Chapter 343 The fourth volume Javert went off the rails

Javert left Wuren Street slowly. For the first time in his life he walked with his head downcast, and for the first time in his life he put his hands behind his back. To this day, Javert only adopts the decisive one of Napoleon's two postures: arms folded on the chest;Now, a change has taken place, and his whole body appears dull and melancholy, frightened and restless. He walked into a quiet street. But it's going in a certain direction. He took the shortest route towards the Seine, and after reaching the quay of the Elms, followed the quay, passed the Place de Gréveau, not far from the post on the Place Châtelet, and stopped at the corner of the Pont Notre-Dame.On the side from the Pont Notre-Dame to the Pont de la Bourse, and on the side from the Tannery to the Flower Market, the Seine forms a square pool through which the rapids pass.

This part of the Seine was a place that sailors dreaded.Nothing could have been more dangerous than this rapid, which at that time was not wide, and was choked up by a row of stakes from the now-demolished bridge-head mill, and was therefore very swift.The proximity of the two bridges added to the danger.When the river passed through the bridge opening, it rushed and rushed, creating terrible waves, which accumulated there, and the water level soared. The waves hugged the piers like a thick water rope, as if they wanted to pull them out.Those who fall here will never come out of the water again, and those who know water best will also sink.

Javert rested his elbows on the railing, his chin in his hands, his nails mechanically tucked into his thick whiskers, and he meditated. A novelty, a revolution, a disaster was happening in his heart, and he needed to examine himself. Javert was in great pain. For a few hours Javert had ceased to be a simple man.His mind was utterly confused, and the head, which had been clear when it was blindly executed, had now lost its clarity, and a cloud had arisen in the crystal.Javert's conscience had made him feel that his duties had taken on a duality, and he could no longer hide this from himself.When he accidentally met Jean Valjean on the beach of the Seine, he felt as if the wolf had caught its prey again, and the dog had found its master again.

Before him he saw two straight roads, and indeed he saw two roads, which dismayed him, for all his life he had known only one straight road.To his great pain, the two paths went in opposite directions.Of the two straight paths, one of which excludes the other, which one is correct? His situation is really indescribable. Rescued by a bad guy, borrowed the debt and paid him back, against one's will, sits on an equal footing with a recidivist, and does him a favor in return for his favor; let others say "go" to yourself, Saying to him again, "You are free"; disregarding duty, the general obligation, for personal reasons, but feeling that there is also something common in these personal factors, perhaps of a higher order; He betrayed society in order to be loyal to his conscience; he actually did all these absurd things, and it was still weighing on his heart, making him petrified.

To his astonishment, Jean Valjean forgave him.There was another incident which frightened him into a daze, namely that he, Javert, had also forgiven Jean Valjean. What happened to him?He is looking for himself and cannot find it. What should we do now?It was not right to surrender Jean Valjean; nor was it right to set Jean Valjean free.In the first case, the man who exercises authority is lower than the convict; in the second, the prisoner rises above the law and tramples it underfoot.Both circumstances were dishonorable to him, Javert.All possible measures are criminal.Destiny has its precipices before the impossible.Beyond these precipices, life is but a bottomless abyss.Javert was in such a desperate situation.

One of his anxieties was being forced to think, this intense conflict of feelings forced him to think.Thinking was unaccustomed to him, and it troubled him especially. There was always some inner treachery in his mind, and he was very resentful because of these inner betrayals. It was useless and tiring for him to think, on any subject and on any occasion, outside his narrow public office.Thinking about the day that just passed is torture.After such an impact, one should observe one's own heart and make oneself understand oneself. What he has just done makes him tremble, he, Javert, violates all police codes, all social and judicial institutions, violates all statutes, thinks it right to release a man, does it to his own satisfaction, does not do business And go about your own private business, isn't that indescribably bad?He shuddered every time he looked at what he did, what to call it.What do you decide to do?He had but one solution: to return immediately to the Rue des Armands, and to imprison Jean Valjean.Obviously this is what he should do.But he can't do that.

Something blocked his way this way. have something?how?Is there anything else in the world but courts, executions, police stations, and authorities?Javert was troubled by this. A holy convict!A reform-through-labour prisoner who is not punished by the law, and this is Javert's fault. Isn't it terrible that Javert and Jean Valjean, the one who was the punisher and the other the sufferer, were both under the law, and now they were both above the law? how?Could it be that no one was punished after such an absurd thing happened!Jean Valjean, stronger than the whole social order, is free, and he, Javert, continues to eat the bread of the government!

