Chapter Text
“That Javert, who has been annoying me so long; (...) that frightful hunting dog!”
—Jean Valjean in Les Misérables Volume 1 Book 7 Chapter 3, Hapgood translation
“You annoy me. Kill me, rather.”
— Javert to Jean Valjean, in Les Misérables Volume 5 Book 1 Chapter 19, Hapgood Translation
Jean Valjean dragged Javert out of the Seine and then crawled onto the quai, shivering like a wet cat. His eyes were bloodshot. He was nearly weeping with fatigue. His fingernails dug into the pavement like claws.
“I wish that I could die,” he sighed.
They were on a decrepit stone quai; the only thing docked there was a small wooden boat, rotted and full of holes, buffeted by the current. The grey wall of the quai loomed above them like the wall of a prison. A single ruddy oil lantern sputtered somewhere, and it seemed to only redden the area rather than light it. The outlines of the bridges and the city were lost in the mist. Not a single light burned in any of the houses above; no one could be heard passing; all of the streets and other quais which could be seen from their position were deserted; Notre-Dame and the towers of the Court-House were shapeless in the fog. The only sound was the rushing of the river.
The sky was starless. Occasionally bright gleams of light appeared in the river, and undulated vaguely in its waters; Jean Valjean watched them.
“There are no stars in the sky,” he muttered, as if in a dream, “they are on earth now.”
Then he looked at Javert, who was breathing but unconscious, and shuddered.
After Javert had so unexpectedly lost his mind and left him at the Rue de l’Homme Armé, Jean Valjean had quickly recovered his composure. His first task, he’d decided, was to conceal all of this from Cosette. There was no need for her future happiness to be sullied by his misery; her marriage should not be poisoned by the galleys and the sewer. She would be shielded from these realities. He would begin by bathing in the Seine, to wash the worst of the sewer mire off himself; the next morning, he would reserve a private room in a bathhouse, and scrub the rest of it away with the strongest soap he could buy; and after that, after that…
He had quitted the Rue de l’Homme Armé and headed for the Seine, with the lost and passive air of a sleepwalker. Too weary to follow any conscious direction, he’d mechanically allowed his feet to guide him through the familiar streets; he had some vague idea that he would see where his body took him; somehow, he had found his feet taking him towards the Pont Au Change. When he heard the rushing of the water he’d started, as if waking from a dream. “How stupid I am!” he’d thought, “I have come to the rapids! What is it I’m doing? This is not a place for bathing; I would drown.” Yet he had lingered for a moment.
That had been a mistake.
He had then noticed a tall shadow, like a phantom, leaning on the parapet. When the phantom stood on the parapet, he had realized it was a living man who was attempting suicide. He’d staggered over to rescue him. Then a light had fallen on the man’s face— Jean Valjean had recognized Javert, shuddered, and hesitated. Yet when Javert had leapt into the river, he had followed him, and pulled him to safety.
“This night!” he said bitterly, staring at the stones of the quai; cold water trickled off his clothes and formed a puddle around him. His hands trembled. “That man!”
So Javert, that relentless frightful hunting dog, had apparently gone mad and thrown himself in a river; very well! And now, had God decreed that it was the duty of Javert’s prey to lick his wounds? Was it the duty of the hunted fox to rescue the hound? He had tasted this agony before, but that did not make it less humiliating.
What a terrible night this was! Every time he thought he was exhausted past all endurance God threw another trial at him, worse than the last. And he endured them all; oh God, he endured and endured and endured. Somehow his body did not break. He knew that it would not. He knew that it could not; he had lost all hope of that. If suicide had formed any part of why he had leapt into the river after Javert, he had failed in it— but he was not allowed to think of suicide, a profoundly irreligious act. He accepted that his lot was to suffer, and die, and be reborn, and suffer again.
No man should have been able to survive this point of the Seine. He and Javert should both be dead. But God would not permit him to die, and by touching Javert he had imparted that curse to him as well.
Jean Valjean could not stay dead; the dead were at peace. He was doomed to live.
