IV
Brilliant light came streaming into the room through the small window that overlooked the garden. The man lying in the big, white bed stirred. He put his hand up to his face to shield his eyes from the bright sunlight. How long had he been asleep? Come to that, how had he arrived here in the first place? Why couldn't he remember? A rather large and ornately framed painting caught his eye. It hung on the wall opposite the bed. The subject was a beautiful raven-haired lady in a simple blue gown. Why did he seem to recognize her? He did not recognize anything else about the room, which served to confirm his nagging suspicion that nothing would ever be the same as it was before.
Still fatigued, in fact, he did not recall ever having been so tired, he closed his eyes and tried to reconstruct the events of the last night. Was it last night? Perhaps he could not even be sure of that. He shuddered at the thought. The last night he could remember was a horrible night to be sure. The convict, Jean Valjean, was in his grasp…but…he had let him go. Set him free! A travesty! Law and Order be damned, he had let Jean Valjean go! And for what? A convict's simple act of mercy…entirely undeserved. "By all rights, Jean Valjean should have killed me on the spot…but instead he spared my life.
An embarrassment of the highest order, and instead of putting things to right, by carrying out my duty…I set him FREE!"
Javert, for that was the man's name, had always despised such weakness. Weakness. Was that truly what it was?
His head now throbbed as the memory flooded back. Javert had taken his only option. There had been no way to escape disgrace, no place left for him in the Earthly realm…but now it seemed that God had denied him even this…his deserved penance.
It was then that the thought occurred to him. It was a concept that the rules of Law and Order had long kept at bay. Perhaps the convict Jean Valjean had been right all along.
God had denied Javert the oblivion of Death…perhaps He had already granted him forgiveness.
Javert thought of the lady in the portrait. "And it seems, He has also granted me an angel."
An unaccustomed peacefulness settled upon Javert, as he sunk into a profound, and for the first time in his memory, untroubled slumber.
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