AT THIS point, in view of what follows and because of matters coming later in the story, a word of explanation is called for.
For some years past the author of this book, who regrets the necessity to speak of himself, has been absent from Paris. During this time the city has been transformed. A new city has arisen which to him is in some sort unknown. He has no need to say that he loves Paris, which is his spiritual home. But in the process of demolition and reconstruction, the Paris of his youth, of which he cherishes the memory, has become a Paris of the past. He must be allowed to talk of that Paris as though it still existed. It may well be that he will refer to a particular house in a particular street where today neither house nor street is to be found. The reader may verify such details if he thinks it worth the trouble. For the author’s part, not knowing the new Paris, he writes of the one he knew and still treasures; it pleases him to suppose that something of it remains, and that not everything has vanished. Going about one’s native land one is inclined to take many things for granted, roads and buildings, roofs, windows and doorways, the walls that shelter strangers, the house one has never entered, trees which are like other trees, pavements which are no more than cobblestones. But when we are distant from them we find that those things have become dear to us, a street, trees and roofs, blank walls, doors and windows; we have entered those houses without knowing it, we have left something of our heart in the very stonework. Those places we no longer see, perhaps will never see again but still remember, have acquired an aching charm; they return to us with the melancholy of ghosts, a hallowed vision and as it were the true face of France. We love and evoke them such as they were; and such as to us they still are, we cling to them and will not have them altered, for the face of our country is our mother’s face.
The author, then, begs leave to treat of the past as though it were the present, and, asking the reader to make allowance for this, continues his tale.
Jean Valjean at once moved off the boulevard and into the side streets, constantly changing direction and now and then turning back to put any possible pursuer off the scent. It was the manoeuvre of the hunted stag, known to huntsmen as ‘doubling in his tracks’, which has the advantage, in country where a visible trail is left, that one set of tracks covers another.
The night was one of full moon, and this suited him. The moon, still low on the horizon, broke up the streets in patches of light and darkness. He could keep to the shadows and see what went on in the light. Perhaps he was too much inclined to ignore what might be lurking in the darkness; but nevertheless, in the network of deserted streets round the Rue de Poliveau, he felt reasonably sure that he was not being followed.
Cosette walked unquestioningly beside him. The hardships of the first six years of her life had taught her a passive stoicism. Moreover, and we shall have occasion to refer to this again, she had grown accustomed to the idiosyncrasies of the man and the unexpectedness of life in general, and she felt safe in his protection.
Jean Valjean knew no more than she where they were going, trusting to God as she trusted to himself. He, too, felt that his hand clasped that of a Being greater than himself, and it was as though some invisible presence were guiding him. But he had no clear idea of what he should do next, no considered plan. He was not even sure that the man he had seen was Javert, and if it were it did not follow that Javert had known him for Jean Valjean. Was he not disguised? Was he not believed to be dead? But strange things had happened in the past few hours and he could not disregard them. He was resolved never to return to the Gorbeau tenement. Like an animal driven from its lair he was looking for a temporary refuge, while he sought a safer lodging.
Their roundabout course brought them to the quarter of the Rue Mouffetard, as profoundly asleep at that hour as though this were the middle ages and the curfew still in force. They passed through a number of streets, the Rue Censier, the Rue Copeau, the Rue du Battoir-Saint-Victor, and the Rue du Puits-l’Ermite, in which there were lodging-houses, but none that suited Valjean. He could still not be sure, if after all he was being pursued, that he had wholly covered his tracks.
Eleven o’clock was sounding from the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont as they passed outside the police post in the Rue Pontoise, which was on the dark side of the street. A moment later the instinct to which we have referred prompted him to look back. He was in time to see, by the light of the lantern over the doorway of the post, the figures of three men moving in his direction, one of whom went into the building. The leader of the party looked to him decidedly suspect.
‘Come, child,’ he said to Cosette and hurriedly left the Rue Pontoise.
He made a detour, by-passing the Passage des Patriaches, which was closed at that hour, and following the Rue de l’Épée-de-Bois and the Rue de l’Arbalète, came to the Rue des Postes. Here, on what is now the site of the Collège Rollin, there was an open space at the junction of the Rue des Postes and the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève. (It goes without saying that the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève is far from being a new street, nor do post-carts travel along the Rue des Postes; in the thirteenth century it was a street of potters and its true name is Rue des Pots.)
The open space was bathed in moonlight and Valjean took refuge in a doorway, reckoning that if the men were still following him he could not fail to see them as they crossed over. And indeed, less than three minutes later they appeared. There were now four of them, tall men in brown tail-coats wearing round hats and carrying truncheons. No less sinister than their size and powerful build was their stealthy progress through that shadowed world. They were like ghosts disguised as citizens.
They stopped in the middle of the intersection and stood in a group as though consulting together. They seemed undecided. The one who appeared to be their leader turned and pointed energetically in the direction Valjean had taken, but another seemed equally convinced that they should go the opposite way. When the first man turned the moon shone full on his face, and Valjean now knew that it was Javert.
This was the end of uncertainty for Jean Valjean but, fortunately for him, not for that of his pursuers. Their loss of time was his gain, and taking advantage of their indecision he left the doorway in which he had been hiding and retreated along the Rue des Postes in the direction of the Jardin des Plantes. Cosette was beginning to tire, so he picked her up and carried her. There was no one about and the street lamps had not been lighted because of the brightness of the moon.
Increasing his speed, he came in a few strides to the Poterie Goblet on the façade of which was still to be seen the ancient inscription proclaiming its wares – ‘Jugs and jars, flower-pots, drain-pipes, tiles.’ Passing the Rue de la Clef and the Fontaine Saint-Victor, he rounded the Jardin des Plantes by the streets at its lower end and so came to the river embankment. Here he turned to take stock of his position. The embankment, like the streets he had passed through, was deserted. He breathed again.
At the Pont d’Austerlitz, which in those days was still a toll-bridge, he went to the toll-collector’s box and offered him a sou.
‘Two sous,’ said the war-veteran who kept the bridge. ‘You’re carrying a child who is able to walk. You must pay for two.’