He thought bitterly, and with a sort of rage, that even Prometheus had been given time to rest. It had seemed for the last few days that his organs were being devoured endlessly and without pause. There was no time to breathe, no time to regrow what had been taken; and every time he felt that his body was entirely broken, he discovered something new within him that could break. He did not know how much longer his body could be forced to live.
“If I were allowed to die!” he said, as a prayer; the thought seemed blessed and sweet.
But there was no time to rest. He had another task. He had another burden, another trial, another stone to roll up the hill. He had to help the horrible shivering creature he had just fished out of the river.
He was too exhausted to think; he felt he was in a dream, and could not separate reality from his imagination. He attempted to focus on what he was certain was there in front of him.
Javert was alive, more or less. He lay flat on his stomach, as limp as a drowned dog or a sack of potatoes. He was breathing but unconscious.
What a poor sad wretch that Javert was! He could not fear him now. Looking at his limp body, Jean Valjean did not know how he had ever been afraid of such a pitiable thing. God had shown him his folly, to be afraid of such a pathetic creature.
He knew that Javert would live. He knew this because it would be far too convenient for Jean Valjean if he were dead. God would never deliver him so easily. It was his fate to suffer all that a man could suffer, to be punished in every way a man could be punished, to crawl through life on his knees and leave his blood on every stone— so it was entirely fitting that he would need to rescue the man who had hounded him for years, who had murdered Fantine, and who would now send him back to prison.
“First I saved that ninny Marius, so he can take my happiness,” Jean Valjean said with a smile, “And now this creature Javert, so he can take my freedom!”
And then he laughed— it was a laugh of triumph, and a laugh of despair. A few moments passed and it turned into a sob. The sound echoed against the wall in a way that was unbearably lonely.
But then, he had nothing to fear anymore. All was over for him. And he would not last long in prison, not at his age—!
“But where to take him-- Javert,” Jean Valjean muttered. “He must be taken…to the place where injured people go…”
He saw shadows in the corner of his vision. Every muscle in his body cried out in agony or exhaustion. He did not know if he would have the strength to carry Javert’s body anywhere.
“He belongs to the police,” Jean Valjean continued. “I could take him to the station-house by the Place du Châtelet, and leave him there like a foundling left on its doorstep…”
He attempted to stand. A horrible splitting pain shot up his leg and he collapsed back to the ground, shivering. He should avoid standing on that leg, he thought— it had been injured in the sewer, and the injury had grown worse when he had leapt into the river.
He would have to find a way to bear Javert to safety without the use of one of his legs.
“That should be no matter for me,” he said between his teeth, thinking of the chain gang. He knew how to bear heavy burdens with one of his legs restricted.
He crawled over to Javert’s side, wincing in pain, his bad leg dragging uselessly behind him. Then he began to inspect the man closely, calculating how he would carry him.
Javert was a tall brick-shaped man with a broad chest and large flat hands. He lay on his stomach with his bulldog-like face and whiskers squashed against the stone. He wore a massive heavy greatcoat that was drenched with water, and a puddle had formed on the pavement around him. He would be heavy, he would be very heavy, he would be much heavier than Marius; he would be like carrying a massive drowned wolf.
He sighed and tried to think. Every idea seemed absurd. Should he sling him over his back like Marius, and stagger along on one foot? Should he grab Javert by the legs and drag him? Should he attempt to crawl away like a cat and carry Javert with his teeth?
His sigh turned into a sob. He would endure it; he had to. He would bear it; he had to. How he would do it he did not know. The only thing he knew for certain was that Javert would be lighter without his greatcoat.
He gently turned Javert over onto his back. The man’s limbs flopped limply, like he was one of Cosette’s little dolls. His hands fell pathetically at his sides like the paws of a dead animal. Jean Valjean felt again: to think that I was ever afraid of this poor creature!
He began to undo the buttons of Javert’s greatcoat. His vision darkened, his hands trembled, and undoing the buttons seemed a monumental and impossible task. They were cold and slippery. He worried that Javert would awaken to stop him, like a guard dog attacking an intruder.
But Javert remained motionless. His eyes remained shut. His only movements were the faint rise and fall of his breath, and the steady trickle of water down his face and through his whiskers.
Javert, that terrible hunting dog who had hounded him for so long, was finally at bay.
