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 CHAPTER II—MADELEINE

 He was a man about fifty years of age, who had a preoccupied air, and who
 was good. That was all that could be said about him.

 Thanks to the rapid progress of the industry which he had so admirably re-
 constructed, M. sur M. had become a rather important centre of trade.
 Spain, which consumes a good deal of black jet, made enormous purchases
 there each year. M. sur M. almost rivalled London and Berlin in this
 branch of commerce. Father Madeleine's profits were such, that at the end
 of the second year he was able to erect a large factory, in which there
 were two vast workrooms, one for the men, and the other for women. Any one
 who was hungry could present himself there, and was sure of finding
 employment and bread. Father Madeleine required of the men good will, of
 the women pure morals, and of all, probity. He had separated the work-
 rooms in order to separate the sexes, and so that the women and girls
 might remain discreet. On this point he was inflexible. It was the only
 thing in which he was in a manner intolerant. He was all the more firmly
 set on this severity, since M. sur M., being a garrison town,
 opportunities for corruption abounded. However, his coming had been a
 boon, and his presence was a godsend. Before Father Madeleine's arrival,
 everything had languished in the country; now everything lived with a
 healthy life of toil. A strong circulation warmed everything and
 penetrated everywhere. Slack seasons and wretchedness were unknown. There
 was no pocket so obscure that it had not a little money in it; no dwelling
 so lowly that there was not some little joy within it.

 Father Madeleine gave employment to every one. He exacted but one thing:
 Be an honest man. Be an honest woman.

 As we have said, in the midst of this activity of which he was the cause
 and the pivot, Father Madeleine made his fortune; but a singular thing in
 a simple man of business, it did not seem as though that were his chief
 care. He appeared to be thinking much of others, and little of himself. In
 1820 he was known to have a sum of six hundred and thirty thousand francs
 lodged in his name with Laffitte; but before reserving these six hundred
 and thirty thousand francs, he had spent more than a million for the town
 and its poor.

 The hospital was badly endowed; he founded six beds there. M. sur M. is
 divided into the upper and the lower town. The lower town, in which he
 lived, had but one school, a miserable hovel, which was falling to ruin:
 he constructed two, one for girls, the other for boys. He allotted a
 salary from his own funds to the two instructors, a salary twice as large
 as their meagre official salary, and one day he said to some one who
 expressed surprise, "The two prime functionaries of the state are the
 nurse and the schoolmaster." He created at his own expense an infant
 school, a thing then almost unknown in France, and a fund for aiding old
 and infirm workmen. As his factory was a centre, a new quarter, in which
 there were a good many indigent families, rose rapidly around him; he
 established there a free dispensary.

 At first, when they watched his beginnings, the good souls said, "He's a
 jolly fellow who means to get rich." When they saw him enriching the
 country before he enriched himself, the good souls said, "He is an
 ambitious man." This seemed all the more probable since the man was
 religious, and even practised his religion to a certain degree, a thing
 which was very favorably viewed at that epoch. He went regularly to low
 mass every Sunday. The local deputy, who nosed out all rivalry everywhere,
 soon began to grow uneasy over this religion. This deputy had been a
 member of the legislative body of the Empire, and shared the religious
 ideas of a father of the Oratoire, known under the name of Fouche, Duc
 d'Otrante, whose creature and friend he had been. He indulged in gentle
 raillery at God with closed doors. But when he beheld the wealthy
 manufacturer Madeleine going to low mass at seven o'clock, he perceived in
 him a possible candidate, and resolved to outdo him; he took a Jesuit
 confessor, and went to high mass and to vespers. Ambition was at that
 time, in the direct acceptation of the word, a race to the steeple. The
 poor profited by this terror as well as the good God, for the honorable
 deputy also founded two beds in the hospital, which made twelve.

 Nevertheless, in 1819 a rumor one morning circulated through the town to
 the effect that, on the representations of the prefect and in
 consideration of the services rendered by him to the country, Father
 Madeleine was to be appointed by the King, mayor of M. sur M. Those who
 had pronounced this new-comer to be "an ambitious fellow," seized with
 delight on this opportunity which all men desire, to exclaim, "There! what
 did we say!" All M. sur M. was in an uproar. The rumor was well founded.
 Several days later the appointment appeared in the Moniteur. On the
 following day Father Madeleine refused.

