Javert deposits Jean Valjean in the city prison. The arrest occasions an extraordinary commotion. At the single word convict, nearly everyone deserts him. In less than two hours all the good he has done is forgotten. The details of Arras are not yet known. All day the town talks: he was a liberated convict; his name was not Madeleine; Béjean, Bojean, Boujean; he will be tried for a highway robbery committed long ago. That man was too good, too perfect, too affected. He refused the cross. I always thought there was some evil history back of all that. The drawing-rooms particularly abound in such remarks. One old lady, a subscriber to the Drapeau Blanc, is not sorry: it will be a lesson to the Bonapartists. The phantom called Madeleine vanishes from the town. Only three or four persons remain faithful to his memory. The old portress who served him is among the number.
On the evening of that day she sits in her lodge, still in a thorough fright. The factory has been closed all day. The carriage gate is bolted. The street is deserted. Only the two nuns are in the house, watching beside Fantine. Towards the hour when he was accustomed to return, she rises mechanically, takes the key of his chamber and the flat candlestick, hangs the key on the nail, and sets the candlestick aside, as though she were expecting him. Two hours later she rouses and exclaims that she has hung his key on the nail. At that moment the small window in the lodge opens. A hand seizes the key and the candlestick and lights the taper. She knows that hand. It is Madeleine. She thought he was. In prison, he finishes. I broke a bar of one of the windows; I let myself drop from the top of a roof; and here I am. Go and find Sister Simplice. He is quite sure she will guard him better than he should guard himself. No one ever found out how he entered the courtyard without opening the big gates. He ascends, leaves the candle on the top step, closes window and shutters by feeling, then returns for the light. The portress has done up his room. On the table, picked out of the ashes, lie the two iron ends of the cudgel and the forty-sou piece blackened by the fire. He writes a paper: these are the two tips of my iron-shod cudgel and the forty-sou piece stolen from Little Gervais, which I mentioned at the Court of Assizes. He tears an old shirt and wraps the Bishop's candlesticks. He nibbles a piece of black bread, probably the prison bread. Two taps. Sister Simplice, pale, red-eyed, the candle trembling in her hand. The emotions of the day have turned the nun into a woman once more. He hands her a paper for the curé: keep an eye on all I leave; pay the trial and the funeral of the woman who died yesterday; the rest is for the poor. Does he not desire a last look? No. I am pursued; it would only end in their arresting me in that room, and that would disturb her.
A loud noise becomes audible on the staircase. The old portress is swearing that not a soul has entered. A man answers that there is a light in that room nevertheless. They recognize Javert's voice. Jean Valjean blows out the light and places himself in the angle the opening door will mask. Sister Simplice falls on her knees near the table. Javert enters, sees the nun, and halts in amazement. A nun is a creature who never sins. His first movement is to retire. His second is to remain. Are you alone in this room? Yes. You have not seen a certain person this evening, that Jean Valjean? No. She has lied twice in succession, without hesitation, promptly, as a person does when sacrificing herself. Javert retires with a deep bow. He does not even observe the candle which has just been extinguished and is still smoking on the table. An hour later a man, marching amid trees and mists, is rapidly departing toward Paris, carrying a bundle, dressed in a blouse no one can explain. One last word about Fantine. The curé thinks he is doing right, reserving as much money as possible from what was left for the poor. Who was concerned, after all? A convict and a woman of the town. So Fantine is buried in the free corner of the cemetery where the poor are lost. Fortunately God knows where to find the soul again. She is thrown into the public grave. Her grave resembled her bed.