He did so, annoyed at having thus drawn attention to himself. All flight should go unnoticed. A large cart came up at this moment, making like himself for the right bank of the river, and this was helpful to him; by walking beside it he could cross over in its shadow. Halfway across Cosette, whose legs were growing stiff, said that she would rather walk. He put her down and took her hand.
Across the river he saw timber yards a short distance to his right and decided to make for these. In order to reach them he had to cross a wide open space, but he did so without hesitation, believing that he had thrown his pursuers off the scent and was for the moment out of danger – pursued but not closely followed.
Between the walls of two of the yards there was a dark and narrow street, the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, which seemed to be exactly what he was looking for.
Before entering it, however, he turned and looked back. From where he stood he could see the whole length of the Pont d’Austerlitz. He saw four shadowy figures at the far end. They were coming away from the Jardin des Plantes, heading for the right bank.
So after all he had not lost them. Valjean quivered like a hunted animal finding the hounds still on its trail. One hope remained to him. It was possible that the four men had not reached the bridge in time to see him cross the open space hand-in-hand with Cosette. In that event, by following this narrow lane, he might find himself in a region of timber-yards or cultivated plots or waste-land where he would have a good chance of escaping them. The silent, narrow lane looked safe, so he entered it.
After some three hundred yards the lane forked. Valjean found himself confronted by the arms of a Y. Which to choose? Without hesitation he went to the right.
He did so because the left fork led in the general direction of the town, back to inhabited places, whereas the right led away from the town, towards open country.
He was no longer walking fast, being obliged by Cosette to go more slowly. He picked her up again and carried her, and she rested her head on his shoulder without speaking. He looked back from time to time, along the straight length of lane behind him. The first two or three times he did this he saw and heard nothing and, somewhat reassured, he continued on his way. But then, as he turned his head again, he seemed to detect a distant movement amid the shadows through which he had passed. He hurried on, more running than walking, hoping to come to a cross-road which would again enable him to put their pursuers off the track.
He came to a wall. It was not a wall which prevented all progress, being the boundary-wall of a lane crossing the end of the one he was following. Once again he had to decide between left and right.
He looked right. The new lane ran past a cluster of buildings which were either warehouses or barns and then came to a stop, ending in a high white wall that was clearly visible. To the left, however, it was open, debouching after a hundred yards or so into a wider street. Clearly he must go this way.
But as he was about to turn left he saw, standing at the end of the lane where it entered the street, a dark figure motionless as a statue. It seemed that a man had been posted there to bar his passage.
The part of Paris which Valjean had now reached, situated between the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and La Rapée, was one of those which have been completely transformed by recent developments, rendered hideous according to some people and improved according to others. The market-gardens, the timber-yards, and other old buildings have all gone, to be replaced by broad new streets, amphitheatres, circuses, hippodromes, railway-stations, and a prison – progress accompanied by its corrective.
Half a century ago, in the language of common use, deriving so largely from tradition, which persists in referring to the Institut de France as ‘les Quatre-Nations’ and to the Opéra-comique as ‘Feydeau’, this particular part of Paris was known as ‘le Petit-Picpus’.* The Porte Saint-Jacques, the Porte Paris, the Barrière des Sergents, the Porcherons, La Galiote, Les Célestins, Les Capucins, Le Mail, La Bourbe, L’Arbre-de-Cracovie, La Petite-Pologne, Le Petit-Picpus, all these are names surviving from the old Paris into the new. Popular memory lives on the relics of the past.
Le Petit-Picpus, which scarcely existed and was never more than the approximation of a quarter, had something of the monkish aspect of a Spanish town. Its streets were poorly paved, its houses scattered. Except for the two or three streets with which we are concerned it was a region of walls and open spaces, without shops or vehicles, with only an occasional candle to be seen in a window and where all lights were extinguished after ten. Gardens, convents, timber-yards, and marshes; a few single-storeyed houses enclosed in walls as high as themselves.
Such was the quarter in the last century. It was roughly handled by the revolution, the aediles of the Republic having pulled down houses, run roads through it and established rubbish-dumps. Thirty years ago it began to disappear under the spread of new development, and today it has completely vanished. No present map of Paris contains any reference to Le Petit-Picpus, although it is clearly indicated on the 1727 map, published in Paris by Denis Thierry, Rue Saint-Jacques, and in Lyon by Jean Girin, Rue Mercière. Le Petit-Picpus centred around what we have called a Y of streets formed by the forking of the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, the left fork being the Petite Rue Picpus and the right the Rue Polonceau. What may be termed a cross-bar united the two arms of the fork, its name being the Rue Droit-Mur. The Rue Polonceau ended there, but the Rue Picpus went on in the direction of the Marché Lenoir. Whoever came from the Seine and reached the end of the Rue Polonceau had to his left the length of the Rue Droit-Mur, with its wall directly facing him, and to his right a short extension of the same street, with no outlet, known as the Cul-de-sac Genrot.
This was where Jean found himself.
Seeing the dark form at the corner of the Rue Droit-Mur and the Rue Picpus, he started back. There could be no doubt that the man was on the watch for him.
What was he to do? His retreat was cut off. The movement he had detected some distance behind him must mean that Javert was there with the rest of his party. Javert, evidently familiar with that maze of alleyways, had sent one of his men to cover the exit. Conjectures, so near to certainties, poured through Valjean’s troubled mind like dust stirred by a gust of wind. He studied the Rue Picpus; that way a sentry stood on guard – the dark figure as he stared towards it was sharply silhouetted against the moonlit pavement. To go on was to fall foul of him; to go back was to fall into the hands of Javert. Valjean felt himself caught in a net that was slowly tightening. He looked despairingly up at the sky.
To understand what follows calls for a precise picture of the Rue Droit-Mur and in particular of the sharp turning which was on the walker’s left as he entered this lane from the Rue Polonceau. The Rue Droit-Mur was almost entirely flanked on the right, as far as the Rue Picpus, by poor-looking houses; and on the left by a stark composite building made up of several sections which increased in height as they approached the Rue Picpus, so that the building was lofty at its far end but low at the end nearest the Rue Polonceau. Here, at the turning, it was nothing but a wall. But this wall did not exactly follow the line of the street; it was deeply recessed, so that anything within the recess was hidden from observers standing at a distance from it in the Rue Polonceau or the Rue Droit-Mur.
