The events of which we have just beheld the reverse side had come about in the simplest possible manner. When Jean Valjean escaped the town jail, on the evening Javert had arrested him beside Fantine's death-bed, the police supposed he had betaken himself to Paris. Paris is a maelstrom where everything is lost. No forest hides a man as does that crowd. Fugitives go there 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. Javert is summoned to throw light on their researches. His zeal in the recapture had been remarked. He is attached to the Paris force, and he renders himself useful in manners that, though the word may seem strange for such services, are honourable. He no longer thinks of Jean Valjean. The wolf of today causes these dogs who are always on the chase to forget the wolf of yesterday. Then, in December 1823, he reads a newspaper, he who never reads newspapers. A monarchical man, he wants the particulars of a princely entry into Bayonne. At the bottom of a page a name attracts his attention. The paper announces that the convict Jean Valjean is dead, and publishes the fact in such formal terms that Javert does not doubt it. He confines himself to the remark, That's a good entry. Then he throws aside the paper, and thinks no more about it.
Some time afterwards a police report comes from the Seine-et-Oise concerning the abduction of a child in Montfermeil. A little girl of seven or eight, entrusted by her mother to an inn-keeper, has been stolen by a stranger. The child answers to the name of Cosette, and is the daughter of a girl named Fantine, who died in the hospital, it was not known where or when. The name of Fantine is well known to him. He remembers the three days Jean Valjean asked, the laugh, the coach for Montfermeil. He understands it now. Fantine's daughter was there. And now this child has been stolen by a stranger. Could it be Jean Valjean? But Jean Valjean is dead. Without saying anything to anybody, Javert takes the coach and makes a trip to Montfermeil. He expected to find a great deal of light. He found a great deal of obscurity. For the first few days the Thenardiers had chattered in their rage. Then Thenardier, with his wonderful instinct, comprehended that it is never advisable to stir up the prosecutor of the Crown. The last thing that owls desire is to have a candle brought to them. How explain the fifteen hundred francs? He puts a gag on his wife's mouth and feigns astonishment. Her grandfather had come for her in the most natural way in the world. He adds the grandfather, which produces a good effect. Who was that grandfather? A wealthy farmer. I saw his passport. I think his name was Guillaume Lambert. Lambert is a respectable and extremely reassuring name. Thereupon Javert returns to Paris. Jean Valjean is certainly dead, said he, and I am a ninny. He has again begun to forget this history when, in March 1824, he hears of a singular personage in the parish of Saint-Medard, surnamed the mendicant who gives alms. The man lives alone with a little girl of eight who knows nothing about herself save that she has come from Montfermeil. Montfermeil. That name is always coming up. Javert borrows a beadle's outfit, crouches in the old spy's place, and receives alms from the suspected individual. The shock Jean Valjean receives on recognizing Javert is equal to the one Javert receives when he thinks he recognizes Jean Valjean. The darkness might have misled him. Jean Valjean's death is official. When in doubt, Javert, the man of scruples, never lays a finger on anyone's collar. He follows the man to the Gorbeau house, gets the old woman talking, hears of the coat lined with millions and the thousand-franc bill. He hires a room. Jean Valjean sees the candle through the keyhole and keeps silent. The next day the five-franc piece falls. The old woman warns Javert. At night, behind the trees of the boulevard, Javert is waiting with two men.
He has not mentioned the name at the Prefecture. The success is too magnificent to share, and he has a taste for the unforeseen. He prefers to elaborate his masterpieces in the dark. He does not lose sight of Jean Valjean for a single instant, even at the moments when Jean Valjean believes himself most secure. Why has he not arrested him? Because he is still in doubt. The police are not at their ease. The free press has made the Prefecture timid. Imagine the paragraph: an aged grandfather with white hair, walking with his grandchild aged eight, arrested as an escaped convict. Jean Valjean's night pace, forced to the child's step, has impressed such senility on his bearing that even Javert can make a mistake. Then, quite late, in the Rue de Pontoise, thanks to the brilliant light thrown from a dram-shop, he decidedly recognizes Jean Valjean. There are in this world two beings who give a profound start: the mother who recovers her child and the tiger who recovers his prey. Javert gave that profound start. He asks for reinforcements. The halt nearly loses the trail. He divines the river, goes straight to the bridge of Austerlitz, hears from the toll-keeper of a man with a little girl, sees them enter the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, remembers the Cul-de-Sac Genrot arranged there like a trap, posts a man at the sole exit, requisitions a patrol, and takes a pinch of snuff. He allows his man to go on ahead, happy at the thought that he is taken and yet at seeing him free, gloating with the voluptuousness of the spider which allows the fly to flutter. When he reached the centre of the web he found the fly no longer there. The sentinel has not seen the man pass. His disappointment borders on despair and rage. Great strategists have their eclipses. He was wrong to hesitate, wrong not to arrest him in the old building, wrong to take counsel in the moonlight, wrong, above all, to play at keeping such a man at the end of a thread. He does not lose his head. He organizes traps and beats the quarter all that night. The first thing he sees is the disorder in the street lantern whose rope has been cut. A precious sign which leads him astray, toward the Cul-de-Sac Genrot, the one direction in which Jean Valjean would probably have been lost. At daybreak he leaves two intelligent men on the outlook, and returns to the Prefecture of Police, as much ashamed as a police spy who had been captured by a robber might have been.
