App for beyondtherift
About You - The Player
* Name: Pat
* Age: 22
* Contact: ddrussianinja@gmail.com
* Past Role Playing Experience: Deadpool, Sokka, and Javert at realityshifted (LJ) and Hank "Beast" McCoy, HK-47, and Kuro at route47 (f-locked LJ)
The Character
* Name: Inspector Javert
* Age/Birthdate: 57/1775
* Species: Wanderer
o Type: His wanderer ability will be to induce paralysis in an individual. This shall begin slowly. He will at first only be able to cause partial paralysis (say in a hand or arm) and only by touch. When he becomes able to paralyze an individual completely, he will still only be able to achieve this for one person at a time. The power will continue to develop however, and perhaps in unexpected ways. Maybe he will eventually be able to paralyze many individuals simultaneously without having to touch them. Perhaps he will be able to control muscular movement. Only time will tell.
* Canon: Les Misérables
o Pre-existing powers: He has none.
* Livejournal: bringme24601
* Played By: Geoffrey Rush
* Icon: http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/91926338/19017106
* Appearance: From the book: "The human face of Javert consisted of a snub nose, with two deep nostrils, which were bordered by large bushy whiskers that covered both his cheeks... For the rest, a small head, large jaws, hair hiding the forehead and falling over the eyebrows, between the eyes a permanent central frown, a gloomy look, a mouth pinched and frightful and an air of fierce command." He stands reasonably tall and is built formidably. He often wears a tall hat and a long frock coat, as is customary.
* Personality: From the book: "The peasants of Asturias believe that in every litter of wolves there is one dog, which is killed by the mother, lest on growing up it should devour the other little ones. Give a human face to this dog son of a wolf and you will have Javert." If we're talking in Dungeons and Dragons alignment terms, he is the definition of Lawful Neutral. It is not his place to question the law, decide whether or not it is just, but simply to enforce it. In his mind, there are only those who obey the law and those who rebel against it. Crime is, therefore, an act of rebellion. In this belief he is singularly uncompromising and consistent. He holds himself to this same standard. He believes his work to be true justice and if he were to compromise that by breaking that which he upholds, it would be an utter disgrace and he would demand to be treated under the same scrutiny by which he treats others.
Being born and partially raised in prison and by vagabonds, he never wished to enter society and wished even less to fall into the same class of people as his parents whom he despised. As such, he decided to remain on the outside of society and to become the exact opposite of his parents. He entered the police and rose to the rank of Inspector.
He lives and breathes his occupation. It consumes him entirely. He is the law. If the law is bent it will bend him. And he doesn't like that. If he found a lowly prostitute who a respectable man said was assaulting him, he would arrest that woman and resolve to put her in jail regardless of her circumstances. And if someone were to pardon that prostitute, he would instantly become quite irate and contest this, whether or not it was reasonable and whether or not it was his place to do so. In fact, this very thing happens in canon.
Javert sees the world in black and white. If you committed a crime, you are a criminal. It doesn't matter if you fulfill your punishment and are released, you are still a criminal in his mind. Forgiveness is all well and good, but justice is what truly matters to Javert and justice cannot be kind. He makes the hard decisions with no hesitation or remorse.
Javert is also very much obsessive. Over the course of the story, he becomes consumed with bringing the lead character, Jean Valjean, to justice. Despite Valjean being a paragon of good throughout the novel, Javert can only see him as a criminal and thus can only see his actions as manipulations and corruptions. Valjean may be taking in a little girl he promised a dying mother he'd look after, but Javert would see this as nothing more than kidnapping.
Despite usually being incredibly straightforward, Javert is also very clever and sneaky when the occasion calls for it. Like a good police officer should, he does not make a move until he can strike a fatal blow. Until his suspicions are confirmed, he will not announce them. He is also very much capable of deception, at least when regarding people he does not see as worthy of honesty. This includes arranging traps and infiltrating a band of rebels undercover.
While Javert will often stand in opposition of those we might consider to be good people, he is not by any means an evil man. He simply stands for the law, whether it be good or evil. This forces him to occasionally commit evil actions, but he sees that as a necessity of the greater good. As far as he believed, he had never in his life met with a decision where to act lawfully meant to act immorally. Until the end, of course.
