Chapter Four
Disclaimer: I do not own Les Misérables.
Javert had presented himself at Madeleine's office and had been told that he was at the hospital despite the fact that it was not the mayor's customary time to be there.
As long as Madeleine was not neglecting his duty (and someone as wonderfully if sometimes misguidedly dutiful as him never would), it did not matter if he insisted on spending every waking moment at that woman's bedside or watching her child. It had not gotten that far, as of yet, but Javert sometimes worried. It was not often that he encountered someone so good that they needed some form of intervention and he was not entirely sure what to do.
The child Cosette was happily playing on the floor with a doll that was far too expensive. A gift from Madeleine, no doubt.
He would prefer not to be forced to engage in a conversation with her but it would be inefficient to go looking for the sisters to ask or for Madeleine himself. "Where is Monsieur le maire?"
Cosette picked up her doll and stood up. "He is with my mother. Shall I go and get him?"
Javert shook his head. If Madeleine was speaking to Fantine without Cosette than their conversation would be to the point and conclude soon enough. His business was not urgent and so it would not do to interrupt.
"Would you like to play with me?" Cosette asked suddenly.
Javert stared uncomprehendingly at her. "Play…with you?"
Cosette nodded and held up her doll. "Catherine and I want you to play with us." She changed her voice and started waving her doll around. "Oh, yes, please play with us!" What was she doing? Was the doll supposed to be speaking?
This might have been the strangest thing that anyone had ever said to him and, given his work and the uncover operations that went along with it, that was really saying something. What did he know of 'playing', especially with a doll and a small girl?
Cosette completely failed to pick up on his disinterest and was still looking at him expectantly.
"I don't have time to play with you," Javert finally gold her.
Cosette cocked her head. "No? But you are just standing here."
"I am waiting for Monsieur le maire," Javert reminded her.
She remained unconvinced. "Playing won't make him take longer but you'll have more fun."
He highly doubted that.
"Monsieur Madeleine plays with me," Cosette tried again.
"He is very generous with his time," Javert replied shortly.
Cosette seemed to give up at that but she resumed playing suspiciously loudly as if hoping to draw him in.
It did not work.
Eventually, after maybe a quarter of an hour, Madeleine emerged from Fantine's room.
Cosette lit up upon seeing him and Madeleine smiled in response.
"Your mother would like to see you, child," he said gently.
Cosette nodded and went in to see her and the mayor's eyes fell upon Javert.
"Javert!" he exclaimed in some surprise. Javert did not spend much time in such a place as this. "Is something the matter?"
"She wanted me to play with her," Javert replied unthinkingly. But he had asked what was wrong.
Madeleine's eyes were amused but he mercifully maintained a neutral expression. "Yes, Cosette does love to play with others. Her mother plays as much as she is able, though of course she is very ill, and I have obliged her on occasion."
More than 'on occasion' if the mayor playing with her was the first thing that came to the child's mind when trying to persuade Javert.
Madeleine sighed. "I only wish that she was more willing to play with children her own age but she seems to have had negative experience in that regard."
Javert felt that he could shed some light on the matter. "The Thénardiers had two daughters her age who were playing while she was not. They likely would not let her or at least their parents would not."
Madeleine looked sad. "I see. But you did not come here to discuss Cosette, surely."
Javert shook his head. "No. I wish to speak to you about the matter of Arras."
Madeleine did not move.
It was no surprise, really. Undoubtedly he realized that Javert had finally heard about his act of well-meaning idiocy. Hopefully by now Madeleine saw how foolish such an attempt was, no matter how noble his motives inevitably were.
He stayed silent, attempting to make the quiet so oppressive that Madeline would feel compelled to explain exactly what he was thinking. The mayor seemed content to simply stand there and never speak again, however, and so Javert was forced to continue.
"I told you that I had mistakenly believed that you were Jean Valjean but had been made aware of my error and the very next day you went to Valjean's trial and denounced yourself as that convict. You can understand my…concern."
"Is this your way of asking if I am Jean Valjean after all?" Madeleine asked softly.
Javert shook his head irritably. He had learned from his mistake and would not be baited into making yet another baseless accusation about the exact same subject. "Of course not."
Strangely, this did not seem to make Madeleine happy. "Why not?"
Was he trying to humiliate him? They had already discussed this and they had both been to the trial. "Because it is impossible."