 In this same year of 1819 the products of the new process invented by
 Madeleine figured in the industrial exhibition; when the jury made their
 report, the King appointed the inventor a chevalier of the Legion of
 Honor. A fresh excitement in the little town. Well, so it was the cross
 that he wanted! Father Madeleine refused the cross.

 Decidedly this man was an enigma. The good souls got out of their
 predicament by saying, "After all, he is some sort of an adventurer."

 We have seen that the country owed much to him; the poor owed him
 everything; he was so useful and he was so gentle that people had been
 obliged to honor and respect him. His workmen, in particular, adored him,
 and he endured this adoration with a sort of melancholy gravity. When he
 was known to be rich, "people in society" bowed to him, and he received
 invitations in the town; he was called, in town, Monsieur Madeleine; his
 workmen and the children continued to call him Father Madeleine, and that
 was what was most adapted to make him smile. In proportion as he mounted,
 throve, invitations rained down upon him. "Society" claimed him for its
 own. The prim little drawing-rooms on M. sur M., which, of course, had at
 first been closed to the artisan, opened both leaves of their folding-
 doors to the millionnaire. They made a thousand advances to him. He
 refused.

 This time the good gossips had no trouble. "He is an ignorant man, of no
 education. No one knows where he came from. He would not know how to
 behave in society. It has not been absolutely proved that he knows how to
 read."

 When they saw him making money, they said, "He is a man of business." When
 they saw him scattering his money about, they said, "He is an ambitious
 man." When he was seen to decline honors, they said, "He is an
 adventurer." When they saw him repulse society, they said, "He is a
 brute."

 In 1820, five years after his arrival in M. sur M., the services which he
 had rendered to the district were so dazzling, the opinion of the whole
 country round about was so unanimous, that the King again appointed him
 mayor of the town. He again declined; but the prefect resisted his
 refusal, all the notabilities of the place came to implore him, the people
 in the street besought him; the urging was so vigorous that he ended by
 accepting. It was noticed that the thing which seemed chiefly to bring him
 to a decision was the almost irritated apostrophe addressed to him by an
 old woman of the people, who called to him from her threshold, in an angry
 way: "A good mayor is a useful thing. Is he drawing back before the good
 which he can do?"

 This was the third phase of his ascent. Father Madeleine had become
 Monsieur Madeleine. Monsieur Madeleine became Monsieur le Maire.





 CHAPTER III—SUMS DEPOSITED WITH LAFFITTE

 On the other hand, he remained as simple as on the first day. He had gray
 hair, a serious eye, the sunburned complexion of a laborer, the thoughtful
 visage of a philosopher. He habitually wore a hat with a wide brim, and a
 long coat of coarse cloth, buttoned to the chin. He fulfilled his duties
 as mayor; but, with that exception, he lived in solitude. He spoke to but
 few people. He avoided polite attentions; he escaped quickly; he smiled to
 relieve himself of the necessity of talking; he gave, in order to get rid
 of the necessity for smiling, The women said of him, "What a good-natured
 bear!" His pleasure consisted in strolling in the fields.

 He always took his meals alone, with an open book before him, which he
 read. He had a well-selected little library. He loved books; books are
 cold but safe friends. In proportion as leisure came to him with fortune,
 he seemed to take advantage of it to cultivate his mind. It had been
 observed that, ever since his arrival at M. sur M.. his language had grown
 more polished, more choice, and more gentle with every passing year. He
 liked to carry a gun with him on his strolls, but he rarely made use of
 it. When he did happen to do so, his shooting was something so infallible
 as to inspire terror. He never killed an inoffensive animal. He never shot
 at a little bird.

 Although he was no longer young, it was thought that he was still
 prodigiously strong. He offered his assistance to any one who was in need
 of it, lifted a horse, released a wheel clogged in the mud, or stopped a
 runaway bull by the horns. He always had his pockets full of money when he
 went out; but they were empty on his return. When he passed through a
 village, the ragged brats ran joyously after him, and surrounded him like
 a swarm of gnats.

 It was thought that he must, in the past, have lived a country life, since
 he knew all sorts of useful secrets, which he taught to the peasants. He
 taught them how to destroy scurf on wheat, by sprinkling it and the
 granary and inundating the cracks in the floor with a solution of common
 salt; and how to chase away weevils by hanging up orviot in bloom
 everywhere, on the walls and the ceilings, among the grass and in the
 houses.

