Complimenting the defending attorney on his ‘good faith’, he proceeded shrewdly to turn it to advantage. The defence appeared to accept that the accused was Jean Valjean, and since this was conceded to the prosecution it need not be further discussed. With an adroit change of subject the prosecutor launched into a thunderous attack on the immorality of writers of the romantic school, now becoming known to certain ‘ultra’ journals of the extreme right as the ‘satanic school’, to whose pernicious influence he attributed the misdeeds of Champmathieu, that is to say, Jean Valjean. Having exhausted this subject he came to Valjean himself. What kind of man was he? An outrageous villain, a monster of depravity, and so on … The model for invective of this kind is to be found in the story told by Theramène in Racine’s Phèdre, which does nothing for the play but has been of the greatest value to court-room orators, causing juries and spectators to ‘shudder’. With an eye on the columns of the Journal de la Préfecture, the prosecutor worked up to a masterly peroration. This was the man, this vagabond whose life had been one of crime and whose term of imprisonment had done nothing to improve his character, as was evidenced by his assault on the boy Petit-Gervais – this was the man who, being caught on the public highway in flagrante delicto, had denied everything, the act of trespass, the theft and even his own name. Apart from the mass of corroborative evidence which need not here be cited, he had been recognized by four witnesses – by Javert, the incorruptible inspector of police, and by three of his former comrades in infamy, the felons Brevet, Chenildieu, and Cochepaille. And what had he to say to this overwhelming testimony? He simply denied it. The brazen impudence! Members of the jury, in the name of justice… And so on …
The accused had listened open-mouthed, in a sort of stupefaction not unmixed with awe. He was evidently amazed that any man could talk so fluently. In the more impassioned moments, when eloquence burst its bonds and the stream of epithets poured over him like a flood, he had gently wagged his head from side to side in the mute and melancholy protest which was all he had allowed himself throughout the trial. The spectators nearest him several times heard him murmur, ‘This is what comes of not asking Monsieur Baloup.’
The prosecutor had drawn the jury’s attention to this ‘sullen attitude’ which, he said, was evidently deliberate, not due to stupidity but to craftiness and cunning and the habit of evading the law, and which shed its own light on the ‘profound perversity’ of the accused. Reserving the case of Petit-Gervais for future consideration, he demanded the full penalty prescribed by the law, which, as matters then stood, was penal servitude for life.
The defending attorney, rising to make his concluding speech, began by congratulating the advocate-general on his ‘admirable eloquence’. He went on to do his best, but weakly, evidently feeling that the ground had been cut from under his feet.
X
The accused
It was time for the case to be concluded. Ordering the accused to rise, the presiding judge put the formal question to him: ‘Have you anything to add in your defence?’
The man stood twisting a grimy cap in his hands, seeming not to have heard. The judge repeated the question.
This time the man heard and seemed to understand. He started like someone awakening out of sleep, stared about him at the onlookers, the gendarmes, his attorney, the jury and the judges, rested a huge fist on the wooden rail in front of his bench, and with his eyes fixed on the prosecutor began to speak. It was like an eruption, a flood of frantic, incoherent words jostling as they exploded from his mouth.
‘I have this to say. I was a wheelwright in Paris and I worked for Monsieur Baloup. It was a hard life. A wheelwright always works out of doors, in a yard or an open shed, never a closed one, because he has to have room, you see. In winter you flap your arms to keep warm, but the bosses don’t like that because it wastes time. It’s rough, handling metal when there’s ice between the cobbles, it wears a man out. You grow old before your time, you may be done for at forty. I was fifty-three and I found it very rough, and the other men, they’re hard on you, “old bones” they say. All I got was thirty sous a day, less than the proper rate because I was old. My daughter was a washerwoman down by the river. She earned a bit that way and between the two of us we got along. It was hard on her too, bent over a washtub, soaked to the waist rain or shine and the wind cutting into you. Even if it’s freezing you have to get the washing done – there are folk who haven’t got many clothes, they’re waiting for you to finish, so you have to keep at it or you’d lose customers. The tubs leak and you’re soaked through to your petticoats. She worked at the Enfants-Rouges laundry as well, where there’s water laid on. You don’t wash at a tub but straight under the tap and rinse the things in a trough. At least it’s indoors, so you’re warmer, but there’s all that steam from the hot water that hurts your eyes. She’d come back at seven dead tired and go straight to bed. Her husband used to beat her. She’s dead now. We weren’t very happy. She was a good girl, steady-going, never any fun. I remember one holiday, Mardi Gras it was, she went to bed at eight. That was our life. I’m telling the truth. You can ask anyone. Well, of course, it’s silly to say that. Paris is like a swamp. Who ever heard of Père Champmathieu? But there’s Monsieur Baloup. You can ask him. I don’t know what else you expect me to say.’
