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Updated: July 18, 2025
As soon as he had found himself released from his bonds, and while Javert was drawing up his report, he had taken advantage of confusion, the crowd, the darkness, and of a moment when the general attention was diverted from him, to dash out of the window. An agent sprang to the opening and looked out. He saw no one outside. The rope ladder was still shaking.
"Ah!" said Madeleine. "In the galleys at Toulon." Madeleine turned pale. Meanwhile, the cart continued to sink slowly. Father Fauchelevent rattled in the throat, and shrieked: "I am strangling! My ribs are breaking! a screw! something! Ah!" Madeleine glanced about him. "Is there, then, no one who wishes to earn twenty louis and save the life of this poor old man?" No one stirred. Javert resumed:
There are in this world two beings who give a profound start, the mother who recovers her child and the tiger who recovers his prey. Javert gave that profound start. As soon as he had positively recognized Jean Valjean, the formidable convict, he perceived that there were only three of them, and he asked for reinforcements at the police station of the Rue de Pontoise.
Marius recalled perfectly now that funereal sight of Jean Valjean dragging the pinioned Javert out of the barricade, and he still heard behind the corner of the little Rue Mondetour that frightful pistol shot. Obviously, there was hatred between that police spy and the galley-slave. The one was in the other's way. Jean Valjean had gone to the barricade for the purpose of revenging himself.
He bent his head and reflected like a blood-hound who puts his nose to the ground to make sure that he is on the right scent. Javert, with his powerful rectitude of instinct, went straight to the bridge of Austerlitz. A word with the toll-keeper furnished him with the information which he required: "Have you seen a man with a little girl?" "I made him pay two sous," replied the toll-keeper.
"He is a dead man," said Javert. Jean Valjean replied: "No. Not yet." "So you have brought him thither from the barricade?" remarked Javert. His preoccupation must indeed have been very profound for him not to insist on this alarming rescue through the sewer, and for him not to even notice Jean Valjean's silence after his question. Jean Valjean, on his side, seemed to have but one thought.
He felt shadows filled with thunders and lightnings descending upon his head. As he listened to Javert, the first thought which occurred to him was to go, to run and denounce himself, to take that Champmathieu out of prison and place himself there; this was as painful and as poignant as an incision in the living flesh. Then it passed away, and he said to himself, "We will see! We will see!"
In order to get a close look at this fantastic gentleman without alarming him, he borrowed the beadle's outfit for a day, and the place where the old spy was in the habit of crouching every evening, whining orisons through his nose, and playing the spy under cover of prayer. "The suspected individual" did indeed approach Javert thus disguised, and bestow alms on him.
"One moment, if you please." Javert raised his eyes and recognized M. Madeleine. He removed his hat, and, saluting him with a sort of aggrieved awkwardness: "Excuse me, Mr. Mayor " The words "Mr. Mayor" produced a curious effect upon Fantine.
The deformity of triumph overspread that narrow brow. All the demonstrations of horror which a satisfied face can afford were there. Javert was in heaven at that moment. Without putting the thing clearly to himself, but with a confused intuition of the necessity of his presence and of his success, he, Javert, personified justice, light, and truth in their celestial function of crushing out evil.
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