A/N: Ok, ok so I know that the Policing of Rural Communes Initiative is a load of un-historical guff invented purely to facilitate the story. And I know that Javert was far more likely to have been in the infantry than the cavalry . . . and that Hugo doesn't specifically mention him having been in the army at all (it's just that quite how a tall, strong, fit man like that could have escaped being enlisted during one of the most militarised period of French history is slightly beyond me)

Anyway . . .

"I've come about a horse"

'Well of course you have!' Scaufflaire thought, 'this is why you are here and not in the baker's! Is there something about becoming a policeman which means one is compelled, ever after, to state the blindingly obvious?

All he said was, "How marvellous. Well, you've come to the right place Monsieur Javert"

He lifted the saddle he had been cleaning from his lap and strode from the barn into the courtyard. "Well then, follow me."

This Javert did, but slowly, with his arms folded over his chest, as if he would really rather have been anywhere else.

"And is it to hire or to buy, this horse?"

"To buy" Javert answered tersely, as if the very thought depressed him.

"And is it to ride or to drive? Or both?"

"To ride" Javert said, with the slightly hunted look of a man who fears that he will be press ganged into buying a cabriolet before the day is done.

"I take it that you do know how to ride, Monsieur Javert?" Scaufflaire enquired with a hesitant delicacy. He did not wish to give offence, but it was amazing how many people didn't. Or who – quite erroneously - thought they could and then got into terrible scrapes.

''Given that I used to be in the cavalry, I should certainly hope so!' Javert snapped inwardly – all Scaufflaire got out of him, however, was a terse and vaguely bored "Yep"

"And were you looking for anything in particular?"

"Oh, you know – not really. Four legs; mane and tail; ears rotating through three-hundred and sixty degrees; one end bites and the other one kicks. That sort of thing," Javert spoke in the same flat, dispassionate voice as before but his grey eyes sparkled nastily and the corner of his mouth twitched involuntarily. If he wasn't going to enjoy his morning, then he'd make damn straight no-one else would either.

"Yes, quite" Scaufflaire returned politely, "Could you just excuse me for a moment though – I see Monsieur Carnot has called about settling our feed bill."

As he strode off across the cobbled stable yard he remarked under his breath, too low for Javert to possibly hear, "Oh give me strength!"

Unfortunately for Scaufflaire, Javert had excellent hearing, and the good Inspector had to feign a rather theatrical coughing fit to cover his glee at having throw Scaufflaire off balance in under five minutes. This was a record even for him.

Watching the Fleming stride off into the distance through half closed eyes, Javert leant his back against the door of one of the loose boxes that looked over the stable yard and pouted.

Truth be told, Javert was still feeling rather resistant to the idea of purchasing a horse. He had avoided coming to see Scaufflaire for as long as he could find other immediately pressing things do, and now he was here he was conducting business with all the surly bad grace he could muster.

At that point a lean, sad old mare, as grizzled and whiskery as Javert himself, stuck her head over the door Javert was leaning on. She gently nuzzled his side whiskers, snorted in his ear and then, seeming to decide that he was really rather uninteresting, ambled back into the shadow of her box.

"I know how you feel, old lass" he mumbled.

Drat it! His bad humour was all the fault of that wretched Madeleine – baiting Scaufflaire was merely a displacement activity.

It had all started when Madeleine had become Mayor, a good few months back now. Well, actually it had probably started when Javert had been 'promoted' from Paris to take charge of Montreuil's police. 'Although', he mused, 'it had probably started a good long time before that – who knew where anything really started? Wasn't life just one set of significant circumstances leading into another until the mind grew dizzy and light faded out forever?'

Actually, scrap that. Let's just say it started with the Policing of Rural Communes Initiative. Oh, and he was still blaming Madeleine.

Madeleine's initiative for Policing Rural Communes was a whole heap of irritation for Javert, once again dressed up as a promotion. He had to admit that it was one of Madeleine's less crackpot schemes (better by far than 'Project-Hug-A-Harlot' or 'Initiative-For-Making-Felons-Feel-All-Warm-And-Fuzzy' – not that these were real schemes the Mayor had proposed, you understand, merely the kind of thing Javert, in his darker moments, feared he might one day trot out). He also had to admit that the policing of the rural communities around Montreuil left much to be desired, and that it was high time someone took it in hand – and that someone may as well be Madeleine and his very good self. He just wished that the now frequent tours he was having to make amongst the various outlying villages could be less time consuming and physically exhausting.

He'd started off trying to accomplish them on foot – a position which he'd soon realised was untenable, although the streak of dogged masochism in his nature had made him press on doing it until he'd made himself ill. He'd tried borrowing horses from the local garrison, which had been a farce. He'd tried improvising journeys using the local coach network, which was horrendously unreliable and only served to make him cross. He'd even considered getting himself transferred back to Paris where they had this wonderful invention, seemingly unknown in M-Sur-M, called the cab. To no avail.

'I suppose I'll have to buy a horse' he'd thought, and had just managed to talk himself round the considerable expense and the fact that a horse was just another damn thing to worry about when Madeleine had made the very same suggestion, adding to it that he would be happy to reimburse the cost of its livery from the town's coffers on the understanding that animal would be a shared resource available to other public officials. This had made Javert dig his heels in and dismiss the suggestion for a further few weeks. During this time he'd continued borrowing post horses at need – despite the nasty suspicion that this was working out as more expensive for the municipality.

Any time Madeleine suggested anything to him he automatically felt a strong desire to do the opposite, that was most of the meat of this argument, childish though he knew the impulse to be. He had been secretly and guiltily looking forward to getting back in the saddle too. Javert liked horses, he understood them and they, by and large, understood him too. He had occasionally been heard to remark that if he ever met a woman as loyal as a horse he would be married, if he ever met a friend as understanding as a horse he would cultivate them, and if he ever found a brother officer as hard working as a horse he'd spend less time complaining whilst doing overtime! It was just that Madeleine's seal of approval automatically took the fun out of the project.

And any suggestion of charity from the Mayor made him feel sick to his craw. He knew full well that his salary wouldn't actually stretch to the cost of keeping a mount, and even though it was presented to him as the most beneficial course of action from a purely practical, governmental standpoint, Javert couldn't help but feel the clammy touch of Madeleine's flabby benevolence in the gesture, which made him wish to recoil from it. It was only when he'd done the sums himself one evening after a particularly trying 15 mile round trip to some God forsaken hamlet or other that he'd accepted that it genuinely was the soundest option.

And so here he was.

Maybe, he reasoned, it was time to stop being so sulky and ungrateful and get on with it. Maybe that English expression about not looking a gift horse in the mouth was an opposite, if rather obvious, fit for this situation.