 He had "recipes" for exterminating from a field, blight, tares, foxtail,
 and all parasitic growths which destroy the wheat. He defended a rabbit
 warren against rats, simply by the odor of a guinea-pig which he placed in
 it.

 One day he saw some country people busily engaged in pulling up nettles;
 he examined the plants, which were uprooted and already dried, and said:
 "They are dead. Nevertheless, it would be a good thing to know how to make
 use of them. When the nettle is young, the leaf makes an excellent
 vegetable; when it is older, it has filaments and fibres like hemp and
 flax. Nettle cloth is as good as linen cloth. Chopped up, nettles are good
 for poultry; pounded, they are good for horned cattle. The seed of the
 nettle, mixed with fodder, gives gloss to the hair of animals; the root,
 mixed with salt, produces a beautiful yellow coloring-matter. Moreover, it
 is an excellent hay, which can be cut twice. And what is required for the
 nettle? A little soil, no care, no culture. Only the seed falls as it is
 ripe, and it is difficult to collect it. That is all. With the exercise of
 a little care, the nettle could be made useful; it is neglected and it
 becomes hurtful. It is exterminated. How many men resemble the nettle!" He
 added, after a pause: "Remember this, my friends: there are no such things
 as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators."

 The children loved him because he knew how to make charming little trifles
 of straw and cocoanuts.

 When he saw the door of a church hung in black, he entered: he sought out
 funerals as other men seek christenings. Widowhood and the grief of others
 attracted him, because of his great gentleness; he mingled with the
 friends clad in mourning, with families dressed in black, with the priests
 groaning around a coffin. He seemed to like to give to his thoughts for
 text these funereal psalmodies filled with the vision of the other world.
 With his eyes fixed on heaven, he listened with a sort of aspiration
 towards all the mysteries of the infinite, those sad voices which sing on
 the verge of the obscure abyss of death.

 He performed a multitude of good actions, concealing his agency in them as
 a man conceals himself because of evil actions. He penetrated houses
 privately, at night; he ascended staircases furtively. A poor wretch on
 returning to his attic would find that his door had been opened, sometimes
 even forced, during his absence. The poor man made a clamor over it: some
 malefactor had been there! He entered, and the first thing he beheld was a
 piece of gold lying forgotten on some piece of furniture. The "malefactor"
 who had been there was Father Madeleine.

 He was affable and sad. The people said: "There is a rich man who has not
 a haughty air. There is a happy man who has not a contented air."

 Some people maintained that he was a mysterious person, and that no one
 ever entered his chamber, which was a regular anchorite's cell, furnished
 with winged hour-glasses and enlivened by cross-bones and skulls of dead
 men! This was much talked of, so that one of the elegant and malicious
 young women of M. sur M. came to him one day, and asked: "Monsieur le
 Maire, pray show us your chamber. It is said to be a grotto." He smiled,
 and introduced them instantly into this "grotto." They were well punished
 for their curiosity. The room was very simply furnished in mahogany, which
 was rather ugly, like all furniture of that sort, and hung with paper
 worth twelve sous. They could see nothing remarkable about it, except two
 candlesticks of antique pattern which stood on the chimney-piece and
 appeared to be silver, "for they were hall-marked," an observation full of
 the type of wit of petty towns.

 Nevertheless, people continued to say that no one ever got into the room,
 and that it was a hermit's cave, a mysterious retreat, a hole, a tomb.

 It was also whispèred about that he had "immense" sums deposited with
 Laffitte, with this peculiar feature, that they were always at his
 immediate disposal, so that, it was added, M. Madeleine could make his
 appearance at Laffitte's any morning, sign a receipt, and carry off his
 two or three millions in ten minutes. In reality, "these two or three
 millions" were reducible, as we have said, to six hundred and thirty or
 forty thousand francs.





 CHAPTER IV—M. MADELEINE IN MOURNING

 At the beginning of 1820 the newspapers announced the death of M. Myriel,
 Bishop of D——, surnamed "Monseigneur Bienvenu," who had died in the odor
 of sanctity at the age of eighty-two.

