Chapter 46 Faint lightning in the five heavens

Gradually, all kinds of hostility disappeared with the years.At first there was, against M. Madeleine, the influence which is common to all who rise in position, viciousness of heart and slander of rumours; Some teases; at last, all perish; reverence becomes complete, consistent, and sincere; there was a time, around 1821, when the people of Montreuil-sur-Mer said the words "Monsieur Mayor" Almost in the same tone as the words "Monsieur Bishop" in the mouth of the people of Digne in 1815.All within ten leagues came to seek advice from M. Madeleine.He settles disputes, prevents lawsuits, and reconciles opposing parties, and each regards him as the arbiter of his own just rights.As if he had a natural code of law in his soul.It seemed to be a kind of contagious reverence, and after six or seven years, it had spread throughout the township.

In that city and in that county there was only one man who was absolutely invulnerable to infection, and whatever Uncle Madeleine did, he was always defiant, as if an instinct that was irreducible and unshakable alarmed and disturbed him. of.In some people there seems to be a true animal instinct as pure and steadfast as other instincts. A person with this instinct can create sympathy and hatred, and can divide the relationship between people so that they can never be reconciled; hesitating, not flustered, always speaking what he says, never denying it; he shows off his foolish intelligence, he is firm and resolute, he stubbornly resists all the precepts of wisdom and all the criticisms of reason, and no matter how fate arranges, his When this animal instinct breaks out, it is always necessary to inform the dog of the coming of the cat and the fox of the coming of the lion.

Often, when M. Madeleine walked quietly and kindly through the streets, and was being admired by everyone, a tall man in an iron-gray coat, carrying a thick stick, and wearing a flat-brimmed hat came up behind him, He turned back suddenly and stared at him until he was out of sight; the man still folded his arms, shook his head slowly, and brought his upper lip to the tip of his nose with his lower lip, showing an ulterior motive. It means to say: "What is this man? ... I must have seen him somewhere. ... All in all, I haven't been fooled by him yet." This character with a stern look that is almost terrifying is the kind of character that makes people shudder at first sight.

His name is Javert, and he is a member of the public security department. He performed those difficult but useful reconnaissance duties at Montreuil-sur-Mer.He did not know the beginnings of Madeleine.Javert had taken this post at the sponsorship of M. Chapuille, secretary to the Comte d'Angles during his cabinet of ministers, and then prefect of the Paris police.Javert came to Montreuil-sur-Mer after the great manufacturer had made his fortune, and after Uncle Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine. Some police officers have a distinctive face, a combination of meanness and authority, and Javert has that face, but without the meanness.

In our belief, if the soul is something that can be seen by the naked eye, then we can clearly see a strange phenomenon, that is, every human being is similar to a certain kind of beast; It is easy to discover the truth, which thinkers have not quite grasped, that the character of every animal, from the oyster to the hawk, from the pig to the tiger, is also in the character of man, and that every man has some animal character.Sometimes a person can also have the character of several animals. Animals are nothing but visualizations of our good and bad qualities, which wander before our eyes like ghostly manifestations of our souls.God points them out to us for our own reflection.However, since the beasts are only a hint, God has no intention of reforming them; besides, what is the use of reforming the beasts?Our souls, on the contrary, are practical, and each soul has its own purpose, so God endows wisdom, that is to say, teachability.A good education in society can develop its inherent merits from any type of soul.

Of course, this is only from a narrow point of view, only talking about our worldly phenomena, and should not involve the spiritual issues of the previous life and the next life.Those esoteric questions do not belong to the human domain.The visible I never allows the thinker to deny the invisible I.With that in mind, let's talk about something else. Now, if we all admit for a moment, as we do, that there is a brute or brutish nature in every human being, it will be easy for us to explain what that security guard Javert is. The farmers in Asturias are convinced that there must be a dog in every wolf pup, but that dog must be killed by the mother wolf, otherwise it will grow up and eat the rest of the cubs.

You put a human face on that wolf-born dog's head, and that's Javert. Javert was born in prison, his mother was a card fortune teller, and his father was a convict.After he grows up, he thinks that he is a person outside the society, and he will never have the hope of entering the society.He saw that society mercilessly excluded two kinds of people from it: those who attacked it and those who defended it.He can only choose one of these two kinds of people, and at the same time he feels that he has an inexplicable fortitude, order, and strict nature, mixed with an indescribable hatred for the vagabond class to which he belongs.He became a policeman.

