The Resignation of Inspector Javert.

"Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice, - error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic in the full flood of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously venerable radiance. Without himself suspecting the fact, Javert in his formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face, wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the good."

Victor Hugo.

In this world, it shall always be there are men of learning and of a certain type of mind who will take it upon themselves to categorize, refine and define the cosmos. Were it up to them, no child would ever ask, 'Maman, what is that thing just between sleep and waking when you are half in a dream and half in the world and for a second might fly if you wished, for you know it is nothing but a dream and you have nothing to lose?' without the mother answering, 'It is called somnolent gnosis, ma petite,' or some such. There would be no mystery on earth unexplained, no happenstance of existence undefined.

Such a man as this undoubtedly coined the phrase 'cognitive dissonance'. This describes the unpleasant feeling generated when one is in some manner forced to hold conflicting ideas simultaneously and is unable to rid oneself of either of them. It is a state of civil unrest within the twin spheres of the brain, a philosophical battle with no victor. It is a supremely sorry state of affairs, and one that was currently plaguing an Inspector, First Class, of the Paris Constabulary. Where as an artist or student - one more used to argument within himself and seeing the world in subtly shifting tones - might shrug such an affliction off, to a man of certainty and iron-clad conviction, such dissonance could prove as damaging as a knife thrust between the ribs.

As he walked along, the Inspector did have the look of a man quietly bleeding to death from a soul-wound too grievous to stem.

Since his time at the barricades he had discarded his slouch cap and jacket and reclaimed his hat and greatcoat from the station-house, thus returning his appearance to that which was more usual. A close observer would have noticed that his boots were scuffed and mud-caked, his hair (sable-turning-pewter) was escaping from its habitually tight queue, and his greatcoat was slovenly buttoned; all of which disarray was usually anathema to the Inspector.

It was past one of the clock and he was walking back from the station-house on the corner of the Place du Chatelet, to the Pont au Change which he had abandoned to his errand not twenty minute previously. He did not look at his surroundings, he walked as one distracted yet intimately acquainted with the city and so able to move about without giving the terrain his full attention.

At last he slowed at the zenith of the bridge, as if that gradient, although slight, was more than his feet could bear. He looked skyward at the velvet of the heavens and the light of the stars that shone there. It is a sight that has moved poets and lovers to wax lyrical, but produced no such affect upon the Inspector. The steel grey of his eyes widened in an attitude of horror and his mouth curled downwards in a show of self-loathing. If one were given to fancy, one would hazard that for him the sky had been void of stars, and he had taken their absence as a personal reproof.

As his chin lowered, his line of sight now took in the upper echelons of the Palais de Justice, and in its shadow the building of the Préfecture. Here his gaze stopped, and he stared at them with the grim hopelessness of a man trying to outstare the sun. At length he blinked, and nodded his head in defeat. Weary now but still straight-backed, he turned, facing out towards the river and the indistinct shape of the Pont Neuf which spanned the darkness a little way downstream. He did not rest his hands upon the stone, instead he reached into the pockets of his greatcoat and methodically excavated what he found there.

These pockets had, through many years habit, contained four things. The first was a day book with a stick of writing lead which he had given not half an hour past to the Sergeant at Chatelet with instructions that it be sent on to the Préfecture.

The second, a slim chased silver snuff box, lay in his palm now. He looked at it for some moments as it rested in his hand as if he had no clue to its function nor had seen it before. With deliberation – for he was beyond all things a very deliberate man – he set it on the parapet before him.

The third was a seal – a writ set within glass as such that a public servant of office might carry to identify him. This he placed beside the snuffbox. Time passed. He removed his hat, a battered article, old but well cared for, and placed it over those two objects as if to shield them.

The fourth item from the pockets of his greatcoat was a set of irons. He spared these not a single glance, but with the movements of one whose hands knew well their business he snapped the first fetter about his left wrist at his back and the second about his right, locking his hands behind him. Without pause and with great elegance of movement, the Inspector swung first one leg and then the other over the stone balustrade so that he perched, like his effects, upon the parapet. The heels of his boots eased down and found purchase upon the outer lip of the masonry that arced across the rushing waters of the Seine. He stood now upon the edge of oblivion.

