Javert passed slowly down the street of the Armed Man. He walked with drooping head for the first time in his life, and likewise, for the first time in his life, with his hands behind his back. Up to that day he had borrowed from Napoleon's attitudes only that which is expressive of resolution, arms folded across the chest. Uncertainty had been unknown to him. Now his whole person, slow and sombre, was stamped with anxiety. He took the shortest cut to the river, halted at the angle of a bridge, and leaned both elbows on the parapet, his chin in his hands. Men who fall in there never reappear. A novelty, a revolution, a catastrophe had just taken place in the depths of his being. For several hours he had ceased to be simple. That brain, so limpid in its blindness, had lost its transparency. When he had encountered Jean Valjean on the banks, there had been in him something of the wolf which regains his grip on his prey, and of the dog who finds his master again. He beheld before him two paths, both equally straight, but he beheld two, and that terrified him, him who had never known more than one straight line. To owe his life to a malefactor, to repay that service with another service, to say Be free, to betray society in order to remain true to his conscience: this was what overwhelmed him. To deliver up Jean Valjean was bad. To leave him at liberty was bad. There was disgrace in any resolution. One sole resource remained: to return in all haste and commit Jean Valjean to prison. It was clear that that was what he ought to do. He could not.
Jean Valjean was the load which weighed upon his spirit. All the axioms which had served him as points of support had crumbled away. Madeleine reappeared behind Jean Valjean, and the two figures formed but one, which was venerable. Javert felt that something terrible was penetrating his soul: admiration for a convict. Twenty times, as he sat in the carriage face to face with Jean Valjean, the legal tiger had roared within him. Every time that his arm had been raised towards Jean Valjean's collar, his hand had fallen back again, as beneath an enormous weight, and a strange voice had cried that he should have the basin brought and wash his claws. His supreme anguish was the loss of certainty. The code was no longer anything more than a stump in his hand. He asked himself what that convict had done in leaving him his life. His duty. No. Something more. And I in showing mercy upon him in my turn, what have I done. My duty. No. Something more. So there is something beyond duty. Here he took fright. One of the scales fell into the abyss, the other rose heavenward. He had centred nearly all his religion in the police. He had a superior at the prefecture. Up to that day he had never dreamed of that other superior. This new chief he became unexpectedly conscious of, and he felt embarrassed by him. In the presence of a superior who amazes him too greatly, the inferior has no other resource than that of handing in his resignation. But how was he to set about handing in his resignation to that presence.
One fact dominated everything else: he had just shut his eyes on an escaped convict. He had just robbed the laws of a man who belonged to them. He was suffering from the strange pains of a conscience abruptly operated on for the cataract. Authority was dead within him. To be granite and to doubt. To be the watch-dog, and to lick the intruder's hand. To be ice and melt. That which was passing in Javert was the derailment of a soul, a probity launched in a straight line and breaking. Up to this point everything above him had been a smooth plane. The irregular, the unforeseen, the slip over a precipice: this was the work of the lower regions. Now he was suddenly terrified by this unprecedented apparition: a gulf on high. An honest servitor of the law could suddenly find himself caught between two crimes, the crime of allowing a man to escape and the crime of arresting him. There might be blind alleys in duty. Society, the magistracy, official cruelty, legal infallibility, all this was rubbish; and, erect at the summit of all that ruin, a man with a green cap on his head and a halo round his brow. Was this to be endured. No. There were only two ways of escaping from it. One was to go resolutely to Jean Valjean and restore him to his cell. The other. Javert quitted the parapet, and, with head erect this time, betook himself with a firm tread towards the station-house.
He mentioned his name, showed his card, and sat down at the table of the post, where a candle was burning. He took a pen and wrote a few observations for the good of the service: barefoot searches that make men cough, relays that should watch each other, a chair forbidden, a canteen that can touch a prisoner's hand, two sous forced for a name distinctly called, ten sous withheld for a broken thread, a parlor reached through a boys' court, gendarmes repeating examinations, a woman at the wicket of the secret cells. He wrote these lines in his calmest hand, not omitting a single comma, signed them as inspector of the first class, dated them about one o'clock in the morning, sealed the note, and left it on the table. The glazed and grated door fell to behind him. He returned with automatic precision to the very point which he had abandoned, leaned on his elbows, and found himself again in the same attitude on the same paving-stone. He did not appear to have stirred. The darkness was complete. He bent his head and gazed. What lay below was not water, it was a gulf. All at once he took off his hat and placed it on the edge of the quay. A moment later, a tall black figure appeared erect upon the parapet, bent over towards the river, then drew itself up again, and fell straight down into the shadows. A dull splash followed, and the shadow alone was in the secret.
