Chapter Thirteen

Disclaimer: I do not own Les Misérables.

Javert was enjoying some rare peace and taking the opportunity to fill out his reports unimpeded. It was not that Montreuil had an exceptionally large crime rate, far from it, but his coworkers could be rather…exuberant when there was nothing pressing going on and that did make it difficult to concentrate. He had not yet given in to the temptation to take his paperwork home with him because he knew that that would probably eventually lead to him working in his every waking hour and he was assured by pretty much everybody that that was not a good idea. It was close, however, and so he compromised by spending far longer at the prefecture than anybody else.

Today it was quiet, however, and Javert was vaguely wondering what he should do if all of his work was finished before his shift ended. Should he go out on patrol again? Stay here and go and stare at the criminals sitting in jail awaiting transport to Arras? They had two currently. One was another prostitute who had attacked Bamatabois. One would think that he would learn to be more careful and stop landing himself in these kinds of situations but evidently he had not. She had been to prison before and seemed indifferent to the prospect, not having a child like Cosette to watch over as Fantine had. Since Madeleine was a far more suitable caretaker to a child than those thieves at the inn (he would not be surprised to hear of their arrest soon) or a prostitute like Fantine, that had actually worked out for the best for the innocent child as well as the law. This woman had actually managed to break Bamatabois' arm, which he insisted on complaining about at every opportunity, and was not even a little repentant.

The other had killed a man in a drunken brawl and seemed to be shocked by the whole situation. Javert could acknowledge that the man hadn't meant to kill anybody and didn't even seem to really remember what had happened but nobody had forced him to drink as much as he had nor to pick a fight. Drunken decisions were still decisions and still punishable by the law.

Suddenly, his own decision about what to do when his rapidly-dwindling pile of paperwork was completed was taken out of his hands when Madeleine rushed in, his eyes wild and his cravat completely crooked. Javert briefly shut his eyes as he quashed the familiar impulse to straighten it (Madeleine, being Madeleine, would probably allow it even if he thought it odd but he could only imagine how ill-dressed strangers on the street would react to such a thing).

"Yes, Monsieur le Maire?" he asked politely, folding his hands in front of him.

"Cosette," Madeleine said in a rush. "I was at my office when my portress sent word that Cosette had not been at the school when she came at the usual time to pick her up."

Javert rather felt that Madeleine was being too overprotective of the child. Girls and boys younger than she managed to get to and from school on their own just fine. Though he had heard of abductions or murders of children in Toulon or at his first post, he could not recall any incidents of the sort happening during his tenure here in Montreuil. Still, there was nothing wrong with this instinct of his and if Cosette's behavior had deviated from her normal conduct then perhaps he was about to see such a case unfold here in the worst possible way.

He immediately stood. "And you would like to enlist police aid in locating the child?"

Madeleine nodded. "Yes. I already searched a little near the school before it occurred to me to ask for your help."

The help of the police or Javert's in particular?

"Well I will take some of my men and search for her," Javert informed him. "You should return home in case she returns there."

But Madeleine shook his head. "Madame Martin is there right now. If Cosette returns, she will be there to greet her. I can't just sit there helplessly waiting; I have to try and find her myself. I cannot believe that she would just wander off without telling anybody. Cosette is a good girl."

"Of course she is," Javert agreed in an effort to calm the other man down. Madeleine would be at best useless and at worse actually hinder the investigation if he was not able to quell his panic. "I will send you out with one of my men."

Madeleine nodded, making a visible effort to calm down. "Thank you."

"It is my duty," Javert said simply.

"I know. But not everyone does their duty and few with such zest as you. So thank you."

Javert assigned his men partners, leaving only a few men back at the station to work and to be there in case anyone else needed assistance, and then set off alone as the man that he would have partnered with he had had to assign to Madeleine. He gave everyone an area of the town to search so that they would not miss any area or go over some places too many times. He did, however, assign a pair to re-search the areas that Madeleine had already checked because he was a panicking father and not trained in such things.

Javert moved through his section at a moderate speed, taking care to look everywhere a child of Cosette's size could conceivably hide but not spending too much time in any one place. He had been searching for perhaps half an hour when he finally found her lying by the riverbank and giggling with four girls that looked to be about her age.

The other girls, when they saw him, all drew back and stopped laughing immediately. Javert wondered if this meant that their parents were hiding some unlawful activity or if they were just naturally cautious about members of the police. Cosette, however, had no such wariness and cheerfully stood up to greet him, wiping the grass off of her dress as she did so.

"Hello, Inspector Javert!" she said brightly. "What are you doing here? Are you looking for a criminal? Can I help?"

Javert took a moment to process the sheer absurdity of the request.

"No you cannot help," he said automatically and then paused. "And I am not chasing a criminal, anyway. Just a very foolish little girl who has her father very worried."

