This could be recognized by some emphasis in his speech.
As we have said, he had no vices.
When he was pleased with himself, he permitted himself a pinch of snuff.
Therein lay his connection with humanity.
The reader will have no difficulty in understanding that Javert was the terror of that whole class which the annual statistics of the Ministry of Justice designates under the rubric, Vagrants.
The name of Javert routed them by its mere utterance; the face of Javert petrified them at sight.
Such was this formidable man.
Javert was like an eye constantly fixed on M. Madeleine.
An eye full of suspicion and conjecture.
M. Madeleine had finally perceived the fact; but it seemed to be of no importance to him.
He did not even put a question to Javert; he neither sought nor avoided him; he bore that embarrassing and almost oppressive gaze without appearing to notice it.
He treated Javert with ease and courtesy, as he did all the rest of the world.
It was divined, from some words which escaped Javert, that he had secretly investigated, with that curiosity which belongs to the race, and into which there enters as much instinct as will, all the anterior traces which Father Madeleine might have left elsewhere.
He seemed to know, and he sometimes said in covert words, that some one had gleaned certain information in a certain district about a family which had disappeared.
Once he chanced to say, as he was talking to himself,
“I think I have him!”
Then he remained pensive for three days, and uttered not a word.
It seemed that the thread which he thought he held had broken.
Moreover, and this furnishes the necessary corrective for the too absolute sense which certain words might present, there can be nothing really infallible in a human creature, and the peculiarity of instinct is that it can become confused, thrown off the track, and defeated.
Otherwise, it would be superior to intelligence, and the beast would be found to be provided with a better light than man.
Javert was evidently somewhat disconcerted by the perfect naturalness and tranquillity of M. Madeleine.
One day, nevertheless, his strange manner appeared to produce an impression on M. Madeleine.
It was on the following occasion.
CHAPTER VI—FATHER FAUCHELEVENT
One morning M. Madeleine was passing through an unpaved alley of M. sur M.; he heard a noise, and saw a group some distance away. He approached.
An old man named Father Fauchelevent had just fallen beneath his cart, his horse having tumbled down.
This Fauchelevent was one of the few enemies whom M. Madeleine had at that time.
When Madeleine arrived in the neighborhood, Fauchelevent, an ex-notary and a peasant who was almost educated, had a business which was beginning to be in a bad way.
Fauchelevent had seen this simple workman grow rich, while he, a lawyer, was being ruined.
This had filled him with jealousy, and he had done all he could, on every occasion, to injure Madeleine.
Then bankruptcy had come; and as the old man had nothing left but a cart and a horse, and neither family nor children, he had turned carter.
The horse had two broken legs and could not rise.
The old man was caught in the wheels. The fall had been so unlucky that the whole weight of the vehicle rested on his breast.
The cart was quite heavily laden.
Father Fauchelevent was rattling in the throat in the most lamentable manner.
They had tried, but in vain, to drag him out.
An unmethodical effort, aid awkwardly given, a wrong shake, might kill him.
It was impossible to disengage him otherwise than by lifting the vehicle off of him.
Javert, who had come up at the moment of the accident, had sent for a jack-screw.
M. Madeleine arrived.
People stood aside respectfully.
“Help!” cried old Fauchelevent. “Who will be good and save the old man?”
M. Madeleine turned towards those present:—
“Is there a jack-screw to be had?”
“One has been sent for,” answered the peasant.
“How long will it take to get it?”
“They have gone for the nearest, to Flachot’s place, where there is a farrier; but it makes no difference; it will take a good quarter of an hour.”
“A quarter of an hour!” exclaimed Madeleine.
It had rained on the preceding night; the soil was soaked. The cart was sinking deeper into the earth every moment, and crushing the old carter’s breast more and more.
It was evident that his ribs would be broken in five minutes more.