Veiled with footprints, darkened with waterstains, and ripped halfway, it crawled its way to his feet and collapsed in his hands like a fragile child when he took it up.

None of the words were disfigured beyond legibility, and as he read them, the old inspector was lifted away from his weary body, finding a door through the impregnable wall he had built for himself and into sweet fresh air for a breath of something he had never tasted.

But the breath was exhaled and the paper crumpled. Poetry was for the young and those in love; certainly not Javert.