Jean Valjean was suddenly overwhelmed with pity.
It was the same pity he would have felt for any other man in Javert’s position. The cruel part of him that valued self-preservation had urged him to let Javert die; he had been tempted to listen; he had been tempted to let Javert drown and let his identity drown with him. He still, after all, had a deep fear of the police, and a helpless rage at his own persecution. And yet his conscience had cried out; he had obeyed his conscience; and now—
And now, looking at Javert’s poor unconscious face, he was relieved that he had.
The drowned thing in front of him no longer seemed like an embodiment of the law; it was simply a helpless injured man, shivering in the cold like a child. He thought of his temptation to let Javert die and spat it out in disgust. That he should rob a man of his life for such a petty reason! That he should allow any living creature to be condemned to death for his own cowardice! Javert reminded him of Thénardier, and of his former chainmate who had become a turnkey — all those men broken by society, led down such horrible paths— how could he fear wretches who were so pitiable? He had not been any better when he had left the galleys.
He was filled with the pride of self-sacrifice, and with the bitter joy of martyrdom. So Javert would arrest him– very well! He would return to infamy in the eyes of men and enter into sanctity in the eyes of God.
He continued unbuttoning Javert’s coat, his fingers struggling with the slippery brass buttons. His hands shivered in the cold. The tips of his fingers were numb.
Javert’s lips parted slightly as if he were speaking in a dream. The wind blew through his whiskers. He shuddered violently, he stammered something in his sleep, and his fingers twitched like he was grasping for his cudgel. Jean Valjean wondered if he was dreaming of hunting men the way a dog would dream of hunting squirrels.
It was far easier to find pity for Javert than it was to find pity for Marius. That insufferable Marius was despicable even when he was unconscious. He had a pedantic air even when he wasn’t speaking.
But Javert, while unconscious, was easy to pity. So long as Javert was not awake— was not able to argue and threaten and make demands—he could care for him as easily as he would care for any other soul in pain. As long as Javert was asleep, he was nothing more than an object of sympathy.
“At least God had granted me this one small mercy,” Jean Valjean said with a sad smile, “the poor wretch is not awake to make things difficult.”
Then Javert coughed. His eyes slowly fluttered open.
Jean Valjean dropped his hands to his sides. He gently closed his eyes. He raised his head. He rubbed his forehead with both hands, and took a long, slow, deep, pained, breath.
“Ah,” Jean Valjean said in an indescribable tone of voice.
Javert slowly regained consciousness, squinting under the lamplight like a newborn puppy. He stared at his surroundings with a look of utter incomprehension, and then began sniffing at the air with his bulldog-like snub nose, as if trying to determine his location by smell. His brows furrowed, as if he recognized a familiar scent; then he made a sound of disgust, as if he smelled the lingering stench of sewage. He slowly adjusted to the light and opened his eyes wider.
At last, he recognized Jean Valjean.
“Oh,” Javert said, dropping his eyelids, his voice barely above a whisper. “Of course.”
Another wave of exhaustion swept over Jean Valjean. His vision darkened, and he dug his nails into his palms to prevent himself from collapsing into unconsciousness. He wanted this to be over— oh God, how Javert might delay things now that he was awake! That annoying man! He might not get to rest for days yet! He would be trapped out here, wounded and in agony, with this strange stubborn argumentative bulldog of a man who always acted so bizarrely! That this should happen to him, tonight, after all that he had already suffered! After all the good he had already done for that ninny Marius!
Why was that not enough? God, what would be enough? After all that he had suffered in prison, after all that he had suffered in Montreuil-Sur-Mer, after the eternity of these last few days, after all that he had done at the barricades, after all the help he had given those rebels, after dragging that pedantic boy though the endless sewers so that he could steal all that remained of his own happiness, after losing Cosette, after losing everything, after growing old without ever having been young, after suffering every agony a man could suffer without being permitted to have any of the joys that made them bearable, after accepting he was not permitted to have any of those joys, after surrendering, after recognizing that all was over for him, after agreeing to be arrested, after turning himself in, after diving into the rapids of the Seine to rescue a man who who would take whatever he had left— why was that not enough? What else would he have to do? How much more should he have to bear? That he should have to face a stubborn unreasonable man like Javert again, and argue with him, while he was so exhausted he could hardly think! That God should test him like this—! It was hard, it was very hard —
Jean Valjean looked up at the starless sky, pressed his hands together, and silently prayed that Javert would miraculously cooperate with him in a way that he never had before and that this would all be over quickly.