The wall on either side of this recess ran along the Rue Polonceau as far as a house bearing the number 49, and along the Rue Droit-Mur, where it was far shorter, to the building we have described, joining it under the gable and thus forming another re-entrant angle. This gabled façade was forbidding in appearance, having only one window, or rather, a pair of permanently closed vine-covered shutters.
The back of the recess was entirely filled by something that looked like a huge and crudely constructed doorway, a vast, shapeless assembly of perpendicular planks, those above wider than those below, the whole held together with long transverse strips of metal. At one side there was a porte-cochère of ordinary dimensions which had evidently been installed within the past fifty years. The branches of a lime tree hung over the wall, which at the Rue Polonceau end was covered with ivy.
To Jean Valjean, in his perilous situation, the apparent solitude and remoteness of the building had their attractions. He looked it over rapidly, feeling that if he could get inside he might be safe. Hope dawned in him.
Adjacent to all the windows on each floor of the central part of the building was the open mouth of an old leaden drain-pipe. These numerous pipes, all leading to a central conduit, formed a pattern not unlike that of a grape-vine trained up a farmhouse wall. This was the first thing that struck Valjean. Seating Cosette with her back to the wall, and telling her not to make a sound, he ran to the spot where the conduit reached the ground, thinking that perhaps the pipes might enable him to climb into the building. But the conduit was rotten with age and its fastenings far from secure; moreover all the windows were closely barred, even the dormer windows in the roof. In addition, the whole front of the house was bathed in moonlight, so that the observer at the end of the lane would certainly see him if he attempted the climb. And finally, would he be able to carry Cosette up the façade of a three-storey house?
He gave up this idea and crept back to the recess. Here at least he could not be seen, and it might be possible for him to force the door. The ivy-clad wall, above which the branches of the lime tree showed, must surely enclose a garden in which, despite the absence of foliage, they might be able to hide for the rest of the night
Time was passing. He had to move fast. He tried the porte-cochère and discovered at once that it was fastened on both sides. The main door looked more hopeful. It was in a thoroughly dilapidated state, and the more vulnerable because of its great size; the planks were rotten and the iron bands holding them together, of which there were only three, were badly rusted. But when he came to examine it he found that this door was not a door at all; there were no hinges, no lock and no division at the centre. The iron bands ran without a break from one side to the other. Peering through the gaps between the planks, he could see roughly cemented stonework beyond them. He had to conclude, to his consternation, that what looked like a door was simply woodwork concealing a building. He might remove a plank, but then he would be faced by a wall.
At this moment a muffled, regular sound became audible in the distance. Valjean ventured to peer out of the recess. Some seven or eight soldiers in two files had just entered the far end of the Rue Polonceau. He caught the gleam of bayonets. They were coming his way.
The squad, at the head of which he could discern the tall figure of Javert, was advancing slowly and cautiously, and making frequent pauses, evidently to investigate every nook and cranny, every side-alley and doorway. This could only mean that Javert, having fallen in with a military patrol, had taken it under his command and that his own two men were marching in its ranks.
From the speed of their advance, and their constant pauses, Valjean reckoned that it would take them perhaps a quarter of an hour to reach the place where he was. It was an appalling thought. Those few minutes were all that separated him from the abyss which now yawned before him for the third time. But this time it meant more than prison; it meant the loss of Cosette, a life that would be a living death.
There was only one possible way out.
Jean Valjean had the singularity that he might be said to be doubly endowed, on the one side with the aspirations of a saint, on the other with the formidable talents of a criminal. He could draw on either as the case required.
It will be recalled that among his other gifts, acquired in the course of his numerous escapes from the prison in Toulon, he was a past master of the art of climbing walls without artificial aids, simply by muscular strength and dexterity, using back, shoulders, and knees in any angle or chimney, and profiting by any roughness of surface which might afford a toe- or finger-hold. By these means he could climb as high as six storeys if necessary. It was a talent which had caused the corner of the courtyard of the Conciergerie in Paris, whereby the condemned criminal, Battemolle, had escaped, to become famous.
Valjean considered the wall at the point where the branches of the lime tree were visible above it. It was about eighteen feet high. The lower part of the angle it made with the big building was filled by a triangular block of masonry probably designed to prevent this convenient corner from being put to insanitary use. Such preventive devices are common in Paris.
The block was about five feet high, and the distance from it to the top of the wall was not more than another fourteen feet. The wall was flat-topped, without spikes or other obstacle.
The problem was Cosette. He had no thought of abandoning her, but to carry her up to the top of the wall was impossible. A man needed all the strength he possessed for this kind of climb; the least added burden would upset his centre of gravity and bring him down.
A rope was what he needed, but he had none. How could he hope to procure one at midnight in the Rue Polonceau? If Jean Valjean had possessed a kingdom he would certainly have exchanged it at that moment for a rope.
Extreme situations bring flashes which may blind or inspire us. Looking frantically about him, Valjean noticed the lamp-bracket in the Cul-de-sac Genrot.
At that time there was no gas-lighting in the streets of Paris. Oil-lamps hanging from widely-spaced brackets were used, and these were lowered for lighting by means of a stout cord, the end of which ran into a grooved post. The reel on which the cord was wound was enclosed in an iron box to which the lamp-lighter had a key, and the cord itself was encased in metal up to a certain height.
With the energy of desperation, Valjean darted across the end of the Rue Polonceau into the cul-de-sac, broke open the box with his knife and an instant later had rejoined Cosette. He had his length of rope. Men in the utmost necessity can move wonderfully fast.
As we have said, the lamps had not been lit that night because of the brightness of the moon. The lamp in the Cul-de-sac Genrot was extinguished like the rest, and any passer-by would have been unlikely to notice that it was not in its proper place. But meanwhile the lateness of the hour, the darkness, the strangeness of their surroundings and the singular behaviour of Jean Valjean were beginning to distress Cosette. Any other child would long since have been in tears. She did no more than tug at his coat-tails. And the sound of the approaching patrol was growing steadily louder.
