In the afternoon, Sergeant Javert once more returned to the streets of Dauphiné to carry out his routine patrol.
As a beat officer, one of his foremost duties was to keep constant watch on the bakeries and vendors around the Luxembourg Palace: eight shops and fifteen itinerant stalls, all of which he was to monitor for their stock of loaves and the prices at which they were sold.
The October storm had left the city shaken, and under immense pressure Mayor Bailly had sworn before the six hundred thousand Parisians that every four-pound loaf of brown bread—commonly called black bread—should be sold at a fixed rate of eight to ten sous, two to two and a half sous the pound, and be available between seven in the morning and five in the afternoon, but only to those citizens who could present their bread certificates.
At the close of the eighteenth century, the wage of a common labourer—men who carried loads, who built and hauled—averaged thirty sous a day, the value of a single livre. Artisans of greater skill—a coppersmith, a shoemaker, a printer, or a coachman—might earn forty or even sixty sous, up to three livres. Yet once rent had been paid, and candles, wine, oil, vegetables, clothing, and fuel purchased, bread remained the chief expense, devouring nearly half the family's means.
Thus to guarantee supply and to restrain price had become, in 1790, the foremost business of the Hôtel de Ville. Flour must be drawn in heavier measure from the southern provinces; imports secured from Poland, from Bohemia, even from Russia. At the same time merchants must be restrained from hoarding or adulterating their loaves with sawdust; vagrants must be checked from pilfering, swindling, or raising disturbances.
The Prefecture of Police, acting upon the advice of the Palais de Justice, created a hundred new patrol posts at the start of the year for the capital's forty-eight electoral districts (sixty the year before). Paris, whose police had numbered but three or four hundred, would thus be strengthened. Javert, then thirty years of age, found himself singularly fortunate: from a prison guard on the verge of dismissal, he was lifted to the rank of patrol sergeant.
From gaoler to policeman—it was nothing short of a leap to the heavens. One might compare it to a night-watchman of no standing suddenly raised to the dignity of state service, uniformed, salaried, and holding rank. At first Javert had supposed it was a kindness from his old governor at the prison; but soon he dismissed the thought.
When he presented himself at the Prefecture, Captain Pierre, his new superior, had smiled in a peculiar way and asked whether he was acquainted with some great man at the Palais de Justice. For the list of patrolmen had, at the last moment, been swollen by several dozen names; Javert's was among them.
"A great man?" Javert had been utterly bewildered. He was no more than the son of a bankrupt merchant of Reims, who had wandered to Paris eight years before and been taken on as a warder for his strength and sturdy frame. Save for a widowed sister and three young nieces and nephews in Reims, he was alone in the world.
The sergeant shook his head with honest simplicity. The captain gave a half smile and said only: "Then you had best remember the favour. There are men who would pay a thousand livres to stand in your place. If ever you should meet the one who procured it, give him, from me, my sincerest compliments."
At the year's end the Hôtel de Ville, pleading poverty, had cut the Prefecture's request in half, striking off fifty of the posts. The Director of Police, furious yet helpless, could do nothing. But the Palais de Justice had intervened, enlisting deputies of the Assembly, and at length the full number was restored. Who the unseen hand was that had thus extended itself remained unknown, even among the higher officers.
And so, in January 1790, Paris beheld for the first time a new spectacle: men in tricorn hats, with three-folded swords at their sides, dressed in black tailcoats and trousers, shoes bound with leather gaiters, a military cast in every detail. It was, very likely, the first body in the history of France—perhaps of the world—of uniformed, salaried, professional policemen.
Having found the price of grain stable and the district quiet, Sergeant Javert was allowed an hour of repose. As was his custom, he stepped into a small café at the corner where Dauphiné meets the Cordeliers. It was as ordinary a house as could be imagined on the Left Bank, so plain that the owner had given it no name but the Street-Corner Café.
The hour was early still, not yet time for afternoon callers. In the narrow hall, no more than three or four patrons sat at the long tables, shabby in appearance, conversing in low voices.