Javert slowly struggled up onto his elbows, then winced in pain.
He looked down at his chest and saw his coat buttons were all undone. He muttered a curse under his breath, and began to mechanically button them all back up.
Jean Valjean sighed.
“I suppose this is hell— or heaven!” Javert grumbled, without looking up from the buttons. “Apparently there’s no difference in this country…”
“This is a quai near the Pont Au Change,” Jean Valjean said in the infinitely patient voice he usually reserved for talking to small children.
“So I’m not dead yet,” Javert scoffed. “A pity!”
Jean Valjean stared at him, exhausted.
Javert looked up and stared back, exhausted.
They continued staring at each other, both of them in too much pain to speak.
Then Javert raised his head, which appeared to take all of his energy; he wore the weary expression of a criminal in the presence of his judge. After a few moments he finally spoke.
“Well,” Javert said tiredly. His words were slurred, as if he were drunk with fatigue. “You ought to finish it. Execute me.”
“Ah,” Jean Valjean said tiredly, his words also slurred. “No.”
“Come, come, now I’ve thought about it,” Javert said with an exhausted hand gesture, as if thinking was something very rare and special for him. “I ought to have gotten myself executed by force. That’s what ought to have happened. Here, that’s —that’s how it is.”
“You are being very odd,” Jean Valjean said.
“I can tell you where to hide the body,” Javert offered helpfully. “I know where the police don’t look.”
“Thank you, but that won’t be necessary,” Jean Valjean said politely, rubbing his temples and wondering whether this odd conversation was a dream.
“Come-- if you execute me now, I can swear that I won’t tell anyone you did it!”
Jean Valjean frowned at him.
Javert grinned.
Jean Valjean continued frowning at him.
Javert grinned wider, a horrible savage smile that showed all of his canine-like teeth and gums.
“Ah,” Jean Valjean said. “No, that would — no. Grant me this one favor. For all your faults you have always been an honest man, so I shall be honest with you. We do not have much time. You must—“
“I can always finish it myself,” Javert said, intent on his one idea. He attempted to gesture with his hand, but then grew tired and let it drop uselessly to the ground. “But it’s less honorable, if— resignation can be honorable, so execution is better. You see how it all is—“
Jean Valjean did not see how it all was. He could hardly hear what Javert was saying and did not understand anything he heard. His vision darkened, heart began to race, and the pain in his leg became more intense. Beads of perspiration began to trickle down his forehead. His thoughts grew more confused; they assumed the stupefied quality of despair.
He saw Javert slowly drag himself on his elbows a few inches back towards the river.
“No,” Jean Valjean said, struggling to recall how to say words.
“I’ve thought about it,” Javert said.
“You must…think of something else.”
“There are too many things in this world.”
“Ah, yes,” Jean Valjean said in a voice that was almost a sob. “There are far too many things.”
He reached out and gently touched Javert’s hand.
Javert recoiled wildly, drawing his hand back. Even his whiskers seemed to bristle, like a dog’s fur standing on end. He stared at his hand, as if stupefied that it had not burst into flames– then stared at Jean Valjean, trembling like a cornered animal.
Jean Valjean met Javert’s gaze. He looked deeply into his eyes, as if trying to plunge into the depths of his conscience and speak to him there. Javert’s eyes were wide and candid; it seemed that all of his conscience was easily visible in them; he felt that he could read the man’s very thoughts; it appeared as if there was nothing in his soul that was not also on his face.
Jean Valjean saw that Javert was utterly terrified of him.
He was too exhausted to know how this made him feel.
“Here, come,” Jean Valjean said, holding Javert’s gaze and cautiously extending his hand as if he were attempting to tame a feral animal. “Have no more fear of me than I have of you.”
“Hm!” Javert said, shuddering and dragging himself a few inches farther away.