In canon, his inability to compromise eventually leads to his own suicide. He lets Valjean go and cannot reconcile allowing one he believes to be a criminal to go free while simultaneously he cannot reconcile putting away a clearly good man who just saved his life. Letting Valjean go would mean sacrificing everything he lived for, but imprisoning Valjean would mean doing something flagrantly immoral. Unable to compromise either decision, he opts to drown himself in a river.
* History: Javert was born in prison to a gypsy fortune-teller and a galley slave. Growing up in that kind of environment had two effects of him: 1) It made him detest criminals and 2) It made him detached from society. Believing he could never enter society, he decided to become an officer of the police. He cared not for his parents and he was probably fine with whatever probably unfortunate fate befell them. As Javert ceased to exist as anything other than a man of the law, the details of his rise to Inspector are largely skipped over, except that amidst his rise as a police officer, he was at one point an assistant to a guard at the Bagne of Toulon. This was when he first met prisoner 24601, Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean was a prisoner incarcerated for stealing a loaf of bread. His sentence was five years, but extended to 19 for repeated escape attempts. He was notable for his mean face and his extraordinary strength, earning him a reputation and a place in Javert's memory.
Eventually, Javert attained the rank of Inspector by the age of forty. While this is not technically a very impressive rank, particularly considering his life-long dedication, it is high enough that he is in charge of a good number of lower-ranking officers and low enough that he can play an active role in law enforcement. The actual terminology of Inspector is a bit weird. By France's current terminology, his rank would be that of Lieutenant. However, the rank is analogous to that of Inspector in the UK police. Essentially, he's neither a small fry, nor a big fish.
Anyway, around 1815, Jean Valjean was released (and subsequently broke parole) and five years later, Javert was transferred to Montreuil-sur-Mer where Valjean just so happened to end up as well. Valjean was, however, going by the name Monsieur Madeleine and had become the wealthy mayor of the town.
In his time at M-sur-M, Javert had become the dread of the undesirables there. He struck terror into them and showed no mercy. He was also accurately perceived to be a man of extreme honesty and conviction.
Javert and Valjean recognized one another instantly, but neither acted on this. Javert didn't wish to accuse a respectable man of being a convict without evidence and Valjean obviously didn't wish to be discovered, exposed, and arrested. As such, they treated each other normally.
There was, however, one incident which all but confirmed Valjean's identity to Javert. One day, a man was trapped under a cart and would die if he were not rescued. Nobody attempted to help the man because, as Javert pointed out, no one could possibly lift that cart without the use of a jack.
Except of course for the insanely strong 24601.
Knowing that he was the only one who could save the man, Valjean did so, displaying his unique strength. Though from this moment Javert had pretty much verified that M. Madeleine was indeed 24601, he still bided his time.
Eventually, Javert was pushed to the breaking point when Jean Valjean pardoned a prostitute who had been detained on the grounds that he felt guilty for her circumstances. Javert saw this as too much of a perversion of the law to stand idly by, so he sent a letter to the higher-ups in Paris, stating that he believed M. Madeleine to be Jean Valjean. He was then informed that Jean Valjean had already been arrested and was to be put on trial. Javert confirmed this himself. Obviously, this man wasn't really Jean Valjean, but convinced that it is, Javert apologizes to the real Jean Valjean and offers his resignation, believing he had falsely accused one of his superiors. Valjean implores him not to, but Javert demands he stand by his convictions.
Fortunately for Javert, his suspicions prove correct and he does not have to retire. The real Jean Valjean reveals his identity to save the falsely accused man, and is arrested. Jean Valjean then escapes and so begins a long cat-and-mouse game between Javert and Jean Valjean that lasts for over a decade.
The fates of Javert and Valjean were inexorably intertwined. Everywhere Valjean was, Javert was soon to follow. Eventually, this comes to a head during the 1832 June riots when Javert went undercover to spy on the rebels. He was, however, caught and left at the mercy of Jean Valjean, who had joined the rebellion.
Javert was prepared to die fighting for what he believed in, even if it meant dying at the hands of his oldest foe, 24601.
Unfortunately for Javert, things wouldn't be that easy as Jean Valjean let him go, sending his whole world into a downward spiral. He eventually allows Valjean to go free, but his system of morals cannot justify it. But he cannot bring himself to incarcerate a clearly good man who saved his life.
He goes into a police station, leaves a note suggesting how to improve the police and prison in the city, then he goes to Pont-au-Change and drowns himself in the river Seine.
