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Updated: June 24, 2025
"He is dead." Jean Valjean, who, soiled and tattered, stood behind Javert, and whom the porter was surveying with some horror, made a sign to him with his head that this was not so. The porter did not appear to understand either Javert's words or Jean Valjean's sign. Javert continued: "He went to the barricade, and here he is." "To the barricade?" ejaculated the porter.
Eighty francs, Mr. Inspector." Javert drew four napoleons from his pocket and dismissed the carriage. Jean Valjean fancied that it was Javert's intention to conduct him on foot to the post of the Blancs-Manteaux or to the post of the Archives, both of which are close at hand. They entered the street. It was deserted as usual. Javert followed Jean Valjean. They reached No. 7. Jean Valjean knocked.
Javert's whole person was expressive of the man who spies and who withdraws himself from observation. The mystical school of Joseph de Maistre, which at that epoch seasoned with lofty cosmogony those things which were called the ultra newspapers, would not have failed to declare that Javert was a symbol.
They heard the tumultuous noise of the patrol searching the blind alley and the streets; the blows of their gun-stocks against the stones; Javert's appeals to the police spies whom he had posted, and his imprecations mingled with words which could not be distinguished. At the expiration of a quarter of an hour it seemed as though that species of stormy roar were becoming more distant.
Fantine trembled at the sound of Javert's voice, and let go of the latch as a thief relinquishes the article which he has stolen. At the sound of Madeleine's voice she turned around, and from that moment forth she uttered no word, nor dared so much as to breathe freely, but her glance strayed from Madeleine to Javert, and from Javert to Madeleine in turn, according to which was speaking.
Javert's face contracted as was always the case when any one seemed to think him capable of making a concession. Nevertheless, he did not say "no." Again he bent over, drew from his pocket a handkerchief which he moistened in the water and with which he then wiped Marius' blood-stained brow. "This man was at the barricade," said he in a low voice and as though speaking to himself.
He did not disturb himself on Javert's account. He could not help thinking of poor Fantine, and it suited him to be glacial in his manner. Javert bestowed a respectful salute on the mayor, whose back was turned to him. The mayor did not look at him, but went on annotating this docket. Javert advanced two or three paces into the study, and halted, without breaking the silence.
The instant that Madeleine's glance encountered Javert's glance, Javert, without stirring, without moving from his post, without approaching him, became terrible. No human sentiment can be as terrible as joy. It was the visage of a demon who has just found his damned soul. The satisfaction of at last getting hold of Jean Valjean caused all that was in his soul to appear in his countenance.
Javert ducked, the stone passed over him, struck the wall behind, knocked off a huge piece of plastering, and, rebounding from angle to angle across the hovel, now luckily almost empty, rested at Javert's feet. At the same moment, Javert reached the Thenardier couple. One of his big hands descended on the woman's shoulder; the other on the husband's head. "The handcuffs!" he shouted.
If these holy women had possessed anything of Javert's glance, they would eventually have noticed that when there was any errand to be done outside in the behalf of the garden, it was always the elder Fauchelevent, the old, the infirm, the lame man, who went, and never the other; but whether it is that eyes constantly fixed on God know not how to spy, or whether they were, by preference, occupied in keeping watch on each other, they paid no heed to this.
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