 The Bishop of D—— to supply here a detail which the papers omitted—had
 been blind for many years before his death, and content to be blind, as
 his sister was beside him.

 Let us remark by the way, that to be blind and to be loved, is, in fact,
 one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth,
 where nothing is complete. To have continually at one's side a woman, a
 daughter, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her
 and because she cannot do without you; to know that we are indispensable
 to a person who is necessary to us; to be able to incessantly measure
 one's affection by the amount of her presence which she bestows on us, and
 to say to ourselves, "Since she consecrates the whole of her time to me,
 it is because I possess the whole of her heart"; to behold her thought in
 lieu of her face; to be able to verify the fidelity of one being amid the
 eclipse of the world; to regard the rustle of a gown as the sound of
 wings; to hear her come and go, retire, speak, return, sing, and to think
 that one is the centre of these steps, of this speech; to manifest at each
 instant one's personal attraction; to feel one's self all the more
 powerful because of one's infirmity; to become in one's obscurity, and
 through one's obscurity, the star around which this angel gravitates,—few
 felicities equal this. The supreme happiness of life consists in the
 conviction that one is loved; loved for one's own sake—let us say rather,
 loved in spite of one's self; this conviction the blind man possesses. To
 be served in distress is to be caressed. Does he lack anything? No. One
 does not lose the sight when one has love. And what love! A love wholly
 constituted of virtue! There is no blindness where there is certainty.
 Soul seeks soul, gropingly, and finds it. And this soul, found and tested,
 is a woman. A hand sustains you; it is hers: a mouth lightly touches your
 brow; it is her mouth: you hear a breath very near you; it is hers. To
 have everything of her, from her worship to her pity, never to be left, to
 have that sweet weakness aiding you, to lean upon that immovable reed, to
 touch Providence with one's hands, and to be able to take it in one's
 arms,—God made tangible,—what bliss! The heart, that obscure, celestial
 flower, undergoes a mysterious blossoming. One would not exchange that
 shadow for all brightness! The angel soul is there, uninterruptedly there;
 if she departs, it is but to return again; she vanishes like a dream, and
 reappears like reality. One feels warmth approaching, and behold! she is
 there. One overflows with serenity, with gayety, with ecstasy; one is a
 radiance amid the night. And there are a thousand little cares. Nothings,
 which are enormous in that void. The most ineffable accents of the
 feminine voice employed to lull you, and supplying the vanished universe
 to you. One is caressed with the soul. One sees nothing, but one feels
 that one is adored. It is a paradise of shadows.

 It was from this paradise that Monseigneur Welcome had passed to the
 other.

 The announcement of his death was reprinted by the local journal of M. sur
 M. On the following day, M. Madeleine appeared clad wholly in black, and
 with crape on his hat.

 This mourning was noticed in the town, and commented on. It seemed to
 throw a light on M. Madeleine's origin. It was concluded that some
 relationship existed between him and the venerable Bishop. "He has gone
 into mourning for the Bishop of D——" said the drawing-rooms; this raised
 M. Madeleine's credit greatly, and procured for him, instantly and at one
 blow, a certain consideration in the noble world of M. sur M. The
 microscopic Faubourg Saint-Germain of the place meditated raising the
 quarantine against M. Madeleine, the probable relative of a bishop. M.
 Madeleine perceived the advancement which he had obtained, by the more
 numerous courtesies of the old women and the more plentiful smiles of the
 young ones. One evening, a ruler in that petty great world, who was
 curious by right of seniority, ventured to ask him, "M. le Maire is
 doubtless a cousin of the late Bishop of D——?"

 He said, "No, Madame."

 "But," resumed the dowager, "you are wearing mourning for him."

 He replied, "It is because I was a servant in his family in my youth."

 Another thing which was remarked, was, that every time that he encountered
 in the town a young Savoyard who was roaming about the country and seeking
 chimneys to sweep, the mayor had him summoned, inquired his name, and gave
 him money. The little Savoyards told each other about it: a great many of
 them passed that way.