Or at least he attempts to. As his consciousness slips away, he falls through a rift, washing ashore on Lake Michigan.
When he wakes up, he'll never be the same again.
* Writing Sample: It was just another night on patrol. Inspector Javert walked the same streets, wearing the same clothes, carrying the same club, watching the same lowlives scurry away at the sound of his footsteps.
Like rats.
The prostitute ran back into her inn. The beggar hid his alms and averted his eyes. An orphan boy eyed passers-by suspiciously. Javert made a note of it.
He'd put them all away for life if it were up to him. Unfortunately, his master was the law, and those who interpret it believe that a criminal can be reformed.
Javert scoffed.
Luckily, his job was not to interpret, but to enforce. He would catch them, they would be put away, and if they were released, they would slip up and he would catch them again. It was a thankless, never-ending duty, but a noble one.
For all its repetition, Javert loved his job, in as much as Javert could "love" anything. He couldn't imagine himself serving any other function. This was all he knew. His raison d'être. He knew that one man could not make a difference, but at least he could know that there was one man who would not bend, who would not be soft, who would not let France eat itself alive. As long as he existed, there was at least one man standing in between his country and chaos.
The orphan boy Javert made note of was small and unassuming. Fearful and desperate, yet calm and somewhat determined. After Javert wrote a short note, he pretended to ignore the boy, keeping watch from the corner of his eye.
Moments like this also made the job worth-while. The anticipation before trapping a rat was almost as exhilarating as the capture itself.
Not much longer, a reasonably well-dressed and tall man turned a corner and began walking along the street. The boy also began walking in the opposite direction until he collided with the stranger. The tall man excused himself, patted the boy on the head, and continued his walk. Without a moments hesitation, Javert moved in for the boy.
"Young man, please turn out your pockets."
The boy looked shocked and somewhat nervous. "What? I didn't do nothin'!"
Javert smiled. His smile seemed to fold his entire face upward, making his already unpleasant visage a bit more frightening. "Turn out your pockets or I shall do it myself at the station."
The boy hesitated, but eventually emptied his pockets. Aside from a ruddy picture of some girl probably about his age and some lint, all he carried was a bit of change amounting to about 63 sou and... a 20 franc piece! Javert held up the coin with the head of Napoleon engraved upon it and let loose a deep chuckle.
"You are under arrest for theft."
The boy's eyes widened and he began reaching desperately for the coin. "No! That's mine! I've been saving that my whole life! Give it back!"
An obvious lie, thought Javert. "So I suppose if I went and asked that man you just walked into he wouldn't notice this coin missing?"
The boy looked quickly in every direction. The tall man was nowhere to be seen. "I swear! It's mine! Please give it back!"
Javert raised the coin high out of the boy's reach. "You will address me as Monsieur Javert or Monsieur Inspector. Now, just a moment ago I witnessed you walking into a man of some esteem. Do you deny this?"
The boy stopped reaching for the coin, lowered his head, and muttered, "No, Monsieur Javert."
Javert continued, "And this coin was in your possession after this incident, correct?"
The boy slowly nodded and Javert promptly grabbed him by the wrist. The boy resisted, "No! Monsieur Javert! I had it before! I didn't--"
"Boy, you may come quietly and willingly or I shall subdue you by force. The decision is yours."
The boy's mouth opened but no words came. His lip curled and his nose sniffled and before long he began to cry. He tried to form words, but they were lost in a fit of desperate hopelessness. While this might melt the hearts of some, Javert's patience was wearing thin.
Many in Montreuil-sur-Mer had already known of Javert's ruthlessness, some first-hand. But those who remained unconvinced of the truth of this legend were convinced beyond any shadow upon seeing a child, no older than ten, bound and flooded with tears, being marched seven blocks to the station.
The boy's name was Jean-Paul. Upon his arrival at the station, the alleged stolen property was taken into custody and Jean-Paul was sent off with a slap on the wrist. Did he truly steal the 20 francs? Didn't matter. Either way he found himself without them upon leaving the station. Regardless of whether he was robbed or the robber, eventually his hunger and poverty as well as the hunger and poverty of a certain little girl from a certain ruddy photograph in a Jean-Paul's pocket would drive him to try and steal an armful of apples a few weeks later.
And Javert would be waiting.
