Thénardier has given Valjean his physical freedom; Javert completes the task by giving him his legal freedom. Spiritually, Valjean has already freed himself and is now truly M. Leblanc: the "white" man, the man with no name, who belongs only to God. A single force has brought him out of the slough of ignorance and evil: the power of love. Love, first, for the bishop; then love of Cosette; and finally, as he shows on the barricades, love of mankind.
In contrast, Javert has always feared and mistrusted love. It twists things, changes things: it is not "in order." Lost, lonely bloodhound that he is, he feels safe only with what is tangible, organized, immutable; if he loves anything, it is the law that has always kept a warm place in a corner for him and told him exactly what to do next. Now, in a revelation like that on the road to Emmaus, he discovers that the law is not enough, that there is a more powerful force to which even the law must bow and which can make even him, Javert, go against his conscience. He sees the light of love, but it is too shattering for him to endure.
"Justice," of which Javert is a personification, says critic Georges Piroué, "cannot accept into its corpus the foreign body of contradiction;" only the divine justice based on charity can do this, and in fact constantly renews itself by so doing. The reign of justice must be destroyed before the reign of charity can begin, and Javert must die so that Jean Valjean may live. His death, however, is not so much a defeat as a transformation. By loving Javert, Valjean has destroyed him, but he has saved him too; and divine justice will reward Javert's crime against human justice.
