Another parallel between Valjean and Javert is that they’re eerily silent when captured or threatened.

Jean Valjean being captured by Patron-Minette:

The silence preserved by the prisoner, that precaution which had been carried to the point of forgetting all anxiety for his own life, that resistance opposed to the first impulse of nature, which is to utter a cry….

Javert being captured by Les Amis:

Javert had not uttered a single cry.

The other police spy who’s captured at the barricade— Le Cabuc— is not like Javert, in that he behaves like a normal person. He cries out in pain and anger and fear; he begs for mercy; he prays. But Javert is inhumanly tranquil, and reacts to his death with indifference.

Jean Valjean, when captured by Patron-Minette, is similar. He acts eerily “calm,” and inhumanly “silent.” Of course in Valjean’s case, he has to be silent, because he’s aware that the police would only hurt him if they arrived; his politeness is also a survival strategy. Knowing how to behave in a superficially polite solicitous way to avoid punishment from authority is clearly something he’s had to learn to survive prison.

This parallel feels like another way the trauma of prison has affected both of Valjean and Javert’s lives. Javert spent time in prison as a child, Valjean spent nineteen years serving his sentence— and both of them have now learned to silence “the first impulse of nature” to cry for help. They know instinctively how to behave in situations where they are trapped in another person’s power and have no autonomy. They are able to remain calm and tranquil and even “polite” even when they’re threatened with death.