"You did not think so once," Madeleine pressed.
"I was mistaken and I do not waste my time on pointless hypotheticals," Javert snapped.
"Indulge me, please," Madeleine requested.
Javert sighed. No doubt, beneath a healthy layer of disgust and repulsion at being confused for such a man, there was a hidden fascination at being thought capable of being so notorious. Civilians were all the same. "Monsieur le maire-"
"I have striven for many years to make myself the very antithesis of a convict and, for you to have thought otherwise, I must have failed somewhere along the line and I simply must know where," Madeleine said stubbornly. "Please, Javert. You are the only one I can ask."
That struck a chord within him. If someone had mistaken him for a convict while he was not posing as a criminal, he would need – not want, need – to know, too. Sometimes even while he was supposed to pass for a convict it disturbed him how successful he seemed to be at it.
"Very well," Javert agreed reluctantly. "I do not know how familiar you are with the prison systems." He paused but Madeleine did not give any indication. "I rarely saw a prisoner there with a sentence of five years or more who did not attempt to escape. Some especially villainous or impatient convicts tried to escape even if they had shorter sentences. Some of these escapes even succeeded although those were not many. It was fairly common to get out of Toulon, all of the prisoners help each other, but we found most of them in the end."
"It would not be difficult," Madeleine remarked, "for even if they found clothes to wear that did not scream of the galleys, there is still the shorn hair to contend with and – beyond that – I've found that time in the Galleys leaves its mark on a man."
Javert nodded. "You've undoubtedly seen convict processions. That is why the most successful escape attempts often are those from convicts who have been in prison for less than a year and several escapes happen at the same time. Though it is difficult to prove, it is widely believed that people from the outside assist them in their endeavor. Unfortunately, this means that it tends to be the worst criminals who succeed in escaping. While I would not have any criminal get away, it is more of a problem with the hardened career criminals than it would be for someone arrested for getting into a fight with the wrong people, for example."
"That does make sense," Madeleine agreed. "If you have so many attempts then you would need to be skilled at catching them and so only the professional criminals could prevail against you."
Javert nodded, accepting the implied compliment. "Though I am no longer at Toulon, I spent years tracking down the criminals who escaped. Some of them were quite cunning and more prepared than the usual rabble who thinks of nothing more than just getting out and so I have gotten into the habit of watching everyone carefully. You dragged your leg, Monsieur, and that is a common indicator of having once been in chains."
Madeleine looked down at his leg thoughtfully. "Is it?"
"But of course that is not the only reason one might have for dragging one's leg and so that was hardly conclusive," Javert continued. He wasn't sure why he was going into so much detail here. Maybe he wanted Madeleine to know that, for all that he had been wrong, he had had cause to believe as he had. It did not matter in the slightest or change what he had done and yet…
"Do go on," Madeleine instructed.
"Your unparalleled marksmanship did not add to the impression of you being a convict but it did make me think of Jean Valjean, since he was as skilled as you were and missing for several years," Javert went on. "There was the fact that you were in mourning for a Bishop that Valjean was last seen in the company of though the Bishop could have had nothing to do with any of this and, as Valjean had been arrested – if only briefly – from stealing from him I did not understand why you, if you were Valjean, would mourn. And while it is perfectly understandable why your papers were not examined when you first came to town, you never speak of your past and no one knows of it."
Madeleine looked distant. "I lost much and, try as I may, I do not seem able to regain any of it." Then, perhaps realizing what a strange statement that was for an extremely wealthy mayor to make, continued, "Not the things that really matter, at least. I was poor growing up and I was just a worker when I came here. It helps not to think of what you cannot change and, when you cannot avoid that, to merely refrain from speaking of it. I do not believe my past is public domain and the suffering contained there suitable fodder for their curiosity and their gossip."
Javert nodded in complete agreement. His superiors knew exactly where and what he had come from (it would have been wrong to deceive them) but he did not speak of it either and the common person had no need to know of something that might make them think that they did not have to obey the law that he represented. "Just the same, if I had known that you came from Paris, that you had four brothers, that they died and you were left alone, it would have assuaged my suspicions. No matter because they are assuaged now."
"You first brought the possibility of me being a convict, however obliquely, up to me when I was trying to save Fauchelevent," Madeleine prompted.
