Les miserables (Abridged) - Victor Hugo [173]
He scarcely dared to admit, even to himself, that the countenance he thought he had seen was the face of Javert.
That night, upon reflection, he regretted that he had not questioned the man so as to compel him to raise his head a second time. On the morrow, at nightfall, he went thither, again. The beggar was in his place. “Good day! Good day!” said Jean Valjean, with firmness, as he gave him the accustomed alms. The beggar raised his head and answered in a whining voice: “Thanks, kind sir, thanks!” It was, indeed, only the old beadle.
Jean Valjean now felt fully reassured. He even began to laugh. “What the deuce was I about to fancy that I saw Javert,” thought he; “is my sight growing poor already?” And he thought no more about it.
Some days after, it might be eight o‘clock in the evening, he was in his room, giving Cosette her spelling lesson, which the child was repeating in a loud voice, when he heard the door of the building open and close again. That seemed odd to him. The old woman, the only occupant of the house besides himself and Cosette, always went to bed at dark to save candles. Jean Valjean made a sign to Cosette to be silent. He heard some one coming up the stairs. Possibly, it might be the old woman who had felt unwell and had been to the druggist’s. Jean Valjean listened. The footstep was heavy, and sounded like a man’s; but the old woman wore heavy shoes, and there is nothing so much like the step of a man as the step of an old woman. However, Jean Valjean blew out his candle.
He sent Cosette to bed, telling her in a suppressed voice to lie down very quietly—and, as he kissed her forehead, the footsteps stopped. Jean Valjean remained silent and motionless, his back turned towards the door, still seated on his chair from which he had not moved, and holding his breath in the darkness. After a considerable interval, not hearing anything more, he turned round without making any noise, and as he raised his eyes towards the door of his room, he saw a light through the keyhole. This ray of light was an evil star in the black background of the door and the wall. There was, evidently, somebody outside with a candle who was listening.
A few minutes elapsed, and the light disappeared. But he heard no sound of footsteps, which seemed to indicate that whoever was eavesdropping had taken off his shoes.
Jean Valjean threw himself on his bed without undressing, but could not shut his eyes that night.
At daybreak, as he was sinking into slumber from fatigue, he was aroused, again, by the creaking of the door of some room at the end of the hall, and then he heard the same footstep which had ascended the stairs, on the preceding night. The step approached. He started from his bed and placed his eye to the keyhole, which was quite a large one, hoping to get a glimpse of the person, whoever it might be, who had made his way into the building in the night-time and had listened at his door. It was a man, indeed, who passed by Jean Valjean’s room, this time without stopping. The hall was still too dark for him to make out his features; but, when the man reached the stairs, a ray of light from without made his figure stand out like a profile, and Jean Valjean had a full view of his back. The man was tall, wore a long frock-coat, and had a cudgel under his arm. It was the redoubtable form of Javert.
Jean Valjean might have tried to get another look at him through his window that opened on the boulevard, but he would have had to raise the sash, and that he dared not do.
It was evident that the man had entered by means of a key, as if at home. “Who, then, had given him the key?—and what was the meaning of this?”
At seven in the morning, when the old lady came to clear up the rooms, Jean Valjean eyed her sharply, but asked her no questions. The good dame appeared as usual.
While she was doing her sweeping, she said:——
“Perhaps monsieur heard some one come in, last night?”
At her age and on that boulevard, eight in the evening is the very darkest of the night.
“Ah! yes, by the way, I did,” he answered