“You will come with me,” Jean Valjean said in a grave, firm voice. “We will take you to— wherever is the best place for you, poor thing.”
Javert scowled, cursed, and muttered something about hating kindness. Jean Valjean stared at him in mingled annoyance and concern. He did not know if this was Javert’s usual unreasonable behavior or if he had suffered a head injury.
“Poor thing,” Jean Valjean thought inwardly. “It is not its fault.”
“That’s an order, is it,” Javert growled, casting his eyes down like an inferior in the presence of his supervisor. “It’s an order to come with you.”
“It is.”
“You say that I have to come with you.”
“You do.”
“I’m not permitted to—“ he mimed slitting his throat.
“You are not.”
“Well then, Monsieur,” Javert grumbled in mock-sarcasm that did not sound sarcastic at all, “I suppose I can’t refuse.”
“What a very odd creature,” Jean Valjean said distantly, almost to himself. He was nearly faint with pain. He wanted this to be over. He wanted everything to be over. He did not know what this indescribably bizarre man wanted from him.
“Can you stand?” he asked. “Or shall I carry—?”
“I can stand!” Javert snarled. He attempted to stand, staggered to his feet, whimpered in agony, and instantly fell flat on his face.
Jean Valjean, still kneeling, stared at him. Then he sighed deeply and buried his face in his hands, stifling a sob.
“You ought to stop this absurdity,” Javert said into the ground, his voice muffled by the pavement. “It’s only right. It’s only just, you see. This is all false kindness! Or I thought it was, I don’t know what any of it is anymore. I hate kindness. It’s horrible. It enrages me. You know, when a dog bites— what does a reasonable man do? He isn’t kind, I tell you! He puts the dog down, is what he does. That is the sort of thing that must be done in this world.”
“Is it?” Jean Valjean asked, in far too much pain to comprehend anything Javert had said.
Javert was silent for a long time.
“I don’t know,” Javert said despairingly.
Jean Valjean was struck by a sudden wave of pain from his leg. He made a strangled sound of agony and nearly collapsed, his vision darkening. His mind had lost its ability to retain thoughts; they passed over him like waves, and all he felt was anguish.
“Time is running short, Javert,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even, polite, and patient. “You may dispose of me how you will. It makes no difference to me. You know I have no intention of escaping you. I did not give you my address with the intent of escape. But grant me this favor; let me carry you—”
“Come, he still talks of prison!” Javert barked at the ground. “Damned saint!”
Javert crawled over to the wall of the quai, muttering curses, and began to use the wall to fight his way to a standing position.
Jean Valjean did not move. He could not. He was overpowered by pain and exhaustion, and his body refused to obey him.
“I cannot endure this,” he said to himself. “I’ve finally broken. This– this is more than I can bear.”
Javert did not hear him.
“They always make the walls too slippery by these damned quais,” Javert said, struggling for purchase against the wall.
Jean Valjean attempted to move, but his fatigue was too great. It did not matter if he wanted to stand and help Javert— he could not. His limbs would not allow him to do it. His body was utterly broken. It was impossible.
He was filled with joy.
It was the joy he had felt when his cart had broken on the way to Arras. He was done. He was finished. It was over. At last, at last, this hellish trial was over.
He had done all he could, but it was no longer within his power; it was no longer his fault; it was out of his hands, and he could rest. All was over for him. He was forced to rest.
“You must know that’s all over— I’ve resigned!” Javert was barking, although Valjean hardly heard him. “Now here, you see, something bars the way…”
“I cannot continue,” Jean Valjean quietly said to himself, nearly weeping with relief. He could not move. “I cannot.”
“…a horrible world this is, where magistrates are down below and convicts are on high! Where the police are the servants of— jumble and confusion! A government of anarchy! I ought to be punished, and I can’t be part of it...!“
Javert continued rambling incoherently. Jean Valjean did not catch his words, but only the vague outlines of them. He was so overwhelmed with relief that the rush of the river sounded comforting, and even Javert’s curses sounded like music.
He collapsed. The world became dark and muffled around him. He settled into that darkness with a serene smile, and prayed that he would sleep forever.