‘I’m frightened, father,’ she said. ‘Who’s that coming?’
‘Quiet!’ the hard-pressed man replied. ‘It’s Madame Thénardier.’ She started convulsively and he went on: ‘Don’t talk. Leave everything to me. If you make a sound she’ll hear you. She’s coming to fetch you back.’
Then, without haste but without fumbling, with a cool precision that was the more remarkable in that Javert and the patrol might arrive at any moment, he removed his cravat, passed it round Cosette under her armpits, adjusting it carefully so that it would not hurt her, tied the ends to one end of his rope, using the knot which sailors call a bowline, took the other end of the rope between his teeth, removed his shoes and stockings and tossed them over the wall, climbed on to the block of masonry and thence climbed up the angle formed by the wall and the end of the building, doing so with as much ease and certainty as if he had had stair-treads under his elbows and heels. Within half a minute he was kneeling on top of the wall
Cosette stared up at him in amazement, frozen to silence by the mention of Mme Thénardier. Then she heard his voice calling to her in a whisper.
‘Stand with your back to the wall.’ She did so. ‘Don’t make a sound and don’t be afraid.’
She felt herself lifted off the ground. Before she had time to realize what was happening she too was on the wall. Jean Valjean seized hold of her and put her on his back. Grasping both her hands in one of his, he crawled on his stomach along the top of the wall until he reached the recess. As he had guessed, on the other side of the wood-work that had looked like a door there was a small building of which the sloping roof at its highest point was on a level with the wall. Fortunately the lime tree was very near, because the ground was considerably lower on this side than on the other. From where he crouched it looked a long way down.
He had just slipped down on to the roof of the buildings, but without letting go of the top of the wall, when a hubbub of voices announced the arrival of the patrol. Javert bellowed:
‘Search the cul-de-sac! The Rue Droit-Mur and the Rue Picpus are both covered. I’ll swear he’s in the cul-de-sac!’
The soldiers dashed along the Cul-de-sac Genrot.
Jean Valjean let himself slide down the roof, still with Cosette on his back, and with the help of the lime tree dropped to the ground. Whether from terror or bravery, Cosette had not uttered a sound. Her hands were slightly grazed.
Jean Valjean found himself in a rather strange garden, one of those that seem made to be seen only in winter and by night. It was oblong in shape, with a poplar-walk along the far side, tall shrubs at the corners, and at the centre a cleared space in which a solitary, very large tree was to be seen, a few gnarled and stunted fruit-trees, vegetable-plots, a melon-patch with glass cloches gleaming in the moonlight and an old well-head. Here and there were stone benches seemingly covered with moss. The paths, which all ran straight, were bordered with small bushes and overgrown with moss and grass.
Valjean was standing beside the building whose roof he had used in his descent, with a pile of faggots at his side and, against the wall behind the faggots, a stone statue of which the face was so mutilated that it looked in the darkness like a shapeless mask. The building itself, which was in ruins, was divided into a number of small rooms, in one of which was a clutter of objects and apparently served as a storage shed.
The large building extending along the Rue Droit-Mur to the Petite Rue Picpus overlooked this garden in a double frontage forming a right-angle, its general appearance even more forbidding than on the street side. All the windows were barred and those on the upper storey were hooded like the windows of a prison. No light showed. One part of this double façade was buried in the shadow of the other, which lay like a black carpet over the garden.
No other house was to be seen. The end of the garden was lost in mist and darkness; but the tops of adjoining walls could be discerned, suggesting that there were cultivated plots of land beyond it, and the low roofs of the houses in the Rue Polonceau were also visible.
Any place more lonely and desolate it would have been hard to imagine. That the garden was deserted at that hour was understandable; but there was nothing about it to suggest that anyone ever walked there, even by day.
Jean Valjean’s first act was to retrieve his shoes and stockings, after which he and Cosette entered the storage-shed. No fugitive ever feels wholly secure. With the thought of Mme Thénardier in her mind, the child’s instinct was to hide. She clung to him trembling. Outside they could hear the noise of the patrol searching the cul-de-sac, the clatter of musket-butts on the cobbles, the voice of Javert calling to the man he had posted on guard and his stream of imprecations mingled with words that they did not catch.
Time passed and the commotion seemed to be receding. Valjean was still holding his breath. He had laid a hand gently over Cosette’s mouth. Throughout this time the solitude in which they found themselves remained miraculously calm and wholly untroubled by the furious hubbub proceeding from so close at hand, as though the walls were built of the unheeding stones of which the Scriptures speak.
But suddenly, amid this profound tranquillity, a new sound arose, a sound both exquisite and divine, as ravishing to the senses as those other sounds were horrible. A hymn rose out of the shadows, an outburst of prayer and harmony in the dark and terrible silence of the night. The voices were those of women, blending the pure accents of virgins with the innocent tones of children, voices not of this earth, resembling the notes still ringing in the ears of the newly-born and those which reach the ears of the dying. The singing came from the gloomy edifice overlooking the garden. It was as though, while the howling of demons faded away in the distance, a chorus of angels had taken its place.
Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees. They did not know the meaning of this or where they were, but both felt instinctively – man and child, penitent and innocent – that they must kneel. The singing had the strange quality that it did not rob the building of its apparent solitude, but was like a supernatural song issuing from an empty house.
While the singing continued Jean Valjean was bereft of thought, no longer conscious of the darkness but seeing a blue sky, feeling the spread of those wings that are a part of all of us. When it died down he could not have said whether it had lasted a long or a short time. The hour of ecstasy may be no more than an instant.
And now all was silence, nothing more to be heard in the street or in the garden. The threat and the reassurance, both had vanished. Only the stir of dried grass in the breeze made a soft and mournful sound.
A night breeze had risen, which suggested that it must be between one and two in the morning. Cosette was silent, and since she was sitting with her head against him, Valjean supposed that she had fallen asleep. But when he bent to look at her he saw that her eyes were wide open and staring with an expression that shocked him. She was shivering.
‘Aren’t you sleepy?’ he asked.
