulty about bringing Cosette to her. But she could not restrain herself from pouring out a flood of questions.
‘Did you have a good journey, Monsieur le maire? It was so wonderfully kind of you to go for her. At least you can tell me how she is. Did she find the journey very tiring? She won’t recognize me, alas; she’ll have forgotten me after all this time. Children have short memories. They’re like birds, living from one day to the next. Were her clothes in good order? Have the Thénardiers taken good care of her? Has she been properly fed? If you only knew how I worried about those things, the suffering they caused me at the time when I was penniless. But now all that is over and I’m happy. I so long to see her. Did you think her pretty, Monsieur le maire? She’s beautiful, isn’t she? You must have been very cold in the coach. Can she not be brought to me just for a moment, and then you can take her away at once. You’re the mayor. Won’t you do this for me?’
He took her hand. ‘Cosette is beautiful,’ he said. ‘She’s well and you will soon see her. But now you must rest. You’ve been talking too much, and you keep taking your arms out from under the bedclothes, which makes you cough.’
Her speech had indeed been constantly interrupted by bursts of coughing. She made no further protest, fearing that her over-eager entreaty had already weakened the confidence she was trying to inspire. She went on more quietly:
‘Montfermeil is a pretty place, isn’t it? Visitors go there in the summer. Are the Thénardiers doing well? There aren’t many people in those parts, and their tavern is a humble one.’
Monsieur Madeleine was still holding her hand while he gazed anxiously at her. There were things he had intended to say, but now he hesitated. The doctor had left and only Sister Simplice remained with them.
The silence that ensued was broken suddenly by a cry from Fantine.
‘I can hear her! My darling, I can hear her!’
A child was playing in the yard, the daughter, perhaps, of one of the women who worked there. It was purely an accident, one of those chance happenings that are so often a part of the mysterious stage-management of scenes of tragedy. A little girl running up and down to keep warm, and laughing and singing as she ran. Children’s games … Alas, is there any human occasion into which they do not enter?
‘It’s Cosette!’ cried Fantine. ‘I recognize her voice.’
The child ran off as casually as she had come, and her voice died away. Fantine lay for a time listening; then her expression darkened and Madeleine heard her murmur, ‘How cruel of that doctor not to let me see her. But he has a cruel face.’
Presently, however, more hopeful thoughts returned and she lay talking to herself with her head relaxed on the pillow.
‘We’re going to be so happy. For one thing, we shall have a little garden, Monsieur Madeleine has promised, and that is where she’ll play. She must have learnt her letters by now, and I’ll teach her to spell. I’ll watch while she skips across the grass chasing the butterflies. And presently she’ll have her first communion. Now, when will that be?’ She began to count on her fingers. ‘One, two, three, four … She’s seven now, so it will be in five years. She’ll wear a white veil and openwork stockings, like a grown-up young lady … Oh, sister, I’m being so foolish, I’m thinking of my daughter’s first communion!’ And she laughed.
Madeleine had let go her hand and with eyes downcast was listening to her as one listens to the stir of wind in the trees, immersed in his own unfathomable thoughts. But suddenly she broke off, and her abrupt silence caused him to look at her. Her aspect was alarming.
She seemed scarcely to breathe. She had raised herself on her elbows, with one thin shoulder emerging from her nightgown. Her face, which a minute before had been radiant, was now white and she was staring with wide, startled eyes at some terrifying sight that, it seemed, had just appeared at the far end of the room.
‘What is it, Fantine?’ he asked. ‘What’s the matter?’
She did not answer but, still staring, touched him on the arm while with her other hand she pointed behind him.
He turned and saw Javert.
This is what had happened.
The clock had struck the half hour after midnight when Monsieur Madeleine left the assize court in Arras. He returned to the inn just in time to catch the mail, on which, we may recall, he had reserved a seat. His first act, upon reaching Montreuil-sur-mer at six in the morning was to post the letter he had written to M. Lafitte, the banker, after which he went to the infirmary to see Fantine.
Meanwhile, shortly after he left the assizes, the prosecutor, who was the first person in court to recover from the universal dismay, had risen to deplore this rash act on the part of the mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer, to declare that his own convictions were in no way altered by an incident which doubtless time would explain, and to demand the conviction of Champmathieu, who was unquestionably the real Jean Valjean. In this he was running counter to the general feeling of the public, the bench, and the jury. The defence lawyer had had little difficulty in showing that Madeleine’s testimony completely demolished the case for the prosecution, to which he had added certain cogent, but not novel, observations on the subject of judicial error. The presiding judge supported him in his summing-up and within a few minutes Champmathieu was acquitted.