This ghost, tall and grim in his demeanor had not been unobserved. A figure hurried along the Quai de Gesvres towards him, unnoticed by the specter at the edge of the Pont au Change. There was a moment of perfect stillness: the dark figure upon the parapet, the interloper frozen as he viewed the scene and struggled to comprehend its meaning...

With the terrible grace of an angel who knows it is damned, the ghost leant forward. He seemed to hang for a heartbeat, suspended, held up perhaps by the light of the stars above –

"No!"

- before gravity took hold and he toppled into the waiting darkness of the Seine.

There was a curse - c'est le foutu bordel - not just spat but bellowed, and the interloper, the unintended audience to this awful act, began to run.

Should a strong man watch a loved one take such a leap towards death, we would find it inconceivable that they did not immediately jump after them with the express though of rescue. Should a member of the public, an Everyman, witness such a fate befall a stranger, we would understand if they did not follow and applaud their heroism should they do otherwise. How then, if the man poised on the brink of destruction and the one observing him were enemies – adversaries who had fought each other through the years? We would expect the one to die, the other to watch with relief, if not satisfaction.

It was all the more surprising then, all the more unthinkingly selfless, when we learn that the man who had dropped into the Seine was Javert, and the man who ran, vaulted, and plunged into that uncertain abyss after him was Jean Valjean.

Javert knew a moment of weightlessness; the night air that rushed past snatching the loosened slip of silk that had bound his hair and tugging too at the tails of his coat, forming him into the parody of a crow in flight... And then the Seine claimed him.

He had given no thought to what it might be like. One might imagine that on a summer's night it would be welcoming, embracing one like a lover, the water murmuring a sibilance of sweetness as it dragged one towards death. It was not so.

The water enveloped Javert like a liquid brick wall, colaphizing the air from his lungs and clasping him with cold and brutal arms. In shock he inhaled, and the Seine invaded his body just as brutally. Ever contrary, what air remained in his chest and the currents conspired together to lift him once more, allowing his head to break the surface, for a choked breath to be taken - once, twice - before the weight of his coat, the dark eddies and his locked hands pulled him under and ever downwards.

He had seen the Inspector poised on the bridge, but, just as a man with a sword at his throat cannot truly believe that same steel will slice inwards and end his life in a bright gout of red, likewise he was incapable of imagining that the Inspector would make good on the action. Javert was an implacable creature of rigid values; he could not be bargained with, reasoned with or stopped in the pursuit of one he considered prey. He was a starving wolf, the unlawful his catch and their incarceration his meat and vittles. He was incapable of any act seeped in such selfish desperation.

And then as the Inspector vanished downwards from the lip of the parapet, Valjean was forced to reevaluate his assessment of Javert's character and to do so at speed, for further amazement wasted time.

In this history thus presented, we have witnessed many feats of strength as practiced by Jean Valjean. The moving of a boulder many times his weight, the scaling of walls, the lifting of a cart, to name but a few. But just because such practices have happened with a regularity to render them almost commonplace, does not mean that we should regard them as any less remarkable. That is to say, Valjean's rush to the side of the Pont au Change and his subsequent vault over the balustrade into the depths of the Seine was not an act to be belittled. The fact that he had the strength within his limbs and heart to do so after a day at the barricades and a night in the sewers does not automatically render the act an easy one. Indeed, as the cold of the water closed over his head, Valjean spared a thought to wonder if he had not just signed his own deathwrit...

It is a lazy conceit of writers, (and an unpardonable lapse for historians) to attribute the unlikely outcome of a situation to God. Battles may be lost all for the want of a horse-shoe and nail, but that is not ostensibly the hand of God - at least, the will of the divine does not imprint more heavily upon that matter than upon any other. From the point of view of Generals who know nothing of a single thrown shoe it might seem as such, but it is a fallacy.

