The peasants of the Asturias believe that in every litter of wolves there is one pup that is killed by the mother for fear that on growing up it would devour the other little ones.
Give a human face to this wolf's son and you will have Javert.
Javert was born in prison. His mother was a fortune-teller whose husband was in the galleys. 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 these 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.
In his youth he had been stationed with the work gangs in the South.
Before going further, let us describe Javert's human face.
It consisted of a snub nose, with two deep nostrils, bordered by large, bushy sideburns covering both his cheeks. One felt ill at ease on first seeing those two forests and those two caverns. When Javert laughed, which was rarely and terribly, his thin lips parted, showing not only his teeth, but his gums; a cleft as broad and wild as on the muzzle of a fallow deer formed around his nose. When serious, Javert was a bulldog; when he laughed, he was a tiger. Beyond that, a small head, large jaws, hair hiding the forehead and falling over the eyebrows, between the eyes a permanent central crease like an angry star, a gloomy look, a pinched and ferocious mouth, and an air of fierce command.
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. 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 the 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.
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 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.
In his leisure moments, which were rare, although he hated books, he would read; so he was not entirely illiterate. This was also perceptible in a certain pomposity in his speech.
He was free from vice, as we have said. When he was satisfied with himself, he allowed himself a pinch of snuff. That proved he was human.
It will be readily understood that Javert was the terror of the whole class which the annual statistics of the Minister of Justice include under the heading "Persons without a fixed abode." To speak the name of Javert would put them to flight; the sight of Javert's face petrified them.
Such was this intimidating man.
This the description of the character of Javert; in the next entry for this novel that I am examining, I want to describe what Jean Valjean had done for the community of Montreuil-sur-mer. (Stay tuned...)
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