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Javert doesn’t intend to stop and linger in the doorway of the hospital room, but the sight before him halts him in his tracks, as though a wall of glass were blocking his path.
Never in his life has the execution of the law thrilled him as it does now. Today, in Arras, it triumphed. Valjean’s confession proved that, however slowly it may move, justice does always win out in the end.
Of all the laws guiding Javert, the greatest is inertia. An object in motion or at rest will remain as such unless acted upon by an unbalanced external force.
What a force it was. The order for Valjean’s arrest seized Javert as though the firm hand of justice had plucked him from his bed, igniting a fury in him that carried his legs forward, caused him to break into a run through the streets of Montreuil-sur-Mer, and down the narrow hallways of the hospital with the speed and conviction of someone who had just been proven right.
It is a vulnerable thing to believe in something — faith always has an undercurrent of fear, promising loss or foolishness at even the slightest possibility of being wrong.
The journey to arrest Valjean, however brief, had been the closest to Heaven Javert had ever felt. After all this time, he had been right not only about Valjean but about the law itself. Satisfaction does not begin to describe how profound it is to devote one’s life completely to a system or an idea and to have it pay dividends at last.
Avenging society feels the way irrefutable proof of God’s existence would feel to a devout man — triumphant, glorious, awe-inspiring.
So why has Javert stopped dead in his tracks? What force could be strong enough to stop Javert, to stop the law, from barreling towards Valjean like an avalanche?
There in the dim, candlelit hospital room that reeks of sickness and grief, kneeling at the bedside of the whore, is Valjean.
His hair is completely white.
The force of the sight is enough to steal the breath from Javert’s lungs and bring his feet to a halt so suddenly that he nearly trips.
When they last spoke, barely a day ago, Valjean’s — Madeleine’s— hair was mostly grey, save for a few white hairs and echoes of what must have been brown once. (Or, now that he has revealed his true identity, what Javert knows was brown once.)
The change should not be so shocking. Perhaps, to another man, it would not even be noticeable. Perhaps, an ordinary towns-person in Montreuil-sur-Mer would see him and simply believe they had misremembered his appearance.
I just saw him a few days ago. His hair must have always been white.
Not Javert.
It is his job to memorize faces, hair, posture, and manners of speaking. It is his job to be a falcon, searching the municipality for crime the way a bird may scour a meadow for a field mouse.
He notices the change because he has done his job correctly. He has memorized Madeleine too well. He has carved Madeleine into his memory so deeply that even the smallest change in his appearance must be catalogued like a note in his case file.
It is only pride — a rare moment of complete satisfaction with himself — that causes him to be in awe of noticing the change. Just pride, just satisfaction. Not worry. Not the faint tug of grief at the turmoil that must have caused such a transformation. Certainly not reverence.
Madeleine is too young for his hair to be completely white, but it suits him. If Javert were not Javert — if he were perhaps a poet or an artist, he would say that Madeleine’s hair was meant to be white, that the glow of it was destined to be captured in a sonnet or an oil painting.
If only Madeleine were as saintly as some of the townspeople say he is. Then, his white hair could resemble a halo, and Madeleine could be an angel — an archangel, strong and commanding and good.
But he is not good. He is not angelic. And he is not Madeleine.
And there is no world in which Javert would think such a thing.
--
At first, Valjean does not notice him lingering in the doorway.
Instead, his attention is fully on the whore, who appears to be burning through her last moments on Earth like the end of a candle.
She is so pale, so white. But not the clean white of the hospital bedsheets or the glowing white of Madeleine’s hair. Her skin bears the paleness of a person who is fading away. Someone whose dreams and morals life has gnawed down to the bone, leaving barely a scrap.
He shudders half because of the haunting state of her, and half because of the way Madeleine hovers over her so attentively.
Of all the criminals he has ever encountered, this husk of a woman has affected Javert the fourth most.
The first is a tie — Valjean for his everyday thoughts to fixate on as though he were untangling a perplexing knot. His mother to follow him like an inescapable shadow, reminding him who he really is and why he has made the choices he has made.
The third is his father, whom he knows only by name.
And the fourth is this wretch. He wishes he didn’t know why.
It is not just the woman herself who has affected him so much; it is Madeleine’s reaction to her. Madeleine was so ardent, so insistent on mercy, that there had to be something underlying it. Lust, or, he shudders, love.
It is probably lust. Now that he knows Madeleine is secretly a criminal, he can say it was lust for certain. How like a criminal to commit one of the seven deadly sins, especially towards a whore. At least, if any credit could be given to Madeleine, he keeps company among other sinners rather than corrupting honest men and women.
So it is only disgust that Javert feels when he looks upon the whore’s decaying, still-alive body, nothing more.
Still, if this creature is so important to Valjean, why would he give himself up so readily and risk losing what little time he could spend with her?
Why would he confess?
It defies all logic. Valjean is a criminal. Criminals are inherently selfish, willing to tear at the fabric of society in pursuit of their own self-interest.
And yet, what Valjean did was the opposite of self-interested. Here this man was — an imposter bearing Valjean’s likeness so convincingly that even Javert’s own memory failed him. The world had handed Valjean a path to freedom on a silver platter, and he refused it. He chose to be honest.
Perhaps he missed Toulon. Perhaps he never felt at home here among honest men and longed to return to a place where he could freely express his criminal tendencies.
Maybe the depravity inside him had been slowly eating away at him until he could no longer ignore it. Javert wishes this were something he did not relate to. But Valjean seems to have gotten the better deal as far as depravity is concerned — Javert’s own depravity manifests in his dreams rather than in his hair going white.
But regardless of the cause of this change — whether depravity or guilt or God or simple old age — it does not matter in the law’s eyes.
It cannot matter in Javert’s.
--
When the whore spots him, she turns even whiter as though surrendering the last of her life force to Javert, finally facing judgment as though Javert were Saint Peter and the doorway were the gates of Heaven.
“Monsieur Madeleine, save me!”
Valjean turns to him at the same moment the whore does.
In his eyes, there is a flicker of fury Javert recognizes from Toulon — a tiny spark of hate that is just as distinctly Jean le Cric as the flex of his back as he lifted the cart from old Fauchelevent, the contours of his muscles, the way his face squeezed shut in concentration as he channeled all the force into his body into the task.
How could Madeleine possibly be anyone other than Valjean? How could those furious brown eyes belong to anyone else? Why did Javert ever doubt himself?
Perhaps Javert wished that this Champmathieu was the real Valjean, so he would not have to face what it meant — an inspector desiring to serve and please their Mayor is a noble aspiration. A guard desiring to do the same to a prisoner, however …
It does not matter anymore. It was a lapse in judgment that Javert will never repeat.
The real Valjean is here in this very room, and soon he will be put away in a place so far away that he will never muddle Javert’s thoughts again.
Javert was right. The law has triumphed, and therefore, Javert has triumphed.
Valjean addresses the whore, but his eyes — the eyes of Jean le Cric — do not leave Javert.
“Be at ease; it is not for you that he has come.” Then, he speaks to Javert directly. “I know what you want.”
You know nothing of what I want.
Before opening his mouth, Javert takes in the glow of the candlelight on Valjean's white hair one last time — the only lingering doubt in his mind about who the man really is: a dirty, hardened criminal.
Finally, he growls,
“Be quick about it.”