‘I’m cold … ’ And then after a moment she said: ‘Is she still there?’
‘Who?’
‘Madame Thénardier.’
He had forgotten the means he had used to ensure her silence.
‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s gone. You have nothing to fear.’
She sighed as though a great weight had been lifted from her spirit.
The earth floor of the shed was damp, and the shed itself was open on all sides to the growing breeze. He took off his coat and wrapped her in it.
‘Is that better?’
‘Yes, father.’
‘Lie down and wait for me. I’ll be back very soon.’
Leaving the shed, he began to explore the outside of the large building in the hope of finding a better place of refuge. He came to doors but they were all locked, and all the ground-floor windows were barred. Crossing the interior angle of the building, he came to a row of arched windows beyond which was a faint light. Standing on tip-toe, he peered in at one of these. He was looking into a spacious room or hall, paved with large flagstones and broken with pillars, in which nothing was at first visible except masses of shadow and the dim glow of a night-light in one corner. The place was deserted and nothing moved in it. But after staring for some time he seemed to discern, lying on the stone floor, something that looked like a human form covered by a shroud. It was lying face down with its arms crossed in the posture of death; and a thin line trailing like a snake over the flags suggested that it had a rope round its neck. The misty half-darkness of the place added to the horror of this sight.
Jean Valjean was to say afterwards that in a life which had witnessed many terrors he had seen nothing more chilling to the blood than that inexplicable figure enacting some mysterious rite in those sombre surroundings. It was terrifying to suppose the figure dead; more terrifying still to suppose that it was alive.
Summoning his resolution, he pressed his face to the window-pane and remained there for what seemed to him a long time, seeking to discern in the figure some sign of life. But he saw no movement, and suddenly, being seized with a sense of inexpressible terror, he turned and ran. He ran back to the shed, not venturing to look round lest he see the figure bounding after him with waving arms. He was gasping by the time he reached the shed, his knees giving way and the sweat running down his back.
Where was he? Who could have imagined anything of the kind in a sort of sepulchre in the heart of Paris? What was this place of nocturnal mystery where angel voices cried out to the soul and, when it answered the summons, offered it a vision of horror, promising the radiance of Heaven and providing the blackness of the tomb? Yet it was a real house with a numbered doorway giving on to a street. It was not a dream. He had to touch the stones in order to convince himself of this.
The coldness of the night, its many stresses and anxieties and the present bewilderment of his mind, all this had rendered him feverish. He bent over Cosette and found that she was asleep.
Cosette had fallen asleep with her head resting on a stone. He sat down beside her, and gradually, as he gazed at her, he grew calmer and recovered his wits.
He now clearly perceived the truth which was henceforth to be the centre of his life, namely, that while she was there, while he had her near him, he would need nothing except for her sake and fear nothing except on her account. He was not even conscious of feeling extremely cold, having taken off his coat to cover her.
He sat thinking, and only by degrees became aware of an odd sound that he had been unconsciously hearing for some time. It came from within the garden, the sound of a bell tinkling, faint but distinct, like a sheep-bell in the fields at night.
The sound caused him to turn his head, and, peering, he saw that there was someone else in the garden. A person, seemingly a man, was walking amid the rows of cloches on the melon-patch, pausing, stooping, and straightening with regular movements as though spreading something over the ground. He appeared to be limping.
Jean Valjean drew back with the instinctive recoil of the hunted, for whom all things are hostile and suspect. They fear daylight because it may cause them to be seen, and darkness because they may be taken by surprise. It was not long since the loneliness of the garden had caused him to shudder, but now he trembled because someone was there.
Turning abruptly from fanciful terrors to real ones, he reflected that perhaps Javert and his helpers were still in the vicinity, that very likely a man had been left to keep watch in the street, and that if this individual in the garden were to see him he would cry out and give the alarm. Taking the sleeping Cosette gently in his arms, he carried her behind a pile of old, disused furniture in the furthest corner of the shed. She did not stir.
He then resumed his observation of the man in the melon-patch. What was strange was that each of his movements was accompanied by this tinkle of a bell, which sounded more loudly when he was nearer, fainter as he moved away. If he made a rapid movement the tinkle became a tremolo; only when he was motionless was the bell silent. Clearly it was attached to him; but what did that mean? What kind of man was it who was ‘belled’ like a wether or a cow?
While he was wondering about this he felt Cosette’s hands. They were ice-cold.
‘Oh, God!’ he exclaimed; and he said in a low voice, ‘Cosette!’ She did not open her eyes.
He shook her vigorously, but she did not wake.
‘Is she dead?’ he thought and stood upright, trembling from head to foot.
Appalling thoughts ran through his mind. There are times when the fears that assail us are like a regiment of furies beating at the walls of our brain. Where those we love are affected terror knows no bounds. He reflected that sleep in the open air may prove fetal on a cold night.
The child was lying motionless at his feet. He bent and listened to her breathing, which seemed to him so weak that at any moment it might cease.
How could he warm her? How revive her? He had no thought for anything but this.
He ran despairingly out of the shed. Whatever happened, within a quarter of an hour Cosette must be in a warm place and in bed.
He made straight for the man on the melon-patch, holding in his hand the roll of coins that had been in his waistcoat pocket. The man was bending down and did not see him. Valjean went up to him and said without preliminaries:
‘A hundred francs!’
The man started and looked up.
‘A hundred francs for you,’ Valjean repeated, ‘if you can give me shelter for tonight.’
The moonlight shone full on his tormented face.
‘Why,’ said the man, ‘why, it’s you, Père Madeleine!’
The sound of his own name, spoken at that hour and in that place by an unknown person, caused Valjean to start in utter amazement. He had been prepared for anything except this. The speaker was a bent and crippled old man clad in working garments, with a leather kneeling-pad on his left knee to which a fair sized bell was fixed. His face, which was in shadow, was not clearly visible. He took off his cap and burst into a torrent of quavering speech.
‘In God’s name how do you come to be here, Père Madeleine? How did you get in? It’s as though you’d fallen from the sky, and that’s no joke because if you fell from anywhere that’s where it would be. But look at you, the clothes you’re wearing – no necktie, no hat, no overcoat! You’d have scared the life out of me if I hadn’t recognized you. But what’s the meaning of it? Have even the saints gone crazy? How in the world did you get in?’
