Chapter Nine

Disclaimer: I do not own Les Misérables.

Valjean was sitting in his office, answering some letters that had recently come from Paris about the management of his little town. Ordinarily he would have had no idea why people from Paris were even aware of him at all, let alone interested in his ideas but he supposed that Javert might have had the right of it that the tale of his confession had spread and so people had heard of him. If he divorced the story from himself (for he never felt that what he did was particularly notable) and thought of it as one man trying to claim to be a completely different man and asking to be sent to the galleys for the rest of his life in the guilty man's place…and with the one being a respected public official and the other a repeat offender…Perhaps he could understand the interest, just a little.

And at least it was leading to people asking him about his public improvement plans in Montreuil instead of trying to lock him up not for being a criminal but for being a madman. He would not have liked being imprisoned for being insane any more than for being guilty, especially when Champmathieu would suffer a fate that no man should suffer no matter what happened to him, and he most certainly could not be taken while Cosette had need of him.

Cosette Madeleine. It was still so strange to think of it. When he had taken that name for himself, he had never expected to bestow it to another but Cosette was in need of a name as well and what better name to give the innocent child of a woman destroyed by society's refusal to forgive than Madeleine? It made his new life feel just a little more real. It was a good thing, too, since it seemed that he would be keeping it.

A young man walked in then, practically still a child. He could not have been more than twenty. Valjean liked to think that he could at least recognize everyone who lived in Montreuil by now even if he did not know everyone's name and he had not seen this man before.

Curiously, despite the fact that one could hardly walk into the mayor's office by accident, even if they could not read, the young man was peering at Valjean with something like bewilderment.

"Hello," Valjean said politely. "May I help you?"

The boy frowned. "Sorry, I just…I've seen you somewhere, right?"

Valjean cast his memory back. People did change as they grew older, certainly, but he did not see how it could have been when the boy was a child. Wouldn't he know who he was as Madeleine then? He certainly hadn't seen any children in Toulon.

"I do not believe so," he replied. "Perhaps you have confused me with somebody else?"

The boy considered it for a moment before shaking his head. "Nah, I don't think that's it. I've got a good memory for faces, you see. You have to be when you live like me. Always know which people to avoid, which will give you a little something extra, which inspectors just assume that you must be up to something and so will give you trouble. That sort of thing."

"Well you will have to tell me if it occurs to you," Valjean said placidly, deciding that since he was not feeling the stirring of recognition, if such a meeting had happened in the past then the impetus to remember and remind was on the boy. He was sure that the meeting could not be very important if they had both forgotten and so that could not be the reason why the boy was here. "In the meantime, what brings you to my door?"

The boy just stared at him. For a man hiding his real identity, even a man who was no longer being hunted, such scrutiny was disconcerting.

"It's probably stupid," the boy said slowly.

A lot of people in town felt that way about their problems, as if as important as it was to them it was beneath the notice of the mayor. He would freely admit that he did not have the time to address every minor squabble in town, he at least liked to hear people out when they came to his office.

He had done what he could to convince people to come to him when they had need of him and their reluctance to bother him with such trifles as their increased inability to survive simply because of their increased inability to survive meant that when someone had need of him it was usually important. Or they were trying to use his influence for their own advantage but he was getting better at detecting that and Javert had taken it upon himself since the trial to keep watch for such things. Valjean liked to think that with the lack of watching him to see if he was, in fact, himself Javert just had a lot more free time and preferred to spend it working.

Sometimes he found that people did not want to air their dirty laundry around him because he was the mayor and if there was a chance that they had done anything wrong (or that anybody would think that although they were perfectly certain that they were in the right) then they did not want the story to spread. He did stop by and try to help whenever he happened to witness a conflict going on while he was walking the streets but those all seemed to miraculously sort themselves out when he got near them.

"Please do go on," Valjean invited. "I do not believe that you would have come to this town to see me if it were not important to you and if it is important to you and you have come all this way then I can at least do you the courtesy of listening."

"It's just…I'm a Savoyard," the boy explained. "And everybody says that you're good to the Savoyard boys who pass through here. I never had the opportunity to come this way when I was younger – I'm from way up near Digne – but I'm glad just the same. Not many are, you see."

