Les Miserables Lyrics: Javert’s Suicide

JAVERT
Who is this man?
What sort of devil is he?
To have me caught in a trap
And choose to let me go free?
It was his hour at last
To put a seal on my fate,
Wipe out the past,
And wash me clean off the slate.
All it would take was a flick of his knife.

Vengeance was his and he gave me back my life!
Damned if I’ll live in the debt of a thief
Damned if I’ll yield at the end of the chase
I am the Law and the Law is not mocked
I’ll spit his pity right back in his face
There is nothing on earth that we share
It is either Valjean or Javert!

How can I now allow this man
To hold dominion over me?
This desperate man that I have hunted
He gave me my life. He gave me freedom.

I should have perished by his hand
It was his right.
I was my right to die as well.
Instead I live — but live in hell.

And my thoughts fly apart.
Can this man be believed?
Shall his sins be forgiven?
Shall his crimes be reprieved?

And must I now begin to doubt,
Who never doubted all those years?
My heart is stone and still it trembles.
The world I have known is lost in shadow.
Is he from heaven or from hell?
And does he know
That, granting me my life today,
This man has killed me even so?

I am reaching but I fall
And the stars are black and cold
As I stare into the void
Of a world that cannot hold
I’ll escape now from that world
From the world of Jean Valjean.
There is nowhere I can turn
There is now way to go on…