He was a convict whom I was in the habit of seeing twenty years ago, when I was adjutant-guard of convicts at Toulon. On leaving the galleys, this Jean Valjean, as it appears, robbed a bishop; then he committed another theft, accompanied with violence, on a public highway on the person of a little Savoyard.
He disappeared eight years ago, no one knows how, and he has been sought, I fancied. In short, I did this thing!
Wrath impelled me; I denounced you at the Prefecture!"
M. Madeleine, who had taken up the docket again several moments before this, resumed with an air of perfect indifference:--
"And what reply did you receive?"
"That I was mad."
"Well?"
"Well, they were right."
"It is lucky that you recognize the fact."
"I am forced to do so, since the real Jean Valjean has been found."
The sheet of paper which M. Madeleine was holding dropped from his hand; he raised his head, gazed fixedly at Javert, and said with his indescribable accent:--
"Ah!"
Javert continued:--
"This is the way it is, Mr. Mayor.
It seems that there was in the neighborhood near Ailly-le-Haut-Clocher an old fellow who was called Father Champmathieu.
He was a very wretched creature. No one paid any attention to him.
No one knows what such people subsist on.
Lately, last autumn, Father Champmathieu was arrested for the theft of some cider apples from--Well, no matter, a theft had been committed, a wall scaled, branches of trees broken. My Champmathieu was arrested.
He still had the branch of apple-tree in his hand.
The scamp is locked up.