Last time we saw how the town of Montreuil-sur-mer had changed drastically in Fantine’s absence, and we met the man responsible for this drastic change, Father Madeleine.
Father Madeleine was respected and admired throughout MSM. He had his share of cynics and detractors as well, but in time even the staunchest of these were won over. All except for one man. This one man was a high-ranking police inspector, and his name was Javert.
Victor Hugo introduces Javert by setting up, in his usual eloquent prose, the idea that every person represents at least one animal, so that all species of the animal kingdom are represented among the human race. Now, certain peasants believe that in every litter of wolves there is one cub which is killed by the mother for fear that when it grows up it will devour all the others. This wolf’s cub would be Javert.
Javert was born in prison, the son of a gypsy mother. It seems that he was ashamed of this for some reason or other, because he grew up with an irascible hatred of gypsies. Here is what Victor Hugo has to say about him:
He grew up thinking himself outside of society, and despaired of ever entering it. He noticed that society irrevocably closes its doors on two classes of men, those who attack it and those who guard it; he could choose between those two classes only; at the same time he felt that he had a powerful foundation of rectitude, order, and honesty based on an irrepressible hatred for that gypsy race to which he belonged. He entered the police. He succeeded. At forty, he was an inspector.
Victor Hugo goes on to describe some of the essentials of Javert’s character:
This man was a compound of two sentiments, simple and good in themselves, but he made them almost evil by his exaggeration of them: respect for authority and hatred of rebellion; and in his eyes theft, murder, all crimes were merely forms of rebellion. In his strong and implicit faith he included everyone with a function in the state, from the prime minister to the constable. He had nothing but disdain, aversion, and disgust for all who had once overstepped the bounds of the law. He was absolute, admitting no exceptions. On the one hand he would say, “A public official cannot be deceived; a magistrate is never wrong!” And on the other, “They are irremediably lost; no good can come of them.” He fully shared the opinion of those extremists who attribute to human laws an indescribable power of making, or, if you will, of determining, demons, and who place a Styx at the bottom of society.
Note how this contrasts with Valjean’s vision of society which we saw several chapters back:
…a frightening accumulation of laws, prejudices, men, and acts, whose outlines escaped him, whose weight appalled him–it was that prodigious pyramid we call civilization. Here and there in that shapeless, seething mass, sometimes near, sometimes far, or at inaccessible heights, he could make out some group, some vivid detail, here the jailer with his cudgel, here the gendarme with his sword, there the mitered archbishop, and high up, in a blaze of glory, the emperor crowned and resplendent. It seemed to him [Valjean] that these distant splendors, far from dissipating his night, made it blacker, deathlier. All this–laws, intolerance, actions, men, things–came and went above him, according to the complicated, mysterious movement God imposes on civilization, walking over him and crushing him with an indescribably serene cruelty, an inexorable indifference. Souls sunk to deepest misfortune, unfortunate men lost in the depths of limbo where they are no longer visible, the rejects of the law, feeling on their heads the whole weight of human society, so formidable to those outside it, so terrible to those beneath it.
That was Valjean’s vision of society. Do you think Javert shared the same vision of society? Certainly Javert saw himself as being outside of human society with no hope of ever gaining admission to it, and in that regard was similar to Valjean during the time of his imprisonment. We know that Javert saw only two paths open to himself for his life: either to attack society (as a criminal) or to guard it (through serving in law enforcement). Valjean had taken the first path; the only reason Javert did not end up sharing his vision of society was that he had chosen the second.
To continue with what Hugo has to say about Javert:
He was stoical, serious, austere, a dreamer of stern dreams; humble and haughty, like all fanatics. His stare was cold and piercing as a gimlet. His whole life was contained in two words: waking, watching. He marked out a straight path through all that is most tortuous in this world; his conscience was bound up in his usefulness, his religion in his duties; and he was a spy as others are priests. Woe to any who fell into his hands! He would have arrested his own father if he escaped from prison and turned in his own mother for breaking parole. And he would have done it with that sort of interior satisfaction that springs from virtue. His life was one of privations, isolation, self-denial, and chastity–never any amusement. It was implacable duty, the police as central to him as Sparta to the Spartans; a pitiless detective, fiercely honest, a marble-hearted informer, Brutus united with Vidocq.
Now it just so happened that Javert was stationed in the south of France at the start of his career, right about the time that Valjean would have been a prisoner there.
And this Javert watched Father Madeleine. Incessantly. Perhaps Father Madeleine reminded him of someone he had seen or known while in the south of France. Recall that no one knew anything of who Father Madeleine was or where he had come from prior to entering the gates of MSM. Though Javert had come along after Father Madeleine was already established, somehow he was able to pick up on this. And he was determined to find out something about Father Madeleine’s background. So he watched. When Father Madeleine went to try and gather information on a certain missing family in a certain part of the country, Javert knew about it. He had his suspicions that there was more to this Father Madeleine than anyone else in MSM was able or willing to let on. Every now and then he would find a clue which would seem to confirm his suspicions, but then the clue he thought he had would prove to be inconclusive and he would be in a sour mood for days afterward.
Father Madeleine picked up on this, but it did not affect his treatment of Javert. He treated Javert with the same ease and kindness with which he treated everyone else, despite the fact that this kindness did not in any way get through to Javert.
Now, one more paragraph on Javert. This is significant because of the imagery which Hugo uses to describe him:
Javert’s whole being expressed the spy and the sneak. The mystic school of Joseph de Maistre, which at that time enlivened what were known to be ultraconservative journals with pretentious cosmogonies, would have said that Javert was a symbol. You could not see his forehead, which disappeared under his hat; you could not see his eyes, which were lost under his brows; you could not see his chin buried in his cravat; you could not see his hands drawn up into his sleeves; you could not see his cane carried under his coat. But when the time came, all at once would spring from this shadow, as from an ambush, a steep and narrow forehead, an ominous look, a threatening chin, enormous hands, and a monstrous club.
Notice what this imagery suggests: a wild animal ready to pounce upon its prey. Earlier when Javert was first introduced, he was likened to a wolf cub that its mother might destroy out of fear that it might come back to kill the rest of the family. On other occasions we will see animal imagery used to describe Javert, such as when Father Madeleine takes over as mayor and he has the same feeling that a bulldog would feel upon scenting a wolf in his master’s clothes.
This animal imagery is appropriate for Javert for several reasons. First, because he engenders fear in all whom he pursues, just as a predatory animal engenders fear in its prey. Second, he saw himself as being outside of human society with no hope of ever being admitted to it; in other words he felt himself to be somehow less than fully human. What else is less than human besides an animal? Finally, he placed duty and the law above all else and was very rigid in his thinking in this regard. Animals are very rigid creatures too; they are incapable of intelligent thought and instead must be taught by rote, to whatever extent they can be taught. And once they adopt a way of thinking (if in fact it can be called that), they are very set in their ways and will not give it up for all the world.
With this in mind, we can now fully appreciate Victor Hugo’s concluding assessment of Javert’s character:
But–and this is the necessary corrective to an excess of absolute meaning that certain words may have presented–there can be nothing really infallible in a human creature, and the very peculiarity of instinct is that it can be disturbed, and thrown off course. Were this not so, it would be superior to intelligence, and the beast would possess a purer light than man.
Keep this in mind, because it provides a clue as to how the character of Javert will end up at the end of the story. I won’t say anything more about this now; you have to read the story and see for yourself.
Well, one day Javert was watching Father Madeleine and he saw an incident unfold which finally provided some of the confirmation which he had been seeking for the things he had begun to suspect about Father Madeleine. We will talk about this next time.