But the law needed a Jean Valjean, and if Champmathieu was not the man then it must be Madeleine. Directly the court adjourned the prosecutor closeted himself with the presiding judge and they conferred together ‘of the necessity of seizing the person of the mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer’. The sentence, with its many ‘ofs’, is taken from the report written in his own hand to the office of the Public Prosecutor. The judge, now in a calmer frame of mind, made little objection. Justice had to take its course. It may be added that, although he was a good-hearted and reasonably intelligent man, the judge was a sturdy and indeed ardent royalist. It had shocked him to hear the mayor, referring to the landing at Cannes, use the word ‘emperor’ instead of ‘Buonaparte’.
A warrant for Madeleine’s arrest was promptly made out and sent by special messenger to Montreuil-sur-mer, for action by Inspector Javert.
Javert, as we know, had returned to Montreuil-sur-mer immediately after testifying. He was just getting up when the document reached him. The messenger, himself an experienced police officer, gave him a terse account of what had taken place after he left Arras. Javert’s instructions were as follows:
‘Inspector Javert will take into bodily custody Sieur Madeleine, mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer, who at today’s hearing was formally identified as the released convict, Jean Valjean.’
Anyone not familiar with Javert who had seen him when he entered the infirmary, would have had no inkling of what was passing through his mind. His manner, as he walked with his customary deliberation up the steps, was calm and composed as usual, his grey hair immaculately combed. But anyone knowing him well, who had observed him more closely, would have been astonished. The buckle of his leather collar, instead of being at the back of his neck, was under his left ear. It was a portent.
Javert was a wholly consistent man who allowed no disorder to appear either in the performance of his duties or in his uniform, as methodical in his treatment of wrongdoers as he was meticulous in the buttoning of his tunic. If his collar buckle was maladjusted it could only mean that he was in a state of inward tension that may be compared to an earthquake.
He brought with him a corporal and four gendarmes whom he left in the courtyard while he asked the doorkeeper to direct him to Fantine’s room. Since it was not unusual for men in uniform to wish to see the mayor, she did so without misgiving. Arrived at the room, he turned the handle, thrust open the door with the gentleness of a sick nurse or a police-spy, and entered.
Or, to be exact, he did not enter. He stood on the threshold with his cap on his head and his left hand thrust into his buttoned greatcoat. Protruding from beneath his arm was the metal head of his huge stick, the rest of which was hidden behind him. He remained like this unobserved for the better part of a minute, until Fantine suddenly pointed at him.
In the moment when the eyes of the two men met, Javert, without having moved or made the least gesture, became hideous. No human emotion can wear an aspect so terrible as that of jubilation. He had the face of a fiend who has found the victim he thought he had lost.
The certain knowledge that now at last he held Jean Valjean brought his whole soul into his eyes as the stirred depths came to the surface. The humiliation of having for a short time lost the scent and been led astray by Champmathieu was banished by the overweening delight of having guessed right in the first place, of knowing that instinct had not failed him. Delight was manifest in the arrogance of his bearing, in the ugly triumph that seemed to radiate from his narrow head, in the whole panoply of ugliness that intense gratification can induce.
Javert was in heaven. Without being fully conscious of the fact, but still with a sense of his importance and achievement, he was at that moment the personification of justice, light, and truth in their sublime task of stamping out evil. Behind him and around him, extending into infinite space, were authority and reason, the conscience of the law, the sentence passed, the public condemnation and all the stars in the firmament. He was the guardian of order, the lightning of justice, the vengeance of society, the mailed fist of the absolute, and he was bathed in glory. There was in his victory a vestige of defiance and conflict. Upright, arrogant and resplendent, he stood like the embodiment in a clear sky of the superhuman ferocity of the destroying angel, and the deed he was performing seemed to invest his clenched fist with the gleam of a fiery sword. He was setting his foot in righteous indignation upon crime, vice and rebellion, damnation, and hell, and was smiling with satisfaction as he did.
Yet in this outrageous St Michael there was a greatness that could not be gainsaid. He was terrible, but he was not ignoble. Integrity, sincerity, honesty, conviction, the sense of duty, these are qualities which, being misguided, may become hideous, but still they retain their greatness; amid the hideousness, the nobility proper to the human conscience still persists. They are virtues subject to a single vice, that of error. The merciless but honest rejoicing of a fanatic performing an atrocious act still has a melancholy claim to our respect. Without knowing it, Javert in his awful happiness was deserving of pity, like every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could have been more poignant or more heartrending than that countenance on which was inscribed all the evil in what is good.
