Disclaimer: Javert, Valjean, and a few minor personages belong to Hugo. Eugene Francois Vidocq was the chief of the Parisian secret police from 1811 to 1827, so he belonged only to himself.
Author's Note: This used to be the opening chapter of a longer story which had been a WIP since times immemorial. Upon reviewing it a few days ago, I decided that if I don't make some changes, it'll be doomed to WIP status for all eternity. So I dismantled the story and re-wrote the first chapter, which you are about to read, into a longer one-shot. The other chapters are currently undergoing re-modeling and fumigation. They will be posted later as a separate story.
From the private correspondence of Vidocq, E.F., excerpt from a letter from "Fauchelevent." Dated 1832; partially de-classified as of 1972. A.N. F8 4937; cited with permission of the Musee de Surete Nationale.
"...with him only one portmanteau. He arrived into town by a post coach, around mid-January, if memory serves me right. Figuratively speaking, the district officials simply dropped him on our collective heads like so much snow.
A newcomer of any sort made news in our town, and a strange and menacing figure like Javert was bound to raise many eyebrows. And I'm fairly certain that in that whole town, none were more curious about him than my own self.
Of course, I made every effort to feign complete innocence of all worldly matters in general and of him in particular. One must keep on his toes when the authorities are on his tail; it would not have been prudent of me to exhibit interest in the sudden arrival into town of a new officer of the law. So I tried to stay out of his way and listened in on town gossip. I soon discovered that no one knew anything about him beyond what he himself volunteered, which was precious little.
It was not until I was made mayor a year later that I discovered a couple of intriguing details about his appointment. Or one detail, rather - a note confirming it, written by no other than M. Chabouillet. This puzzled me: why would the prefect of police in Paris concern himself with some provincial inspector?
My secretary, a pedantic and cynical fellow who had watched three mayors come and go already, informed me that the note arrived independently, three days after Javert showed up at the town hall. I found this government efficiency suspicious. In my experience, bureaucratic matters like these often took weeks to finalize.
I requested of the secretary to inventorize all the municipal appointments made under the previous mayor, as if I were planning to review the documents concerning them. In truth I only wanted to see that particular note.
Within a few days, it was exhumed from the archives. Besides the two formulaic "By-the-order-of-His-Very-Christian-Majesty" paragraphs and terms of employment, the communication held an addendum, obviously scribbled in great haste and in a different ink. This addendum intrigued me greatly. It prescribed two matters concerning Javert's appointment. Firstly, it indicated his allotted salary. I can't recall how much it amounted to exactly, but I remember it was quite substantial for his low rank, something like a thousand francs a year - easily three times the salary he would have gotten in our backwaters had it been drawn from the municipal funds. But it wasn't. Bizarrely, it was paid out from the monies of the Paris Prefecture, not the Montreuil-sur-Mer customs barrier. And secondly, Javert was provisioned with an unchallengeable right to appeal his placement "at any given moment" - this part was thrice underlined.
But the most intriguing aspect of the note was its authorship. The addendum was neither stamped nor signed, but I recognized the handwriting. It belonged to the King.
Naturally, I walked away with more questions than I started out with. All signs seemed to point to a mystery. The townspeople felt this also, and tongues flapped about unchecked by decorum or even common sense. A couple of officers in the garrison even maintained that Javert's papers were forged, and that he was actually a Prussian spy! I'm ashamed to say that from time to time I actually found myself nodding in accord with those windbags, since Javert was sometimes heard to mutter to himself in German.
To address briefly the matter of those first few months which you asked about. After the initial excitement over him died down, all sorts of people started to approach him with questions. Even the most brilliant of our salon luminaries, Mme G- and Mme de S-, expressed an interest in his person. I doubt any of them actually called to his home - he lived in a veritable garret, on the third floor of some run-down boarding house near the docks, and being seen in that quarter augured irreparable damage to a woman's reputation - but I have it on good authority that he got as many invites to balls and social events as I did. Whether he attended often or not, I do not know, but I can vouch for at least one of them, although that particular gathering was more of a business meeting than a party of pleasure.
His biography remained entirely obscure. Anything that concerned his current office and duties was a safe subject to broach, but nothing besides. Those who insisted on asking about his origins, relations or other personal affairs were rebuffed so bluntly and viciously that only a few short weeks after his arrival, Javert had already cemented for himself the reputation of a boor and a blackguard. I had also thought that he was a contrary and difficult fellow, although later I conceded him a few positive qualities, like honesty and diligence. Well, what else could I have thought? He never gave any indication this wasn't the case, that he wasn't simply some lout our city had to endure because of a high appointment. Who was I when the King first appointed me mayor in 1819? a nobody without a past, a workman who got rich through sheer luck! Could not then a whimsical caprice of the Highest temper result in the appointment as a town inspector of some disgraced bureaucrat who refused a pension?
If I sound defensive, well, I have no better excuse. I may not have made it obvious, but Javert set my teeth on edge. Your last letter made me feel like the worst sort of fool. It was as if fish scales had fallen from my eyes. I confess, sometimes I wish it had never reached me. I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for mistreating him now. Looking back on that first winter, it should have been obvious. He looked like a right horror then, like death warmed over. How I wish I were kinder to him! But alas, what's done is done. And perverse as it may sound, perhaps it was for the best that he endured all that pain on his own. You oughtn't to torment yourself over this - you did everything you could for him. If he really wanted yours or anyone else's sympathy, he would not have decided to leave Paris. I think he just wanted to be alone.
...several lines thoroughly scratched out...