His musings grew more and more terrifying. In his musings he might have reproached himself for being negligent in bringing the rioter to the Rue de la Passion, but it did not occur to him.Big mistakes cover up small mistakes.In addition, the rioter must be dead, and the dead cannot be held accountable legally. Jean Valjean, this is his spiritual burden. Jean Valjean puzzled him.All the principles on which his life was based could not exist in the presence of this man.Jean Valjean's magnanimity towards him oppressed him.He recalled other incidents, which he had thought to be lies in the past, now seemed to be true.M. Madeleine appeared behind Jean Valjean, and the faces of the two men merged into one person, a respectable person.Javert felt something terrible invade his heart, that is, his admiration for a convict.Is it possible to respect a reform-through-labor prisoner?He trembled because of it, but couldn't shake it off.After a futile struggle, he had to admit in his heart the noble qualities of this humble man.This is disgusting.

A good villain, a sympathetic convict, gentle, helpful, merciful, repaying evil with kindness, forgiving hatred, replacing revenge with mercy, preferring to destroy himself instead of sending enemies, rescuing those who have hit him, respecting the noble The morality of mortals and angels he is closer to angels!Javert was forced to admit that the monster existed. But the situation can no longer continue like this. We repeat, of course, that he does not surrender without resistance to this monster, this repulsive angel, this hideous hero, who infuriates and dismays him.When he and Jean Valjean sat face to face in the carriage, the legal system roared in his heart countless times like a tiger.Countless times he tried to rush at Jean Valjean, seize him and swallow him, that is to say, arrest him.Indeed, what is the difficulty?Call out to the first sentry post you pass: "This is a habitual criminal who has absconded!" Call the police and say to them: "Leave this man to you!" Then leave the prisoner there and walk away without asking. What happens next, I don't care about anything anymore.This man will always be a prisoner of the law, at the mercy of the law.What injustice is there?Javert had said this to himself.He had wanted to go further and arrest this man himself, but just like now, he hadn't been able to.Every time his hand was raised convulsively towards Jean Valjean's collar, and then fell as if under a weight, he heard a voice in the back of his mind calling to him: "Very well, Betray your savior. Then have Pontius Pilate's basin brought over, and wash your paws."

Then he thought of himself, and felt that Javert had been lowered in the presence of the noble Jean Valjean. A convict is actually his benefactor! Why did he agree with this man to let himself live?He had the right to be killed in that barricade.He should take advantage of this right.It would be better to have other insurgents come to his aid against Jean Valjean, and force them to shoot him. He was in agony, and felt himself uprooted for the loss of his firm faith.The Code was but a stump in his hands.He had to grapple with an unfamiliar concern.He discovered a feeling quite different from the legal right and wrong, which had been his only measure before.It was not enough to rest on his old integrity.A series of unexpected events emerged and overwhelmed him.A new world appeared in his mind: accepting good deeds and giving them back, this spirit of sacrifice, kindness, forgiveness, the violation of stern laws from motives of pity, respect for the individual, no final judgment, no guilt in hell , the eyes of the law may also shed a teardrop, an inexplicable God's justice and human justice run counter to each other.He saw a strange moral sun rising horribly out of the darkness, and he was disgusted and dazzled.An owl is forced to look down on an eagle.

