The Final Exile of Jean Valjean.

"Soon he no longer came as far as the Rue Saint-Louis. He got as far as the Rue Pavee, shook his head and turned back; then he went no further than the Rue des Trois-Pavillons; then he did not overstep the Blancs-Manteaux. One would have said that he was a pendulum which was no longer wound up, and whose oscillations were growing shorter before ceasing altogether."

Victor Hugo.

The portress stood in Valjean's rooms, a shallow dish of pottage in one hand, a little earthenware jug in the other and an expression on her face that was equal parts worry and scandal. Had her hands not been occupied they would have been lodged on her hips in that classic attitude women strike when they are about to unleash a scolding the likes of which might wither fruit upon the vine and the valor of lesser men within their character. "Monsieur! You ate nothing yesterday!" Her initial accusation was much like an advancing army's warning shot.

The man who sat on the edge of his bed, shoulders stooped and apparently in contemplation of the black worsted weave of his trousers as the material hung loosely across his knees, did not raise his head. He made no reply to her either, although it seemed she did not require it.

"This good food I bring you and I am lucky if one plate has been touched in five!" She did not know the man well, he had been a tenant here on and off for some time, but previously he had family with him and a servant or two. It was only when he had returned, alone, with the face of one who had suffered disaster, that she had taken it upon herself to look out for him. She was a kind woman who had seen enough trouble that she didn't like to witness it befalling good gentleman who had in her opinion done nothing to warrant it. She was also a practical soul, and so set herself tasks she could achieve. She knew Monsieur Fauchelevent's daughter had been married and surmised it must have been a very bad match - for surely nothing else could possibly weigh as heavily and as suddenly upon a father's heart as that. She could do nothing to fix a poor marriage, but she could ensure that Monsieur Fauchelevent had a decent meal once a day; offer to take his laundry with her family's to clean, or fetch him a pot of tea. These were not when viewed against the ills and vastness of the world great acts, but they were both kind and good and it is sometimes these small mercies we are most grateful for.

The old portress did feel (and here we may sympathize) that in payment for those services she was at liberty to give Monsieur Fauchelevent a piece of her mind, an enterprise she was keen to start on now. "Monsieur, you promised me faithfully that you would finish your meal today. I have brought you a little pottage. Will you eat it?" It was a final calm demand of the type issued by gendarmes before the storming of a building.

He raised his head a fraction, and although his strength seemed uncertain, his voice was resolute. "I am going to Saint-Jean-de-Braye. By Orléans."

"Monsieur?" She asked foolishly, unable to gauge what that had to do with pottage. Feeling unable to express herself correctly without spilling vittles on the boards she placed the dish and jug upon his desk, pushing aside yesterday's untouched plate and drained cup. This freed her hands which she immediately forged upon her skirts atop her hips. "What nonsense is this? You've not left your rooms in two weeks! You haven't been well. You shouldn't go, monsieur you're ill..."

"I am fine," he muttered.

"Fine?" She scoffed. "Well! I should hate to see you when you are not! Surely this business can wait..."

"No, it cannot. I leave for Orléans."

"So far!" she protested. "And the weather has turned! With the chill in the air and the rains coming..."

"Would you be so kind as to summon a carriage?"

"What in heaven's name is so important that you..."

"I must allow a man to repay a debt."

"Monsieur? What nonsense is this!" There is, as any who have read this account of Valjean's history are aware, a list of nuns, housekeepers and assorted good people who had in their time been quite put out by Valjean's mule-headedness in the pursuit of what he considered right. The woman speaking to him now was simply the latest to add her name (which was Madam Durand) to that record.

"Let this man settle his account himself, or let him send what he owes. It is not your place to..." Alas, little did Madam Durand know that sometimes when we are at our weakest, all we require is something to push against so that we might move forward. She, in her innocence and her concern, was providing Valjean just such a thing: the more she argued with him, the stronger his resolve became.

"That is not how it is."

"Monsieur..."

"Peace, woman," he said gently. "Please. Send for a carriage."

She pursed her lips and we know what Valjean suspected: that she was making an inventory of things to urge him to pack into a small valise and of how many coats she could swaddle him into. Sounding unhappy but determined to force the best upon it, she nodded. "Very well monsieur."

There was then a long pause; Valjean sat still upon the edge of his bed, like one who was gathering his strength, and Madam Durand did not go upon her errand but instead remained, looking down her nose at him, calculating how far she could push her luck in nagging him to eat or pack needful things. She came to an uncertain but optimistic conclusion. At last with a long suffering sigh she abandoned the battle of the pottage, and went instead to summon a fiacre and to prepare herself for the war of the coat and valise to come.