He had smooth sailing and became a scout at the age of forty. In his youth, he served in Southern prisons. Before going any further, let us clarify the word "human face" we just added to Javert. Javert's human face has a flat nose, two deep nostrils, and two large beards growing to the nostrils. Those two forests and two deep caves are not pleasant to anyone who sees them for the first time.Javert didn't smile very often, but when he did he had a hideous shape. His thin lips were parted, revealing not only his teeth but also his gums, and around his nose there was a kind of beast-like mouth. oblate rough wrinkles.The Javert when he is solemn is a hound, and the Javert when he is laughing is a tiger.In addition, he had a small skull, large jaws, hair that covered his forehead and fell to his brows, a fixed central crease between his eyes, like a raging star, deep eyes, forbiddingly set lips, in short, a whole. A vicious and domineering style.

This person is composed of two emotions: respect for the government and hatred for rebellion.These two feelings are originally very simple, and it can be said that they are quite good, but if he over-executes them, he will inevitably do evil.In his view, theft, murder, all crimes are different forms of rebellion.He has a blind and deep faith in all the people who hold official positions in the government, from cabinet ministers to village policemen.He despises, hates, and loathes all who have once transgressed the law.He went to extremes and did not admit exceptions. On the one hand, he often said: "Public servants are infallible, and officials are never at fault." On the other hand, he said: "These people are incurable. They I can never do anything good." Some people think too much, they think that the law of man has the right to designate someone as a criminal at will, and also has the right to testify against someone when necessary, and does not allow people from the lower classes to defend themselves. Agree with this opinion.He is resolute, serious, and unselfish, he is the brooding dreamer, he is as resilient as a blind believer.His gaze is like a steel awl, the cold light is piercing.All his life, he only worked hard on "vigilance" and "reconnaissance".He understands the most tortuous things in the world with a straight-line vision; he believes in his role and loves his job; he is a spy, just like others are priests.Those who fall into his hands will not be spared!If his father escapes from prison, he will also arrest him; if his mother absconds, he will also report on it.He did that, and he would be smug, as if he had done a good deed.At the same time, he worked hard all his life, lived alone, restrained himself, restrained his desires, and never entertained himself.Absolutely selfless about his duties, he understood the police as the Spartans understood Sparta; Vidoc, the character of Brutus.

All Javert's temperament shows that he is a man who hides his head and shows his tail, and has a sneaky eye.At that time, the Mestel metaphysicists, who embellished various so-called extremist newspapers with profound theories of cosmic evolution, would definitely say that Javert was a symbolic figure.No one can see his forehead buried under his hat, his eyes pressed under his eyebrows, his chin sunk in his tie, his hands tucked into his sleeves, No one could see his crutch hidden in his dress.But when the time came, his flat forehead with exposed muscles and bones, dark eyes, terrifying chin, thick hands, and strange-looking short stick all suddenly appeared from the shadows like an ambush.

Despite his aversion to books, he read a lot when he had the occasional spare moment, so he was not entirely illiterate, as can be seen from his fondness for words in his conversation. He has no bad habits at all, as we have said.When he is proud, he only smells a little snuff.At this point, he has a touch of humanity. There is a class that is called "vagrants" in the statistical chronology of the Ministry of Justice. It is not difficult for us to understand why Javert is the king of Hades of that class.The mention of Javert's name made them shy away, and the presence of Javert overwhelmed them with consternation. Above is the image of this demon. Javert seemed to be an eye forever fixed on M. Madeleine, an eye full of doubts and suspicions.Later, M. Madeleine noticed it too, but it seemed to him a matter of insignificance.He never asked Javert a word, he neither sought him out nor avoided him, and he bore the irritating, almost menacing look with aplomb.He treated Javert as easily and kindly as he treated anyone else. From Javert's tone, we can guess that he has secretly investigated some traces that Uncle Madeleine may have left elsewhere in the past.That curiosity was characteristic of his race, part instinct, part will.He seemed to know the truth, and sometimes he said in a veiled manner that someone had investigated certain situations of a disappeared family in a certain place.Once, when he was talking to himself, he said something like this: "I believe, I have caught him." After that, he thought about it for three days without saying a word.It was as if the thread he thought he was holding had broken off again. Moreover, the following correction is also necessary, because the meaning of certain words and sentences is often too absolute. In fact, human imagination is not really infallible, and the nature of instinct is that it is sometimes disturbed by the outside world. , confused and knocked back.Otherwise instinct would be superior to intelligence, and animals would be wiser than humans. Javert was obviously a little embarrassed by M. Madeleine's quiet, easy, and nonchalant attitude. One day, however, his peculiar behavior seemed to irritate M. Madeleine.This is how it happened.