"8. It is annoying that visitors to La Force are obliged to pass through the boys court in proceeding to the speaking-room of Sainte Marie Égyptienne.
"9. It is certain that gendarmes are daily heard repeating, in the court-yard of the Préfecture, the examination of prisoners by the magistrates. For a gendarme, who ought to be consecrated, to repeat what he has heard in the examination room is a serious breach of duty.
"10. Madame Henry is an honest woman, her canteen is very clean; but it is wrong for a woman to hold the key of the secret cells. This is not worthy of the Conciergerie of a great civilization."
Javert wrote these lines in his calmest and most correct handwriting, not omitting to cross a t, and making the paper creak firmly beneath his pen. Under the last line he signed,—
"JAVERT, Inspector of the first class.
"At the post of the Place du Châtelet,
about one in the morning, June 7, 1832."
Javert dried the ink on the paper, folded it like a letter, sealed it, wrote on the back, "Note for the Administration," left it on the table, and quitted the guard-room. The glass door fell back after him. He again diagonally crossed the Place du Châtelet, reached the quay again, and went back with automatic precision to the same spot which he had left a quarter of an hour previously; he bent down and found himself again in the same attitude on the same parapet slab; it seemed as if he had not stirred. The darkness was complete, for it was the sepulchral moment which follows midnight; a ceiling of clouds hid the stars; the houses in the Cité did not display a single light, no one passed, all the streets and quays that could be seen were deserted, and Nôtre Dame and the towers of the Palace of Justice appeared lineaments of the night. A lamp reddened the edge of the quay, and the shadows of the bridges looked ghostly one behind the other. Rains had swelled the river. The spot where Javert was leaning was, it will be remembered, precisely above the rapids of the Seine and that formidable whirlpool which unrolls itself and rolls itself up again like an endless screw. Javert stooped down and looked; all was dark, and nothing could be distinguished. A sound of spray was audible, but the river was invisible. At moments in this dizzy depth a flash appeared and undulated, for water has the power, even on the darkest night, of obtaining light, no one knows whence, and changing itself into a lizard. The glimmer vanished and all became indistinct again. Immensity seemed open there, and what was beneath was not water, but the gulf. The quay-wall, abrupt, confused, mingled with the vapor, hidden immediately, produced the effect of a precipice of infinitude.
Nothing could be seen but the hostile coldness of the water, and the sickly smell of the damp stones could be felt. A ferocious breath rose from this abyss; and the swelling of the river, divined rather than perceived, the tragic muttering of the water, the mournful immensity of the bridge arches, a possible fall into this gloomy vacuum,—all this shadow was full of horror. Javert remained for some moments motionless, gazing at this opening of the darkness, and considered the invisible with an intentness which resembled attention. All at once he took off his hat and placed it on the brink of the quay. A moment after a tall black figure, which any belated passer-by might have taken at a distance for a ghost, appeared standing on the parapet, stooped toward the Seine, then drew itself up, and fell straight into the darkness. There was a dull plash, and the shadows alone were in the secret of this obscure form which had disappeared beneath the waters.