About: Dak reads Les Misérables and recaps it here, so that she may better retain the information. Things not to expect: deep literary analysis. Things to expect: Spoilers. All the spoilers.
BOOK 6: Wolf Puppy!
In which Javert even refers to himself in the third person in the book.
M. Madeline takes Fantine to the hospital after she passed out in the last chapter. The hospital is also his house, or his house contains hospital beds. Either way, Fantine is there. She’s not really recovering, but she hopes to see her daughter soon.
Madeline has written to the Thénardiers and attempts to settle Fantine’s debt to them. He sends for the child. The Thénardiers are no dummies, so they realize quickly that Cosette has just turned into some kind of major cash cow. They don’t send her. Instead they ask for more money. Madeline supplies it.
No Cosette. They want more money. So it goes for a while while Fantine is over here dying. Madeline’s about to travel down to Montfermiel himself to get Cosette when he is visited by a certain Javert.
We’ll switch gears for a moment and see what our dear inspector has been up to since last we saw him. Gossip around town is that he’s been corresponding with Paris and now he’s come to tell the Mayor that there has been a crime committed. A crime that has been perpetrated against the Mayor himself!
This all comes as news to Madeline. I mean if someone committed a crime against him, surely he would know about it. Right? He asks Javert what the fresh hell he’s talking about. Javert, as it turns out, is the perpetrator.
Plot Twist!
Madeline is still confused. Javert insists that he be fired. Quitting would be too honorable, and he feels he should be disgraced for his indiscretion. We’re all going to need a little clarification before anybody gets dismissed, and Javert is going to give us a tour through the mind acrobatics he’s gone through in order to arrive at the conclusion that he ought to be sent packing.
So, after the whole Fantine debacle, Javert was pretty enraged. He actually put pen to paper and wrote down his suspicions and sent them on their suspicious way to Paris. Their reply? Javert, you crazy! They already had the suspect, Jean Valjean, in custody.
Oh, really?
Let’s explain…
It seems a guy who just happens to match Jean Valjeans description was caught stealing apples from somebody’s tree. (Bread is a gateway food!) This guy also just happens to have had the same job as a pruner that Valjean had. Though nobody from Valjean’s old life can be found to identify him, there are a couple of his old convict friends that say this apple-stealer is the guy. Even Javert recognizes him, and is already to set forth and identify the man himself.
And then there is the matter of his name. His name is Champmathieu. I will spare you the prodigious hoops it takes to derive that from Jean Valjean. All you need to know is that it is somehow a perfectly logical assumption based on Valjean’s mother’s maiden name and French dialects. Javert seems excited about it.
And this is why he must be dismissed, for slandering the mayor’s good name.
Of course, Madeline has absolutely zero intention of dismissing anybody. Javert insists, Madeline declines — a few times. Javert makes his case further.
He doesn’t think he should be dismissed for being suspicious. He would be a crap inspector if he wasn’t. He thinks he deserves the dishonor because he denounced Madeline as a convict in a fit of pique with no proof, and it just isn’t right to be vengeful like that. He doesn’t want any special consideration, because he would totally sack his subordinates if they ever did such a thing, and what kind of an example would that be if he didn’t abide by the same rules?
Javert spends a bit more time explaining why he must be fired immediately, and in the end Madeline shakes his hand and offers up a maybe. Javert is certainly vexed at this point. He considers himself no better than a spy right now, and the Mayor should not even deign to shake hands with him. What does a guy gotta do to get fired around here?
Javert finally leaves, informing Madeline that he will do his job until his replacement arrives, and that is that.