He fell silent but remained standing. He had talked rapidly in a loud, harsh voice, hoarse and uncouth, and with a kind of exasperated simplicity. Once he had paused to nod to someone among the spectators. The string of random affirmations, coming jerkily like a series of hiccoughs, had each been accompanied by a gesture of his hand like that of a man cutting wood. When he had finished the audience burst out laughing. He gazed about him, not understanding, and then laughed himself.
This did him no good.
The presiding judge, a considerate and well-meaning man, then spoke.
He first reminded the jury that his Monsieur Baloup ‘at one time a master wheelwright in Paris, for whom the accused claims to have worked’ was not available as a witness: he had gone bankrupt and could not be found. Then, turning to the accused and advising him to listen carefully, he said: ‘Your position is one which must cause you to think twice. You are the object of very serious suspicions. In your own interest I will ask you for the last time to give the court a plain answer to these questions. First, did you or did you not climb the wall of the Pierron smallholding, break a branch off a tree and steal the apples – in other words, commit the crime of theft with illegal entry? And secondly, are you or are you not the released convict, Jean Valjean?’
The accused shook his head in the manner of a man who understands and knows what he intends to say. Turning to face the judge, he opened his mouth and began:
‘In the first place –’
But then he looked down at his cap and up at the ceiling and was silent.
‘Listen to me,’ the prosecutor said sternly. ‘You refuse to answer questions, and your refusal in itself condemns you. It is apparent that your name is not Champmathieu. You are the convict Jean Valjean who at one time went by the name of Jean Mathieu, your mother’s name, and you were born in Faverolles, where you were a tree-pruner. It is also clear that you stole the apples from the Pierron property. The jury cannot fail to draw this conclusion.’
The man had re-seated himself. But now he rose abruptly and cried:
‘You’re wicked, that’s what you are! That’s what I was trying to say, only I couldn’t find the words. I’m one of those that don’t eat every day. I was on my way on foot from Ailly where there were floods and the countryside swamped and nothing but mud and a few bushes at the roadside, and there was this branch with apples lying on the ground and I picked it up not meaning any harm. So I’ve spent three months in prison being chivvied and now you’re all against me and telling me to answer your questions and the gendarme, who’s all right, he keeps nudging me in the ribs and saying, “Go on – answer.” But I don’t know how to say things, I never had any schooling, I’m
one of the poor. That’s what you don’t understand. I never stole anything, I just picked up something I found lying on the ground. You keep talking about Jean Valjean and Jean Mathieu. I don’t know who they are. They’re village people. I worked for Monsieur Baloup in the Boulevard de l’Hôpital and my name’s Champmathieu. You’re very clever, telling me where I was born, because it’s more than I know. Not everyone has the luck to be born in a house. I think my father and mother were tramps, but I don’t know for sure. When I was a kid they called me little Champmathieu and now I’m old Champmathieu. That’s my baptismal name and you can make what you like of it. I’ve been in Auvergne and I’ve been in Faverolles, but can’t a man go places without being a convict? I never stole anything. I’m Champmathieu and I worked for Monsieur Baloup and I lived in Paris. You make me tired with all your questions. Why does everyone have to pick on me?’
The prosecutor had remained standing. He now addressed the presiding judge.
‘Monsieur le président, in view of the confused but shrewdly calculated denials on the part of the accused, who is trying to pass himself off as an idiot but will not succeed in doing so, I request the Court’s permission to recall the witnesses Brevet, Cochepaille, and Chenildieu and Inspector Javert, so that they may reaffirm their testimony identifying the prisoner with the convict Jean Valjean.’
‘I must remind you,’ said the president, ‘that Inspector Javert is no longer in Court. With the Court’s permission, and with the consent of both the prosecution and the defence, he has returned to his duties in Montreuil-sur-mer.’