 CHAPTER V—VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON

 Little by little, and in the course of time, all this opposition subsided.
 There had at first been exercised against M. Madeleine, in virtue of a
 sort of law which all those who rise must submit to, blackening and
 calumnies; then they grew to be nothing more than ill-nature, then merely
 malicious remarks, then even this entirely disappeared; respect became
 complete, unanimous, cordial, and towards 1821 the moment arrived when the
 word "Monsieur le Maire" was pronounced at M. sur M. with almost the same
 accent as "Monseigneur the Bishop" had been pronounced in D—— in 1815.
 People came from a distance of ten leagues around to consult M. Madeleine.
 He put an end to differences, he prevented lawsuits, he reconciled
 enemies. Every one took him for the judge, and with good reason. It seemed
 as though he had for a soul the book of the natural law. It was like an
 epidemic of veneration, which in the course of six or seven years
 gradually took possession of the whole district.

 One single man in the town, in the arrondissement, absolutely escaped this
 contagion, and, whatever Father Madeleine did, remained his opponent as
 though a sort of incorruptible and imperturbable instinct kept him on the
 alert and uneasy. It seems, in fact, as though there existed in certain
 men a veritable bestial instinct, though pure and upright, like all
 instincts, which creates antipathies and sympathies, which fatally
 separates one nature from another nature, which does not hesitate, which
 feels no disquiet, which does not hold its peace, and which never belies
 itself, clear in its obscurity, infallible, imperious, intractable,
 stubborn to all counsels of the intelligence and to all the dissolvents of
 reason, and which, in whatever manner destinies are arranged, secretly
 warns the man-dog of the presence of the man-cat, and the man-fox of the
 presence of the man-lion.

 It frequently happened that when M. Madeleine was passing along a street,
 calm, affectionate, surrounded by the blessings of all, a man of lofty
 stature, clad in an iron-gray frock-coat, armed with a heavy cane, and
 wearing a battered hat, turned round abruptly behind him, and followed him
 with his eyes until he disappeared, with folded arms and a slow shake of
 the head, and his upper lip raised in company with his lower to his nose,
 a sort of significant grimace which might be translated by: "What is that
 man, after all? I certainly have seen him somewhere. In any case, I am not
 his dupe."

 This person, grave with a gravity which was almost menacing, was one of
 those men who, even when only seen by a rapid glimpse, arrest the
 spectator's attention.

 His name was Javert, and he belonged to the police.

 At M. sur M. he exercised the unpleasant but useful functions of an
 inspector. He had not seen Madeleine's beginnings. Javert owed the post
 which he occupied to the protection of M. Chabouillet, the secretary of
 the Minister of State, Comte Angeles, then prefect of police at Paris.
 When Javert arrived at M. sur M. the fortune of the great manufacturer was
 already made, and Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine.

 Certain police officers have a peculiar physiognomy, which is complicated
 with an air of baseness mingled with an air of authority. Javert possessed
 this physiognomy minus the baseness.

 It is our conviction that if souls were visible to the eyes, we should be
 able to see distinctly that strange thing that each one individual of the
 human race corresponds to some one of the species of the animal creation;
 and we could easily recognize this truth, hardly perceived by the thinker,
 that from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to the tiger, all animals
 exist in man, and that each one of them is in a man. Sometimes even
 several of them at a time.

 Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices,
 straying before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows
 them to us in order to induce us to reflect. Only since animals are mere
 shadows, God has not made them capable of education in the full sense of
 the word; what is the use? On the contrary, our souls being realities and
 having a goal which is appropriate to them, God has bestowed on them
 intelligence; that is to say, the possibility of education. Social
 education, when well done, can always draw from a soul, of whatever sort
 it may be, the utility which it contains.

 This, be it said, is of course from the restricted point of view of the
 terrestrial life which is apparent, and without prejudging the profound
 question of the anterior or ulterior personality of the beings which are
 not man. The visible I in nowise authorizes the thinker to deny the latent
 I. Having made this reservation, let us pass on.

 Now, if the reader will admit, for a moment, with us, that in every man
 there is one of the animal species of creation, it will be easy for us to
 say what there was in Police Officer Javert.

 The peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every litter of wolves
 there is one dog, which is killed by the mother because, otherwise, as he
 grew up, he would devour the other little ones.

 Give to this dog-son of a wolf a human face, and the result will be
 Javert.

