JAVERT HAD walked slowly away from the Rue de l’Homme-Armé, walking for the first time in his life with his head bowed and, also for the first time, with his hands behind his back. Until then Javert had adopted of Napoleon’s two attitudes only the one expressive of determination, arms folded over the chest; the attitude of indecision, hands behind the back, was unknown to him. Now a change had come over him; his whole person bore the imprint of uncertainty.
Walking through the silent streets, he took the shortest way to the Seine, finally arriving near the police-post in the Place du Châtelet, by the Pont Notre-Dame. Between the Pont Notre-Dame and the Pont-au-Change, on the one hand, and the Quai de la Mégisserie and the Quai aux Fleurs, the Seine forms a sort of pool traversed by a swift current. It is a place feared by boatmen. Nothing is more dangerous than that current, aggravated in those days by the piles of the bridges, which have since been done away with. The current speeds up formidably, swelling in waves which seem to be trying to sweep the bridges away. A man falling into the river at this point, even a strong swimmer, does not emerge.
Javert leaned with his elbows on the parapet, his chin resting on his hands. Something new, a revolution, a disaster, had occurred to him, and he had to think it over. He was suffering deeply. For some hours past he had ceased to be the simple creature he had been; his blinkered, one-track mind had been disturbed. There was a flaw in the crystal. He felt that his sense of duty was impaired, and he could not hide this from himself. When he had so unexpectedly encountered Jean Valjean on the edge of the river his feelings had been partly those of a wolf catching its prey and partly those of a dog finding its master.
He could see two ways ahead of him, and this appalled him, because hitherto he had never seen more than one straight line. And the paths led in opposite directions. One ruled out the other. Which was the true one?
To owe his life to a man wanted by the law and to pay the debt in equal terms; to have accepted the words, ‘You may go,’ and now to say, ‘Go free,’ this was to sacrifice duty to personal motive, while at the same time feeling that the personal motive had a wider and perhaps higher application; it was to betray society while keeping faith with his own conscience. That this dilemma should have come upon him was what so overwhelmed him. He was amazed that Valjean should have shown him mercy, and that he should have shown Valjean mercy in return.
And now what was he to do? It would be bad to arrest Valjean, bad also to let him go. In the first case an officer of the law would be sinking to the level of a criminal, and in the second the criminal would be rising above the law. There are occasions when we find ourselves with an abyss on either side, and this was one of them.
His trouble was that he was forced to reflect – the very strength of his feelings made this unavoidable. Reflection was something to which he was unused, and he found it singularly painful. There is in it always an element of conflict, and this irritated him. Reflection, on any subject outside the narrow circle of his duties, had always been to him a useless and wearisome procedure; but now, after today’s happenings, it was torture. Yet he was obliged to study his shaken conscience and account for himself to himself.
What he had done made him shudder. Against all regulations, all social and legal organization, against the whole code he, Javert, had taken it upon himself to let a prisoner go. He had substituted private considerations for those of the community: was it not inexcusable? He trembled when he thought of this. What to do? Only one proper course lay open to him – to hurry back to the Rue de l’Homme-Armé and seize Valjean. He knew it well, but he could not do it.
Something prevented him. What was it? Could there be other things in life besides trials and sentences, authority and the police? Javert was in utter dismay. A condemned man to escape justice through his act! That these two men, the one meant to enforce, the other to submit to the law, should thus place themselves outside the law – was not this a dreadful thing? Jean Valjean, in defiance of society, would be free, and he, Javert, would continue to live at the government’s expense. His thoughts grew blacker and blacker.
The thought of the rebel taken to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire might have occurred to him, but it did not. The lesser fault was lost in the greater. In any case, he was probably dead. It was the thought of Jean Valjean that oppressed and dismayed him. All the principles on which his estimate of man had been based were overthrown. Valjean’s generosity towards himself amazed him. Behind Valjean loomed the figure of Monsieur Madeleine, and they merged into one, into a figure deserving of veneration. Something dreadful was forcing its way into Javert’s consciousness – admiration for a convicted felon. He shivered, but could not evade it. Try as he might, he had in his heart to admit the scoundrel’s greatness. It was abhorrent. A benevolent evil-doer, a man who returned good for evil, a man near to the angels – Javert was forced to admit that this monstrosity could exist. He did not accept the fact without a struggle. He did not for a moment deny that the law was the law. What more simple than to enforce it? But when he sought to raise his hand to lay it on Valjean’s shoulder an inner voice restrained him: ‘You will deliver up your deliverer? Then go and find Pontius Pilate’s bowl and wash your hands!’ He felt himself diminished beside Jean Valjean.
But his greatest anguish was the loss of certainty. He had been torn up by the roots. The code he lived by was in fragments in his hand. He was confronted by scruples that were utterly strange to him. He could no longer live by his lifelong principles; he had entered a new strange world of humanity, mercy, gratitude and justice other than that of the law. He contemplated with horror the rising of a new sun – an owl required to see with eagle’s eyes. He was forced to admit that kindness existed. The felon had been kind, and, a thing unheard of, so had he. Therefore he had failed himself. He felt himself to be a coward. Javert’s ideal was to be more than human; to be above reproach. And he had failed.
All kinds of new questions arose in his mind, and the answers appalled him. Had the man performed a duty in showing him mercy? No, he had done something more. And he, in returning mercy, had denied his duty. So it seemed that there was something other than duty? Here all balance left him, the whole structure of his life collapsed; what was high was no more deserving of honour than what was low. Although instinctively he held the Church in respect, he regarded it as no more than an august part of the social order; and order was his dogma, and had hitherto sufficed him. The police force had been his true religion. He had a superior officer, Monsieur Gisquet; he had given no thought to that higher superior, which is God.