‘I stand corrected, Monsieur le président. In the absence of Inspector Javert I will remind the jury of what he said in this court a short time ago. Javert is a man highly respected for his personal probity and strict performance of his duties. His deposition was as follows: “I have no need to rely on circumstantial or material evidence in refuting the denials of the accused. I recognize him perfectly. His name is not Champmathieu. He is a highly dangerous ex-convict named Jean Valjean who was very reluctantly released at the end of his sentence. He had served nineteen years’ hard labour for robbery with violence. He made five or six attempts to escape. Apart from the Petit-Gervais and Pierron robberies, I suspect him of having robbed his lordship the late Bishop of Digne. I saw him frequently when I was in the prison service in Toulon and, I repeat, I recognize him perfectly.”’
This very positive affirmation appeared to make a deep impression on both the public and the jury. In the absence of Javert, the prosecutor demanded the recall of the three other witnesses so that they might again be formally questioned. The presiding judge gave the order and a minute later the prisoner Brevet was brought back into court escorted by a gendarme.
Brevet was clad in the black and grey smock of the central prisons. He was a man of about sixty whose appearance suggested both the man of affairs and the rogue, two things that sometimes go together. He had become some sort of turnkey in the prison to which his latest misdeeds had brought him, being, in the words of the authorities, ‘a man who likes to make himself useful’, and the almoner reported favourably on his religious beliefs. This, it must be remembered, was under the Restoration.
‘Brevet,’ said the president, ‘you are under a shameful sentence and cannot give testimony on oath.’ Brevet lowered his eyes. ‘However, even a man thus degraded by the law may, in God’s mercy, retain some sense of honesty and justice, and it is to this that I am appealing. If it still exists in you, as I trust it does, you will reflect very carefully before answering. You have to consider, on the one hand, the man whom your answer may destroy, and on the other hand the cause of justice which it may serve. This is a critical moment. You may have been mistaken … The accused man will rise … Brevet, look hard at the man in the dock and tell the Court if in all conscience you still recognize him as your former prison-mate, Jean Valjean.’
Brevet did as required and then said:
‘Yes, Monsieur le président, I do. I was the first to recognize him and I stick to it. That is Jean Valjean, who came to Toulon in 1796 and went out in 1815.1 went out a year later. He looks dull-witted now, but that is due to age; he looked crafty enough in prison. I positively recognize him.’
‘You can sit down,’ said the judge. ‘The accused will remain standing.’
Chenildieu was then brought in, a convict under life-sentence as his red smock and green cap indicated, who had been fetched from Toulon to testify at this trial. He was a small man of about fifty with a yellow, wrinkled face and an impudent expression, whose physical aspect suggested some sort of nervous weakness but whose gaze contained a hint of immense will-power. His fellow-prisoners had nicknamed him ‘Godless’. When the judge, addressing him in the same terms that he had used to Brevet, reminded him that his condition deprived him of the right to take the oath, he looked up and gazed sternly at the spectators; and when asked if he still recognized the accused he burst into laughter.
‘How could I help recognizing him? We did five years on the same chain. What’s the trouble, mate – you sulking?’
‘Sit down,’ said the judge.
Then came Cochepaille, also under life-sentence, a peasant from Lourdes who had become an outlaw in the Pyrenees. From pasturing sheep in the mountains he had drifted into brigandage, and in his general aspect he was no less ruffianly and even more stupid than the accused. He was one of those unfortunates shaped by nature to be wild animals and turned by society into gaolbirds.
The judge, with the same solemn invocation, put the same question to him and he answered promptly:
‘It’s Jean Valjean all right. We used to call him “Jean-the-crow-bar” on account of he was so strong.’
Each of the three affirmations, so clearly uttered in good faith, had drawn from the spectators a murmur of increasing volume and hostility towards the accused. The prisoner himself had listened to them with that air of astonishment which, according to the prosecution, was his principal weapon of defence. The gendarmes standing on either side of him heard him mutter after the first, ‘Well, that’s one!’ After the second he said more loudly, and seemingly with a grim satisfaction, ‘Fine!’ And after the third he exclaimed, ‘Famous!’
The judge looked at him.
‘Prisoner at the bar, you have heard this testimony. What have you to say?’
He replied: ‘I say it’s famous!’
