The man who writes this has been absent from Paris for many years. A new city has arisen that is, after a fashion, unknown to him. The Paris of his youth, the Paris he bore away religiously in his memory, is now a Paris of days gone by. He asks to speak of that Paris as though it still existed. It is possible that when he conducts a reader to a spot and says that in such a street there stands such and such a house, neither street nor house will any longer exist in that locality. He is unacquainted with the new Paris. He writes with the old Paris before his eyes, in an illusion which is precious to him. It is a delight to him to dream that there still lingers behind him something of that which he beheld when he was in his own country, and that all has not vanished. So long as you go and come in your native land, you imagine that those streets are a matter of indifference to you, that those windows, those roofs, and those doors are nothing to you, that those walls are strangers, that those trees are merely the first encountered, that those houses which you do not enter are useless to you, that the pavements which you tread are merely stones. Later on, when you are no longer there, you perceive that the streets are dear to you, that you miss those roofs, those doors, that those walls are necessary to you, those trees well beloved, that you entered those houses which you never entered, every day, and that you have left a part of your heart, of your blood, of your soul, in those pavements. All those places which you no longer behold take on a melancholy charm, recur with the melancholy of an apparition, make the holy land visible, and are, so to speak, the very form of France, and you love them. You call them up as they are, as they were, and you persist in this, and you will submit to no change, for you are attached to the figure of your fatherland as to the face of your mother. May we, then, be permitted to speak of the past in the present? That said, we continue.
Jean Valjean instantly quits the boulevard and plunges into the streets, taking the most intricate lines he can devise, returning on his track at times, to make sure that he is not being followed. This manoeuvre is peculiar to the hunted stag. On soil where an imprint of the track may be left, it throws huntsmen and dogs on the wrong scent. In venery this is called false re-imbushment. The moon is full that night. Jean Valjean is not sorry for this. The moon, still very close to the horizon, casts great masses of light and shadow in the streets. He can glide along close to the houses on the dark side, and yet keep watch on the light side. He does not, perhaps, take sufficiently into consideration the fact that the dark side escapes him. Still, in the deserted lanes which lie near the Rue Poliveau, he thinks he feels certain that no one is following him. Cosette walks on without asking any questions. The sufferings of the first six years of her life have instilled something passive into her nature. She has grown used, without being herself aware of it, to the peculiarities of this good man and to the freaks of destiny. And then she was with him, and she felt safe. Jean Valjean knows no more where he is going than does Cosette. He trusts in God, as she trusts in him. It seems as though he also were clinging to the hand of someone greater than himself. He has no settled idea, no plan, no project. He is not even absolutely sure that it was Javert, and then it might have been Javert, without Javert knowing that he was Jean Valjean. Was he not disguised? Was he not believed to be dead? Still, queer things have been going on for several days. He wants no more of them. He is determined not to return to the Gorbeau house. Like the wild animal chased from its lair, he is seeking a hole in which he might hide until he could find one where he might dwell.
He describes many and varied labyrinths in the Mouffetard quarter, which is already asleep, as though the discipline of the Middle Ages and the yoke of the curfew still existed. He combines, 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 does not even enter one, finding nothing which suits him. He has no doubt that if anyone had chanced to be upon his track, they would have lost it. As eleven o'clock strikes from Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, he is traversing the Rue de Pontoise, in front of the office of the commissary of police, situated at Number 14. A few moments later, the instinct of which we have spoken makes him turn round. At that moment he sees distinctly, thanks to the commissary's lantern, which betrays them, three men who are following him closely, pass, one after the other, under that lantern, on the dark side of the street. One of the three enters the alley leading to the commissary's house. The one who marches at their head strikes him as decidedly suspicious. Come, child, he said to Cosette, and he made haste to quit the Rue Pontoise. He takes a circuit, turns into the Passage des Patriarches, which is closed on account of the hour, strides along the Rue de l'Epee-de-Bois and the Rue de l'Arbalete, and plunges into the Rue des Postes. He goes into ambush in a doorway, calculating that if the men are still following him, he cannot fail to get a good look at them as they traverse this illuminated space. In point of fact, three minutes have not elapsed when the men make their appearance. There are four of them now. All are tall, dressed in long, brown coats, with round hats, and huge cudgels in their hands. Their great stature and their vast fists render them no less alarming than does their sinister stride through the darkness. One would have pronounced them four spectres disguised as bourgeois. They halt in the middle of the space and form a group, like men in consultation. They have an air of indecision. The one who appears to be their leader turns round and points hastily with his right hand in the direction which Jean Valjean has taken. Another seems to indicate the contrary direction with considerable obstinacy. At the moment when the first man wheeled round, the moon fell full in his face. Jean Valjean recognized Javert perfectly.