"Nothing nearly concrete enough to even begin to think of suggesting the possibility," Javert assured him. "Though I was doing what my duty in investigating the possibility. If you had been Valjean, your position would not have kept you safe from me."
"I do not doubt it," Madeleine said wryly. "But you spoke of him, of Valjean, to me before I even did anything more extraordinary than plead for someone to step up and save that man."
"That cart was the kind of object that I would have once said could not be lifted by a mere man," Javert explained. "In Toulon, I was proven wrong by Jean Valjean. It was his misfortune his strength was discovered as he was never taken off fatigue work in all his nineteen years. Of course, if he had stopped trying to escape he would not have been there so long, either. Because of the sheer improbability of a man being able to lift that cart and man's awareness of his own limits, the rest of the crowd could only stand by helplessly. And yet, somehow, you seemed to think that if you just offered up enough money then a miracle would occur and someone would be able to do it. You seemed to believe that it was possible and I thought it might be because, for you, it was possible. And I was right."
"And that made you think of Valjean because of how remarkable such a feat was," Madeleine concluded. "But Inspector, surely you know that if something is possible once then it is possible again. If Valjean is so strong as to lift the cart then that means that that strength is possible and any number of other men may possess it."
"I acknowledge that," Javert replied. "And that is why I still did not inform Paris."
"I do wonder that you seem to know so much about your Valjean," Madeleine said curiously. "I am fully aware of your dedication to the law and your years in Toulon but there must have been many prisoners under your guard there. Why does this one stay with you after all these years?"
Javert was surprised by the question. He had never thought to consider why it was that he kept seeing Valjean everywhere, even though years had passed. "Part of it was the strength," he said slowly. "You do not soon forget a man that can do the work of a jack. The constant escape attempts, which I have already mentioned took up a great deal of my time, was another factor. He got two years for resisting attempts to retake him on, I believe, his second attempt and I had actually been there for that. It was…quite memorable. We needed quite a few men to take him. He was perhaps the longest-serving convict there who was not a green cap. And once he broke parole less than a week after being reluctantly released, I was always going to be at least a little on the watch for him. I must apologize once again for thinking that you could have been him."
Madeleine sighed deeply as if the travesty that had been tormenting Javert since he had first learned the truth about Valjean now was merely a slight inconvenience just as soon swept aside and forgotten about. Life was so easy when you could be secure that you were righteous. "It no longer matters. I know the rest of this story. You were angry about my intervention regarding Fantine, informed Paris of your suspicions, and were pointed to Champmathieu."
"Who, despite your best efforts, has been correctly identified as Jean Valjean and returned to Toulon," Javert said pointedly.
Madeleine winced. "Ah, yes."
"I simply do not understand, Monsieur le maire," Javert said honestly. "I do not understand at all."
Madeleine looked entirely uncertain about where to begin. "Was there something specific that you did not understand?"
"All of it," Javert said bluntly. "So all of the specifics, as well. You have an unfortunate habit of believing in mercy over consequences but you do not generally try to subvert the course of justice. Falsely accusing yourself of being Valjean…You could hardly have shown less respect for the law than you did right then."
"I was not thinking of disrespecting the law, I can assure you," Madeline told him.
"Then what were you thinking of?" Javert challenged. He is this man's subordinate, he knows that, but he cannot let any man get away with abusing the law. Nothing came of the mayor's attempt and there would be no consequences but he had to try and make him see why such a thing could not be done.
Madeleine looked at a point somewhere above Javert's head. "I was thinking that I was sitting in that courtroom watching the trial for an entire hour. I was thinking that it was clear that the only reason that they thought of bringing up his potential criminal past was because they could not prove that he had anything to do with the apples. I was thinking that it was not just to condemn a man for being something instead of doing something. I was thinking that he did not deserve this and, yes, I was thinking that I wanted to spare him."
Where did he start?
"He was not condemned for being Jean Valjean," he insisted. "He was condemned because he stole those apples because without those he never would have been discovered. You say that he might not have stolen those apples. Maybe he did not, I do not know. It does not matter, though, because what he was guilty of was breaking parole and stealing from a child and robbing a bishop. Any of those offences would have been enough to see him returned to Toulon in chains for life and he committed all of them."
"I do not recall this supposed theft of a bishop being mentioned in court and I do not believe that the zealous prosecutor would have neglected to mention something so…scandalous," Madeleine said slowly.
