While thinking, he turned, and his eyes met the brass handle of the door that separated him from the assize court. He had almost forgotten this door, but his eye, at first calm, rested on it, then became wild and fixed, and was gradually filled with terror. Drops of perspiration started out from his hair and streamed down his temples. At one moment he made with a species of authority blended with rebellion that indescribable gesture which means and says so well,—"By heaven, who forces me?" Then he turned hurriedly, saw before him the door by which he had entered, walked up, opened it, and went out. He was no longer in that room, but in a passage, a long narrow passage, cut up by steps and wickets, making all sorts of turns, lit up here and there by reflectors like the night-lamps for the sick,—the passage by which he had come. He breathed, he listened, not a sound behind him, not a sound before him, and he began to fly as if he were pursued. When he had passed several turnings, he listened again,—there was still the same silence and the same gloom around him. He panted, tottered, and leaned against the wall; the stone was cold, the perspiration was chilled on his forehead, and he drew himself up with a shudder. Then standing there alone, trembling from cold, and perhaps from something else, he thought. He had thought all night, he had thought all day; but he only heard within him a voice that said, Alas!
A quarter of an hour passed thus; at length he inclined his head, sighed with agony, let his arms droop, and turned back. He walked slowly and as if stunned; it looked as if he had been caught up in his flight, and was being brought back. He entered the judges chamber, and the first thing he saw was the handle of the door. This handle, which was round and made of polished brass, shone for him like a terrific star; he looked at it as a sheep would look at the eye of a tiger. His eyes would not leave it, and from time to time he took a step which brought him nearer to the door. Had he listened he would have heard, like a species of confused murmur, the noise in the adjoining court; but he did not listen and did not hear. All at once, and without knowing how, he found himself close to the door; he convulsively seized the handle, and the door opened. He was in the assize court.
[CHAPTER IX.]
THE TRIAL.
He advanced a step, closed the door mechanically after him, and gazed at the scene before him. It was a dimly-lighted large hall, at one moment full of sounds, and at another of silence, in which all the machinery of a criminal trial was displayed, with its paltry and lugubrious gravity, in the midst of a crowd. At one of the ends of the hall, the one where he was, judges with a vacant look, in shabby gowns, biting their nails or shutting their eye-lids; barristers in all sorts of attitudes; soldiers with honest harsh faces; old stained wainscoting, a dirty ceiling; tables covered with baize, which was rather yellow than green; doors blackened by hands; pot-house sconces that produced more smoke than light, hanging from nails driven into the wall; upon the tables brass candlesticks,—all was obscurity, ugliness, and sadness. But all this yet produced an austere and august impression, for the grand human thing called law, and the great divine thing called justice, could be felt in it.
No one in this crowd paid any attention to him, for all eyes converged on a single point,—a wooden bench placed against a little door, along the wall on the left of the President; on this bench, which was illumined by several candles, sat a man between two gendarmes. This man was the man; he did not seek him, he saw him; his eyes went there naturally, as if they had known beforehand where that face was. He fancied he saw himself, aged, not absolutely alike in face, but exactly similar in attitude and appearance, with his bristling hair, with his savage restless eyeballs, and the blouse, just as he was on the day when he entered D——, full of hatred, and concealing in his mind that hideous treasure of frightful thoughts which he had spent nineteen years in collecting on the pavement of the bagne. He said to himself with a shudder, "My God! shall I become again like that?" This being appeared to be at least sixty years of age; he had something about him rough, stupid, and startled. On hearing the sound of the door, persons made way for the new comer, the President had turned his head, and guessing that the gentleman who had just entered was the Mayor of M——, he bowed to him. The public prosecutor who had seen M. Madeleine at M——, whither his duties had more than once called him, recognized him and also bowed. He scarce noticed it, for he was under a species of hallucination; he was looking at a judge, a clerk, gendarmes, a number of cruelly curious faces,—he had seen all this once, formerly, seven-and-twenty years ago. These mournful things he found again,—they were there, stirring, existing; it was no longer an effort of his memory, a mirage of his mind; they were real gendarmes, real judges, a real crowd, and real men in flesh and bone. He saw all the monstrous aspect of his past reappear, and live again around him, with all the terror that reality possesses. All this was yawning before him; he felt terrified, closed his eyes, and exclaimed in the depths of his mind. Never! And by a tragic sport of fate which made all his ideas terrible and rendered him nearly mad, it was another himself who was there. This man who was being tried everybody called Jean Valjean. He had before him an unheard-of vision, a species of representation of the most horrible moment of his life played by his phantom. All was there,—it was the same machinery, the same hour of the night, almost the same faces of judges, soldiers, and spectators. The only difference was that there was a crucifix over the President's head, which had been removed from the courts at the time of his condemnation. When he was tried God was absent. There was a chair behind him, into which he fell, terrified by the idea that people could see him. When he was seated he took advantage of a pile of paste-board cases on the judges' desk to hide his face from the spectators. He could now see without being seen: he fully regained the feeling of the real, and gradually recovered. He attained that phase of calmness in which a man can listen. Monsieur Bamatabois was serving on the jury. He looked for Javert, but could not see him, for the witnesses' bench was hidden by the clerk's table, and then, as we have said, the court was hardly lighted.