Cosette looked blankly at him .

"I think he means you," one of the other girls whispered to her.

"Really?" Cosette asked, looking surprised. "Do you mean me?"

Javert fought the rather unprofessional urge to roll his eyes at her. "That would be a safe guess, yes." He turned to the other girls. "You, all of you, go home right now."

He had no way of knowing whether they actually would but they quickly said their goodbyes to Cosette and scampered off so it was not his concern. Perhaps their parents were worried about them and perhaps not but they did not come to the prefecture to find their daughters (and, as people who were not the mayor, their concerns over such a simple matter were far less pressing) and so they could take care of themselves.

Cosette was frowning up at him, still clearly confused.

"Why were you not waiting to be picked up after school today?" Javert demanded, feeling for the first time in his life strangely like a parent and rather resenting it.

"Monsieur Durand got sick and so we got out really early," Cosette explained to him. "I knew that Papa was busy and I thought that Madame Martin would be busy, too, and not want to have to watch me, too, and my friends wanted to come play here. I didn't think it would upset anybody." She looked down at the ground.

"Why did you not tell anybody where you were going?" Javert pressed.

"I did not think anybody would worry," Cosette said quietly. "I used to go out all the time by myself before I came here. I had to. I was always fine."

It did not surprise Javert in the slightest to learn this of the Thénardiers. "Your father is a far better person and more able caretaker than your previous guardians."

"I know that!" Cosette assured him, her eyes huge. "I just did not think that he would worry about something like that. I've been going out by myself for as long as I can remember."

"And you didn't think that his refusal to let you walk to or from school by yourself meant that maybe it would worry him?" Javert asked pointedly.

Cosette hesitated. "No?"

Javert sighed. She had broken no laws. She was a child. The past could not be changed. "Do not do something like this again. Your father has most of the police out looking for you instead of arresting criminals."

"I'm sorry," Cosette said contritely. She seemed to mean it so Javert nodded at her.

"Let's get back to the prefecture and then we can send a message to your father letting him know that we found you," he told her.

Cosette nodded back at him and made several futile attempts to slip her hand into his.

Finally, she gave up and asked, "Do you like arresting criminals?"

"It is my duty."

"But do you like it?" she pressed.

Javert thought about it. "I suppose I do."

"Why?" she asked.

"What does it matter?" Javert countered.

"Because I want to know," Cosette said as if it were obvious.

Deciding that it would be easier to just answer her than to have to listen to her attempts to persuade him, Javert replied, "I like to keep the streets safe for nice law-abiding citizens. I like to make sure that people do not flout the law. I like knowing that I am doing my duty and doing it well. I like to pit myself against a criminal and come out victorious."

"Why do you like the last one?" Cosette asked curiously.

Javert valiantly resisted the urge to glare at her but did narrow his eyes a little.

Cosette did not seem impressed.

"My job is not just about the law," Javert tried to explain. "It is about the people, too. Every time there is a crime, I have to figure out who did it and to catch them. Sometimes it is obvious who did it but that doesn't mean that it will be easy to find them. Some criminals, especially people who commit crimes all the time, are very good at hiding and I have to find them so I can arrest them."

Cosette was quiet for a blessed moment as she digested this. "So it's like a game. You have to be smarter than the criminals so you can arrest them."

"I wouldn't call it a 'game'," Javert said a bit stiffly. "It is far more serious than that. But yes, I do have to be smarter than the criminals. Sometimes that is not hard. Sometimes the criminal is stupid or careless or just has very bad luck and it is easy to catch them. Sometimes a criminal can escape for years."

"But you always catch them in the end, right?" Cosette asked worriedly.

Another man might have hesitated to frighten the child but Javert saw no reason to coddle her. "Not always."

Cosette bit her lip. "But most times?"

Javert considered. "I believe so."

She relaxed a little. "Can you tell me about a criminal?"

That sounded like the sort of thing that Madeleine would not want him to talk about. He probably told her how sad criminals were and that they only turned to crime because they were desperately poor. In some cases, it might even be true that if their lives were easier then the criminals would be honest men. It did not excuse anything, however, and perhaps it would be good for little Cosette to get a more realistic (and frankly sane) look at the world lest she grow up thinking that any ill-fortune she might experience, as if Madeleine would allow that, was an excuse to turn to crime or she should try to help dangerous criminals.

There was one man that, even after all these months, was still on his mind. It was not the man himself but the fact that he had associated this convict with Madeleine that meant that every time he saw the man he thought, at least in passing, of Valjean. He had meant it when he said that he no longer harbored any illusions about Valjean and Madeleine being one and the same but the association had yet to completely fade for him.

"There was once a very poor man," Javert began. "His name was Jean Valjean. He was not a complete idiot but you would never have been able to tell from his crime."

"What did he do?" Cosette asked, intrigued.