When Javert entered—stern-faced, his grey hair smoothed neatly upon his temples—the men rose at once in nervous haste, avoiding the policeman's sharp eye, and hurried to the counter. They flung down a few sous, then departed in such haste that they scarcely looked behind them.
The innkeeper, a middle-aged man, was untroubled. He was, in truth, relieved. Had Javert not come, those fellows would have gone off without paying, or worse, have contrived to extort something from him.
"A large cup of cocoa, from Santo Domingo, milk but no sugar?" he asked in passing. It was the sergeant's habit; since becoming a patrolman a month earlier he had frequented the place.
Javert gave a nod, said nothing, and took his seat by the window. He laid his tricorn hat and sword within reach and settled himself to observe. From this vantage he commanded a view of both streets. Bread was not the sole duty of the patrol: they were charged with the order of the thoroughfares, the prevention of crime, and the immediate handling of offences punishable by a week's detention or less.
He watched for some time. All seemed in order. Only then did he turn to the steaming cup before him. At that moment he became aware of a stranger opposite, a young man who lifted his coffee cup and inclined his head in salutation.
The youth was strikingly handsome, twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, with a broad brow, eyes of clear blue, golden curls, cheeks like roses, and teeth white as ivory. A black cloak enveloped him; beside him lay a brown leather case, almost new; upon the table a powdered wig, lightly perfumed, had been set aside.
Javert, cold of aspect, hesitated, then gave the briefest nod, choosing not to reply. Yet he had noted the man before: a lawyer, young but already present several times that month in this same café.
Though his schooling had been no more than two broken years at a parish school, Javert's experience of life had taught him a firm belief: that lawyers, for all their frail appearance and effeminate gestures, were creatures of formidable power, dangerous as flood and fire, not to be crossed. Not merely a sergeant such as he, but even Captain Pierre and the high officers of the Prefecture, were cautious not to offend them.
In the Prefecture's training courses the lesson was repeated: have nothing to do with the men of the Palais de Justice; avoid misunderstandings with deputies; steer clear of lawyers altogether.
And with reason. On the Île de la Cité, the lawyers of the Palais—judges and prosecutors alike—interfered freely in the Prefecture's affairs, even in appointments, planting their clients where they pleased. In the Assembly they made up near half the deputies, drafting laws as they saw fit, binding the sceptre of Louis XVI within the chamber itself.
As for those still in practice, their influence was the more alarming. A certain stammering lawyer, Camille Desmoulins, had once spoken beneath the trees of the Palais-Royal, and it was said that every leaf had fallen at his words. The next day Paris had stormed the Bastille. Another, Georges Danton, hideous of visage but prodigious in force, could raise the women of Paris with a single gesture, set them armed about Versailles, and bring the King and his family back captive to the capital.
Javert had no desire to know what passed in the mind of the young man before him. He was a policeman, nothing more; politics were poison. Ten livres a week, with a daily allowance besides, sufficed him, and allowed him to aid his widowed sister and her children in Reims.
Yet the lawyer rose, untroubled by Javert's indifference, and came towards him. Javert, unwilling to hazard his place, thought it wisest to yield.
"Do not rise!" The young man placed a hand firmly on the sergeant's shoulder, his tone that of command. "The time has come for us to meet."
He signalled to the innkeeper, who instantly left the room, closing the door and hanging a board that read Closed for the present.
"You need not be alarmed," the lawyer said lightly. "This house owes me some gratitude. In a certain transaction I saved the owner from a ruinous contract, and in court I defended his right to this very café. He promised me a quarter of an hour's privacy, that I might speak with you."
"What is there to talk of? I am nobody," Javert answered, still tense though his hand no longer sought the sword.
The young man smiled faintly, touched the policeman's uniform, and spoke half to himself: "Your coat, your sword, the very increase of your patrol—all these are the fruit of my influence upon a certain great man at the Palais de Justice. Yet the fools at the Prefecture, blind and petty, refused my design for a proper police insignia and continued with their borrowed military ranks. More absurd still, your Director rejected my proposal that patrolmen carry whistles—too shrill, he said, unpleasant to the ear. A dolt! And as for these tricorns and long swords—they ought to be replaced. A flat-crowned hat and a stout baton, that would be the true emblem of the French police."
