Page 489 - les-miserables

CHAPTER III

JAVERT SATISFIED

This is what had taken place.
The half-hour after midnight had just struck when M.
Madeleine quitted the Hall of Assizes in Arras. He regained
his inn just in time to set out again by the mail-wagon, in
which he had engaged his place. A little before six o’clock in
the morning he had arrived at M. sur M., and his first care
had been to post a letter to M. Laffitte, then to enter the in-
firmary and see Fantine.
However, he had hardly quitted the audience hall of
the Court of Assizes, when the district-attorney, recover-
ing from his first shock, had taken the word to deplore the
mad deed of the honorable mayor of M. sur M., to declare
that his convictions had not been in the least modified by
that curious incident, which would be explained thereafter,
and to demand, in the meantime, the condemnation of that
Champmathieu, who was evidently the real Jean Valjean.
The district-attorney’s persistence was visibly at variance
with the sentiments of every one, of the public, of the court,
and of the jury. The counsel for the defence had some dif-
ficulty in refuting this harangue and in establishing that,

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