I’ve started going to the gym lately!! My fitness goals: if someone was trapped underneath a cart that was slowly sinking into the mud, I would be able to dive underneath the cart and lift it on my back [taking the place of a jack-screw] thereby saving his life even as a nearby police inspector insists that only one specific convict he knew would be strong enough to do such a thing
Little by little over the course of time, all opposition to him fell away. By virtue of a sort of law to which those who better themselves are always subject, there had at first been slanders and calumnies against Monsieur Madeleine, then there were just malicious comments, then just rude remarks, then that was the end of it. Respect for him was total, unanimous and cordial . . .
I love that so much for him
People came from twenty-five miles around to consult Monsieur Madeleine. He ended disagreements, prevented lawsuits, reconciled enemies. Everyone recognized his authority as judge. It was as if he were animated by the book of natural law. It was like a contagion of respect that over six or seven years was passed on from one to another and infected the whole area.
I'M SO GLAD HE'S SO BELOVED 🙏
One man alone in the town and its surroundings totally escaped this contagion, and no matter what Père Madeleine did, he remained resistant, as if some sort of incorruptible and imperturbable instinct kept him alert and uneasy.
Uh oh
Okay well Hugo you can't say something is unanimous when there's at least one outlier. It's not unanimous anymore.
It would seem to be the case that there exists in certain men a real animal instinct . . . an instinct that, however destinies may be shaped, secretly warns the dog-man of the presence of the cat-man and the fox-man of the presence of the lion-man.
This made me laugh I'm not gonna lie. Gave me some goofy imagery
Often when Monsieur Madeleine went by in the street, peaceable, loving, with the blessings of everyone around him, a tall man dressed in an iron-grey frock-coat, armed with a stout walking-stick and wearing his hat pulled down, would swing round behind him and follow him with his eyes until he was out of sight, folding his arms, slowly shaking his head and pursing his upper and lower lips towards his nose, a sort of meaningful grimace that might be translated as ‘Now who on earth is that man? I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere before … Anyhow, I’m not in the least taken in by him.’
UH OH
His name was Javert, and he was with the police.
UH OH A COP
It is our firm belief that if souls were visible to the eye we should clearly see that strange thing whereby every single member of the human species corresponds to some species of the animal world. And we would easily be able to recognize that truth barely apprehended by the philosopher, which is that, from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to the tiger, all animals are to be found in mankind, and each one of them is to be found in some man. Sometimes even several at a time.
Hugo you would have loved "what's your spirit animal?" personality quizzes
Animals are nothing other than the physical representation of our virtues and vices, wandering about before our eyes, the visible spectres of our souls. God lets us see them so as to make us think.
That uh. That sure is a belief.
Now, if the reader will grant for a moment that there is in every man one of the animal species in creation, it will be easy for us to say which of them resided in police officer Javert.
The peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every she-wolf’s litter there is one dog, which is killed by the mother because otherwise as it grew up it would eat the rest of her young.
Give this son-of-a-wolf dog a human face, and you have Javert.
Yikes...
Javert was born in prison of a fortune-teller whose husband was a convicted felon. As he grew up, he believed he was on the outside of society and had no hope of ever being let in. He observed that society unforgivingly kept out two classes of men, those who attack it and those who guard it. He had the choice between these two classes only. At the same time he was conscious of some underlying inflexibility, steadiness and probity within him, compounded by an inexpressible hatred for that ——— race to which he belonged. He joined the police.
(gonna cut out the slur for Romani people)
A lot of yikes about this guy! This does not bode well! I'm thinking about how Val thought there was nothing left for him to do but hold onto hatred because there was no place in society for him (and honestly if he hadn't changed his identity, there probably WOULD still be no place for him with those yellow papers stopping him at every turn).
And this guy saw either the path Val had temporarily ended up on, or, well, being a cop I guess, and, with the same exact rigidity and thoroughness, had decided to dedicate himself to police work. Except there's no Myriel to show him balance, to teach him that people can change just as he helped Valjean to see and do...
Hey Javert, consider changing your name, maybe, so whenever associations between you and your parents are gone, and then maybe uhh, I dunno, take up reading and gardening?
OH HEY WAIT IS THIS THE COP I'VE SEEN MEMES IN THE PAST ABOUT. BREAD THIEF VS COP GUY?? Ooh, I wonder where this will go. Maybe Val can teach him what Myriel taught him.
He made his mark.
By the age of forty he was an inspector.
At what age does someone typically achieve that??
As a young man he worked with the chain gangs in the south.
Was JVJ in the south. I don't remember. He was part of the chain gangs, I know that. Was it south? If he thinks the guy looks familiar... Probably.
