the sense of duty

The satisfaction of at last getting hold of Jean Valjean caused all that was in his soul to
appear in his countenance. The depths having been stirred up, mounted to the surface. The
humiliation of having, in some slight degree, lost the scent, and of having indulged, for a
few moments, in an error with regard to Champmathieu, was effaced by pride at having so well
and accurately divined in the first place, and of having for so long cherished a just
instinct. Javert's content shone forth in his sovereign attitude. The deformity of triumph
overspread that narrow brow. All the demonstrations of horror which a satisfied face can
afford were there.

Javert was in heaven at that moment. Without putting the thing clearly to himself, but with
a confused intuition of the necessity of his presence and of his success, he, Javert,
personified justice, light, and truth in their celestial function of crushing out evil.
Behind him and around him, at an infinite distance, he had authority, reason, the case
judged, the legal conscience, the public prosecution, all the stars; he was protecting
order, he was causing the law to yield up its thunders, he was avenging society, he was
lending a helping hand to the absolute, he was standing erect in the midst of a glory. There
existed in his victory a remnant of defiance and of combat. Erect, haughty, brilliant, he
flaunted abroad in open day the superhuman bestiality of a ferocious archangel. The terrible
shadow of the action which he was accomplishing caused the vague FLASH of the social sword
to be visible in his clenched fist; happy and indignant, he held his heel upon crime, vice,
rebellion, perdition, hell; he was radiant, he exterminated, he smiled, and there was an
incontestable grandeur in this monstrous Saint Michael.

Javert, though frightful, had nothing ignoble about him.

Probity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become
hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty,
the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they
are virtues which have one vice,--error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic in the full
flood of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously venerable radiance. Without himself
suspecting the fact, Javert in his formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every
ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face,
wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the good.