There was something like a roar from the audience, in which the jury came near to joining. The case was clearly hopeless.
‘The ushers will call for silence,’ said the presiding judge. ‘I am about to pronounce sentence.’
But at this moment there was a movement behind the bench and a voice cried:
‘Brevet, Chenildieu, and Cochepaille, I want you to look at me!’
All eyes turned in the direction of this voice, which was so grief-stricken, so terrible, that it chilled the hearts of all who heard it. A man who had been seated among the privileged spectators behind the judges had risen to his feet. Opening the gate in the low rail separating the bench from the body of the court, he strode to the centre of the court-room. The presiding judge, the prosecutor, Monsieur Bamatabois, and twenty others recognized him and exclaimed with one voice:
‘Monsieur Madeleine!’
XI
Increased astonishment of Champmathieu
It was indeed he. The light from the clerk’s lamp fell upon his face. He was holding his hat in his hand, his clothes were neat, his greatcoat carefully buttoned. He was very pale and trembled slightly. His hair, which had still been grey when he arrived in Arras, was now quite white. It had gone white during the hour that he had been in the court-room.
The profound sensation caused by his sudden appearance was followed by a bewildered silence. So great was the contrast between the anguish in the voice and the calm outward aspect of the man that it was hard to believe that it was he who had spoken. But the pause was only brief. Before the judge or prosecutor could speak, or any gendarme or usher make
a movement, the man who was still known to everyone as Monsieur Madeleine advanced towards the three witnesses.
‘Do you not recognize me?’ he asked.
They shook their heads, staring at him in astonishment. The startled Cochepaille gave him a military salute. Monsieur Madeleine turned to face the court and said quietly:
‘Gentlemen of the jury, you must acquit the accused. I must ask the court to order my arrest. I am the man you are looking for. I am Jean Valjean.’
No one breathed. The first stir of amazement was followed by a deathly stillness. The hall was seized with the kind of religious awe that grips a crowd in the presence of a great event, but the face of the presiding judge wore an expression of sympathy and sadness. After exchanging gestures with the prosecutor and a few low-spoken words with his fellow-judges, he addressed the court-room in a tone that everyone understood:
‘Is there a doctor present?’
The prosecutor spoke.
‘Gentlemen of the jury, this very strange and disturbing incident must inspire in us all sentiments which I have no need to express. We all know the mayor of Montreuil-sur-mer, the highly respected Monsieur Madeleine, at least by repute. If there is a doctor present I wish to associate myself with the bench in requesting him to attend to the gentleman, and see that he gets safely home.’
He seemed about to say more, but Madeleine himself cut him short, speaking in a voice of quiet authority. What follows are the words he used, the exact words, as they were recorded immediately after the trial and as they must linger in the minds of everyone who heard them, nearly forty years ago.
‘I am grateful to you, Monsieur l’avocat général, but I am not mad, as you will see. You are on the point of committing a grave error, whereas I am performing an act of public duty. This man must be released. I am that wretched convict. What I now tell you is the truth, and it is sufficient for me that God is my witness. Here I am – you have only to take me. I did the best I could. I changed my name, I grew rich and became mayor; I sought to reinstate myself in the ranks of honest men. But it seems that it is not to be. I need not, at this point, tell you the whole story of my life, it will become known in due course. But it is true that I robbed the Bishop of Digne and the boy Petit-Gervais. You are right in supposing that Jean Valjean was a very evil wretch, although perhaps the fault was not wholly his. It is not for a man so lowly to remonstrate with Divine Providence or seek to advise society, but the degradation from which I sought to escape is none the less an evil thing. It is gaol that makes the gaolbird, and this is something that you must bear in mind. Before going to prison I was a peasant with very little intelligence, almost an idiot. It was prison that changed me. I had been stupid but I grew malignant, like a smouldering log that bursts into flame. Goodness and compassion saved me after brutality had come near to destroying me. But these are things that I cannot expect you to understand. You will find in the hearth in the place where I live the forty-sou piece I stole from Petit-Gervais. I have nothing to add. You have only to arrest me. But I see the advocate-general shake his head. You do not believe me, you think me mad. This greatly distresses me. At the least, an innocent man must not be convicted. It is a pity Javert is not here, for he would recognize me. These men say that they do not, but we shall see.’
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