Javert was determined not to do any more thinking.
He had finished with all that— with thinking. Thought was useless and a fatigue; he’d made his decision. Before throwing himself into the river Javert had been forced to think and while thinking he had decided on two things:
Jean Valjean should be alive, and free, at Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7.
He, Javert, should be dead.
Those were the only two things he knew for certain in this repugnant unreasonable world. That was the path he had chosen, and all he needed to do was ensure it was followed. He would be dead shortly, but the road to his death was straight. At last there was one straight track again. Whenever his mind tried to force him to think, he shut his eyes and calmly repeated the two simple points he had decided on: Jean Valjean should be alive and free at Rue de l’Homme Armé No. 7, and he, Javert, should be dead. There was no need to “think” about anything anymore.
Jean Valjean had attempted to throw things into confusion; of course he had. That was the sort of thing that happened in this horrible country, as Javert was beginning to understand. Of course that hideous angel had dragged Javert from the river and ordered him to stay out of it.
Javert could not disobey his order. Jean Valjean was an authority in this world, apparently— this was a world where saints were convicts and convicts were saints, a world where where a bagnard with a green cap could also have a halo on his brow and a holy scepter in his hand — and Javert would never disobey an authority. He could not remember a time before obedience had been beaten into him. He did not understand, but he knew that his duty was to obey his superiors regardless of whether he understood. It was not his place to argue or find fault. His place was to obey. Javert was a well-trained dog.
But even if he could not disobey an authority, he could remind an authority of the way things were. He could bow his head and follow their orders for the moment, but remind them of the things they ought to know and the punishments they ought to give.
Right now he was reminding Jean Valjean that he should be killed.
He was explaining things very logically and rationally. It was all perfectly comprehensible. Soon that man would remember why Javert needed to be dead, why it was right, and then he would stop ordering him not to kill himself.
Perhaps, he hoped, Jean Valjean might even execute him! How fitting that would be! How Javert would deserve it! How he would submit to it, as perfectly and obediently as a man should submit to his just punishment! How right it would be! There was nothing more just! Surely that convict must see that! And then Jean Valjean would return to Rue de l’Homme Armé No. 7 with blood on his monstrous holy hands, and Javert would be rotting in some shameful ditch, and everything between them would be as it should.
“And then, see,” Javert said between labored breaths as he finished another line of thought, one of his hands propping him up against the wall of the quai and the other twined mechanically in his whiskers, “As I’m your damned accomplice now, apparently, as I’ve sunk to that… or risen to it, it’s all the same in this country!… I’ll warn you the, the gendarmes are looking for insurgents. Rebels and barricades…such things there are in this world…!”
Javert forgot how he was going to end the sentence and made a tired gesture with one hand. He noticed that forming words was more of an effort than usual— it likely had something to do with “fatigue” or “agony”— but he was certain it did not affect his speech.
“And this is the right thing to do, apparently,” he said mockingly. “The ‘right thing to do’ is to help criminals rebel against the government– ha!”
He struck the wall in frustration and reflected on how the world was an awful place where all the morally correct things to do were also terrible. This was why he was turning in his resignation.
“And you were at the barricades– that’s a crime, rebellion! If you don’t want to be shot dead in the street, hurry along. They patrol this area. You’ll be arrested by— another man! Not me, hear. Another man!”
He jabbed his finger in Jean Valjean’s direction.
“So move along now, move along, that’s my damned criminal advice for you,” he said. “Valjean?”
He noticed that Jean Valjean had collapsed onto the pavement and lay there unmoving.
“Valjean?” He repeated.
A breath of wind from the river stirred Jean Valjean’s white hair. Otherwise, he did not move.
“Valjean!” Javert repeated in a worried snarl. “Or Fauchelevent, or Madeleine, or whatever absurdity—! ”
A sudden horror seized him.
He reminded himself of the two decisions he had come to that night, the decisions he had repeated to himself like a mantra: that Jean Valjean should be alive and free at Rue de l’Homme Armé No. 7, and that he, Javert, should be dead.
What if Jean Valjean were to die?
And what if he were to die without rescinding his order for Javert to stay alive?
