"Ah!
Father Madeleine! You did not recognize me immediately; you save people's lives, and then you forget them!
That is bad!
But they remember you! You are an ingrate!"
BOOK FIFTH.--FOR A BLACK HUNT, A MUTE PACK
CHAPTER X
WHICH EXPLAINS HOW JAVERT GOT ON THE SCENT
The events of which we have just beheld the reverse side, so to speak, had come about in the simplest possible manner.
When Jean Valjean, on the evening of the very day when Javert had arrested him beside Fantine's death-bed, had escaped from the town jail of M. sur M., the police had supposed that he had betaken himself to Paris.
Paris is a maelstrom where everything is lost, and everything disappears in this belly of the world, as in the belly of the sea.
No forest hides a man as does that crowd. Fugitives of every sort know this.
They go to Paris as to an abyss; there are gulfs which save.
The police know it also, and it is in Paris that they seek what they have lost elsewhere. They sought the ex-mayor of M. sur M. Javert was summoned to Paris to throw light on their researches.
Javert had, in fact, rendered powerful assistance in the recapture of Jean Valjean. Javert's zeal and intelligence on that occasion had been remarked by M. Chabouillet, secretary of the Prefecture under Comte Angles. M. Chabouillet, who had, moreover, already been Javert's patron, had the inspector of M. sur M. attached to the police force of Paris. There Javert rendered himself useful in divers and, though the word may seem strange for such services, honorable manners.
He no longer thought of Jean Valjean,--the wolf of to-day causes these dogs who are always on the chase to forget the wolf of yesterday,--when, in December, 1823, he read a newspaper, he who never read newspapers; but Javert, a monarchical man, had a desire to know the particulars of the triumphal entry of the "Prince Generalissimo" into Bayonne. Just as he was finishing the article, which interested him; a name, the name of Jean Valjean, attracted his attention at the bottom of a page.
The paper announced that the convict Jean Valjean was dead, and published the fact in such formal terms that Javert did not doubt it.
He confined himself to the remark, "That's a good entry." Then he threw aside the paper, and thought no more about it.
Some time afterwards, it chanced that a police report was transmitted from the prefecture of the Seine-et-Oise to the prefecture of police in Paris, concerning the abduction of a child, which had taken place, under peculiar circumstances, as it was said, in the commune of Montfermeil.