 Javert had been born in prison, of a fortune-teller, whose husband was in
 the galleys. As he grew up, he thought that he was outside the pale of
 society, and he despaired of ever re-entering it. He observed that society
 unpardoningly excludes two classes of men,—those who attack it and those
 who guard it; he had no choice except between these two classes; at the
 same time, he was conscious of an indescribable foundation of rigidity,
 regularity, and probity, complicated with an inexpressible hatred for the
 race of bohemians whence he was sprung. He entered the police; he
 succeeded there. At forty years of age he was an inspector.

 During his youth he had been employed in the convict establishments of the
 South.

 Before proceeding further, let us come to an understanding as to the
 words, "human face," which we have just applied to Javert.

 The human face of Javert consisted of a flat nose, with two deep nostrils,
 towards which enormous whiskers ascended on his cheeks. One felt ill at
 ease when he saw these two forests and these two caverns for the first
 time. When Javert laughed,—and his laugh was rare and terrible,—his thin
 lips parted and revealed to view not only his teeth, but his gums, and
 around his nose there formed a flattened and savage fold, as on the muzzle
 of a wild beast. Javert, serious, was a watchdog; when he laughed, he was
 a tiger. As for the rest, he had very little skull and a great deal of
 jaw; his hair concealed his forehead and fell over his eyebrows; between
 his eyes there was a permanent, central frown, like an imprint of wrath;
 his gaze was obscure; his mouth pursed up and terrible; his air that of
 ferocious command.

 This man was composed of two very simple and two very good sentiments,
 comparatively; but he rendered them almost bad, by dint of exaggerating
 them,—respect for authority, hatred of rebellion; and in his eyes, murder,
 robbery, all crimes, are only forms of rebellion. He enveloped in a blind
 and profound faith every one who had a function in the state, from the
 prime minister to the rural policeman. He covered with scorn, aversion,
 and disgust every one who had once crossed the legal threshold of evil. He
 was absolute, and admitted no exceptions. On the one hand, he said, "The
 functionary can make no mistake; the magistrate is never the wrong." On
 the other hand, he said, "These men are irremediably lost. Nothing good
 can come from them." He fully shared the opinion of those extreme minds
 which attribute to human law I know not what power of making, or, if the
 reader will have it so, of authenticating, demons, and who place a Styx at
 the base of society. He was stoical, serious, austere; a melancholy
 dreamer, humble and haughty, like fanatics. His glance was like a gimlet,
 cold and piercing. His whole life hung on these two words: watchfulness
 and supervision. He had introduced a straight line into what is the most
 crooked thing in the world; he possessed the conscience of his usefulness,
 the religion of his functions, and he was a spy as other men are priests.
 Woe to the man who fell into his hands! He would have arrested his own
 father, if the latter had escaped from the galleys, and would have
 denounced his mother, if she had broken her ban. And he would have done it
 with that sort of inward satisfaction which is conferred by virtue. And,
 withal, a life of privation, isolation, abnegation, chastity, with never a
 diversion. It was implacable duty; the police understood, as the Spartans
 understood Sparta, a pitiless lying in wait, a ferocious honesty, a marble
 informer, Brutus in Vidocq.

 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. His brow was not visible; it disappeared beneath
 his hat: his eyes were not visible, since they were lost under his
 eyebrows: his chin was not visible, for it was plunged in his cravat: his
 hands were not visible; they were drawn up in his sleeves: and his cane
 was not visible; he carried it under his coat. But when the occasion
 presented itself, there was suddenly seen to emerge from all this shadow,
 as from an ambuscade, a narrow and angular forehead, a baleful glance, a
 threatening chin, enormous hands, and a monstrous cudgel.

 In his leisure moments, which were far from frequent, he read, although he
 hated books; this caused him to be not wholly illiterate. This could be
 recognized by some emphasis in his speech.

 As we have said, he had no vices. When he was pleased with himself, he
 permitted himself a pinch of snuff. Therein lay his connection with
 humanity.

 The reader will have no difficulty in understanding that Javert was the
 terror of that whole class which the annual statistics of the Ministry of
 Justice designates under the rubric, Vagrants. The name of Javert routed
 them by its mere utterance; the face of Javert petrified them at sight.

 Such was this formidable man.

 Javert was like an eye constantly fixed on M. Madeleine. An eye full of
 suspicion and conjecture. M. Madeleine had finally perceived the fact; but
 it seemed to be of no importance to him. He did not even put a question to
 Javert; he neither sought nor avoided him; he bore that embarrassing and
 almost oppressive gaze without appearing to notice it. He treated Javert
 with ease and courtesy, as he did all the rest of the world.