* Name: Pat
* Age: 22
* Contact: ddrussianinja@gmail.com
* Past Role Playing Experience: Deadpool, Sokka, and Javert at realityshifted (LJ) and Hank "Beast" McCoy, HK-47, and Kuro at route47 (f-locked LJ)
The Character
* Name: Inspector Javert
* Age/Birthdate: 57/1775
* Species: Wanderer
o Type: His wanderer ability will be to induce paralysis in an individual. This shall begin slowly. He will at first only be able to cause partial paralysis (say in a hand or arm) and only by touch. When he becomes able to paralyze an individual completely, he will still only be able to achieve this for one person at a time. The power will continue to develop however, and perhaps in unexpected ways. Maybe he will eventually be able to paralyze many individuals simultaneously without having to touch them. Perhaps he will be able to control muscular movement. Only time will tell.
* Canon: Les Misérables
o Pre-existing powers: He has none.
* Livejournal: bringme24601
* Played By: Geoffrey Rush
* Icon: http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/91926338/19017106
* Appearance: From the book: "The human face of Javert consisted of a snub nose, with two deep nostrils, which were bordered by large bushy whiskers that covered both his cheeks... For the rest, a small head, large jaws, hair hiding the forehead and falling over the eyebrows, between the eyes a permanent central frown, a gloomy look, a mouth pinched and frightful and an air of fierce command." He stands reasonably tall and is built formidably. He often wears a tall hat and a long frock coat, as is customary.
* Personality: From the book: "The peasants of Asturias believe that in every litter of wolves there is one dog, which is killed by the mother, lest on growing up it should devour the other little ones. Give a human face to this dog son of a wolf and you will have Javert." If we're talking in Dungeons and Dragons alignment terms, he is the definition of Lawful Neutral. It is not his place to question the law, decide whether or not it is just, but simply to enforce it. In his mind, there are only those who obey the law and those who rebel against it. Crime is, therefore, an act of rebellion. In this belief he is singularly uncompromising and consistent. He holds himself to this same standard. He believes his work to be true justice and if he were to compromise that by breaking that which he upholds, it would be an utter disgrace and he would demand to be treated under the same scrutiny by which he treats others.
Being born and partially raised in prison and by vagabonds, he never wished to enter society and wished even less to fall into the same class of people as his parents whom he despised. As such, he decided to remain on the outside of society and to become the exact opposite of his parents. He entered the police and rose to the rank of Inspector.
He lives and breathes his occupation. It consumes him entirely. He is the law. If the law is bent it will bend him. And he doesn't like that. If he found a lowly prostitute who a respectable man said was assaulting him, he would arrest that woman and resolve to put her in jail regardless of her circumstances. And if someone were to pardon that prostitute, he would instantly become quite irate and contest this, whether or not it was reasonable and whether or not it was his place to do so. In fact, this very thing happens in canon.
Javert sees the world in black and white. If you committed a crime, you are a criminal. It doesn't matter if you fulfill your punishment and are released, you are still a criminal in his mind. Forgiveness is all well and good, but justice is what truly matters to Javert and justice cannot be kind. He makes the hard decisions with no hesitation or remorse.
Javert is also very much obsessive. Over the course of the story, he becomes consumed with bringing the lead character, Jean Valjean, to justice. Despite Valjean being a paragon of good throughout the novel, Javert can only see him as a criminal and thus can only see his actions as manipulations and corruptions. Valjean may be taking in a little girl he promised a dying mother he'd look after, but Javert would see this as nothing more than kidnapping.
Despite usually being incredibly straightforward, Javert is also very clever and sneaky when the occasion calls for it. Like a good police officer should, he does not make a move until he can strike a fatal blow. Until his suspicions are confirmed, he will not announce them. He is also very much capable of deception, at least when regarding people he does not see as worthy of honesty. This includes arranging traps and infiltrating a band of rebels undercover.
While Javert will often stand in opposition of those we might consider to be good people, he is not by any means an evil man. He simply stands for the law, whether it be good or evil. This forces him to occasionally commit evil actions, but he sees that as a necessity of the greater good. As far as he believed, he had never in his life met with a decision where to act lawfully meant to act immorally. Until the end, of course.