He said to himself, it turns out to be true, things have exceptions, power can become embarrassing, regulations can be overwhelmed by a fact, not everything can be framed in the rules of the law, accidents can Makes obedience, the sublime qualities of a convict can set a trap for the integrity of a civil servant, ghosts can become holy, there is such an ambush in fate, and he remembered desperately that he himself could not escape the unexpected. He is forced to admit that goodness exists.The convict was kind.And he himself, which is really unheard of, has also done good deeds.Therefore he has fallen. He felt weak, and he hated himself. For Javert, the most ideal is not to talk about humanity, greatness and nobility, but to be innocent. But now he just made a mistake. How did he get to this point?How did all this happen?He couldn't explain it to himself either.He held his head in his hands, but to no avail, he was still at a loss as to how to answer. Of course, he has been making Jean Valjean fall under the law again. Jean Valjean was originally a prisoner of the law, and he, Javert, is a slave of the law.He never admitted that, when he had seized Jean Valjean, he had thought for a moment of letting him go.He seemed to unknowingly let go of his hand and let him go. New and difficult questions of all kinds flashed before his eyes, and he asked and answered himself, and his answers surprised him.He asked himself: "This convict, this desperate man, I pursued him to the point of persecuting him, and I fell at his feet, he could have revenge, but also to vent his hatred, and at the same time, for his own safety, he should have revenge , but he pardoned me and let me live. What did he do? Do his duty? No. This is a step forward. And I, I forgive him, what did I do? Do my best Responsibility. No. And a step further. So there's something else besides duty?" This made him panic, and his scales fell apart, one pan fell into the abyss, the other into the sky; Javert was equally horrified by the one above as by the one below.He was by no means a so-called Voltairean, philosopher, or atheist; on the contrary, he had an instinctive reverence for the established Church, which he recognized only as a solemn part of society as a whole, where public order was His creed, that was enough for him; since he became a policeman as a man, he has almost made police service his religion, he is a spy as other people are priests, and we use these words from the very beginning. In a serious sense, there is no irony at all.He had one superior, Monsieur Gisquet, and another superior whom he had never thought of hitherto: God. The new officer, God, he felt unexpectedly, and was disturbed by it. This unexpected appearance made him lose his way, he didn't know what to do with this superior, he knew that subordinates should always obey, could not disobey orders, could not blame, could not argue, he knew that in front of a superior who surprised him too much, The only way out for subordinates is to resign. But how do you go about submitting your resignation to God? Anyway, he always came back to the point that there was one thing that mattered to him more than anything else, and that was that he had committed a terrible crime against the law.He turned a blind eye to a convicted and absconded criminal.He released a convict.He detains from the law a man who falls under the law.He did it, so he didn't understand himself either.He wasn't even sure if it was him.He didn't know why he was doing it, all he felt was dizziness.Hitherto he had lived by blind faith, out of which came a dark integrity.Now that belief has been lost, so this integrity is no more.Everything he believed in was gone.The truth he did not want to touch tortured him harshly.From now on he has to be a different kind of person.He felt a strange pang, a pang of conscience when it is unveiled.He saw things he didn't want to see.He felt empty, useless, out of touch with his old life, dismissed, ruined.Power was dead in his mind, and he had no reason to live. He was moved, what a terrible experience it was! It's granite, but suspicious!Cast in a legal mould, a whole bronze statue of the Lord's punishment, and suddenly found under the bronze breast a grotesque and disobedient thing, almost like a heart!To repay kindness with kindness, although even today people still consider this kind of virtue to be a kind of evil!Is a watchdog but licks people!It was ice, but it melted!It was originally an iron tongs, but it turned into a hand!Suddenly feel the fingers loosen!Let go, what a terrible thing! A man who is going forward has lost his way and is going backwards. Forced to admit that infallibility is not guaranteed, that dogmas may be wrong, that codes are not all-encompassing, that societies are not perfect, that power can be shaken, and that which is immutable can be broken.Judges are only mortals, the law may be wrong, and the court may make wrong judgments!Saw a crack in the boundless blue-glass sky! In Javert's heart there was such a shock as a simple conscience can have, and a soul out of order, integrity thrown out under irresistible circumstances, crashed headlong against God and shattered.Of course this is very peculiar.The stoker of law and order, the driver of power, riding a blind iron horse on a straight and hard road, can actually knock a ray of light off the horse!Irreplaceable, direct, correct, geometrically rigorous, passive and complete, even yields!The locomotive also has a way to Damascus! God is ever present in man's heart, which is the true conscience, which is not swayed by false consciences, which forbids the spark to be extinguished, which orders the light to remember the sun, which instructs the mind to know when it encounters false absolutes The true absolute, the triumph of human nature, the immortality of human heart, this glorious phenomenon may be the most magnificent miracle in our hearts, can Javert understand it?Can Javert see it?Can Javert feel something?Certainly not.But under the pressure of this undeniable incomprehension, he felt his head crack. Instead of changing his appearance, this miracle wounded him.He endured the change, exasperated, and he felt only that it was so hard to live with all this, that he felt as if he would not be able to breathe easily from now on. He was not used to the appearance of unfamiliar things over his head. What had been seen above him so far was a clear, simple, penetrating plane, nothing unknown or