Fantine had not set eyes on Javert since the day when the mayor had rescued her from him. Her sick mind understood nothing, but she did not doubt that he had come on her account The sight of him was like a foretaste of death and she hid her face in her hands and cried:
‘Monsieur Madeleine, save me!’
Jean Valjean (we shall henceforth call him by no other name) had risen to his feet. He said in the calmest of voices:
‘Don’t be afraid. He hasn’t come for you.’ And to Javert he said: ‘I know what you’re here for.’
Javert said: ‘Then be quick about it.’
He spoke the words in savage haste, running them together in an unintelligible growl that scarcely resembled human speech. Disregarding the customary formalities, he made no official pronouncement, did not even produce the warrant. To him Jean Valjean was in some sort a mystical obsession, a shadowy opponent with whom he had wrestled for five years before at last overthrowing him. This arrest was not a beginning but an end. ‘Be quick about it,’ he said and did not move as he growled the words, fixing Valjean with the gaze, flung like a grappling-iron, with which he was accustomed to pull in offenders, the gaze which, two months earlier, had pierced Fantine to the marrow of her bones.
The terse utterance caused her to open her eyes; but with the mayor beside her what had she to fear?
Javert advanced into the room and barked: ‘Well, are you coming?’
She looked in bewilderment about her. Only the sister and the mayor were present. Whom else could he be addressing in that peremptory tone except herself? And, trembling, she witnessed something unbelievable, so outrageous that never in her wildest delirium had she imagined it. She saw the policeman Javert seize the mayor by the collar, and the mayor meekly submit. It was as though the whole world had collapsed.
‘Monsieur le maire!’ she cried.
Javert uttered a hideous laugh, baring all his teeth. ‘He isn’t mayor any longer!’
Jean Valjean made no attempt to loosen the hand gripping his coat collar.
‘Javert –’ he said.
‘Inspector, if you don’t mind.’
‘Inspector, I would like to have a word with you in private.’
‘Speak up,’ said Javert. ‘People don’t mutter when they talk to me.’
Jean Valjean said, still in an undertone: ‘I want to ask you a favour.’
‘I told you to speak up.’
‘But this is for your ears alone.’
‘I don’t care what it is. I’m not listening.’
Jean Valjean turned towards him and said rapidly in a very low voice: ‘Give me three days! Three days to fetch the unfortunate woman’s child. I’ll pay anything you like. You can come with me if you want to.’
‘Are you joking?’ said Javert. ‘I didn’t think you were so stupid. Three days to clear out! To fetch the woman’s child, you say. That’s rich!’
Fantine began to tremble. ‘To fetch my child? But isn’t she here? Sister, answer me – where is Cosette? I want to see her. Monsieur Madeleine –’
Javert stamped his foot. ‘And now she’s started! You hold your tongue, you slut! It’s a fine state of affairs when gaolbirds become magistrates and whores are nursed like countesses. But we’re going to put a stop to all that, and high time too!’ He turned to regard Fantine, tightening his grip on Valjean. ‘I tell you there’s no Monsieur Madeleine here, no mayor either. There’s no one but a criminal, a convict called Jean Valjean. That’s the man I’m holding.’
Fantine sat upright, supporting herself on her rigid arms. Her eyes travelled from Valjean to Javert and then to the nun. She seemed about to speak, but only a whimper issued from her lips, while her teeth chattered. She reached out her arms in a gesture of anguish and with open hands groped like a person in the act of drowning. And suddenly she fell back against the pillow. Her head struck the head of the bed and then sank limply against her shoulder, the mouth open, the eyes wide and sightless.
She was dead.
Jean Valjean seized the hand gripping his collar and detached it as effortlessly as if it had been that of a child. He said to Javert:
‘You have killed that woman.’
‘That’ll do,’ Javert cried furiously. ‘I didn’t come here to argue. We’ve wasted enough time. The escort’s waiting below. March, or I’ll put the handcuffs on you.’
In a corner of the room was a dilapidated iron bedstead used occasionally by sisters on night-duty. Valjean went across to it and in an instant had broken up the rusty frame, a simple matter for a man of his strength. Then with one of the crossbars in his hand he stood confronting Javert, who retreated towards the door.
Armed with his metal cudgel, Valjean walked slowly to Fantine’s bed; he looked round and said in a voice that was scarcely audible:
‘I would advise you not to interfere with me at this moment.’
One thing is certain; Javert trembled.
He thought of going for the guard, but Valjean might use the chance to make a bolt for it. So grasping his stick by the thin end, he stayed leaning against the doorpost, not taking his eyes off his prisoner.