The words tumbled over one another in a stream of country volubility that was in no way disquieting, a mingling of bewilderment and innocent goodwill.
‘Who are you, and what is this place?’ Jean Valjean asked.
‘What! Well, that’s rich! I’m the man you put here, and this is the place you put me in. Do you mean to say you don’t know me?’
‘No. Nor do I understand how you know me.’
‘You saved my life,’ the old man said.
He turned, and the moonlight falling upon his face revealed the features of Fauchelevent, who had once been nearly crushed to death beneath a cart.
‘Ah,’ said Valjean. ‘Yes. I know you now.’
‘So I should hope,’ the old man said reproachfully.
‘But what are you doing out here at this hour?’
‘I’m covering up my melons, d’you see.’
Fauchelevent still held in his hand the strip of straw matting which he had been in the act of spreading on the ground when Valjean had surprised him. He had been thus employed for some time, and it was this that accounted for the movements that Valjean had watched from the shed.
‘I said to myself, well it’s a fine, clear night and there’s going to be a frost, so I might as well get my melons into their jackets.’ He laughed. ‘What’s more, it’s what you’d have done yourself in my place. But how do you come to be here?’
Finding himself known to the old man, at least by the name of Madeleine, Jean Valjean was still on his guard. He went on to question him in a strange reversal of roles, the midnight intruder become interrogator.
‘What’s that bell you’re wearing on your knee?’
‘That?’ said Fauchelevent. ‘That’s to warn people off.’
‘But why should anyone be warned off?’
The old man wagged his head and grinned.
‘Bless you, there’s nothing but women in this place, a lot of them young girls. It seems it might be dangerous for them to meet me. When they hear the bell they keep their distance.’
‘But what is this place?’
‘Go on, you must surely know.’
‘I assure you I don’t.’
‘But seeing you got me the job here as gardener.’
‘I still don’t understand. You will have to tell me.’
‘Why, then, it’s the Convent of the Petit-Picpus.’
And then Valjean remembered. Chance, but it is better to say Providence, had led him to the very convent in the Saint-Antoine quarter where old Fauchelevent, crippled after his accident, had been engaged on his recommendation. That had happened two years ago. Valjean repeated, as though to himself, ‘The Convent of the Petit-Picpus!’
‘Now we’ve got that straight,’ said Fauchelevent, ‘perhaps you’ll tell me, Père Madeleine, how the devil you managed to get in here? You may be a saint but you’re also a man, and men aren’t admitted.’
‘But you’re here.’
‘I’m the only one.’
‘All the same,’ said Jean Valjean, ‘I’ve got to stop here.’
‘Lord preserve us!’ exclaimed Fauchelevent.
Valjean drew close to him and said in a grave voice:
‘Père Fauchelevent, I once saved your life.’
‘I’ve just reminded you of it.’
‘Well, now you can do as much for me.’
At this Fauchelevent clasped Jean Valjean’s powerful hands in his own gnarled and wrinkled ones and for a moment was too moved for speech. Then he burst out:
‘I thank God if I can repay something of what I owe you. To save your life! Monsieur le Maire, I am at your service!’ His face was transfigured, and it was as though a light shone from it. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘I’ll tell you. Have you a room?’
‘I have a sort of cottage beyond the ruins of the old convent. No one ever comes near it. There are three rooms.’
The cottage was in fact so well hidden beyond the ruins that Valjean had not noticed it.
‘I must ask two things of you,’ he said. ‘First, that you will tell no one what you know about me. And secondly, that you will not seek to know more than you already do.’
‘As you please. I know that you will do nothing dishonourable and that you have always been a God-fearing man, besides which, you got me my employment here. Your affairs are no business of mine. I am yours to command.’
‘Thank you. Now I will ask you to come with me. We must fetch the child.’
‘Ah,’ said Fauchelevent. ‘So there’s a child.’
He followed Jean Valjean without another word, like a dog following its master.
Less than half an hour later Cosette, rosy once more in the warmth of a good fire, was asleep in the old gardener’s bed. Jean Valjean had put on his cravat and coat and retrieved the hat which he had thrown over the wall. While he was doing so Fauchelevent had removed his knee-pad with its bell, and it now decorated the wall, hanging on a nail by the fireside. The two men sat warming themselves with their elbows on a table on which Fauchelevent had set a morsel of cheese, bread, a bottle of wine, and two glasses. Laying a hand on Valjean’s knee he said:
‘So, Père Madeleine, you didn’t recognize me at once. You save men’s lives and then forget them. That’s bad. They don’t forget you. You are ungrateful, Père Madeleine!’
The events of which we have witnessed the reverse side, so to speak, had come about in a very simple fashion.
When Jean Valjean escaped from the prison in Montreuil-sur-mer, on the evening of the day when Javert arrested him at Fantine’s bedside, the police had supposed that he would make for Paris. Paris is a whirlpool in which all things can be lost, sucked into that navel of the earth like flotsam into the navel of the sea. No forest can hide a man so well as its teeming streets, a fact well known to all kinds of fugitive. It is also known to the police, who scour Paris for what they have lost elsewhere. Javert was summoned to Paris to assist in the search for Valjean and had played an important part in his recapture. His zeal and energy on that occasion attracted the notice of M. Chapouillet, the secretary of the Prefecture under Comte Anglès. M. Chapouillet, who had interested himself in Javert in the past, had him transferred from Montreuil-sur-mer to Paris, where he rendered useful and, inappropriate though the word may appear in connection with such a calling, honourable service.
He thought no more about Jean Valjean (to a hound for ever on the scent, today’s wolf causes yesterday’s to be forgotten) until in December 1823 he saw his name in a newspaper. Javert was not a reader of newspapers, but as an ardent monarchist he was interested in the account of the landing of the ‘prince generalissimo’ at Bayonne. Having read this, he glanced over the rest of the paper and his eye fell on a paragraph at the bottom of a page reporting the death of the convict Jean Valjean. The statement was so positive that he had no reason to doubt it, and reflecting that it was a good riddance, he dismissed the matter from his mind.