In canon, his inability to compromise eventually leads to his own suicide. He lets Valjean go and cannot reconcile allowing one he believes to be a criminal to go free while simultaneously he cannot reconcile putting away a clearly good man who just saved his life. Letting Valjean go would mean sacrificing everything he lived for, but imprisoning Valjean would mean doing something flagrantly immoral. Unable to compromise either decision, he opts to drown himself in a river.
* History: Javert was born in prison to a gypsy fortune-teller and a galley slave. Growing up in that kind of environment had two effects of him: 1) It made him detest criminals and 2) It made him detached from society. Believing he could never enter society, he decided to become an officer of the police. He cared not for his parents and he was probably fine with whatever probably unfortunate fate befell them. As Javert ceased to exist as anything other than a man of the law, the details of his rise to Inspector are largely skipped over, except that amidst his rise as a police officer, he was at one point an assistant to a guard at the Bagne of Toulon. This was when he first met prisoner 24601, Jean Valjean.
Jean Valjean was a prisoner incarcerated for stealing a loaf of bread. His sentence was five years, but extended to 19 for repeated escape attempts. He was notable for his mean face and his extraordinary strength, earning him a reputation and a place in Javert's memory.
Eventually, Javert attained the rank of Inspector by the age of forty. While this is not technically a very impressive rank, particularly considering his life-long dedication, it is high enough that he is in charge of a good number of lower-ranking officers and low enough that he can play an active role in law enforcement. The actual terminology of Inspector is a bit weird. By France's current terminology, his rank would be that of Lieutenant. However, the rank is analogous to that of Inspector in the UK police. Essentially, he's neither a small fry, nor a big fish.
Anyway, around 1815, Jean Valjean was released (and subsequently broke parole) and five years later, Javert was transferred to Montreuil-sur-Mer where Valjean just so happened to end up as well. Valjean was, however, going by the name Monsieur Madeleine and had become the wealthy mayor of the town.
In his time at M-sur-M, Javert had become the dread of the undesirables there. He struck terror into them and showed no mercy. He was also accurately perceived to be a man of extreme honesty and conviction.
Javert and Valjean recognized one another instantly, but neither acted on this. Javert didn't wish to accuse a respectable man of being a convict without evidence and Valjean obviously didn't wish to be discovered, exposed, and arrested. As such, they treated each other normally.
There was, however, one incident which all but confirmed Valjean's identity to Javert. One day, a man was trapped under a cart and would die if he were not rescued. Nobody attempted to help the man because, as Javert pointed out, no one could possibly lift that cart without the use of a jack.
Except of course for the insanely strong 24601.
Knowing that he was the only one who could save the man, Valjean did so, displaying his unique strength. Though from this moment Javert had pretty much verified that M. Madeleine was indeed 24601, he still bided his time.
Eventually, Javert was pushed to the breaking point when Jean Valjean pardoned a prostitute who had been detained on the grounds that he felt guilty for her circumstances. Javert saw this as too much of a perversion of the law to stand idly by, so he sent a letter to the higher-ups in Paris, stating that he believed M. Madeleine to be Jean Valjean. He was then informed that Jean Valjean had already been arrested and was to be put on trial. Javert confirmed this himself. Obviously, this man wasn't really Jean Valjean, but convinced that it is, Javert apologizes to the real Jean Valjean and offers his resignation, believing he had falsely accused one of his superiors. Valjean implores him not to, but Javert demands he stand by his convictions.
Fortunately for Javert, his suspicions prove correct and he does not have to retire. The real Jean Valjean reveals his identity to save the falsely accused man, and is arrested. Jean Valjean then escapes and so begins a long cat-and-mouse game between Javert and Jean Valjean that lasts for over a decade.
The fates of Javert and Valjean were inexorably intertwined. Everywhere Valjean was, Javert was soon to follow. Eventually, this comes to a head during the 1832 June riots when Javert went undercover to spy on the rebels. He was, however, caught and left at the mercy of Jean Valjean, who had joined the rebellion.
Javert was prepared to die fighting for what he believed in, even if it meant dying at the hands of his oldest foe, 24601.
Unfortunately for Javert, things wouldn't be that easy as Jean Valjean let him go, sending his whole world into a downward spiral. He eventually allows Valjean to go free, but his system of morals cannot justify it. But he cannot bring himself to incarcerate a clearly good man who saved his life.
He goes into a police station, leaves a note suggesting how to improve the police and prison in the city, then he goes to Pont-au-Change and drowns himself in the river Seine.
