He was not even absolutely sure that it was Javert, and then it might have been Javert, without Javert knowing that he was Jean Valjean.
Was not he disguised?
Was not he believed to be dead?
Still, queer things had been going on for several days.
He wanted no more of them. He was determined not to return to the Gorbeau house.
Like the wild animal chased from its lair, he was seeking a hole in which he might hide until he could find one where he might dwell.
Jean Valjean described many and varied labyrinths in the Mouffetard quarter, which was already asleep, as though the discipline of the Middle Ages and the yoke of the curfew still existed; he combined in various manners, with cunning strategy, the Rue Censier and the Rue Copeau, the Rue du Battoir-Saint-Victor and the Rue du Puits l'Ermite. There are lodging houses in this locality, but he did not even enter one, finding nothing which suited him. He had no doubt that if any one had chanced to be upon his track, they would have lost it.
As eleven o'clock struck from Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, he was traversing the Rue de Pontoise, in front of the office of the commissary of police, situated at No. 14.
A few moments later, the instinct of which we have spoken above made him turn round. At that moment he saw distinctly, thanks to the commissary's lantern, which betrayed them, three men who were following him closely, pass, one after the other, under that lantern, on the dark side of the street. One of the three entered the alley leading to the commissary's house. The one who marched at their head struck him as decidedly suspicious.
"Come, child," he said to Cosette; and he made haste to quit the Rue Pontoise.
He took a circuit, turned into the Passage des Patriarches, which was closed on account of the hour, strode along the Rue de l'Epee-de-Bois and the Rue de l'Arbalete, and plunged into the Rue des Postes.
At that time there was a square formed by the intersection of streets, where the College Rollin stands to-day, and where the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve turns off.
It is understood, of course, that the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve is an old street, and that a posting-chaise does not pass through the Rue des Postes once in ten years.
In the thirteenth century this Rue des Postes was inhabited by potters, and its real name is Rue des Pots.
The moon cast a livid light into this open space.
Jean Valjean went into ambush in a doorway, calculating that if the men were still following him, he could not fail to get a good look at them, as they traversed this illuminated space.
In point of fact, three minutes had not elapsed when the men made their appearance.
There were four of them now.
All were tall, dressed in long, brown coats, with round hats, and huge cudgels in their hands.
Their great stature and their vast fists rendered them no less alarming than did their sinister stride through the darkness. One would have pronounced them four spectres disguised as bourgeois.