"He waited until it was night and punched the baker's window. He grabbed a loaf of bread and he ran away," Javert narrated.

"Why?" Cosette asked him.

"You need to stop asking me why," Javert informed her.

"But you don't tell me enough," Cosette protested.

"Most people who steal food tend to do so because they are hungry," Javert said indifferently.

Cosette frowned, a knowing look coming into her eyes. A child whose mother went to such desperate and, more importantly, legal lengths to provide for her shouldn't know hunger. "But he was hungry. How can you be mad at someone for being hungry?"

"It was not that he was hungry it was that he stole," Javert said curtly. "There must have been another way. He could have asked for the food or borrowed something from someone or even just waited until he could afford to buy it himself. It's not easy for someone to starve to death, Cosette."

She looked unconvinced. "Still-"

"Still," he interrupted, "do you really believe that getting rid of your hunger right then is worth going to prison for years and years?"

Cosette quickly shook her head.

"Good," Javert said, pleased that she wasn't a completely lost cause. "Can you tell me why what Valjean did was stupid?"

"Glass is sharp and so his hand was probably bleeding," Cosette replied so promptly that Javert could not help but imagine just how she had come to learn this. "And it makes a really loud noise. And he only stole one loaf of bread."

Javert just shook his head at this. "Technically, you are correct. On a practical level the noise from the glass breaking attracted a lot of attention and led to Valjean's arrest. He was also bleeding so when he was caught, he couldn't pretend it wasn't him though he threw the loaf away so even if he had escaped it all would have been for nothing. And since he was starving, only one loaf likely would not have been enough but that part is not important. Even had he not been caught, stealing is wrong. What did that poor baker do to deserve having his window broken and his bread stolen?"

"Nothing," Cosette replied after a moment.

"Exactly. And then Valjean was sentenced to five years in Toulon," Javert continued. "Do you know what Toulon is?"

Cosette shook her head.

"It is a terrible place that only the worst criminals have to go to," Javert lectured. "I myself was a guard there for a few years to make sure that no one escapes or causes problems. The prisoners have to do heavy labor for most of the day almost every day and they get paid very little. They get hurt whenever they do something bad. Many criminals try to die in Toulon."

Cosette looked horrified. "That is terrible! And that man who stole the bread and broke the window was one of the worst criminals?"

"He is according to the law," Javert said simply. "And we must all trust in the law otherwise we would live in a society where bad people did bad things to people and no one could stop them."

Cosette shivered. "That would be bad."

"Besides, his crime was not the worst," Javert conceded. "That is why he only got five years instead of ten or twenty or even the rest of his life."

"So he went to Toulon and everything was really terrible and then five years later he got to leave?" Cosette asked him.

Javert couldn't help himself; he snorted.

Cosette looked affronted.

"He would have gotten out but, as I said, Valjean was not an idiot but he often acted like one. He attempted to escape," Javert informed her.

"I think that that makes sense," Cosette told him seriously. "You said that Toulon is really, really terrible so why wouldn't people try to leave?"

"If it were as simple as just leaving then perhaps the criminal element would be smart to try," Javert admitted. "If they even just got a beating on their return then I could still see a reason to attempt it. But that is not all that it is. It is easy enough to try and escape Toulon, especially with all of the convicts helping each other, but it is much harder for someone to stay escaped."

"Why?" Cosette asked yet again.

"The uniform the convicts wear stands out and everyone recognizes them as being convicts," Javert informed her. "They have shorn hair and long, unruly beards. There is also a wild and haunted look to them that makes it really obvious that they are escaped convicts. Not only does every police officer in the country look for the man that escapes but every normal person who sees them knows what they are and reports them. To successfully escape, they have to stay away from everyone and try to avoid the people looking for them. We have a pretty good idea at this point of the common paths that escaped criminals take and we search them up and down. And then they also need money and supplies to try and disappear. Most cannot manage it. Valjean couldn't."

"What else besides being beaten makes it stupid to try and escape Toulon?" Cosette asked, looking a little haunted herself. "I think being beaten is bad enough."

"Criminals get used to being beaten and it is not good enough to stop them from trying to escape," Javert said. "It is too much to hope that they will all gracefully accept their punishment like honest men as if they were honest men they would not be there in the first place. Attempting to escape adds three more years to your sentence. Attempting to escape and then fighting the people who try to take you back adds five years."

Cosette counted on her fingers. "So Valjean had to do eight years? Or ten?"

"He would have had eight if he had stopped there," Javert said grimly.

Cosette looked stunned. "He tried to escape again?"

"Yes," Javert confirmed. "And again and again. Once he tried to resist and three times he didn't. How many years is that, Cosette?"

It took her a moment but at last she breathed, "Nineteen years!"

"He was released around the time you were born, October of 1815," Javert said. "He was a very dangerous man and so he was on parole forever."

