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fortune of being forced to flee by night, to seek a chance
refuge in Paris for Cosette and himself, the necessity of reg-
ulating his pace to the pace of the child—all this, without
his being aware of it, had altered Jean Valjean’s walk, and
impressed on his bearing such senility, that the police them-
selves, incarnate in the person of Javert, might, and did in
fact, make a mistake. The impossibility of approaching too
close, his costume of an emigre preceptor, the declaration of
Thenardier which made a grandfather of him, and, finally,
the belief in his death in prison, added still further to the
uncertainty which gathered thick in Javert’s mind.
For an instant it occurred to him to make an abrupt de-
mand for his papers; but if the man was not Jean Valjean,
and if this man was not a good, honest old fellow living on
his income, he was probably some merry blade deeply and
cunningly implicated in the obscure web of Parisian mis-
deeds, some chief of a dangerous band, who gave alms to
conceal his other talents, which was an old dodge. He had
trusty fellows, accomplices’ retreats in case of emergencies,
in which he would, no doubt, take refuge. All these turns
which he was making through the streets seemed to indi-
cate that he was not a simple and honest man. To arrest him
too hastily would be ‘to kill the hen that laid the golden
eggs.’ Where was the inconvenience in waiting? Javert was
very sure that he would not escape.
Thus he proceeded in a tolerably perplexed state of mind,
putting to himself a hundred questions about this enigmati-
cal personage.
It was only quite late in the Rue de Pontoise, that, thanks