"Well, it was not reported," Javert admitted. "And when gendarmes took Valjean to the bishop, he denied it."
"And that denial of being stolen from is not enough for you?" Madeleine demanded. "I thought you adhered to the rules of evidence, Javert."
"I do!" Javert retorted. "And even without that, the other two crimes can be proven. Valjean confessed to a priest of his theft right before vanishing! As for the first part…The Bishop, who was a saint and who is dead, excused his crime but it was probably just an act of charity: and I'm sure that you, Monsieur le maire would have done the same thing. This Bishop was a man just like you."
Javert had never seen Madeleine's face so open before but there it was, plain as day, a curious mixture of hope and regret, gratitude and disbelief, sorrow and reverence, pain and joy. But Madeleine had openly been in mourning for months after this same bishop had died and, the two being so similar and acquainted in the mayor's youth, had probably respected this man and had striven to be just like him. The reaction to his words made Javert, who was unused to such things, feel a little uncomfortable but his statement contained no flattery. In fact, he rather disapproved of the bishop's insistence on shielding Valjean from the natural results of his actions and he had been proven right as Valjean had gone right around to commit two more serious crimes before resurfacing a few weeks ago.
Were those tears he was seeing in the mayor's eyes? Javert could not be sure as, at the first suspicion, he immediately and respectfully turned his attention away.
Eventually, Madeleine cleared his throat and Javert refocused his gaze. "I thank you for your kind words, Javert."
"There is nothing kind or unkind in the truth," Javert said with certainty. "As I was saying, proving that he was Jean Valjean was merely so we could show that he deserved to be punished for crimes that we could prove he had committed."
"Did you ever think about why he might have broken parole?" Madeleine asked abruptly.
Javert had not. "I assume it was so that he could escape the watchful eye of the law. And indeed, he had eight years to live in anonymity."
"Have you considered that it was not just the law that refused to let him forget his past or try to move forward that he was trying to leave behind him?" Madeleine inquired.
"You will have to enlighten me," Javert replied. "It is my job to find out who committed a crime and to arrest them not figure out what drove them to it."
It looked like there were a lot of things that Madeleine wanted to say in response to that. He contented himself with ,"No, I suppose it is not."
Reluctantly, Javert asked, "What conclusions have you drawn, Monsieur le maire?" It would be something that portrayed those truant convicts as sympathetic, he was sure of it.
"Society," Madeleine said simply.
"Society?"
"It is not enough that they have to live their lives going where the law says to go and doing what it tells them to do and no matter how faithfully they obey these commands they are still the first ones looked to whenever something goes wrong," Madeleine began. "They also must show everyone that they meet that they were once a convict. I say 'once' but they always are, aren't they?"
"That I can agree with," Javert told him although he knew that they didn't mean it in the same way.
The look in his eyes made it clear that Madeleine had realized the same thing. "Who will hire a man who once stole? Who will sell them anything? Who will let him find food or lodging? Who will, if by some miracle he can find work, even give him enough to survive? Many laborers do not make enough as it is and if the convict earns still less…How is he to survive without turning back to crime? And so he lives up to – or rather, down to – the disdain and rejection that society has for him and just perpetuates the cycle as everyone was convinced that they were right to treat him that way in the first place. And the next convict they meet will have it even harder because they know they were right about the first one."
Javert shook his head, rejecting this. "That's too easy. Those poor convicts, they'd instantly reform and be saints if only society was nicer to them."
"Are you denying that the conditions that parolees face has anything to do with where they end up?" Madeleine demanded.
"If they did not have serious moral deficiencies in the first place then they would not let this negative treatment convince them to learn nothing from their years in prison – making those years wasted – and continue breaking the law," Javert said stubbornly.
"That doesn't answer the question," Madeleine argued. "If a man is born to rich parents who can take care of his every need then he will not steal to survive. If that same man is born into poverty then perhaps he will. Whatever deficiencies you believe that these convicts possess, circumstance simply must play a part even if you do not believe that it excuses is. If a man kills his wife's lover then if she had not had a lover it would have been impossible for him to have killed that other man."
"I…can see what you're saying," Javert conceded grudgingly. "Though I maintain that it does not excuse it. Still, we have to weigh the rights of the many against the rights of the few. The honest citizens of France have more of a right to know of any convict in their midst who might steal from them, kill them, commit any number of crimes against them than that convict does to pretend his past does not exist and start over."
