Once again we watch a coach and four progress across the landscape of northern France. However, this time the horses are not fiery since this coach is public transport, which never works properly. The Paris-Calais diligence is badly sprung and very crowded. The air inside the carriage is close with the smell of unwashed winter coats and . . . garlic.
The reader may guess who was aboard.
"Would you like some parsley, sonny?" asks the old lady sitting opposite Marius.
Marius would very much like some parsley as he is embarrassingly aware that he has helped the inside of the coach to smell like the kitchen ofthe grimier workers' café. He is fully aware of just how unpleasant and stomach-churning an overweening stench of garlic can be. He himself had put up with it until the first post stop, at which point he had bought a bulb of garlic from an old herb seller and devoured it whole. It had been the most disgusting experience of his life, but he had kept it down and, on returning to the coach, found that he couldn't smell the inspector at all.. He did have a slight feeling that, since then, the other passengers had been giving him evil looks, so he ignored them and maintained conversation with the inspector. Unfortunately, he now has the distinct impression that he will be bored to death before he ever reaches Calais.
"Did I ever tell you about the time I worked out that the mayor of Montreuil was a convict?"
"You did, yes," says Marius, resisting the urge to add 'Three times since we left Paris'. Instead he says: "Surely that's not the only exciting thing to happen to you in all your time in the police?"
"Well, no! Now, let me see . . . Let me see . . .Well, this one time, at Toulon - "
Marius shudders: "Just stop!"
"Why?"
"There isn't a flute in this story, is there?"
Javert knits his brows, perplexed: "I think a flute might come into it somewhere - or was it a French horn ? "
The inspector buries his chin in his cravat and carries on talking to himself. Marius sighs. He had never previouslythought that he would find another human being as dull as his grandfather - but here is the specimen on the seat next to him.Inspector Javert and Luc-Esprit Gillenormand, Marius reflects with worry in his heart, are actually distressingly alike - arch-conservative ancien-regime relics whoan never remember anybody's name, seem to live on snuff and cary walking sticks which they brandish wistfully at small dogs. Thankfully the inspector has not yet used his stick to lift up women's' skirts, as his grandfather was sometimes wont to do, for which Marius is suitably grateful.
Actually, there is something that Marius wants to talk to the inspector about, but it's a little . . embarrassing.
"How long have you been with the police, Monsieur Javert?"
"Six years as a prison guard and twenty five with the municipals."
"You must know an awful lot!"
Javert smiles proudly: "Yes, I do. Why?"
"Well, um, you know how I'm meant to be a lawyer? You see, there are a few things - one big thing really - that I don't understand. Could you explain it to me please?"
"Well, what is it? I'll give it a go."
"The law"
"The law? It's a big thing. Which bit of it exactly? Procedure of arrest? Matrimonial? Property law? - that, I give you, is complex - "
"No. Just The Law. You know?"
"Are you telling me you don't understand anything? Not even the penal system, the municipal police or the bar?"
For an answer, Marius looks confused.
"This, I see, is going to take some time."
Javert has the distinct suspicion that he is going to be bored to death before he ever reaches Calais. It is not that he minds explaining the entire civil code, penal code and the structure of the French judiciary system. Explaining it three times over in quick succession to someone to who he may as well have read his laundry list, in Rom, backwards for all the good it does, is somewhat disheartening.
He is halfway through describing the duties of an justice of the peace when the little twerp starts singing
"Somewhere, beyond the sea
Somewhere, waiting for me
Somewhere, beyond the shore - "
Fortunately for Javert, the coach pulls up on the Calais docks before he is forced to listen to any more. He jumps out of the coach and runs.
"God, I need to find and inn, preferably one with sturdy furniture!"
"Why?" asks the Small Voice.
"So that I can have a large brandy and then smack my head repeatedly into a table."
"Fair enough," says the Small Voice, "There's a place just round the corner."
Javert smiles. For once he is quite pleased to hear from the Small Voice. After that little fool Pontmercy even she is good company. His is also beginning to come to terms with her. When she first appeared he had been rather worried - which is only natural - and also irritated by her incessant kvetching and cavilling. 'Why should he be plagued by a random disembodied female?' he asked himself. 'and who the hell could she be?' At first he came up with two possibilities, both now disproved. The first was that the voice was his mother. Then he decided that the voice didn't swear enough. Which left possibility number two: could the voice be . . . Mathilde? Javert hoped not. Firstly that would mean that Mathilde was dead, which wasn't a nice thing to happen to anyone. Secondly, Javert knew that Mathilde would never let anything as trifling as death slow her down, meaning that he would never know a moment's peace again. It was only gradually that he came to realise the Small Voice's true identity. To be honest, he had all but forgotten about the wretched woman who had played such a brief but important part in his recent past and had been surprised to hear from her again (the fact that he had watched her die and been, unfairly, accused of killed her added somewhat to this sense of surprise). Not that he could say, hand on heart, that his spectre ('The inspector's spectre' ) was being entirely unreasonable - he probably deserved it. Anyway, he could learn to get along with her.
"Thanks," he says, quietly so the other people on the street won't thing he is marble-less, "for the directions."
"Ce n'est rien - after all, God knows it's easy to be kind." she replies slyly.