This man was made up of two very simple sentiments, and within reason very good ones, which he rendered almost bad by taking them to extremes: respect for authority and hatred of rebellion. And in his eyes theft, murder, any crime, was simply a form of rebellion. He looked on any state official, from the prime minister to the rural policeman, with a deep-seated blind faith. On anyone who had once crossed the legal threshold of wrong-doing he heaped scorn, loathing and disgust. He was uncompromising, and he allowed of no exceptions. On the one hand he said, ‘The state official is incapable of making a mistake. The magistrate is never wrong.’ On the other he said, ‘These people are lost beyond redemption. Nothing good can come of them.’
Oh. Okay so he really sucks.
Dude I promise you state officials can and do commit wrongs and errors and mistakes. Ohhhh boy. Oh boy. Not a fan of this guy's mindset.
Conscientious in his usefulness, he made a religion of his duties, and he was a spy as other men are priests. Woe betide the man who fell into his hands! He would have arrested his father for escaping from prison and denounced his mother for contravening the terms of her release from gaol. And he would have done so with that kind of inward satisfaction conferred by virtuousness. To accompany this, a life of privation, isolation, abnegation, chastity, never a moment’s recreation.
This was implacable duty, an understanding of the police like the Spartans’ understanding of Sparta, pitiless surveillance, ferocious honesty, a sleuth of marble-like coldness, Brutus in Vidocq.
The footnote here says a lot:
Brutus in Vidocq: Marcus Junius Brutus (85–42 BC), who joined the Ides of March conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar in 44 BC, was celebrated in Revolutionary France as the embodiment of Republican integrity, as was the legendary founder of the Roman Republic Lucius Junius Brutus (sixth century BC), who sentenced to death his own sons for conspiring to restore the monarchy, an incident that inspired David’s controversial painting of 1789, The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons. Eugène-François Vidocq (1775–1857) was a reformed criminal, condemned to penal servitude for theft and fraud, who twice escaped prison and eventually joined the police as an informer. He was extraordinarily successful as the head of the police detective force, and after he retired set up his own private detective agency.
Also taking note of the statue/marble description. I've seen that two other times now: Enjolras and Marius, both who have been presented as extremely firm in their convictions, to the point of being blind to faults (Enjolras with Jean-Jacques, Marius with Bonaparte, etc). And now we have Javert, blind to the faults of state officials and dogged (haha) in his obsession with his police work.
Javert’s entire person was an expression of the man who spies and keeps out of sight.
Haha. Very ironic, what with Marius spying in today's other chapter.
Even though he hated books, in his moments of leisure, which were few and far between, he read, with the result that he was not completely uneducated.
It's interesting to see how reading - the love of it, the amount of it, etc - seems to correlate with the qualities of a person in this book.
Myriel read a lot, enjoyed it, got a lot out of it, and he was painted as the most excellent man. Mabeuf adores books and has also been painted as a good and kind man. Valjean reads, he's got his little library, he loves books, has become a good man, and he's used it to become a more gentle speaker.
And here we have Javert, who hates books and has been painted as an overly strict and harsh person.
Javert was like an eye constantly fixed on Monsieur Madeleine. An eye full of suspicion and conjecture. Monsieur Madeleine eventually noticed, but it appeared that this was of no interest to him. He did not even question Javert. He neither sought him out nor avoided him. And he bore that intrusive and almost oppressive gaze without appearing to pay any attention to it. He treated Javert the same way he treated everybody, with unassuming kindness.
Absolutely terrifying and absolutely incredible that Val is being so chill about it. I mean, that's good, anything else would be suspicious.
From a few words Javert let drop, it was clear that with that curiosity bred in the bone, in which instinct plays as great a part as willpower, he had secretly investigated all previous traces Père Madeleine might have left elsewhere. He seemed to know, and sometimes he said cryptically, that someone had made certain inquiries in a certain place about a certain family that had disappeared. Talking to himself, he once happened to remark, ‘I think I’ve got him!’ Then he remained preoccupied for three days without uttering a word. It seemed the lead he thought he had, had come to nothing.
GOOD. I HOPE YOU NEVER FIND ANYTHING EVER.
In any case . . . there can be nothing truly infallible about any human being and it is precisely in the nature of instinct that it can become confused, thrown off the scent and led astray. Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by Monsieur Madeleine’s complete naturalness and calm.
Good 😤
One day, however, his strange manner seemed to make an impression on Monsieur Madeleine. This was the occasion.
"The human face of Javert consisted of a flat nose, with two deep nostrils, towards which enormous whiskers ascended on his cheeks. One felt ill at ease when he saw these two forests and these two caverns for the first time. When Javert laughed,—and his laugh was rare and terrible,—his thin lips parted and revealed to view not only his teeth, but his gums, and around his nose there formed a flattened and savage fold, as on the muzzle of a wild beast. Javert, serious, was a watchdog; when he laughed, he was a tiger. As for the rest, he had very little skull and a great deal of jaw; his hair concealed his forehead and fell over his eyebrows; between his eyes there was a permanent, central frown, like an imprint of wrath; his gaze was obscure; his mouth pursed up and terrible; his air that of ferocious command."
