The last chapter ended with Fantine making a terrible face as Javert stood on the doorway of the room. Here in this chapter we get a recounting of all that happened and see Javert and Madeliene meet eye to eye. We are right upon the threshold of the moment Madeliene feared - he is about to be arrested for the past crimes of jean Valjean.
We learn that back at the courthouse as people came out of the stunned silence that initially accompanied Madeleine’s revelation, the case was reignited. Initially the prosecutor pushed forward the idea that Madeleine was out of his mind and tried to reassert Champmathieu’s guilt. That did not las though and the defense, judge, and everyone else present were able to establish Champmathieu’s innocence. Once that was cleared up they were left with another matter - what were they to do about the newly revealed Jean Valjean? They decided he must be prosecuted for his crimes, so they immediately wrote up a warrant for Madeleine’s arrest and sent it to Javert.
For Javert this was a moment of great triumph. Having thought he had made a grave error in thinking Madeleine to be Valjean, this is a moment of redemption. He was right all along, and in all the nobility of the law, with all of his commitment to justice coming together with great force, he marched off to find Madeleine and apprehend him. This quote from Hugo describing Javert is worth revisiting:
Javert was in heaven. Without being fully conscious of the fact, but still with a sense of his importance and achievement, he was at that moment the personification of justice, light, and truth in their sublime task of stamping out evil. Behind him and around him,extending into infinite space,were authority and reason, the conscience of the law, the sentence passed, the public condemnation, and all the stars of the firmament. He was the guardian of order, the lightning of justice, the vengeance of society, the mailed fist of the absolute, and he was bathed in glory. There was in his victory a vestige of defiance and conflict. Upright, arrogant and resplendent, he stood like the embodiment in a clear sky of the superhuman ferocity of the destroying angel, and the deed he was performing seemed to invest his clenched fist with the gleam of a fiery sword. He was setting his foot in righteous indignation upon crime, vice and rebellion, damnation, and hell, and was smiling with satisfaction as he did.
I won’t add much here. This passage should be left to breathe for itself.
I’ll only add that this brand of justice leaves no room for mercy, for love, for grace. In the sterile environment it creates there is no spark of life left, no chance for flourishing. All withers beneath its light. The foot that stands upon all of this supposed “crime, vice and rebellion” is blind to the innocents, the repentant, the transformed and reforming who are pulled up with it and crushed along side it. It does not see the road that led here, it only sees the binary moment in time breakdown of “good” and “evil”. This justice is ugly. This justice will never satisfy or be satisfied. This cannot be called good, beautiful, right or true when we consider it holistically. It is deficient.