With an elbow on the knob at the head of the bed, and his chin resting on his hand, Jean Valjean stood contemplating Fantine’s motionless form, silent and absorbed, clearly with no thought in his mind except for this life that had ended, his whole attitude one of inexpressible compassion. After some moments he bent towards her and spoke in a low voice.
What did he say to her? What could that man who was condemned say to that woman who was dead? What words did he use? No living person heard them. Did the dead hear them? There are touching illusions that are perhaps sublime realities. What is beyond doubt is that Sister Simplice, the only witness of the scene, often described how, at the moment when Valjean bent and spoke softly in Fantine’s ear, she distinctly saw the dawning of a smile on the pallid lips and in the vacant eyes, wide in the astonishment of death.
Taking Fantine’s head in both his hands, Valjean set it on the pillow, like a mother with her child; he retied the lace of her nightgown and tucked her hair under her cap. Then he closed her eyes. One hand was hanging down beside the bed. He knelt and gently lifted it and touched it with his lips.
Then he rose and turned back to Javert.
‘I am at your service,’ he said.
Javert consigned Jean Valjean to the town lock-up.
The arrest of Monsieur Madeleine created a sensation in Montreuil, indeed an extraordinary commotion. It is sad to have to record that at the mention of the word ‘felon’ nearly everyone deserted him. In a matter of hours all the good he had done was forgotten and he was simply ‘the ex-convict’. In fairness it must be said that nothing was yet known of the events in Arras. Throughout the day, and at every gathering in the town, there were conversations like the following:
‘Haven’t you heard? He was a released convict’ … ‘Monsieur Madeleine? Impossible!’ … ‘But it’s true. His name isn’t Madeleine. It’s something like Bejean or Bonjean. He’s been arrested. He’s in the town lock-up until they transfer him. He is to be tried at the assizes for a highway robbery he committed years ago’ … ‘Well, I’m not surprised. I always though that man was too good to be true, the way he refused all decorations and handed out money to every rascal who asked for it. I always thought there was something queer about him.’
Such views were particularly prevalent in the drawing-rooms. One old lady, a subscriber to the monarchist journal Le Drapeau blanc, produced a comment of fathomless depth.
‘So much the better. That’ll teach the Bonapartists!’
Thus the ghost that had been known as Madeleine vanished from Montreuil-sur-mer. Only three or four persons in the whole town remained faithful to his memory, among them the old concierge who had served him.
On the evening of that day the devoted creature was seated in her porter’s lodge, still bewildered and sadly pondering. The factory had been closed all day; the doors were bolted and the street deserted. There was no one on the premises but the two nuns, Sister Perpetua and Sister Simplice, who were keeping vigil at Fantine’s bedside.
At the time when Monsieur Madeleine was accustomed to come the old woman got his key out of a drawer and made ready the taper in a stand which he used to light his way upstairs. She hung the key on the hook where he was accustomed to look for it, and placed the taper beside it, as though she were expecting him. Then she returned to her chair and her unhappy thoughts, having acted from force of habit, unconscious of what she was doing. It was not until an hour or two later that she suddenly exclaimed, ‘Bless my soul! I’ve put his things ready for him.’
At this moment the window of her pigeon-hole was opened, and a hand reached for the key and lit the taper at her own lighted candle. She stared open-mouthed, stifling the cry that rose to her lips. The hand and coat-sleeve were unmistakably those of Monsieur Madeleine.
For a moment she could not speak, ‘struck all of a heap’ as she said later, but then she cried:
‘God forgive me, Monsieur le maire, I thought you were –’
She could not finish the sentence and he did so for her.
‘You thought I was in prison. So I was. I broke a window-bar, dropped down from a roof and here I am. I’m going up to my room. Will you please fetch Sister Simplice. No doubt she’s in the infirmary.’
The old woman hurried off. He had uttered no word of warning, knowing that she would never betray him.
How he had managed to get into the courtyard without calling for the porte cochère to be opened is not known. He always carried a passkey which opened any of the doors, but this must have been taken from him when he was searched in the prison. The point has never been cleared up. Climbing the stairs leading to his room, he left the taper on the topmost tread, cautiously opened his door, groped his way across the room and closed the shutters – a necessary precaution, since, as we know, his window could be seen from the street. Then he went back for the taper.
He glanced swiftly about him, at the table, the chair, and the bed, which had not been slept in for three nights. No trace remained of the disorder he had created three nights previously. The servant had ‘done the room’. She had found amid the ashes in the hearth, and disposed neatly on the table, the charred, ferruled ends of his thorn stick and the forty-sou piece, now blackened by the fire.