Some time after his transfer a report was received in Paris from the Prefecture of Seine-et-Oise concerning the abduction of a child under peculiar circumstances in the commune of Montfermeil. The child, a girl of seven or eight, had been entrusted by her mother to a local innkeeper and had been ‘stolen’, in the words of the report, by a stranger. The child was named Cosette, and the mother was a woman named Fantine who had died in hospital, details not known. The report came Javert’s way and it made him think.
He had not forgotten Fantine; nor had he forgotten that Jean Valjean had caused him to burst out laughing by asking for three days’ respite so that he might go and fetch the woman’s child. He recalled that Valjean had been arrested in the act of boarding the coach for Montfermeil. Moreover, there had been grounds for suspecting that this would not have been his first visit to Montfermeil and that he had been in the neighbourhood of the village on the previous day, although he had not been seen in the village itself. No one had understood at the time what had taken him to Montfermeil, but this was now clear to Javert. He had gone there for Fantine’s child. And now the child had been abducted by a stranger. Could the stranger be Valjean? But Valjean was reported dead. Without saying anything to anyone Javert took the coach to Montfermeil.
He had gone there expecting enlightenment and had found only mystification.
In their first disappointment the Thénardiers had talked, and the story of ‘the Lark’s’ disappearance had gone round the village. Various versions had circulated, culminating in the tale of abduction. Hence the police report. But after recovering from his sense of grievance Thénardier, with his admirable instinct of caution, had been quick to realize that it is never wise to attract the notice of Authority, and that a formal complaint about kidnapping would cause the eagle-eye of the Law to be turned upon himself and his many dubious transactions. The last thing an owl wants is to be examined by the light of a lamp. How, in particular, was he to account for the fifteen hundred francs he had accepted? He promptly changed his tune, put a gag on his wife, and expressed great astonishment when people talked as though the child had been stolen. He had been upset at the time by the speed with which she had been taken away; he would have liked, from sheer affection, to keep her a few days longer. But the gentleman who had come for her was her grandfather and it was only natural that he should want to have her. This was the story Javert heard when he arrived at Montfermeil. The ‘grandfather’, which was Thénardier’s happy thought, eliminated Jean Valjean.
Nevertheless Javert tested the story with a few questions. Who was this grandfather and what was his name? Thénardier replied with perfect candour: ‘He’s a wealthy landowner. I saw his passport. I think his name is Monsieur Guillaume Lambert.’ Lambert is a highly respectable name. Javert went back to Paris. ‘Valjean is dead,’ he said to himself, ‘and I’m an ass.’
He was beginning to forget the whole affair when, in March 1824, a story reached him about an eccentric individual living in the parish of Saint-Médard who was known as ‘the beggar who gives alms’. The man was said to be a person of independent means living with a small girl who knew nothing of their circumstances except that she herself came from Montfermeil. The name caused Javert to prick up his ears. An elderly beggar, a former beadle who was now a police-informer, supplied further details. The man was a very queer customer, never went out except at night, never spoke to anyone except occasionally to the poor, and never let anyone come near him. He wore a wretched old yellow overcoat which was probably worth millions because its lining was stuffed with banknotes … All this was decidedly interesting to Javert. In order to have a look at the queer customer he borrowed the ex-beadle’s outer garments and the use of the pitch where he huddled every evening, intoning prayers and keeping his eyes open.
The ‘suspect’ duly appeared and gave the bogus mendicant money. Javert looked up as he did so, and Jean Valjean’s shock when he thought he recognized the policeman was no greater than Javert’s when he thought he recognized Jean Valjean. At the same time Javert realized that in the darkness he might have been mistaken. Valjean was officially dead. There was serious room for doubt, and Javert, scrupulous in all his dealings, did not lay hands on a man without being sure of his ground.
He followed his man to the Gorbeau tenement and got the old woman to talk, which was no difficult matter. She confirmed the detail of the overcoat lined with millions and told him about the thousand-franc note which she herself had handled. Javert rented a room in the tenement and occupied it that same evening. He listened at Valjean’s door, hoping to hear the sound of his voice; but Valjean, seeing the light of his candle, foiled him by keeping silent.
Jean Valjean fled the next day; but the sound of the five-franc piece he let fall on the floor was overheard by the old woman, and hearing the chink of money she guessed that he intended to leave and hastened to warn Javert. When Valjean left the house that evening with Cosette, Javert was waiting for him, hidden with two men behind the trees along the boulevard.
Javert had applied to the Prefecture for full authorization but he had not disclosed the name of the person he hoped to arrest. He had kept this to himself for three reasons. First, because the least indiscretion might serve to warn Valjean; secondly, because to arrest an escaped convict who was believed to be dead, and whose record in the official files was that of a ‘highly-dangerous criminal’ would be a tremendous feather in his cap which would be resented by the old hands of the Paris police-force, who might try to rob him of the credit; and finally because Javert, being an artist, had a taste for the dramatic. He had no fondness for the kind of triumph that is robbed of its lustre by being proclaimed in advance. He liked to elaborate his masterpieces in secret and unveil them with a flourish.
He had followed Jean Valjean from tree to tree and from street-corner to street-corner, always keeping him in sight. Even in those moments when Valjean thought himself most safe Javert had had an eye on him.
Why, then, had he not at once arrested him? The reason is that he still had doubts.
We must remember that at that time the Paris police were not in a happy state, being much harassed by the free press. A number of arbitrary arrests, denounced in the newspapers, had led to questions in Parliament, and the Prefecture was nervous. To infringe the liberty of the subject was a serious matter. A major blunder on the part of a subordinate policeman might lead to his dismissal. It is not hard to imagine the effect of a news-item on the lines of the following, reproduced in twenty papers: ‘Yesterday a white-headed grandfather, a respectable rentier out walking with his eight-year-old granddaughter, was arrested and taken to Police Headquarters as an escaped convict.’! … Besides which, we must repeat, Javert was a man of principle. To the voice of the Prefect was added the voice of his own conscience. He had genuine doubts. He had seen only Jean Valjean’s back as he vanished into the darkness.
