“You, Mr. Mayor.”
M. Madeleine sat erect in his arm-chair. Javert went on, with a severe air and his eyes still cast down.
“Mr. Mayor, I have come to request you to instigate the authorities to dismiss me.”
M. Madeleine opened his mouth in amazement. Javert interrupted him:— “You will say that I might have handed in my resignation, but that does not suffice. Handing in one’s resignation is honorable. I have failed in my duty; I ought to be punished; I must be turned out.”
And after a pause he added:—
“Mr. Mayor, you were severe with me the other day, and unjustly. Be so to-day, with justice.”
“Come, now! Why?” exclaimed M. Madeleine. “What nonsense is this? What is the meaning of this? What culpable act have you been guilty of towards me? What have you done to me? What are your wrongs with regard to me? You accuse yourself; you wish to be superseded—”
“Turned out,” said Javert.
“Turned out; so it be, then. That is well. I do not understand.”
“You shall understand, Mr. Mayor.”
Javert sighed from the very bottom of his chest, and resumed, still coldly and sadly:— “Mr. Mayor, six weeks ago, in consequence of the scene over that woman, I was furious, and I informed against you.”
“Informed against me!”
“At the Prefecture of Police in Paris.”
M. Madeleine, who was not in the habit of laughing much oftener than Javert himself, burst out laughing now:— “As a mayor who had encroached on the province of the police?”
“As an ex-convict.”
The mayor turned livid.
Javert, who had not raised his eyes, went on:—
“I thought it was so. I had had an idea for a long time; a resemblance; inquiries which you had caused to be made at Faverolles; the strength of your loins; the adventure with old Fauchelevant; your skill in marksmanship; your leg, which you drag a little;—I hardly know what all,—absurdities! But, at all events, I took you for a certain Jean Valjean.”
“A certain—What did you say the name was?”
“Jean Valjean. He was a convict whom I was in the habit of seeing twenty years ago, when I was adjutant-guard of convicts at Toulon. On leaving the galleys, this Jean Valjean, as it appears, robbed a bishop; then he committed another theft, accompanied with violence, on a public highway on the person of a little Savoyard. He disappeared eight years ago, no one knows how, and he has been sought, I fancied. In short, I did this thing! Wrath impelled me; I denounced you at the Prefecture!”
M. Madeleine, who had taken up the docket again several moments before this, resumed with an air of perfect indifference:— “And what reply did you receive?”
“That I was mad.”
“Well?”
“Well, they were right.”
“It is lucky that you recognize the fact.”
“I am forced to do so, since the real Jean Valjean has been found.”
The sheet of paper which M. Madeleine was holding dropped from his hand; he raised his head, gazed fixedly at Javert, and said with his indescribable accent:— “Ah!”
Javert continued:—
“This is the way it is, Mr. Mayor. It seems that there was in the neighborhood near Ailly-le-Haut-Clocher an old fellow who was called Father Champmathieu. He was a very wretched creature. No one paid any attention to him. No one knows what such people subsist on. Lately, last autumn, Father Champmathieu was arrested for the theft of some cider apples from—Well, no matter, a theft had been committed, a wall scaled, branches of trees broken. My Champmathieu was arrested. He still had the branch of apple-tree in his hand. The scamp is locked up. Up to this point it was merely an affair of a misdemeanor. But here is where Providence intervened.
“The jail being in a bad condition, the examining magistrate finds it convenient to transfer Champmathieu to Arras, where the departmental prison is situated. In this prison at Arras there is an ex-convict named Brevet, who is detained for I know not what, and who has been appointed turnkey of the house, because of good behavior. Mr. Mayor, no sooner had Champmathieu arrived than Brevet exclaims: ‘Eh! Why, I know that man! He is a fagot!4 Take a good look at me, my good man! You are Jean Valjean!’ ‘Jean Valjean! who’s Jean Valjean?’ Champmathieu feigns astonishment. ‘Don’t play the innocent dodge,’ says Brevet. ‘You are Jean Valjean! You have been in the galleys of Toulon; it was twenty years ago; we were there together.’ Champmathieu denies it. Parbleu! You understand. The case is investigated. The thing was well ventilated for me. This is what they discovered: This Champmathieu had been, thirty years ago, a pruner of trees in various localities, notably at Faverolles. There all trace of him was lost. A long time afterwards he was seen again in Auvergne; then in Paris, where he is said to have been a wheelwright, and to have had a daughter, who was a laundress; but that has not been proved. Now, before going to the galleys for theft, what was Jean Valjean? A pruner of trees. Where? At Faverolles. Another fact. This Valjean’s Christian name was Jean, and his mother’s surname was Mathieu. What more natural to suppose than that, on emerging from the galleys, he should have taken his mother’s name for the purpose of concealing himself, and have called himself Jean Mathieu? He goes to Auvergne. The local pronunciation turns Jean into Chan—he is called Chan Mathieu. Our man offers no opposition, and behold him transformed into Champmathieu. You follow me, do you not? Inquiries were made at Faverolles. The family of Jean Valjean is no longer there. It is not known where they have gone. You know that among those classes a family often disappears. Search was made, and nothing was found. When such people are not mud, they are dust. And then, as the beginning of the story dates thirty years back, there is no longer any one at Faverolles who knew Jean Valjean. Inquiries were made at Toulon. Besides Brevet, there are only two convicts in existence who have seen Jean Valjean; they are Cochepaille and Chenildieu, and are sentenced for life. They are taken from the galleys and confronted with the pretended Champmathieu. They do not hesitate; he is Jean Valjean for them as well as for Brevet. The same age,—he is fifty-four,—the same height, the same air, the same man; in short, it is he. It was precisely at this moment that I forwarded my denunciation to the Prefecture in Paris. I was told that I had lost my reason, and that Jean Valjean is at Arras, in the power of the authorities. You can imagine whether this surprised me, when I thought that I had that same Jean Valjean here. I write to the examining judge; he sends for me; Champmathieu is conducted to me—”
“Well?” interposed M. Madeleine.
Javert replied, his face incorruptible, and as melancholy as ever:— “Mr. Mayor, the truth is the truth. I am sorry; but that man is Jean Valjean. I recognized him also.”
M. Madeleine resumed in, a very low voice:—
“You are sure?”
Javert began to laugh, with that mournful laugh which comes from profound conviction.
“O! Sure!”
He stood there thoughtfully for a moment, mechanically taking pinches of powdered wood for blotting ink from the wooden bowl which stood on the table, and he added:— “And even now that I have seen the real Jean Valjean, I do not see how I could have thought otherwise. I beg your pardon, Mr. Mayor.”
Javert, as he addressed these grave and supplicating words to the man, who six weeks before had humiliated him in the presence of the whole station-house, and bade him “leave the room,”—Javert, that haughty man, was unconsciously full of simplicity and dignity,—M. Madeleine made no other reply to his prayer than the abrupt question:— “And what does this man say?”
“Ah!