Now he became conscious of God and was troubled in spirit, thrown into disarray by that unexpected presence. He did not know how to treat this superior, knowing that the subordinate must always give way, never disobey or dispute orders, and that, faced by a superior with whom he does not agree, he can only resign. But how resign from God?
What it all came down to was that he was guilty of an unpardonable infraction of the rules. He had let a felon go. He felt that his life was in ruins. Authority was dead within him, and he had no reason to go on living.
To feel emotion was terrible. To be carved in stone, the very figure of chastisement, and to discover suddenly under the granite of our face something contradictory that is almost a heart. To return good for a good that hitherto one had held to be evil; to be of ice, and melt; to see a pincer become a hand with fingers that parted. To let go! The man of action had lost his way. He was forced to admit that infallibility is not always infallible, that there may be error in dogma, that society is not perfect, that a flaw in the unalterable is possible, that judges are men and even the law may do wrong. What was happening to Javert resembled the de-railing of a train – the straight line of the soul broken by the presence of God. God, the inwardness of man, the true conscience as opposed to the false; the eternal, splendid presence. Did he understand or fully realize this? No; and faced by the incomprehensibility he felt that his head must explode.
He was not so much transformed as a victim of this miracle. He submitted in exasperation, feeling that henceforth his very breath must fail. He was not used to confronting the unknown. Until now what had been above him had been plain and simple, clearly defined and exact. Authority … Javert had been conscious of nothing unknowable. The unexpected, the glimpse of chaos, these belonged to some unknown, recalcitrant, miserable world. But now, recoiling, he was appalled by a new manifestation – an abyss above him. It meant that he was wholly at a loss. In what was he to believe?
The chink in society’s armour might be found by a wretched act of mercy. An honest servant of the law might find himself caught between two crimes, the crime of mercy and the crime of duty. Nothing any longer was certain in the duties laid upon him. It seemed that a one-time felon might rise again and in the end prove right. Was it conceivable? Were there then cases when the law, mumbling excuses, must bow to transfigured crime? Yes, there were! Javert saw, and not only could not deny it but himself shared in it. This was reality. It was abominable that true fact should wear so distorted a face. If facts did their duty they would simply reinforce the law. Facts were God-given. Did anarchy itself descend from Heaven?
So then – and in the extremity of his anguish everything that might have corrected this impression was lost, and society and human kind assumed a hideous aspect – then the settled verdict, the force of law, official wisdom, legal infallibility, all dogma on which social stability reposed, all was chaos; and he, Javert, the guardian of these things, was in utter disarray. Was this state of things to be borne? It was not. There were only two ways out. To go determinedly to Jean Valjean and return him to prison; or else …
Javert left the parapet and, now with his head held high, walked firmly to the police-post lighted by a lantern in the corner of the Place du Châtelet. He thrust open the door, showed the duty sergeant his card and sat down at a table on which were pens, inkstand and paper. It was something to be found in every police-post, fully equipped for the writing of reports. Javert settled down to write.
First: I beg Monsieur le Préfet to consider this.
Second: Prisoners returning from interrogation are made to take off their shoes and wait with their bare feet on the tiles. Many are coughing when they go back to prison. This leads to hospital expenses.
Third: Surveillance is well performed, with relief agents at regular distances; but in all important cases there should be at least two agents within sight of one another, able to come to each other’s support.
Four: The special regulation at the Madelonnette prison, whereby prisoners are not allowed a chair even if they pay for it, is hard to justify.
Five: There are only two bars over the canteen counter at the Madelonnette, which enables the canteen-woman to touch the prisoners’ hands.
Six: The prisoners called ‘barkers’ who summon prisoners to the parlour charge two sous for calling a man’s name distinctly. This is robbery.
Seven: The prisoner who drops a thread in the weaving-room loses ten sous. This is an abuse on the part of the contractor, since the cloth is none the worse for it.
Eight: It is unsatisfactory that visitors to La Force should have to cross the Cour des Mômes to reach the Sainte-Marie-l’Égyptienne parlour.
Nine: Gendarmes in the courtyard of the Préfecture are often heard discussing Court proceedings. A gendarme should never repeat what he has heard in the course of his official duties.
Ten: Mme Henry is an excellent woman who keeps her canteen in good order. But it is wrong that a woman should be at the entrance to the secret cells. This is unworthy of the Conciergerie.
Having methodically written these lines without omitting a comma, Javert signed as follows:
‘Javert, Inspector of the First Class, writing at the Place du Châtelet post.
‘7 June 1832, at about one o’clock in the morning.’
He blotted and folded the sheet of paper, and addressing it to the Administration, left it on the table. He went out, and the barred, glass-paned door closed behind him.
Crossing the Place du Châtelet, he returned automatically to the spot he had left a quarter of an hour before and stood leaning with his elbows on the parapet as though he had never left it. It was the sepulchral moment that succeeds midnight, with the stars hidden by cloud and not a light to be seen in the houses of the Cité, not a passer-by, only the faint, distant gleam of a street-lamp and the shadowy outlines of Notre-Dame and the Palais de Justice.
The place where Javert stood, we may recall, was where the river flows in a dangerous rapid. He looked down. There was a sound of running water, but the river itself was not to be seen. What lay below him was a void, so that he might have been standing at the edge of infinity. He stayed motionless for some minutes, staring into nothingness. Abruptly he took off his hat and laid it on the parapet. A moment later a tall, dark figure, which a passer-by might have taken for a ghost, stood upright on the parapet. It leaned forward and dropped into the darkness.
There was a splash, and that was all.