"It was eight years after breaking parole before Champmathieu was arrested for anything," Madeleine pointed out. "Do you not believe that those eight years of living within the law – aside from the broken parole – and not even knowing for sure that he stole the apples indicates that he has changed?"
"What does it matter if he has changed?" Javert demanded.
Madeleine looked stricken. He was entirely too tender-hearted.
"If a man murders someone in cold-blood and then sincerely repents, does that mean that he should be allowed to escape the punishment of those acts?" Javert asked rhetorically. "He broke parole and he stole from that child as well as possibly that bishop. Those are crimes and they need to be punished regardless of if Valjean turned out to be just like you."
"If he has truly changed then he will already face punishment enough in the form of his guilt," Madeleine said quietly.
As if mere guilt could ever be punishment enough.
"And just because the first time Valjean was caught stealing was over the apples does not mean that it was the first crime committed since breaking parole," Javert reminded him.
"It just didn't seem right," Madeleine said simply, his gaze distant.
"That is not your determination to make any more than it is mine," Javert said seriously. "I understand how you might disagree with certain points of the law but it is the law and we are all charged with obeying it. What you did in Arras, Monsieur le maire, cannot happen again."
There was something almost painful about Madeleine's expression then. "Do not worry. It won't."
"You may disapprove of parts of the justice system but you do not have the right to place yourself above it," Javert lectured sternly. "No man does. That is what is so beautiful about the law. It judges all things equally, even if men occasionally err in enforcing it."
Was that a gleam of defiance? "I do not regret what I did."
"No, of course not," Javert said, shaking his head in frustration. How could someone as intelligent as Madeleine fail to grasp such basic concepts? He wondered what sort of monastery this man had escaped from before coming to Montreuil. "Nothing came of it and justice was still served so you can tell yourself that you won a moral victory and congratulate yourself, having no idea of the consequences you would have faced had your lie been believed."
"I was fully prepared for the consequences of being believed," Madeleine said flatly. "It had never occurred to me that I would not be."
"You clearly know nothing of the galleys," Javert said dismissively. "You may think that you are prepared for them because you have had some experience with convicts. You are not. Think about what it would really take to turn a man who looks like any other into the miserable wretch you see when they eventually run. Or try to, at least, because you will not be able to imagine it. You may have thought that you could handle being imprisoned in the galleys for life, Monsieur le maire, but you have no idea. The galleys is a terrible place reserved for the worst of our society. It is no place for an honest man and it is certainly no place for a truly righteous man like you."
Madeleine gave him an almost pitying look. "Oh, Javert…"
He was not sure what to make of that and so he ignored it. "I suppose that, for all your words otherwise, you must have great faith in the law to go there and denounce yourself as a criminal and trust that the wrong man would not be convicted but even I, with my utmost trust in the law, would hesitate before risking so much. The law is infallible but men are not and the case was decided by a jury." He chose not to mention that knowing that he would not be arrested as Valjean made what he did a hollow gesture because they had quite enough to be getting on with already. "And in addition to how foolish this was, it was such a selfish thing to do as well."
Madeleine started. "Selfish? In what way would sacrificing my liberty for the sake of another be selfish?"
"Your life is not just your own, Monsieur le maire," Javert replied. "You run a factory that employs a large part of this town. If you went to Toulon, what would happen to all of your workers? And you almost single-handedly pulled this town from an economic depression to the prosperous little hamlet we see today. You give and give so much that it is a wonder that you have anything left for yourself! This town has really come to depend on you. Now imagine that all of that went away suddenly."
Madeleine looked a little uncertain. Finally, progress. "I did consider that but they survived before me and, if they had to, they will survive after me. In fact, no one can live forever so sooner or later they will have to do exactly that and I can only hope that I will have done enough to ease things for them even after my death."
Javert was never more painfully aware of how ridiculous he must have sounded, accusing a man like this of being a common criminal.
"And they would not be consigned to the galleys, unlike Champmathieu, so I judged that his need was greater than the need of any of the other individuals. It was not easy but I could not in good conscience let him go to Toulon without at least trying to stop it," Madeleine revealed.
Javert still had one card to play to make him realize that he was being foolish. Even though he pledged not to do something like this again, what was really to stop him from feeling overly sorry for the next convict he heard about since he faced no consequences for this? He would have to take care in the future to not draw Madeleine's attention to any local court cases since the mayor showed a remarkable lack of interest in what went on outside of his little fiefdom.
