The transformation of Jean Valjean into M. Madeleine is improbable, coincidental, and comes out of the same formula box as The Count of Monte Cristo; nevertheless, it is psychologically and artistically satisfying. We recognize, as Hugo does, that it is not enough for Jean Valjean to have experienced a spiritual conversion; this conversion must be tested in action, and the wider the field of action, the more satisfactory the test.
In any case, Hugo makes it clear that this transformation is not intended to be a happy ending. Jean Valjean is still in jeopardy, still, like Fantine, at a halfway house, as is shown by the presence of Javert.
Once every few hundred years, an author manages to delineate a character at once so individual and so universal that he becomes a new archetype in literature. Chaucer developed Pandarus; Victor Hugo created Javert. With consummate artistry, Hugo blends Javert's history, his external appearance, and his inner nature to paint for us an unforgettable and terrifying portrait of a man-bloodhound, an inexorable and incorruptible police agent—a contradiction in terms in those days, when police forces were largely made up of "mouchards," or informers themselves involved in the criminal world.
What is most terrifying about Javert, however, is neither his persistence nor his purity but the fact that like a robot he decides always according to the letter of the law and not its spirit. Because of this, he makes both Fantine and Jean Valjean suffer acutely, but in the long run their weakness proves spiritual strength, and Javert's strength a spiritual weakness.
