Close to death. The words echoed in my head. Was I ready to die? Suicide is against God, after all. But was there another way out? I couldn't think of one. I had to go against my duty to the law and let Valjean go or go against God and arrest a good man. My mind went back to the prison.
I sat in the cell that was overcrowded with men who had done nothing wrong. Many of the men had served under me in the National Guard. On the 16th of October, we received news that Marie Antoinette had been executed. We held a brief moment of silence in her memory.
Some time in February, some guards came into the prison. "Stand up!" they shouted at us. We all scrambled up. It was painful to move with the shackles around our wrists and ankles, which were meant to keep us from trying to escape. "We have come to inform you that as per the Ventôse decrees, your property will be seized and distributed to patriots in need. We will take you one at a time and you will tell us all of the property that you own." They began to call us, but no one came back. After what felt like an eternity, one of the guards called my name.''
"Alain Javert!" A guard yelled. I went to the door of the cell, which the guard unlocked, quickly pulled me through, and relocked. He pushed me down many hallways to a small room. Inside, there was a hard wood chair with metal straps for the legs, waist, chest, arms, and neck. I gulped nervously at the sight. There were three guards in the room. The guard holding me shoved me in and shut the door. With the other guards, he stripped me of my clothes and unlocked my shackles. They pushed me into the chair and secured the metal straps tightly. I could barely breathe. Then they walked out and locked the door.
As I sat in the chair in the pitch-black room, I heard screaming from other rooms. I was suddenly very nervous about what they would do to me. After what I could guess was about four hours, two guards came in and lit a fire in the fireplace and put a pot with a handle sticking out of it over the fire. They left again. At least there was some light now.
Around half an hour later, two men walked in. One stood right in front of me and the other walked over to the fire. He had a glove on.
"Alain Javert?" The man in front of me asked. I just glared at him. "You will answer me when I talk to you." He went behind the chair, and the strap around my chest tightened. I felt like I was suffocating. The man came back in front of me. "Are you Alain Javert?"
"Yes," I managed to gulp.
"Yes, sir," he corrected. "Do you know why you were arrested?"
"I was a leader in the National Guard before the Prussians attacked, sir" It took all of my concentration to not say the last word sarcastically.
"Now. Since you are an enemy of the revolution, your property will be seized and given to someone who needs it. Tell us, where do you own property?"
"14 rue de Pontoise in Méry-sur-Oise," I choked out. He wrote down the address.
"Any others?"
"No, sir."
"LIAR!" He spat. "I know that street and it is only small houses. Surely someone of your former rank would own more property somewhere."
"I don't, sir! I live alone and am not home often."
"Ferrand!" He shouted. The man standing by the fire grabbed the handle with his gloved hand. As he walked closer, I saw that there was some sort of dark liquid in a ladle. All I could tell was it was hot. He got near me. He came right in front of me and slowly poured the hot liquid onto my chest. I screamed out in pain. "I repeat," the first man said as the other, Ferrand, walked back to the fire, "Do you own any other property?"
"No," I managed to say through the pain. "I do not waste money on such frivolous things as multiple properties."
"Very well," the interrogator said, standing up. He tightened the straps binding me to the chair and left the room without another word. I was barely getting enough air to stay alive.
After a few hours, some guards walked in. They undid the straps and I collapsed onto my knees. They pulled some rather itchy clothes onto my bare skin and laughed when they saw the burns on my chest. They put heavier shackles on me than I was wearing before and dragged me to a different cell, one that was meant for four people but already contained seven. I recognized them from my time with the National Guard. The cell had obviously never been cleaned, which I discovered as I was thrown onto the floor of it and the door was locked behind me.
My hand went to the place where I still have scars from that hot liquid. Tear continued to fall as I recalled the painful memory.
Not too long after the interrogation, if you could even call it that, terror filled the prison. Guards informed us that Robespierre had essentially taken over the government. We all knew what that meant: France had a merciless dictator and we would all be dead soon. For several months, tension was high in the prison. People began to disappear. Our small cell went from eight to five.
In what I later found out to be early June, the Law of 22 Prairial was signed. It sped up judicial procedures, leading to mass trials and executions. People were disappearing at a rapid pace. Eventually, I was the only one left in my cell and there were very few others in the prison. We were consolidated into just a few cells and told we were going to trial.
The trial, which was certainly not the right term for the "judicial proceedings," was very short. We were all found guilty and sentenced to the guillotine. We were kept in a holding cell overnight and were to be executed the next morning, July 27. We stayed up all night, unable to sleep, and prayed that a miracle would happen and we would not be killed.
The next day came. The guards brought us out to the guillotine. Robespierre was making a speech about why we were being executed. I was toward the end of the line. They brought the first man to the guillotine. I had to turn away as I heard the blade come down. I got closer and closer to the front of the line. The man three people in front of me was brought to the guillotine. I recognize him. He was my second in command in the National Guard. "No!" I screamed as the blade came down, ending the life of the man who was closest I considered to a friend. Everyone turned to me.
"He's next," Robespierre ordered. I swallowed nervously as I was dragged to the guillotine. I lied down on the hard wood surface, staring up at the blade. They strapped me down and I closed my eyes. "God save my soul," I thought to myself. I waited for the blade to come down and end the pain. I kept waiting. It didn't come.
"You're under arrest," I heard a man's voice say. I opened my eyes. There was a guard standing in front of Robespierre.
"Excusez-moi?" Robespierre asked him. More guards came and arrested the dictator. One came over and rescued me from my deathbed. This was the miracle I prayed for.
After being freed, I went immediately to the church. I spent the rest of the day and well into the night there, praying and thanking God for sparing my life. The bishop allowed me to stay there until I had earned enough money to buy myself a new house. I started my life from scratch. I joined the police force and eventually was able to buy myself a small house on the outskirts of Paris. Soon after I was released, Robespierre was executed with around 150 of his supporters. I quickly ascended the ranks of the police force throughout the reign of the Directory and the Directorate. When Napoleon became first consul, he gave me a job as a guard at a small prison in the southern part of the country, where I worked for four years.
God was looking after me that day when I was almost killed. I had always been a religious man, but it was on that day that I became a devout Catholic and devoted my life to God. My life had been spared, and now I was about to throw it away. Could I get rid of something that God had already saved? But there is no other option, is there?
Sorry it took me so long to update! I have been very busy and this chapter took a surprising amount of research. I want this story to be as factual as possible, and although I remember quite a lot about the French revolution from history class a few years ago, I needed details. I wanted to show that it isn't just on the bridge where Javert suffers and I wanted to get him into the police somehow and this is what I came up with. I actually had quite a lot of fun writing this chapter. I made Javert's first name Alain, because one of it's translations is stone, which I thought fit him because his "heart is stone." I hope you enjoyed the chapter! I'll try to update sooner. Please review and follow the story so you know when I update!
~principalflutist1