In such a manner, it vexes me I can offer you no satisfactory and natural reason for why Valjean should have been capable of finding and clasping hold of Javert in the crush and swell of the unforgiving water. In truth he should not; the odds of such a happenstance are beyond my merge means to calculate. No doubt timing is all: at this moment Valjean knifed into the river, at that moment Javert surfaced for an instant. The light fell here, eyes locked on their prey there. This current pulled one of them thus, whilst that eddy turned them thither. And in such a manner did Valjean catch his quarry and, with Herculean effort, convey both of them to the stone steps of the little jetty at the side of the Quai de la Mégisserie, some lengths down-steam.

At last, with as much expenditure of strength as it had taken to drag Marius through the sewers and with near as a profound feeling of relief, Valjean reached the steps and flung the Inspector upon them, dragging himself onto the stone after and with a final effort, depositing them both on the narrow stone jetty. There he lay for a time, nequient of any further movement, so far beyond the natural limits of endurance that breathing was an exhausting effort.

That acknowledgement seemed to stir some disquieting thought within him for with a scarcely audible groan Valjean levered himself upright, grabbed the Inspector by the shoulders and struck him several times upon the back with the flat of his palm. It produced no effect whatsoever. The man cursed the corpse in his care roundly – Putain! Ne fait pas le con! Ah, ce me fait chier... – and struck him again with a mounting violence that spoke of desperation.

Of a sudden the corpse twitched, convulsed as if caught on some invisible hook and vomited up copious amounts of river water. Valjean gave a ragged sigh, collapsing back against the wall of the quay and keeping a baleful eye on the sodden and sorry figure of the Inspector as he continued to cough the Seine from his defedated lungs.

"Pardieu," the older man swore with relief, "thought I'd lost you."

The Inspector made no comment about the absurdity of such a statement; it is in fact doubtful he heard it at all and if he did it certainly did not register. The Inspector's world was still very much aquatic in nature. His clothes were water-logged, his hair hung about his face in darkly sodden rat's-tails, his eyes were clouded with liquid and his nose, throat, and lungs wetly burnt with a surfeit of the stuff. Blindly, his hands clawing for purchase against the stone and the shackles that still bound them, Javert succeeded in bracing against the jetty, and, like some uncertain Lazarus, he pushed himself upright.

Surprise and a hint of unease mingled. "Javert?"

Like a drunk, a man in the grip of a siren song, blank eyed and weak legged Javert stumbled to his feet and staggered down the steps towards the river. Had he stepped straight off the side of the jetty things would have gone differently, but in a twist of felicity his beleaguered brain had fixed upon the pale stone of the steps and saw that they lead to the river's depths: and so that was the direction he chose. He had reached the water, the silt lapping against his boots once more when a fist connected with the side of his head. He ricocheted off the quayside wall and dropped, senseless, boneless, against the muddy stone.

"Fils de salop!" Valjean uncurled his fist with an apologetic grimace, raised his eyes heavenward briefly and then addressed the unconscious man. "Pardon," he huffed, grasping him by the collar and dragging him unceremoniously up the steps to the haven of the jetty. "But one dousing was enough." A sigh and he knelt awkwardly beside his adversary, pulling at the heavy folds of his coat. "Let us hope," he complained to himself, "you are a creature of habit and your keys, as ever, are latched at your belt. Otherwise..." Blind searching with numb fingers was rewarded with the Inspector's keys. "Thank heaven for small mercies," Valjean acknowledged, rolling the other man awkwardly round so that he might unlock the cuffs that chained him.

Sense and sensation returned to him reluctantly. His body was leaden and cold and for a moment he felt triumph, for if ever a drowned corpse could acknowledge its existence it would surely feel like this. Something brackish rose at the back of his throat and he coughed, water dribbling from his mouth. An uneasy notion fought its way to the forefront of his mind: unless this was hell and the universe had a frankly putrid sense of humor, he should not feel this discomforted if he was dead.

Gritty eyelashes prized themselves apart with all the reluctance of a rusted gate and he blinked against the dark of the summer sky and the waterlogged shapes of light and shadow that swam before his wavering vision. One shape, paler and nearer than the rest resolved itself into the concerned and dripping face of Jean Valjean. Javert stared at him, feeling no surprise and only the barest flicker of disappointment. "Of course," he rasped. "Who else?" Sense and vision dimmed.