His expression changed like the weather, like a storm blown in from the coast: different looks washed across lean features as waves battering upon craggy rocks.

First and only for an instant, his face showed the mingled curiosity and irritation that any man might feel when someone knocks unexpectedly upon his door close to midnight. This was tidied behind a mask of hard indifference such as a man would wear when opening the door – a look that says 'it is late, this had better be worth my while'. After that, when the door was open and the Inspector beheld who stood in the dark of the night, lit haphazardly by the tallow glow of the candle, the mask was exchanged in passing for puzzlement before settling firmly upon recognition and a sort of horror.

The Inspector inhaled, his brows raising like a man steeling himself against an unpleasant surprise. Then his breath exited is a short rush and, "Come inside this instant," he ordered briskly, sweeping the man in and the door closed behind him.

The stranger, who was after all no stranger to us or to Javert, being as it was Jean Valjean, stood where he'd been ushered but made no move to enter further, neither removing his coat nor nearing the hearth and the fire that burnt there. "If I thought I was an embarrassment to you," he said quietly, "I would not have come."

Javert had gone to the fire as soon as the door was latched, picking up two logs and throwing them into the grate like a demon with a handful of unrepentant sinners. Poker in hand as if it was a saber he turned and cast an irritated look at Valjean. "I have no objection to your presence in my house but I have several strenuous objections to your corpse upon my doorstep. Dieu! You're a dead man walking – what's the matter with you?"

Valjean looked at him and smiled, a weary smile, like one who has made a great journey and is now incapable of doing anything else. In truth he was too tired to move; having reached at last his goal, all remaining strength (of which there was little) had left him.

"Sit down," Javert said, and it was not quite the bark of an order but there was much in his voice rich in authority and poor in temper. "Here. By the fire." When his guest failed to act, the Inspector - fire iron still in hand - strode to his side and forcefully guided him to the seat he had previously indicated. Only then did he appear to notice he still held the poker, scowled at it, thrust it amongst the logs and embers to teach them their business and finally, as the flames leapt, discarded the iron amid the hearth ashes at the side of the grate. He straightened and treated the other man to a critical look. "Would you like something to eat? I've taken my repast but there is a little bread and cheese still – also a slice of tart au pomme should you care for it." He looked troubled by the miserly fare he was offering. "Had you sent word I could have prepared better," he muttered.

Valjean was shaking his head. "No, thank you" he said in a hollow voice. "I need nothing."

Javert gave him an incredulous look, arch at the edges, unable to believe that was not a jest. When this did not prove spur enough for an explanation, he demanded with more force, "What is the matter with you?"

For a moment Valjean was sorely tempted to play the innocent, to look blank. Pardon? he might ask. Whatever do you mean? But he realized the exercise would be so futile as to be insulting. He gave a little shrug as if it was of no consequence and something to be brushed aside as quickly as possible. "I have been ill."

"You?" he asked shortly. "You know, I was told by that weasel Thénardier and several of the Patron-Minette that you took hold of a burning brand they had meant to threaten you with and placed it against your own arm as if it was nothing more than a birch twig. I wasn't surprised, although they, poor rats, were flabbergasted. But now - the man who lifts carts, scales walls, braves rivers – you'd have me believe that a chill has defeated you? Now I am surprised."

For the first time in what seemed an age, Valjean felt hunted and harried by the man before him. It was, he thought distractedly, something in the voice. It was the voice of a predator who knew where his prey would run and spoke only to pass the time and quicken the prey's blood before the kill was made. "No," he disputed, "I would have you believe that a chill was a passing inconvenience, and that I..."

"I fail to see," Javert said, still in that calm almost arrogant manner which denoted utter certainty of the true facts, "why I should countenance being lied to. I am in my own house – it is an insult."

"You felt free enough to insult me in mine!" Valjean bit back.

Javert smiled, a slow lupine grin. "So," he said. "He has some fight in him after all! Good. Will you drink with me?" It was a question tossed carelessly over his shoulder as he went to a narrow cupboard at the back of the room which was set with slate shelves and served as his larder. However when he heard no reply he cast back a look which was shadowed with apprehension; we should know by now Javert was not in the habit of asking questions he did not require an answer to.

Valjean nodded again. "Yes."