Digne. It couldn't be. Little Gervais had been but a child, not a full-grown man. But then, how many years had passed since then? Eight, perhaps? Children grew up. It was a coincidence, though. After all this time of trying to search for the child he had stolen from (why had he done it? Hadn't he been in the process of deciding to turn his life around? What had possessed him to steal from first a bishop and then a child instead of any of the people who had abused him if he must have stolen from someone at all? He truly had been hopeless back then, hadn't he?), he couldn't have just walked straight into his office and announced it one day. And, as the boy had said, Digne was a fair distance away. It had taken him weeks to make his way from the Bishop to Montreuil.

It took him a moment (and noticing the expectant eyes of the boy) for Valjean to remember that he had been thanked. As always, it made him uncomfortable, especially considering that he was essentially being thanked for his feeble and possibly futile efforts to make up for that child he had so abominably wronged so long ago. It was so easy for people to get lost in the wind and yet he, far less deserving, was known – both Valjean and Madeleine – to a great many people.

"I try to help out where I can," he said quietly, bowing his head. "I have been greatly blessed by our good Lord and I wish to share that blessing with those who have not been so fortunate."

The boy smiled, looking almost amused. He knew that a lot of poorer people were skeptical of God's mercy. He knew that when he was at his lowest 'skeptical' was putting it politely. "Whatever it is that makes you give so much to boys like I was is a good thing."

"Are you in need of some work?" Valjean asked suddenly, a little chagrined that he had not thought to ask sooner. This boy kept talking about the generosity he had shown to boys like him in the past and he had not thought that perhaps he was hoping for a little of that generosity himself? He was a little older than the Savoyard boys usually were but Valjean hated to have to turn down a soul in need.

"I'll be fine," the boy said dismissively, though not really answering the question. "I'm not really a chimney sweep anymore and at any rate I'll wager that your town must have the cleanest chimneys in all of France!"

Valjean smiled gently at the jest. "Perhaps. I find cleanliness to be very important."

Valjean would like to think that he was not a vain man but he did place a certain importance on cleanliness. There had been years, far too many years, where he had felt that he would never be clean again. Even when he had first been released he had not been able to shake that feeling, doubly so after realizing just how wretched his soul had become. Now, despite the lingering guilt he felt over Champmathieu (for even if there was literally nothing else that could have been done to save the man after his arrest, if Valjean had not gone on the run in the first place then there would have been no cause to have confused that poor man with him in the first place), he had learned to feel like he was clean again.

It was something he tried to teach others, would certainly teach Cosette, and would perhaps never cease to prize highly. Other men, freer men, did not always understand the importance he placed upon that but it was the case of taking things for granted until you were not able to anymore.

"If not work, what brings you to our humble town?" Valjean asked casually. "You are a long way from home, young man."

"They said I had to come," the boy said, shrugging.

"They?" Valjean repeated, puzzled.

"A few months back some policeman came up to me and asked me questions about something that happened nearly a decade ago. Then he told me that I needed to go to Arras. Can you believe it? All the way from Digne to Arras!" the boy exclaimed.

"What…" Valjean trailed off, swallowed. His throat felt suddenly dry. "What's your name? I do not believe that you said."

"What?" the boy looked surprised. "My name is Gervais. And you're Monsieur Madeleine, of course."

Of course.

It could still be a coincidence but all of these coincidences were starting to blur together to reform into one impossible picture.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Monsieur Gervais," Valjean said automatically.

Gervais laughed. "Me? A Monsieur? Imagine!"

But he did look pleased. Valjean had found it just as incomprehensible when the Bishop had called him that but no less grateful. And he had deserved it even less than this poor boy. Valjean had come to learn that things like addresses and manners said more about the person employing them than the person on the receiving end.

"Why did they tell you that you must go to Arras?" Valjean inquired.

"A long time ago, I was walking along and I dropped a forty-sous piece," Gervais said casually. "That may not seem like a lot to a man such as you but to me it was half of everything I had."