 It was divined, from some words which escaped Javert, that he had secretly
 investigated, with that curiosity which belongs to the race, and into
 which there enters as much instinct as will, all the anterior traces which
 Father Madeleine might have left elsewhere. He seemed to know, and he
 sometimes said in covert words, that some one had gleaned certain
 information in a certain district about a family which had disappeared.
 Once he chanced to say, as he was talking to himself, "I think I have
 him!" Then he remained pensive for three days, and uttered not a word. It
 seemed that the thread which he thought he held had broken.

 Moreover, and this furnishes the necessary corrective for the too absolute
 sense which certain words might present, there can be nothing really
 infallible in a human creature, and the peculiarity of instinct is that it
 can become confused, thrown off the track, and defeated. Otherwise, it
 would be superior to intelligence, and the beast would be found to be
 provided with a better light than man.

 Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by the perfect naturalness and
 tranquillity of M. Madeleine.

 One day, nevertheless, his strange manner appeared to produce an
 impression on M. Madeleine. It was on the following occasion.





 CHAPTER VI—FATHER FAUCHELEVENT

 One morning M. Madeleine was passing through an unpaved alley of M. sur
 M.; he heard a noise, and saw a group some distance away. He approached.
 An old man named Father Fauchelevent had just fallen beneath his cart, his
 horse having tumbled down.

 This Fauchelevent was one of the few enemies whom M. Madeleine had at that
 time. When Madeleine arrived in the neighborhood, Fauchelevent, an ex-
 notary and a peasant who was almost educated, had a business which was
 beginning to be in a bad way. Fauchelevent had seen this simple workman
 grow rich, while he, a lawyer, was being ruined. This had filled him with
 jealousy, and he had done all he could, on every occasion, to injure
 Madeleine. Then bankruptcy had come; and as the old man had nothing left
 but a cart and a horse, and neither family nor children, he had turned
 carter.

 The horse had two broken legs and could not rise. The old man was caught
 in the wheels. The fall had been so unlucky that the whole weight of the
 vehicle rested on his breast. The cart was quite heavily laden. Father
 Fauchelevent was rattling in the throat in the most lamentable manner.
 They had tried, but in vain, to drag him out. An unmethodical effort, aid
 awkwardly given, a wrong shake, might kill him. It was impossible to
 disengage him otherwise than by lifting the vehicle off of him. Javert,
 who had come up at the moment of the accident, had sent for a jack-screw.

 M. Madeleine arrived. People stood aside respectfully.

 "Help!" cried old Fauchelevent. "Who will be good and save the old man?"

 M. Madeleine turned towards those present:—

 "Is there a jack-screw to be had?"

 "One has been sent for," answered the peasant.

 "How long will it take to get it?"

 "They have gone for the nearest, to Flachot's place, where there is a
 farrier; but it makes no difference; it will take a good quarter of an
 hour."

 "A quarter of an hour!" exclaimed Madeleine.

 It had rained on the preceding night; the soil was soaked.

 The cart was sinking deeper into the earth every moment, and crushing the
 old carter's breast more and more. It was evident that his ribs would be
 broken in five minutes more.

 "It is impossible to wait another quarter of an hour," said Madeleine to
 the peasants, who were staring at him.

 "We must!"

 "But it will be too late then! Don't you see that the cart is sinking?"

 "Well!"

 "Listen," resumed Madeleine; "there is still room enough under the cart to
 allow a man to crawl beneath it and raise it with his back. Only half a
 minute, and the poor man can be taken out. Is there any one here who has
 stout loins and heart? There are five louis d'or to be earned!"

 Not a man in the group stirred.

 "Ten louis," said Madeleine.

 The persons present dropped their eyes. One of them muttered: "A man would
 need to be devilish strong. And then he runs the risk of getting crushed!"

 "Come," began Madeleine again, "twenty louis."

 The same silence.

 "It is not the will which is lacking," said a voice.

 M. Madeleine turned round, and recognized Javert. He had not noticed him
 on his arrival.

 Javert went on:—

 "It is strength. One would have to be a terrible man to do such a thing as
 lift a cart like that on his back."