He stooped and pulled up a bottle from the lower reaches of the larder. "I had concluded you wouldn't visit." His tone was even and his face no more or less severe than usual so it was impossible to tell whether he'd felt disappointment or indifference. He returned to the table, put down the bottle and then went in search of cups.

Valjean made no comment although he looked discomforted, perhaps treating the Inspector's words as a rebuke. A moment later he sought to leave the topic behind by asking: "How many days did it take you to have the long and the short of this town pegged? Did you know everyone's measure within one week, or was it two?"

Javert tipped his head a little to the side and his eyes narrowed in an attitude of calculation. "Now that is interesting," he said. "You travel from Paris, not an insignificant journey to make when the wind and rain has begun, and you ask me about my occupation. Forgive me if I find it a little strange, considering when last we met you were at such pains to show me that I am not my work." The briefest of pauses and he added, "Ten. It took me ten days." One side of his mouth twitched upwards in a crooked smile because no matter what path he walked nor how full or lacking his soul, the Inspector would always take pride in his job and pleasure in his abilities – there are some traits the Seine cannot wash away.

Valjean did his best not to shiver; sitting by the fire had so far only served to show him how deep into his bones the cold had seeped. "You once told me," he said, "you could be a farmer for all the difference it made. You might have thought so, but you couldn't. You'd make a terrible farmer."

"I would," he conceded easily. Standing there neat as a city copy-clerk in his black, silver buttoned waistcoat, but with a light in his eyes that professed him a more dangerous creature by far, there was not a man in the world harder to imagine in the role of villein.

"How is it here?"

"Stay a day or so and you shall find out." An improcerous laugh. "Your deplorable habit of asking the wrong question is still running rampant I see."

"Then correct me."

"This is a small town, passably prosperous and no different from a hundred other small towns. You are not curious about it – and it's no wonder for there is scarcely a single point of interest historical, geographical, social or, god help us, political within it. You are curious to know whether I speak to people. Whether I am a part of the community here, or whether I stalk solitary through the shadows like the Loup Garou of old." (I had once said Javert did not know of that sobriquet bequeathed him by the gutter-thieves of Paris, but it would appear in this matter I was wrong.)

"Well then?"

Narrow shoulders shrugged. "Oh, I am considered a forbidding fellow still. But Madam Bellau who keeps the bakery and is seen by many as a miserable thing is generous in her smiles and has twice gifted me brioche. And whilst they do not - and I hazard would never – dare to ask me to join in their singing, Messieurs Lacasse, Aubin and Grenier have asked me to share a drink with them at the tavern. Upon occasion I even accept. So," he concluded, "I am perhaps not as forbidding as all that."

"That is good to hear."

He placed the two wine beakers he had been holding on the table, each with a little more force than was necessary, and unstoppered the bottle. "Since I have not this night just been pulled from a river, I am in a stronger position than our previous encounter. As such – I warn you - I refuse to put up with your endless badgering. Especially when you arrive at my door in the middle of the night like a wandering grave-wight." He poured them each a measure and handed Valjean his, frowning as it was grasped in both hands as if its weight was thrice what it truly was. "What has happened to you?" he demanded gruffly. And then quietly, "Is there anything I can do?"

Valjean smiled because even with a measure of humanity within his inverteratist character, Javert still lanced unfailingly to the heart of matters. For some moments he did not answer and his mind turned like a divining pendulum over the face of a map, spinning but unable to chose a single direction.

He had come here because he had felt he was dying; it was not a mortal malady that claimed him, but rather an immortal one. His soul was broken and bereft and so his body failed; Valjean felt his own decline with the hopeless impotence of a man who watches the sun go down and knows soon he must surrender himself to the cold of the night. He had thought he'd made the journey as a final pilgrimage, a farewell to his past. And so that Javert in his spiky and scrupulous manner would not remain vexed by the debt of the shirt given a year back.

But now Valjean felt these reasons were hollow; they formed a neat veneer over a pit of tangled thoughts which were more confused and terrible by far. He recoiled from this writhing viper's nest in his mind, recoiled from the edges of unpleasant serpentine thoughts and from the fact that they were his.

Javert watched as Valjean's face turned griseous, a hue he hadn't been aware living flesh was capable of paling to, and the man stumbled to his feet, the chair scraping behind him, the cup almost spilling from his grasp before he set it on the table. "Forgive me," he mumbled, "I should not have come."

"Sit down." It was neither shout nor roar but it possessed the mark of authority unleashed with all the precision and brutality of a whip. It was not a command that could be disobeyed.

Valjean sat, dropping back into the chair as if hamstrung.