Moments, aeons, later it was called to heel as hands griped his shoulders, gave him a little shake. He struggled to sit, with the vague notion that this might grant him peace. The hands did not release their hold but moved instead to brace him steady.

"Can you walk?"

Javert gave the demon before him a tired and disappointed look of the sort that might be bestowed upon an imbecile child. The darkness from the river had never entirely released its hold, and he felt those Lethe-y waters rise again in his mind. The Inspector barely entertained the notion of fighting against the pull of oblivion. It had been a long day and an even longer night – exhaustion was a distant memory, unconsciousness a widening and welcome pit at his feet.

"Javert!"

There was darkness for a time – although what measure of time the fastidious Inspector could not swear to. The world returned to him in frozen instances, like bubbles risen from the depths of eternity.

He was being held – dragged, and supported – by someone. His right arm was locked across their broad shoulders; their left arm tightly circled his waist, lodged beneath his ribs, holding him up and propelling him along by brute strength as his boots dragged across the cobbles.

"I wish you'd lift your damn legs," his keeper complained, voice taut with exertion and worry.

Javert for his part made an inarticulate noise against the sodden wool of their coat. "Forgive me if I'm a little past my best," he replied. At least, those were the words he meant to say, but his lips were numb, his breath all but absent and his rebuke was mangled to nothing more but a second sound of semi-conscious distress.

Darkness came again.

Disjointed instances: streets which twisted and roiled beneath his feet, causing him to stumble those few times he was aware enough to attempt to walk. Pain in his side from where the hand clasped him like a vice, an ache in his opposite shoulder from his arm being used as an anchor-point. An ever present vitriol-burn in his chest. Light and shadow dancing before his uncomprehending eyes. The sound of carriage wheels on cobbles and the sensation of being rocked in a hammock filled with stones...

When next his eyes stayed open for longer than an instant, Javert was sat on the floor, propped against a wall in the atrium of a house. The house was dark. A single spark of light was called into existence: an unbearably bright pinpoint in the darkness which now floated towards him. He could feel his pupils cringe in complaint.

"Pardieu," muttered a voice behind the light. "You look awful."

"Plus ça change," Javert croaked blithely.

"Huh. I'm glad you're awake," the voice continued, sounding more put-upon than the words suggested. "It will make getting you upstairs simpler."

"Stairs?" he mumbled, long legs shifting uselessly against the floor-tiles, one hand pawing ineffectually at the wall in an attempt to gain his feet.

The floating light lowered and hovered in one place. The voice continued to move, coming close to him. "A moment. Here, give me your arm. Lean towards me, that's it." A pause as he was grappled with and then a grunt as he was hefted upwards, legs unfolded but unable to bear his weight. A muffled oath; the light ceased to hover and floated piercingly close. Javert tried to curl away from it but was locked in place against a solid, inescapable presence.

"Come on," the voice admonished. "Stir yourself! Work your legs!"

Somehow, by rote, by the habit of obeying an imperative as given by authority, Javert lifted one foot after the other and so was not dragged up the stairs like a sack of meal. The knuckles of his left hand knocked against the banister rails as he was propelled along; that chance percussion seemed to clear a little of his fugue. "Where is my hat?" he asked in a voice that held much of its usual certainty and vigor.

"On the parapet of the Pont au Change."

Another step. "My cane - where is my cane?"

"I haven't a damn clue."

Two more steps. "Where is my hat?"

A resigned pause. "Merde." The word was strained as it had become clear that Javert's lucidity was grossly misleading. "Never mind your hat, get up the damn stairs."

Three more steps. "I feel... wrong..."

Valjean centered his weight and had time to brace a hand against the wall as the man in his grasp convulsed violently and retched up a mouthful of who-knew-what before slumping heavily. "My thanks for the warning," Valjean muttered with an edge of sourness, all too aware of how they had both nearly been pitched down the stairs. With a sigh he resettled his burden against his side and prepared to tackle the rest of his task.