Page 293 - les-miserables

His name was Javert, and he belonged to the police.
At M. sur M. he exercised the unpleasant but useful
functions of an inspector. He had not seen Madeleine’s be-
ginnings. Javert owed the post which he occupied to the
protection of M. Chabouillet, the secretary of the Minis-
ter of State, Comte Angeles, then prefect of police at Paris.
When Javert arrived at M. sur M. the fortune of the great
manufacturer was already made, and Father Madeleine had
become Monsieur Madeleine.
Certain police officers have a peculiar physiognomy,
which is complicated with an air of baseness mingled with
an air of authority. Javert possessed this physiognomy mi-
nus the baseness.
It is our conviction that if souls were visible to the eyes,
we should be able to see distinctly that strange thing that
each one individual of the human race corresponds to some
one of the species of the animal creation; and we could easi-
ly recognize this truth, hardly perceived by the thinker, that
from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to the tiger, all
animals exist in man, and that each one of them is in a man.
Sometimes even several of them at a time.
Animals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues
and our vices, straying before our eyes, the visible phan-
toms of our souls. God shows them to us in order to induce
us to reflect. Only since animals are mere shadows, God has
not made them capable of education in the full sense of the
word; what is the use? On the contrary, our souls being re-
alities and having a goal which is appropriate to them, God
has bestowed on them intelligence; that is to say, the pos-

293