"Though I still do not see why you concern yourselves with them, had you been arrested as Jean Valjean what of Fantine and Cosette?" Javert asked silkily.
Madeleine flinched and he knew he was on the right track.
"Fantine would have probably died by now without Cosette by her side since you were the only one with both the desire to fetch her and the means to do so," Javert pointed out. "And as for Cosette…you did not see where she was staying but you saw the state that she was in and that should be enough. It was not a good place for a child and she would not have had a good life there. Was trying to save a man from the consequences of his own bad choices worth letting them down?"
"Fantine…would not have been able to be saved and her death might have been accompanied by the despair of knowing that she would never see her daughter again," Madeleine said carefully. He took a deep breath and his eyes were suddenly blazing. "But as for Cosette…She would have been taken care of. I had made that vow before I ever heard of Champmathieu."
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask how exactly Madeleine thought he was going to accomplish that from Toulon (they didn't give the convicts time to get their affairs in order!) but something about the look on his face stopped him. He was left uncertain that the mayor would not have been capable of escaping from Toulon and staying out of sight even while raising that woman's child. After all, since he would have committed no crime save perjury and Champmathieu would be out of danger, would reason would he have had to stay? Madeleine was a wiser man that Valjean, that was for sure, so with a similar strength and a keener intellect he might just have succeeded, too.
It was not something that he wanted to think about.
"I understand that it was not a practical thing to do and would have hurt far more people than it helped," Madeleine said in a low, measured voice. "I understand it would have ruined my life and prevented me from helping countless others in the future. I still believe that I did the right thing but I swear to you that nothing like this will happen in the future. It can't."
Javert wasn't sure if he'd gotten through to him or not. Perhaps he knew that Javert was right and was just clinging to what remained of his dignity by insisting that he had not made the wrong decision. As long as he was not planning on doing something like that again then his reasons did not matter so much.
Javert nodded. "I am relieved to hear that, Monsieur le maire. I understand that your philanthropy is your most treasured part of your life but I think that, your newfound resolution notwithstanding, we need to have a discussion about boundaries."
Madeleine's brow furrowed. "Boundaries? Javert, what you talking about?"
"Desiring to improve the world is an admirable thing," Javert said. "But sometimes such desires can go too far."
"You can never go too far in your desire to help another," Madeleine objected, his thoughts clearly elsewhere. "And even something that may seem like a big sacrifice to you may be worth far more than you can ever imagine to someone else. You might be saving a life with a little act of kindness."
"That is all well and good," Javert agreed. "And what you have is certainly yours to do with if you like. If you want to give everything you have to every ingrate who comes into your life then that choice is, of course, yours. But surely you must agree that when you get to the point where you're willing to spend the rest of your life in prison for something you did not do and nobody suspects you of doing to save a stranger then you're going too far."
A tinge of annoyance. "I already said that I would not do something like this in the future, Javert."
"Ah, but what does that mean?" Javert asked. "You won't try to get yourself imprisoned, yes, but if you do not accept that it is possible to give too much and you need to be sane about this then what's to stop you from, I don't know, giving every last bit of your money away and having nothing to live on so you die in the streets?"
"I think you're being a little dramatic," Madeleine told him.
"I really wish that I could be so sure of that," Javert replied. "But, back when I was trying to decide if you were Jean Valjean or not, I spent a great deal of time watching you."
"That must have been quite dull," Madeleine said lightly.
Javert shook his head. "Far from it. When Bamatabois told me that you had falsely confessed, at first I was surprised but after really thinking about it I no longer am. This is exactly the sort of overly self-sacrificing thing that you would do for no clear reason except that it seems the 'moral choice' – though by what definition of morality I could not tell you – and it really has to stop. If it does not then one of these days you will give until there is nothing left and end up wasting away alone because you care too much for those that matter to you to allow them anywhere near you."
Madeleine was looking at him curiously. "You sound disapproving, Javert, but surely that too is my choice."
"A man such as you," Javert said frankly, "one of those good and righteous men that remind me why I chose to upheld the law, you deserve better than that."
Madeleine's expression softened and Javert thought that maybe he had finally gotten through to him, at least in part. "I thank you for your concern, Javert. I will be fine."
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