Such words—dolt, fool, short-sighted—Javert let pass. They belonged to quarrels among men of power, quarrels in which he would never entangle himself.
The lawyer went on, half in irony: "Perhaps I am too far ahead of my time. A step in advance makes one a genius; two steps, a madman. Life is loneliness in the snow! But let us leave these fancies. Let us speak of you."
He paused, and when Javert's look grew impatient, he continued more directly:
"Perhaps it is because we are both of Reims that I have watched you. Since last November I have observed you more than once. You are upright, severe, incorruptible. In the prison you showed a heart of stone to criminals, yet compassion, disinterested and unspoken, to the innocent who suffered. You care for your sister and her children. Do not mistake me; I mean you no harm.
"At the Palais, when I was engaged upon the police archives, a certain person entrusted me with the addition of several names to the Prefecture's roll. I slipped yours among them. Do not thank me; it was nothing. The result has been plain: in a fortnight the streets about the Luxembourg are calmer, thieves and brawlers seized, seditious plots suppressed. Men speak of Javert, the tireless, solitary, austere sergeant, who knows neither indulgence nor distraction, but who is just, incorrupt, and severe.
"Captain Pierre himself praises you. But I would see you advance further. A patrol sergeant is but the first step; the next will be inspector. That is, if you are willing to trust me with your career."
Confusion, gratitude, and unease wrestled within Javert. He longed to thank the man, yet feared such favour must bind him to deeds unlawful.
But the lawyer's voice came again, calm and deliberate: "No, I do not seek your gratitude. Too many livres in the purse corrupt a man, and women no less. I am a lawyer now; I shall be a prosecutor, perhaps a judge, perhaps higher still. What I need is not flattery, but an ally—one of strong character, proven ability, and loyalty not lightly broken.
"Your captain, Pierre, I know well enough: narrow, ambitious, eager to share glory, quick to betray in adversity. I cannot rely on him. With you it is different. Between us there shall be no servitude, only mutual aid. Should you ever think me straying beyond the law, you may withdraw from me without reproach."
Javert hesitated, then gave a silent nod. In truth he had no choice. The man who had raised him could as easily cast him down. His sister and her children in Reims were hostages to fortune. Among five or six hundred patrolmen in Paris, many would gladly climb over the shoulders of their fellows. Severity and incorruptibility were his armour; they could not save him now.
The lawyer seemed content. "Two days past," he said, "a woman, mistress to the Marquis de Denormesnil, was murdered in the Rue Bâcle, Grenelle. The Marquis has been arrested for it. But the true culprit is her brother, Coller. This very evening, at eight, in a gambling den at Number 5, Rue de Sèvres, he will pawn her jewels for his play. Go there, you and your comrades. You will see him yourself. Ask me nothing more. Only remember: Denormesnil, though near ruined, was the guarantor when your Captain Pierre entered the force. Take your doubts and put them aside. One day, when you are inspector, come to me in Rue Saint-Jacques, Number 156. Then we shall speak at length."
The lawyer gathered his papers, his cloak, his powdered wig. At the door he turned, and said, "Forgive me, Sergeant Javert, I nearly forgot. My name is André—André Franck. I am at present engaged at the Palais de Justice."
With that he was gone. Javert sat in silence, gazing after him through the glass, watching the tall figure vanish at the end of the street.
Note: The Louis d'or was a gold coin, valued at twenty to twenty-five livres.
The livre—sometimes rendered as livre tournois or, in certain texts, as li—was a French silver coin, soon to be supplanted by the franc; its value was broadly equivalent to the latter. The sou was a copper piece, with twenty sous to the livre.
The Louis d'or (gold), the livre (silver), the franc (silver), and the sou (copper) will be the four principal currencies referred to in the narrative. As for the older French coins—the écu in its large and small issues, the pistole, the réal, the denier—these will, so far as possible, be omitted or simplified in the text.