At the moment when he came in, the counsel for the defence was ending his speech. The attention of all was excited to the highest pitch; for three hours they had seen a man, a stranger, a species of miserable being, deeply stupid or deeply clever, being gradually crushed by the weight of a terrible resemblance. This man, as we know already, was a vagabond who was found in a field, carrying a branch covered with ripe apples, which had been broken off a tree in a neighboring orchard. Who was this man? Inquiries had been made, and witnesses heard; they were unanimous, and light had flashed all through the trial. The accusation said,—"We have got hold not only of a fruit-stealer, a marauder, but we hold under our hand a bandit, a man who has broken his ban, an ex-convict, a most dangerous villain, a malefactor of the name of Jean Valjean, whom justice has been seeking for a long time, and who, eight years ago, on leaving Toulon, committed a highway robbery with violence on a Savoyard lad, called Little Gervais, a crime provided for by Article 383 of the penal code, for which we intend to prosecute him hereafter, when the identity has been judicially proved. He has just committed a fresh robbery, and that is a case of relapse. Find him guilty of the new offence, and he will be tried at a later date for the old one." The prisoner seemed highly amazed at this accusation and the unanimity of the witnesses; he made gestures and signs intended to deny, or else looked at the ceiling. He spoke with difficulty, answered with embarrassment, but from head to foot his whole person denied. He was like an idiot in the presence of all these intellects ranged in battle-array round him, and like a stranger in the midst of this society which seized him. Still, a most menacing future was hanging over him; the probability of his being Jean Valjean increased with each moment, and the entire crowd regarded with greater anxiety than himself the sentence full of calamity which was gradually settling down on him. An eventuality even offered a glimpse of a death-penalty, should the identity be proved, and he was hereafter found guilty of the attack on Little Gervais. Who was this man? Of what nature was his apathy? Was it imbecility or cunning? Did he understand too much, or did he understand nothing at all? These questions divided the crowd, and the jury seemed to share their opinion. There was in this trial something terrific and something puzzling; the drama was not only gloomy, but it was obscure.