Taking a sheet of paper, he wrote: ‘Here are the remains of my thorn cudgel, and the coin stolen from Petit-Gervais to which I referred in the assize court,’ and laid these objects on the paper so that they would be instantly seen by anyone entering the room. He got an old shirt out of a drawer and tore it into strips in which he wrapped the two silver candlesticks. He did all this without haste or agitation, gnawing meanwhile at a hunk of black bread, presumably prison bread which he had brought with him. The crumbs were found when later the police ransacked the room.
There was a soft knock on the door and Sister Simplice entered.
She was pale and red-eyed, and the candle she carried was shaking in her hand. The harsh blows of fate have this especial quality, that however self-perfected we may be, however disciplined, they draw from us the true essence of ourselves. The emotions of that day had turned the nun again into a woman. She had wept and she was trembling.
Jean Valjean had written another note. He handed it to her unfolded and said, ‘I should be grateful, sister, if you would give this to the curé. You can read it.’
She read: ‘I would ask Monsieur le curé to take charge of the money I am leaving here. He is to use it to pay the costs of my trial and the funeral expenses of the woman who died today. The rest is for the poor.’
The sister tried to speak but could do little more than stammer a few words. She did, however, manage to ask if he would like to see the dead woman for the last time.
‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re after me. They might arrest me at her bedside, and that would disturb her peace.’
He had scarcely finished speaking when they heard sounds from below, the tramping of feet and mingled with them the voice of the servant loudly protesting:
‘I swear to you by God, Monsieur, that I have been here all day and all this evening, and that I have seen no one enter.’
A man said: ‘But there’s a light in his room.’
They recognized the voice of Javert.
The room was so arranged that the door, when it was fully opened, masked one corner. Jean Valjean blew out his light and slipped into this hiding-place. Sister Simplice went on her knees at the table.
The door opened and Javert entered.
There was a murmur of men’s voices from the corridor, and the voice of the servant still raised in protest. The sister did not look up. She was praying. Her candle, standing on the mantelpiece, gave only a dim light.
At the sight of her Javert stood abashed.
It must be borne in mind that the core of Javert’s being, the climate in which he lived, the very air he breathed, was respect for authority. He was all of a piece, admitting neither question nor compromise, and in his religious faith, as in all things, he was both superficial and rigidly orthodox. It goes without saying that for him the highest authority was that of the Church. A priest, in his eyes, was a soul incapable of error, a nun a creature incapable of sin. These were souls separated from the world by a wall with a single door which opened only to allow the passage of truth.
Seeing the sister, Javert’s first impulse was to withdraw. But on the other hand he had a duty to perform which also admitted of no denial. So on second thoughts he stayed, resolved to hazard at least one question.
And there knelt Sister Simplice, who in all her life had never told a lie. Javert knew this and held her in especial veneration because of it.
‘Sister,’ he asked, ‘are you the only person in this room?’
There ensued a terrible instant during which the trembling servant thought that she would faint. The sister looked up.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Forgive me,’ said Javert, ‘if I ask you one thing more. Have you seen anyone this evening, a man? He has escaped from the prison and we are searching for him – the man called Jean Valjean. Have you seen him?’
‘No,’ replied the sister.
A second lie. She had lied twice, promptly and without hesitation, in an act of sacrifice.
‘I apologize,’ said Javert, and bowing deeply he withdrew.
Sister Simplice! The saintly woman has long since departed this life to join her brothers and sisters in the radiance of Heaven. May she be credited there for her falsehood!
Her denial was to Javert so conclusive that he did not even notice the fact that a taper, recently blown out, still stood smoking on the table.
An hour later a man on foot might have been seen amid the trees and mists, heading rapidly away from Montreuil-sur-mer in the direction of Paris. It was Jean Valjean. The testimony of two or three carters whom he passed on the road subsequently established that he was carrying a bundle and wearing a smock. Where he had obtained this was not certainly known, but an old workman had died in the hospital infirmary a few days before, and the smock may have been among the garments he left behind.
A last word about Fantine. We all have a common mother, the earth, and it was to this mother that she was restored.
The curé thought it well to retain, for the benefit of the poor, as much as possible of the money left behind by Jean Valjean. Perhaps he was right. After all, what were the persons directly concerned? – a criminal and a woman of the town. So he limited the funeral to the barest essentials, consigning Fantine to a pauper’s grave in the free corner of the cemetery. Mercifully, God knows where to look for our souls. Her mortal remains were laid to rest, in company with other unconsidered bones, in a public grave resembling her own bed.