It was five o'clock in the evening, and, as he did every Thursday at that time, Inspector Javert stalked the streets of Paris looking for a prostitute or a drunkard or some such to arrest. It had been a slow week. Although the thought of Parisians upholding the scriptures of French law highly appealed to his aggravated sense of right and wrong, that thought that Javert was unable to find a ruffian or two-and they were out there-was just enough to make him uneasy. So he continued to comb his surroundings with a keen pair of eyes. If anything at all were to go amiss, Javert would be the first one to make a blind arrest.
But no such ruffians presented themselves. Javert saw a filthy and rag-clothed gamin roaming the streets; he saw a dazed boy in a threadbare black coat meandering about, he saw an old man and his daughter out for an evening stroll together. The one thing that Javert did not see was any activity shady enough to warrant his concern. And this frustrated him.
Then an idea flashed in his head. That pretty student boy who wore the revolutionary cockade around his waist...what was his name? Enjolras! Yes, that clicked in Javert's mind. Enjolras. That brazen radical was bound to be creating some disorder on such a clear summer night. "Yes," Javert thought to himself. "I'm sure that there's a rally somewhere just waiting for me to break it up." So he turned sharply, his black greatcoat swirling around him, and he headed to the place he just knew there would be a riot-the Cafe Musain.