The counsel for the defence had argued rather cleverly, in that provincial language which for a long time constituted the eloquence of the bar, and which all barristers formerly employed, not only at Paris but at Romorantin or Montbrison, and which at the present day, having become classical, is only spoken by public prosecutors, whom it suits through its serious sonorousness and majestic movements. It is the language in which a husband is called a "consort;" a wife, a "spouse;" Paris, "the centre of the arts and of civilization;" the king, "the Monarch;" the bishop, a "holy Pontiff;" the public prosecutor, the "eloquent interpreter of the majesty of the law;" the pleadings, the "accents which we have just heard;" the age of Louis XIV., "the great age;" a theatre, the "temple of Melpomene;" the reigning family, the "august blood of our kings;" a concert, "a musical solemnity;" the general commanding in the department, "the illustrious warrior who, etc.;" the pupils of the seminary, "those tender Levites;" the mistakes imputed to the newspapers, "the imposture which distils its venom in the columns of these organs," etc., etc. The barrister had, consequently, begun by explaining away the robbery of the apples,—rather a difficult thing in this grand style; but Bénigne Bossuet himself was obliged to allude to a fowl in the midst of a formal speech, and got out of the difficulty with glory. The barrister had established the fact that the apple robbery was not materially proved,—his client, whom, in his quality as defender, he persistently called Champmathieu, had not been seen by any one scaling a wall or breaking the branch; he had been arrested with the branch in his possession, but he declared that he found it on the ground and picked it up. Where was the proof of the contrary? This branch had been broken off and then thrown away by the frightened robber, for doubtless there was one. But where was the evidence that this Champmathieu was a robber? Only one thing, his being an ex-convict. The counsel did not deny that this fact seemed unluckily proved. The prisoner had lived at Faverolles; he had been a wood-cutter; the name of Champmathieu might possibly be derived from Jean Mathieu; lastly, four witnesses unhesitatingly recognized Champmathieu as the galley slave, Jean Valjean. To these indications, to this testimony, the counsel could only oppose his client's denial, which was certainly interested: but, even supposing that he was the convict Jean Mathieu, did that prove he was the apple-stealer? It was a presumption at the most, but not a proof. The accused, it was true,—and his counsel was obliged "in his good faith" to allow it,—had adopted a bad system of defence; he insisted in denying everything,—not merely the robbery, but his quality as convict. A confession on the latter point would have doubtless been better, and gained him the indulgence of his judges; the counsel had advised him to do so, but the prisoner had obstinately refused, probably in the belief that he would save everything by confessing nothing. This was wrong, but should not his scanty intellect be taken into consideration? This man was visibly stupid: a long misery at the galleys, a long wretchedness out of them, had brutalized him, etc., etc.; his defence was bad, but was that a reason to find him guilty? As for the offence on Little Gervais, the counsel need not argue that, as it was not included in the indictment. The counsel wound up by imploring the jury and the court, if the identity of Jean Valjean appeared to them proved, to punish him as a criminal who had broken his ban, and not apply the fearful chastisement which falls on the relapsed convict.
The public prosecutor replied. He was violent and flowery, as public prosecutors usually are. He congratulated the counsel for the defence on his "fairness," and cleverly took advantage of it; he attacked the prisoner with all the concessions which his counsel had made. He appeared to allow that the prisoner was Jean Valjean, and he therefore was so. This was so much gained for the prosecution, and could not be contested; and here, reverting cleverly to the sources and causes of criminality, the public prosecutor thundered against the immorality of the romantic school, at that time in its dawn under the name of the "Satanic school," which the critics of the Quotidienne and the Oriflamme had given it; and he attributed, not without some show of reason, the crime of Champmathieu, or to speak more correctly, of Jean Valjean, to this perverse literature. These reflections exhausted, he passed to Jean Valjean himself. Who was this Jean Valjean? Here came a description of Jean Valjean, a monster in human form, etc. The model of this sort of description will be found in the recitation of Théramène, which is not only useful to tragedy but daily renders great services to judicial eloquence. The audience and the jury "quivered," and when the description was ended, the public prosecutor went on, with an oratorical outburst intended to excite to the highest pitch the enthusiasm of the country papers which would appear the next morning. "And it is such a man, etc., etc., etc., a vagabond, a beggar, having no means of existence, etc., etc., etc., accustomed through his past life to culpable actions, and but little corrected by confinement in the bagne, as is proved by the crime committed on little Gervais, etc., etc., etc.,—it is such a man, who, found on the high road with the proof of robbery in his hand, and a few paces from the wall he had climbed over, denies the fact, the robbery, denies everything, even to his name and his identity. In addition to a hundred proofs to which we will not revert, four witnesses recognize him,—Javert, the upright Inspector of Police, and three of his old comrades in ignominy, the convicts Brevet, Chenildieu, and Cochepaille. And what does he oppose to this crushing unanimity? He denies. What hardness of heart! But you will do justice, gentlemen of the jury, etc., etc., etc."