Page 338 - les-miserables

Fantine trembled at the sound of Javert’s voice, and let go
of the latch as a thief relinquishes the article which he has
stolen. At the sound of Madeleine’s voice she turned around,
and from that moment forth she uttered no word, nor dared
so much as to breathe freely, but her glance strayed from
Madeleine to Javert, and from Javert to Madeleine in turn,
according to which was speaking.
It was evident that Javert must have been exasperated
beyond measure before he would permit himself to apos-
trophize the sergeant as he had done, after the mayor’s
suggestion that Fantine should be set at liberty. Had he
reached the point of forgetting the mayor’s presence? Had
he finally declared to himself that it was impossible that any
‘authority’ should have given such an order, and that the
mayor must certainly have said one thing by mistake for
another, without intending it? Or, in view of the enormities
of which he had been a witness for the past two hours, did
he say to himself, that it was necessary to recur to supreme
resolutions, that it was indispensable that the small should
be made great, that the police spy should transform him-
self into a magistrate, that the policeman should become a
dispenser of justice, and that, in this prodigious extremity,
order, law, morality, government, society in its entirety, was
personified in him, Javert?
However that may be, when M. Madeleine uttered that
word, I, as we have just heard, Police Inspector Javert was
seen to turn toward the mayor, pale, cold, with blue lips, and
a look of despair, his whole body agitated by an impercep-
tible quiver and an unprecedented occurrence, and say to

338 Les Miserables