"A dangerous man?" Cosette asked, confused. "I know that stealing is bad and breaking a window is also bad but you said that he was hungry. How does that make him dangerous?"

"Perhaps the man who was arrested was not particularly dangerous," Javert said, shrugging. "I would not know. I did not meet him then. But by the time he was released, he had become very dangerous indeed."

Cosette's brow furrowed. "Because of all the time in that terrible Toulon?"

"Very likely," Javert agreed.

"Why have a prison that takes non-dangerous people and makes them dangerous?" Cosette asked reasonably.

"It's not supposed to make people dangerous," Javert explained. "Personally, I believe it is the influence of the other convicts. They are all terrible influences on each other and make each other worse. But what is the alternative? We cannot possible prevent the convicts from ever interacting. Then they would not be able to be useful by working, and we need their labor, and we do not have the room or resources to manage it. It would also be much like solitary confinement and prisoners have a difficult time being left alone for too long."

"I still don't like it," Cosette said eventually.

"Neither do they," Javert said dryly. "That is another reason not to break the law. Women do not have hard labor in prison but it is still a very bad experience for them and something you do not want to have to face."

Cosette nodded vehemently. "What happened to the man?"

"What man?" Javert asked. "Oh, Valjean. Well he was on parole for five days. Then he was arrested for stealing some very valuable silver from a respected and much-loved bishop. This bishop was so good that he even let Valjean stay the night when no one else would let him stay. And before you start feeling sorry for him, know that they were right to do so because Valjean clearly would have just stolen from them as well."

Cosette gasped. "Why would he steal from someone who was nice to him?"

"Instead of stealing from one of the ones who were not?" Javert asked rhetorically. "Perhaps because he had more of an opportunity to steal from a man who inexplicably trusted him and whose roof he was sleeping under. And as I said, he was a very dangerous man at this point and did not care if he hurt innocent people."

"He hurt the bishop?" Cosette asked worriedly.

"He did not," Javert assured her. "But if the bishop had woken up, who knows what might have happened?" His honestly compelled him to elaborate further. "When Valjean was brought back, the bishop claimed that he had given Valjean the silver as a gift and then gave him yet more silver and so the gendarmes were forced to let him go."

"But you don't believe the bishop?" Cosette asked him. "Why would he lie to protect someone who stole from him?"

"The bishop was a very kind and forgiving man, much like your father," Javert explained. "He probably thought that he was helping this man. Valjean had been in prison for nineteen years after all and was out on parole for less than a week. If the bishop had not denied having been robbed then Valjean would have spent the rest of his life in Toulon."

Cosette shuddered. "That's horrible!"

"It is," Javert agreed. "And exactly what he should have thought of before he stole the silver. He was no naïve man who did not know what the punishment for being caught was and he was never very successful at being a criminal."

"But you don't know that he did steal the silver," Cosette pointed out. "I think a man that would lie about being robbed and give away even more silver to save a criminal would also be willing to just give all that silver away in the first place."

"Perhaps you are right," Javert admitted grudgingly. "But I believe that the theft was more likely."

"And then what happened?" Cosette asked. "Did Valjean steal again?"

"He did," Javert confirmed. "I do not know how much or how often but less than a year ago he stole some apples and was sent back to Toulon for the rest of his life."

"Maybe he didn't steal anything between those two times," Cosette said hopefully. "Why would he need to steal food if he had all that silver?"

"He probably wasted the money," Javert said dismissively. "He was so poor before being in prison where there was no money for nearly two decades that it wouldn't surprise me at all if he squandered it. And I highly doubt he did not steal anything else because immediately after being released by the gendarmes in 1815 he broke parole and disappeared."

"And that's bad?" Cosette guessed.

Javert nodded seriously. "It is very bad. The reason that convicts are put on parole in the first place instead of just turned loose upon society is so that we can keep an eye on them and make sure that they are not committing more crimes. Valjean, in particular, was a very dangerous man who likely stole very quickly after leaving prison. Forgive me, likely stole from a bishop shortly after leaving prison. I almost forgot that he did steal a forty-sous piece from a poor child on that same day he broke parole."

"Why would he need to take a coin from a poor child when he had all that silver?" Cosette asked uncomprehendingly.

"He didn't," Javert said simply. "And that completely invalidates any argument anyone might make about him only stealing out of necessity. And no man who was trying not to be a criminal anymore would have broken parole in the first place so it was no surprise to see him arrested years later. You see now why it was so important that we caught him? I regret that I was not the one to catch him-" he regretted the fact that he had been so sure that it was her father "-but I was able to identify him and return him to prison where he belongs."

"That's a sad story," Cosette said unhappily.

Javert rather thought it was a triumph for the justice system although it had failed with Valjean for several years so perhaps he could see her point.

"Don't break the law."

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