You asked earlier whether I recognized him as an old Toulon prison guard. I confess that I don't even have that to excuse my immediate antipathy. In fact, had I recognized him, I would have probably been more friendly with him. But the man I met in M.-sur-M. in 1820 had nothing of that vivacious young adjutant-garde-chiorme in him (and certainly nothing at all of the wild lad I remembered from my earliest years of seaside slavery.) I am not simply talking of the predictable outer transformation of youth to mature man, though even this far exceeded the expected, considering his height. No, it was his spirit that was altered beyond recognition. I saw him most often in the earliest days of the Empire, before duties restricted him entirely to his ward, and I can attest that he was an entirely different person then. He spoke to everyone in the same jocular tone, guard or convict. He managed to be everywhere, observe everyone, know everyone's affairs, regardless of whether they were new to the galleys or old hands with decades of forced labor behind them. He always had a word for you, and while he was not always kind, - they didn't call him "I'm-warning-you" for nothing - he was always light-hearted enough in his teasing that no one held grudges, and the bolder of us even responded with jibes of our own.
When I was kept in the floating ward for "returned horses," fastened day and night to my bunk with double chains, he would sometimes come by and play guitar outside our door before lights out, just like he did for his fellows. You must recall the mind-crushing boredom of that nautical prison, where one isn't even allowed fatigue duty from fear of escape attempts. More of us went insane from boredom in that ward than succumbed to fevers or ailments. Javert's visits were like manna from Heaven to our benumbed minds. He would sit outside our door and practice his chords, composing little ditties and often humming in his native tongue. Occasionally he'd even sing to us but not often, as other guards did not approve of his "clowning" for our amusement." In short, he was a relatively good-natured fellow, completely lacking that gratuitous cruelty so prevalent in the sergeants that guarded us. You know yourself how rare it is to find an honorable man are among those employed in the bagnes.
But that man never set his foot in M.-sur-M. In his stead came a creature who was somber, serious and ostensibly without a trace of humanity. His eyes were cold and empty, his wide mouth curved perpetually downward, and his skin, once sunburned almost to a shade of coffee, was now barely darker than my own. Even his voice changed, lost some of that hoarseness; he no longer sounded as though he'd been living on straight brandy and cigarettes since infancy. He never laughed and very rarely smiled. And so, I didn't make the connection until Javert himself mentioned that he had worked in the Southern galleys as a youth, and even then it took me quite a while before I finally recalled why the name "Javert" had always sounded so peculiarly familiar to me.
Needless to say, it didn't take him nearly as long to recognize me. Already that winter I learned that Javert was doing his utmost to find any traces I may have left elsewhere before my arrival to M.-sur-M. To be fair, my intelligence concerning his preoccupation owed nothing to any indiscretion on his part - he wasn't really making a secret of it. And as secure as I was in my knowledge that all threads to my former life had been torn, I still couldn't help but shudder inwardly every time we passed each other on the street and nodded our silent greetings.
Paradoxically, after my incriminating episode with Father Fauchelevent's cart, we not only remained aloof but also began to underscore that aloofness to an extent that in retrospect seems utterly ridiculous. On my part, I figured that going out of my way to steer clear of Javert would now seem very suspicious indeed, so I did my best to run into him as often as I could - sometimes altering my usual strolling routes for that purpose - just to show him that his reminiscences about the "terrible man" from Toulon had not unsettled me in any way. On Javert's part, he obviously wanted to conceal that he was investigating me, so he took up precisely the opposite strategy and began avoiding me!
This comedy went on for several months; then I got elected mayor, and suddenly we could not keep at the game any longer. We were finally formally introduced to each other during a crush which Mme G- called together to celebrate what was in effect my second election to the office (I had rejected the offer the first time around). I rarely accepted invitations to society - the attention made me uneasy - but I felt it would be impolite to refuse this one. About an hour into it, I was fixing to abscond quietly, when the hostess, resplendent and bejeweled from her slippers to her coiffure, cried, "Oh, Monsieur Mayor," and seized me by the sleeve. "Have you met our brave peace-keeper yet? You mustn't leave without meeting him! He's quite a character. Oh, Monsieur Javert, do oblige us with a minute of your time!"
With that she dragged me unceremoniously across the buzzing drawing-room towards a very tall gentleman with not one but two Legion of Honor crosses pinned to the breast of his somber black waistcoat. On his head was a plain black wig, braided and clipped off in the back in the Spanish style. I barely recognized him. He was standing slightly apart from the festive crowd and conversing animatedly with the head of the town dispensary, doctor Dupont. Upon hearing the shrill exclamations of Mme G-, he excused himself graciously to Dupont and approached us. We bowed to each other and exchanged pleasantries, as befitted a newly hatched Mayor and his Chief Inspector, but our true feelings must have been plain to read.
So, there you are, Jean Valjean, thought Javert as he smiled and inquired after my health.
Yes. There I am, I echoed, while complaining to him of slight rheumatism in the knees.
I will find the proof eventually, his eyes pledged as we discussed the year's projected budget for general traffic surveillance.
You might, I agreed, supplying him with the address of some inexpensive rooms open for lease close to his new post.
And then you are done for, affirmed the slight twitch of his jaw as he promised to talk to the portress of the building as soon as his schedule permitted.
Maybe so. But for now, let us at least pretend to be civil to each other, I suggested while asking him if there was anything he and his men needed from the municipality.
While you are Mayor, I will obey you in full, as my duty dictates, acquiesced Javert, inclining his head in polite gratitude and declining further assistance. But do not forget for a moment who I am and who you are.
Then he straightened back out and fixed his cold eyes on me.
For I certainly will not.
Of course, that is only my imagining. Who knows what really went through his mind?..