Valjean's mind drifted back to the days when the eighteen-sous he made as a pruner (he did miss that, surprisingly, though he had never been very fond of it at the time. He wished that he had more time for gardening) was enough to keep his family afloat in a world trying increasingly hard to drag them under. And then when it had succeeded…But no. Enough of that.

"I understand the value of a sous," he said instead. "What happened to your sous? Did you lose them?"

Gervais hesitated. "Not…exactly. There was a man, you see. I had never seen someone like him before. Frightened me half out of my wits, he did, especially when he stepped on my piece! I don't even think he knew that he did it, honestly, because he didn't pick it up or nothing, just kept his foot on it. Well, I was scared but I needed the money so I went up to him and tried to get it back but he kept ignoring me. I just kept asking and then he yelled at me and I ran away."

"I'm sorry," Valjean said because what else was there to say?

Another shrug. "It was a long time ago. I honestly barely even remembered it before everyone started asking about it."

"Half of everything you had and you just forgot?" Valjean asked incredulously.

"Well, it was hard for awhile after that. Very hard. I survived, though, and it's been so many years that whether I had kept or lost that particular forty-sous piece would make no difference in my life today," Gervais explained.

"That's a very mature attitude," Valjean managed to say. He knew that, intellectually, that was probably true. Unless the lack of money led to losing your home or someone dying or not being able to stay together, as more time passed the fact that there was not much money at one point became far less important.

"Is it?" Gervais asked flippantly but, again, he did look pleased. "I tried telling them that I didn't want to go to Arras. I had no particular reason to stay in Digne but I had no reason to go to Arras, either, and it would take forever to get there. They told me that they caught the man who stole from me all those years ago and they needed me to identify him but I told them that I didn't even care anymore and it wasn't worth the journey. They didn't understand why I wouldn't want to waste all this time over a crime from eight years ago when I should be outraged about it forever and made me go anyway. At least they paid for me to go."

At this, Valjean frowned. Up until then he could follow the story quite well. He was relieved that his crime had not destroyed this young boy's life even if that did not make it any less wicked to have done what he had and after the Bishop's forgiveness, too. But now something did not make sense to him.

"I believe that I know the trial you are speaking of," Valjean told him. "It was the trial of Jean Valjean, yes?"

Gervais nodded, surprised. "How did you know?"

"I happened to be at the trial and they said that they had not been able to locate you," Valjean informed him.

Gervais rolled his eyes. "Oh, they found me alright. They just didn't like what they heard. It's pretty rotten of them to just pretend that I wasn't there because they didn't like what I had to say."

"What did you say?" Valjean asked curiously.

"Well they were going on and on about how that guy should go to Toulon because he was Jean Valjean and had stolen that forty-sous piece from me. They thought a bishop had been robbed but the bishop had denied it and was dead anyway. He was on trial for some apples or something but nobody was talking about that. And if their whole case is about how awful it was that I was stolen from and I'm just annoyed that I have to be there then it makes them look really foolish for obsessing about it themselves," Gervais said reasonably.

"I see," Valjean said faintly, wondering once again at a justice system that judged people for things they were not charged for, felt perfectly free to just ignore inconvenient confessions, and apparently hid away inconvenient witnesses as well.

"They might have still made me go to the trial and just not asked me questions about how upset I was if it hadn't been for that other thing," Gervais said softly.

"Other thing?" Valjean repeated.

Gervais nodded. "I looked at that man, the man that they said was Jean Valjean. And who knows? Maybe it really was. But even though it had been several years, I don't forget a face. The man that robbed me made my life really hard for a long time. That man, no matter what they said, was not it."

It would appear that the trial was even more of a farce than he had initially suspected if so much effort had gone into perpetuating a clear lie.

Gervais was staring at him again. "I don't forget a face. It will probably sound completely absurd and I almost do not want to say it but I think I know where I've seen you before."

Valjean said nothing.

"You were that man. That man that robbed me."

Note: I just kind of love the thought of other people who aren't Javert recognizing Valjean, even if not immediately. Javert seemed to pick up on it pretty quickly even if he just couldn't accept that he was taking orders from a convict and the Thénardiers apparently had no trouble with it.

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