obscure; Clear area, limited, and scope; everything is predictable; power is a fair thing, it will not be overthrown by itself, and it will not be dizzy in front of it.Only below did Javert see things he did not know.Injustice, accident, that chaotic breach of disorder, the possibility of slipping into the abyss, these belong to the lower classes, to the rebels, to the bad and the low.Now Javert threw back his head, and he was suddenly surprised to see something he had never seen before: there was an abyss above. What's the matter!Totally destroyed!Totally disrupted!On what basis?The sure things crumbled. how?The weakness of this society can be found by a magnanimous villain!how?The faithful servant of the law can see himself in two crimes: the crime of letting him escape and the crime of arresting him!Not all government orders to employees are reliable!There may be no way to go in the duty!How come these are true!Could it be that a former gangster who succumbed to punishment can stand upright and be justified in the end?Is this believable?Should there be cases where the law should recede before the transfigured sinner, and make an apology? Yes, it does!Javert saw it!Javert got it!Far from denying it, he participated.This is a fact.It is frightening that real facts can have such monstrous changes. Let the facts do their job, and they would be limited to being arguments for the law, but they are God-sent.Will anarchy also fall from the sky now? In this way, in this exaggerated illusion of pain and depression, everything that could have limited and corrected his impression disappeared, and society, human beings, and the universe were left in front of his eyes only as a simple and ugly outline. , such as punishment, what has been tried, the powers given by the law, the judgments of the Supreme Court, the judiciary, the government, detention and repression, official wisdom, legal correctness, principles of power, all political and civil security. Creed, sovereignty, jurisprudence, logic from the code, the absolute being of society, the truth of the masses, all reduced to rubble, rubbish, and chaos; Javert himself - the watcher of order , the incorruptible policeman, the watchdog of society—now defeated and overthrown; and on the ruins of it all stood a man with a green hat and a halo ;his thoughts were so confused that such was the dreadful phantasm of his soul. Can this be tolerated?cannot. If there is an anomaly, this is an example.There are only two ways out, one is to resolutely go to Jean Valjean and send the prisoner to prison, the other is... Javert left the railing, and this time, with his head up, he walked steadily towards the post in a corner of the Place Châtelet, marked by a lantern. Once there, he saw a policeman through the window and went in, the guards recognizing their own men just by the way they pushed open the guard's door.Javert said his name, handed his papers to the policeman, and sat down at a table in the post where a candle was burning.On the table were a pen, a lead inkwell, and some papers, for notes which might be required, and for depositing items on night patrol. This table is always accompanied by a chair with straw cushions, which is a rule and is equipped in all guard posts; there is also a boxwood dish full of sawdust and a cardboard box on the table. Boxes filled with red paste for sealing, such tables belong to the format used by junior police officers.The official documents of the government start here. Javert picked up a pen and a piece of paper and began to write, and here is what he wrote: Javert wrote these few lines with his quietest and most neat calligraphy, without missing a single comma, and with a firm handwriting that made the paper rustle under the heavy pen.Below the last line he signed: Javert blotted the ink on the paper, folded it like a letter, sealed it, wrote "Report to the Government" on the back, put it on the table, and walked out of the post.The iron-barred and glass-paneled door closed behind him.He crossed the Place Châtelet again, returned to the bank of the river, and returned mechanically and accurately to the original spot he had left only a quarter of an hour ago.He leaned his elbows on the original stone railing in the same position, as if he hadn't moved. Dark and deep, it was the grave-like hour after midnight, when a cloud hid the stars.The sky is a thick, gloomy layer.The houses in the city were no longer lit, and no one passed by; the road and the shore were deserted as far as the eye could see; the towers of Notre-Dame and the court seemed to be silhouetted by the night.A street lamp illuminated the curbstones on the river bank red, and the shadows of those bridges lined up in front and back were distorted in the mist.The rain made the river rise. Where Javert leaned, we remember, just above the rapids of the Seine, straight below it was the terrible eddy, which opened and closed in an endless spiral. Javert lowered his head and looked around.It was pitch black, and nothing could be discerned.You can hear the waves, but you can't see the river.Occasionally, out of this dizzying abyss, a gleam of light, vague and serpentine, has the power of water, to draw light from nowhere in the dark night, and make it become water snake.The light disappeared and everything became blurred again.The boundless and vast world seems to have opened a hole here, and the bottom is not water but a deep valley. The river's embankment is steep, blurred, mixed with water vapor, and suddenly disappears, just like the cliff of infinite space. Seeing nothing but feeling the hostile coldness of the water and the dampness of the dull stones.A bad wind blew straight up from the abyss.The rise of the imaginable but unseen river, the desolate whine of the waves, the tall and gloomy bridge arches, fell into this melancholy void in imagination, and the whole shadow was full of terror. Javert remained motionless for a few minutes, looking into the dark opening, as if he were contemplating the void ahead.The sound of the water was gurgling, and suddenly he took off his hat and put it on the side of the stone railing. After a while, a tall black figure appeared standing above the railing. The late pedestrians in the distance might regard him as a ghost. On the Seine, he straightened up again and fell straight into the darkness, immediately making a deep splashing sound. Only the underworld knows the secret of this drastic change that disappeared in the water.