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Javert received the blow erect, full in the face, in his
breast, like a Russian soldier. He bowed to the very earth
before the mayor and left the room.
Fantine stood aside from the door and stared at him in
amazement as he passed.
Nevertheless, she also was the prey to a strange confu-
sion. She had just seen herself a subject of dispute between
two opposing powers. She had seen two men who held in
their hands her liberty, her life, her soul, her child, in com-
bat before her very eyes; one of these men was drawing her
towards darkness, the other was leading her back towards
the light. In this conflict, viewed through the exaggerations
of terror, these two men had appeared to her like two gi-
ants; the one spoke like her demon, the other like her good
angel. The angel had conquered the demon, and, strange to
say, that which made her shudder from head to foot was the
fact that this angel, this liberator, was the very man whom
she abhorred, that mayor whom she had so long regarded as
the author of all her woes, that Madeleine! And at the very
moment when she had insulted him in so hideous a fashion,
he had saved her! Had she, then, been mistaken? Must she
change her whole soul? She did not know; she trembled. She
listened in bewilderment, she looked on in affright, and at
every word uttered by M. Madeleine she felt the frightful
shades of hatred crumble and melt within her, and some-
thing warm and ineffable, indescribable, which was both
joy, confidence and love, dawn in her heart.
When Javert had taken his departure, M. Madeleine
turned to her and said to her in a deliberate voice, like a se-