The grandfather caused Jean Valjean to vanish.
Nevertheless, Javert dropped a few questions, like plummets, into Thenardier's history.
"Who was that grandfather? and what was his name?"
Thenardier replied with simplicity:
"He is a wealthy farmer. I saw his passport.
I think his name was M. Guillaume Lambert."
Lambert is a respectable and extremely reassuring name. Thereupon Javert returned to Paris.
"Jean Valjean is certainly dead," said he, "and I am a ninny."
He had again begun to forget this history, when, in the course of March, 1824, he heard of a singular personage who dwelt in the parish of Saint-Medard and who had been surnamed "the mendicant who gives alms."
This person, the story ran, was a man of means, whose name no one knew exactly, and who lived alone with a little girl of eight years, who knew nothing about herself, save that she had come from Montfermeil.
Montfermeil! that name was always coming up, and it made Javert prick up his ears.
An old beggar police spy, an ex-beadle, to whom this person had given alms, added a few more details.
This gentleman of property was very shy,-- never coming out except in the evening, speaking to no one, except, occasionally to the poor, and never allowing any one to approach him. He wore a horrible old yellow frock-coat, which was worth many millions, being all wadded with bank-bills. This piqued Javert's curiosity in a decided manner.
In order to get a close look at this fantastic gentleman without alarming him, he borrowed the beadle's outfit for a day, and the place where the old spy was in the habit of crouching every evening, whining orisons through his nose, and playing the spy under cover of prayer.
"The suspected individual" did indeed approach Javert thus disguised, and bestow alms on him.
At that moment Javert raised his head, and the shock which Jean Valjean received on recognizing Javert was equal to the one received by Javert when he thought he recognized Jean Valjean.
However, the darkness might have misled him; Jean Valjean's death was official; Javert cherished very grave doubts; and when in doubt, Javert, the man of scruples, never laid a finger on any one's collar.
He followed his man to the Gorbeau house, and got "the old woman" to talking, which was no difficult matter.
The old woman confirmed the fact regarding the coat lined with millions, and narrated to him the episode of the thousand-franc bill.
She had seen it! She had handled it!