“I won’t think about it!” Javert barked, covering his ears with his hands, “because he won’t!”
He staggered towards Jean Valjean, seized with a sudden energy. If Javert had been attempting to turn in his resignation to God, then God had soundly rejected it; he was in agony, but he could still walk.
He stood next to Jean Valjean’s body. He was alive. He was alive because he had to be. It was decided. He was not allowed to be dead; it simply could not be allowed to happen. He would not think about that.
Yet it was strange to see the man who had loomed so large in his thoughts suddenly lying helpless at his feet.
For decades Jean Valjean had been no more than any other criminal to him. Then, at the barricades, he had suddenly revealed himself to be— he did not know what he was! He was a divine monstrosity beyond Javert’s comprehension, a god hiding in the clothes of a convict, Jesus Christ in a green cap, a hideous angel with a fiery sword and a thousand eyes that could crush him with a glance and yet gently told him “be not afraid” and “you are free.”
Now he looked disturbingly human. His white hair clung to his weatherbeaten face. His shirt, which had probably been white before he’d dragged it through the sewers, was torn— through the holes Javert could see the tangled outlines of scars on his back. Jean Valjean’s hands shivered against the stone; for such broad strong hands, they seemed strangely fragile. Every aspect of him breathed weariness and agony. He looked like any of the other criminals at Toulon, and any of the corpses that Javert had seen dragged out of the nets of Saint-Cloud—
“No thinking!” Javert growled, catching himself. “I’ve done my thinking! It’s done!”
Javert gently prodded Jean Valjean’s shoulder with the toe of his boot. Jean Valjean did not react, so he prodded him again. Jean Valjean remained still. Javert’s hands began trembling violently, he stammered out a curse, he refused to think about the possibility that he would not wake up, and then he prodded him again.
At last, Jean Valjean’s eyes slowly opened. He moved his head, looked up at Javert… and then dropped his head back on the ground with a muffled groan of pain.
“Your address is Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7,” Javert said.
Jean Valjean babbled something incoherent.
“It is within walking distance!”
Jean Valjean babbled again.
“It is within dragging distance too, if necessary!”
Javert stooped and, with enormous effort, managed to drape Jean Valjean’s arm over his shoulder and drag the man to his feet. One of his legs was apparently broken, he noticed; so Jean Valjean stood on his other one, leaning most of his weight on Javert like a crutch, the bad leg dragging uselessly behind him.
It was horribly unpleasant. Jean Valjean was heavy. His white hair brushed against Javert’s cheek and sideburns, making him flinch; he was cold and dripping with grime and river water. He stank strongly of sewage.
Javert cursed; he hated that he lived in a horrible absurd country where saints could smell like sewage. A fine world this was! This was why he was turning in his resignation.
“Now, come along!” Javert said, and began to slowly help Jean Valjean stagger forward. Jean Valjean murmured something incoherent, but slowly took an awkward one-legged step.
“Here, we’re going. Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7. Before you get arrested. Yes?”
Jean Valjean sighed– an agonized, broken, hopeless sound. Then he murmured something that seemed like agreement, and nodded his head.
For a moment Javert hesitated.
He reminded himself that the police and gendarmes were still prowling the streets. It would not be easy for him to play this criminal’s accomplice, for him to hide this insurgent convict from the eyes of the government, for two men who were owned by the law to try setting themselves above the law. Their injuries and ragged clothing made them suspicious, and they would be taken for vagrants if they weren’t taken for rebels. It was unlikely that he would get Jean Valjean back to Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7 without being stopped by an agent of the authorities. Then they would both be found out, and taken to prison! Then the law would reassert its rights, crime would be punished, insubordination would be violently extinguished, all this rebellion would be crushed as surely as the rebellion of the previous days had been crushed—
“I won’t think about that!” Javert snarled. “No more ‘thinking!’ The first thing is that Jean Valjean will be alive, and free, at Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7. The second thing is that I will be dead by morning. He’ll be put back where he’s supposed to be, and if anything stands in his way—“
Jean Valjean staggered forward and Javert caught him.
“Well, he’s got a guard dog!”
He let out another string of curses, and slowly helped Jean Valjean stumble forward.