Valjean’s acute anxiety and distress at this fresh disaster which had driven him to flight and forced him to seek haphazardly for a new place of refuge for Cosette and himself, his responsibility for the child and the necessity to accommodate his footsteps to hers, all this, without his realizing it, had so altered his gait, lending an impression of senility to his whole bearing, that even the police, in the person of Javert, could be misled by it. The impossibility of examining him closely, his shabby attire resembling that of an elderly schoolmaster, Thénardier’s statement that he was the child’s grandfather and finally his reported death, these were added elements of uncertainty.
Javert thought for a moment of going up to him and peremptorily demanding to see his papers. But if the man was not Jean Valjean, and not a respectable rentier either, then there was every likelihood that he was a villain deeply involved in the Paris underworld, possibly a dangerous gang-leader, at present keeping under cover for reasons of his own. In that case he would have contacts, accomplices, emergency hide-outs where he would eventually go to earth. His general behaviour and the circuitous route he was following suggested that he could scarcely be an honest citizen. To arrest him too soon might be to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. What harm was there in waiting? Javert was confident that he would not escape.
So he continued tentatively to follow him until, some time later, by the light outside a tavern in the Rue Pontoise, he had a clear view of him and knew positively that this was Jean Valjean.
There is a kind of thrill known to only two creatures on earth – the mother who recovers her child and the tiger who recovers its prey. This was Javert’s sensation at that moment. But simultaneously, being now assured that it was the formidable Jean Valjean, he realized that he had only two men with him, and he therefore applied to the police-post in the Rue Pontoise for assistance. Before grasping a stick of thorn we put on gloves.
This delay, and the pause at the Rollin crossroads to confer with his men, nearly caused him to lose the scent; but he quickly realized that Valjean would want to put the river between his pursuers and himself. He stood with his head bent, pointing like a hound, and then, with his customary sureness of instinct, made straight for the Pont d’Austerlitz. A word with the toll-keeper told him what he wanted to know – ‘Have you seen a man with a little girl?’ … ‘I charged him two sous.’ Javert was on the bridge in time to see Valjean cross a moonlit space with Cosette. He saw him enter the Rue de Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine and at once he thought of the Cul-de-sac Genrot, which was a trap in itself, and the Rue Droit-Mur, of which the only other outlet was into the Petite Rue Picpus. Fanning out his beaters, in hunting parlance, he sent a man promptly by a roundabout route to close that end. Encountering a military patrol on its way back to the Arsenal, he commandeered it and took it along with him. In games of this sort the military are a trump card, and it is in any case axiomatic that in dealing with a wild boar one needs both the cunning of the hunter and a strong pack of hounds. Having thus completed his depositions, and knowing Valjean to be enclosed between the impasse on his right, the police agent on his left and the main party coming up behind him, Javert took a pinch of snuff.
Then, with a demonic and sensual pleasure, he settled down to enjoy himself. He played his man knowing that he had him, deliberately postponing the climax, granting him a last illusion of freedom, relishing the situation like a spider with a fly buzzing in its web or a cat letting a mouse run between its paws – the ecstasy of watching those last struggles! His net was shrewdly cast, he could close it when he chose, and Valjean, desperate and dangerous though he was, could not hope to resist the force arrayed against him.
So Javert moved slowly forward, methodically searching every nook and cranny of the street as though he were going through the pockets of a footpad. But when he reached the centre of his net he found that the fly had vanished. The impasse was empty, and the man posted at the end of the Rue Droit-Mur had seen no one.
Javert’s fury of exasperation can be imagined. It happens sometimes that a stag breaks cover with the whole pack upon him and miraculously contrives to escape, leaving even the most experienced huntsman confounded. In one such situation Artonge exclaimed, ‘It isn’t a stag, it’s a wizard!’ Javert might well have said the same.
It is undeniable that Napoleon blundered in the Russian campaign, Alexander in the Indian war, Caesar in Africa, Cyrus in Scythia; nor was Javert guiltless of error in his campaign against Jean Valjean. He was wrong, perhaps, in hesitating to recognize him at the beginning: that first glance should have sufficed. He erred in not arresting him at once in the tenement, and again in the Rue Pontoise, when he had definitely recognized him. The conclave under the moon at the Rollin intersection was a mistake. To take counsel is prudent, but the huntsman must be on the alert when he is dealing with such wary animals as a wolf or a convict. In his over-anxiety to set his pack on the right scent Javert allowed his prey a moment of respite. Above all he was wrong when, having again sighted him, he allowed himself to indulge in the childish satisfaction of toying with a man of that calibre. He thought himself stronger than he was, able to play with a lion as though it were a mouse. And at the same time he under-rated his strength when he wasted precious times in seeking reinforcements. He was guilty of all these errors and yet he was one of the most shrewd and able detectives that ever lived – in the full sense of the hunting term, ‘a wise hound’.
But who among us is perfect? Even the greatest strategists have their eclipses, and the greatest blunders, like the thickest ropes, are often compounded of a multitude of strands. Take the rope apart, separate it into the small threads that compose it, and you can break them one by one. You think, ‘That is all there was!’ But twist them all together and you have something tremendous – Attila hesitating between Marcians in the east and Valentinians in the west, Hannibal delaying too long in Capua, Danton slumbering in Arcis-sur-Aube.
Nevertheless, when he found that Jean Valjean had escaped him Javert did not lose his head. Convinced that his prey could not be far off, he posted watches, set up traps and ambushes, and scoured the district throughout the night. The first thing he noticed was the displaced street-lamp of which the cord had been cut. It was a valuable clue but a misleading one since it led him to concentrate the search on the Cul-de-sac Genrot. The blind-alley was partly enclosed by comparatively low walls flanking gardens beyond which lay wide stretches of uncultivated land. He concluded that Valjean must have gone that way, and the fact is that Valjean would probably have done so had he gone a little further into the blind alley, and he would then have been lost. Javert combed the gardens and wasteland like a man looking for a needle in a haystack.
At daybreak he left two capable men on watch and returned to Police Headquarters as shamefaced as the fox outwitted by a hen.