 Then, gazing fixedly at M. Madeleine, he went on, emphasizing every word
 that he uttered:—

 "Monsieur Madeleine, I have never known but one man capable of doing what
 you ask."

 Madeleine shuddered.

 Javert added, with an air of indifference, but without removing his eyes
 from Madeleine:—

 "He was a convict."

 "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:—

 "I have never known but one man who could take the place of a screw, and
 he was that convict."

 "Ah! It is crushing me!" cried the old man.

 Madeleine raised his head, met Javert's falcon eye still fixed upon him,
 looked at the motionless peasants, and smiled sadly. Then, without saying
 a word, he fell on his knees, and before the crowd had even had time to
 utter a cry, he was underneath the vehicle.

 A terrible moment of expectation and silence ensued.

 They beheld Madeleine, almost flat on his stomach beneath that terrible
 weight, make two vain efforts to bring his knees and his elbows together.
 They shouted to him, "Father Madeleine, come out!" Old Fauchelevent
 himself said to him, "Monsieur Madeleine, go away! You see that I am fated
 to die! Leave me! You will get yourself crushed also!" Madeleine made no
 reply.

 All the spectators were panting. The wheels had continued to sink, and it
 had become almost impossible for Madeleine to make his way from under the
 vehicle.

 Suddenly the enormous mass was seen to quiver, the cart rose slowly, the
 wheels half emerged from the ruts. They heard a stifled voice crying,
 "Make haste! Help!" It was Madeleine, who had just made a final effort.

 They rushed forwards. The devotion of a single man had given force and
 courage to all. The cart was raised by twenty arms. Old Fauchelevent was
 saved.

 Madeleine rose. He was pale, though dripping with perspiration. His
 clothes were torn and covered with mud. All wept. The old man kissed his
 knees and called him the good God. As for him, he bore upon his
 countenance an indescribable expression of happy and celestial suffering,
 and he fixed his tranquil eye on Javert, who was still staring at him.





 CHAPTER VII—FAUCHELEVENT BECOMES A GARDENER IN PARIS

 Fauchelevent had dislocated his kneepan in his fall. Father Madeleine had
 him conveyed to an infirmary which he had established for his workmen in
 the factory building itself, and which was served by two sisters of
 charity. On the following morning the old man found a thousand-franc bank-
 note on his night-stand, with these words in Father Madeleine's writing:
 "I purchase your horse and cart." The cart was broken, and the horse was
 dead. Fauchelevent recovered, but his knee remained stiff. M. Madeleine,
 on the recommendation of the sisters of charity and of his priest, got the
 good man a place as gardener in a female convent in the Rue Saint-Antoine
 in Paris.

 Some time afterwards, M. Madeleine was appointed mayor. The first time
 that Javert beheld M. Madeleine clothed in the scarf which gave him
 authority over the town, he felt the sort of shudder which a watch-dog
 might experience on smelling a wolf in his master's clothes. From that
 time forth he avoided him as much as he possibly could. When the
 requirements of the service imperatively demanded it, and he could not do
 otherwise than meet the mayor, he addressed him with profound respect.

 This prosperity created at M. sur M. by Father Madeleine had, besides the
 visible signs which we have mentioned, another symptom which was none the
 less significant for not being visible. This never deceives. When the
 population suffers, when work is lacking, when there is no commerce, the
 tax-payer resists imposts through penury, he exhausts and oversteps his
 respite, and the state expends a great deal of money in the charges for
 compelling and collection. When work is abundant, when the country is rich
 and happy, the taxes are paid easily and cost the state nothing. It may be
 said, that there is one infallible thermometer of the public misery and
 riches,—the cost of collecting the taxes. In the course of seven years the
 expense of collecting the taxes had diminished three-fourths in the
 arrondissement of M. sur M., and this led to this arrondissement being
 frequently cited from all the rest by M. de Villele, then Minister of
 Finance.

 Such was the condition of the country when Fantine returned thither. No
 one remembered her. Fortunately, the door of M. Madeleine's factory was
 like the face of a friend. She presented herself there, and was admitted
 to the women's workroom. The trade was entirely new to Fantine; she could
 not be very skilful at it, and she therefore earned but little by her
 day's work; but it was sufficient; the problem was solved; she was earning
 her living.

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