Or at least he attempts to. As his consciousness slips away, he falls through a rift, washing ashore on Lake Michigan.
When he wakes up, he'll never be the same again.
* Writing Sample: It was just another night on patrol. Inspector Javert walked the same streets, wearing the same clothes, carrying the same club, watching the same lowlives scurry away at the sound of his footsteps.
Like rats.
The prostitute ran back into her inn. The beggar hid his alms and averted his eyes. An orphan boy eyed passers-by suspiciously. Javert made a note of it.
He'd put them all away for life if it were up to him. Unfortunately, his master was the law, and those who interpret it believe that a criminal can be reformed.
Javert scoffed.
Luckily, his job was not to interpret, but to enforce. He would catch them, they would be put away, and if they were released, they would slip up and he would catch them again. It was a thankless, never-ending duty, but a noble one.
For all its repetition, Javert loved his job, in as much as Javert could "love" anything. He couldn't imagine himself serving any other function. This was all he knew. His raison d'être. He knew that one man could not make a difference, but at least he could know that there was one man who would not bend, who would not be soft, who would not let France eat itself alive. As long as he existed, there was at least one man standing in between his country and chaos.
The orphan boy Javert made note of was small and unassuming. Fearful and desperate, yet calm and somewhat determined. After Javert wrote a short note, he pretended to ignore the boy, keeping watch from the corner of his eye.
Moments like this also made the job worth-while. The anticipation before trapping a rat was almost as exhilarating as the capture itself.
Not much longer, a reasonably well-dressed and tall man turned a corner and began walking along the street. The boy also began walking in the opposite direction until he collided with the stranger. The tall man excused himself, patted the boy on the head, and continued his walk. Without a moments hesitation, Javert moved in for the boy.
"Young man, please turn out your pockets."
The boy looked shocked and somewhat nervous. "What? I didn't do nothin'!"
Javert smiled. His smile seemed to fold his entire face upward, making his already unpleasant visage a bit more frightening. "Turn out your pockets or I shall do it myself at the station."
The boy hesitated, but eventually emptied his pockets. Aside from a ruddy picture of some girl probably about his age and some lint, all he carried was a bit of change amounting to about 63 sou and... a 20 franc piece! Javert held up the coin with the head of Napoleon engraved upon it and let loose a deep chuckle.
"You are under arrest for theft."
The boy's eyes widened and he began reaching desperately for the coin. "No! That's mine! I've been saving that my whole life! Give it back!"
An obvious lie, thought Javert. "So I suppose if I went and asked that man you just walked into he wouldn't notice this coin missing?"
The boy looked quickly in every direction. The tall man was nowhere to be seen. "I swear! It's mine! Please give it back!"
Javert raised the coin high out of the boy's reach. "You will address me as Monsieur Javert or Monsieur Inspector. Now, just a moment ago I witnessed you walking into a man of some esteem. Do you deny this?"
The boy stopped reaching for the coin, lowered his head, and muttered, "No, Monsieur Javert."
Javert continued, "And this coin was in your possession after this incident, correct?"
The boy slowly nodded and Javert promptly grabbed him by the wrist. The boy resisted, "No! Monsieur Javert! I had it before! I didn't--"
"Boy, you may come quietly and willingly or I shall subdue you by force. The decision is yours."
The boy's mouth opened but no words came. His lip curled and his nose sniffled and before long he began to cry. He tried to form words, but they were lost in a fit of desperate hopelessness. While this might melt the hearts of some, Javert's patience was wearing thin.
Many in Montreuil-sur-Mer had already known of Javert's ruthlessness, some first-hand. But those who remained unconvinced of the truth of this legend were convinced beyond any shadow upon seeing a child, no older than ten, bound and flooded with tears, being marched seven blocks to the station.
The boy's name was Jean-Paul. Upon his arrival at the station, the alleged stolen property was taken into custody and Jean-Paul was sent off with a slap on the wrist. Did he truly steal the 20 francs? Didn't matter. Either way he found himself without them upon leaving the station. Regardless of whether he was robbed or the robber, eventually his hunger and poverty as well as the hunger and poverty of a certain little girl from a certain ruddy photograph in a Jean-Paul's pocket would drive him to try and steal an armful of apples a few weeks later.
And Javert would be waiting.