We may agree then, when all is said, that cleaning is a tribute which the sewer pays to civilization; and since, in this respect, the conscience of Tartuffe is an advance on the Augean stable, so the Paris sewer is a step forward.
It is more than an advance, it is a transformation. Between the old and the present sewer a revolution has taken place. And who was responsible? The man whom everyone forgets, and whom we have named – Bruneseau.
VI
Future progress
The digging of the Paris sewer was no small matter. Ten centuries had worked at it without completing it, any more than they had completed Paris. It was a sort of dark, multi-armed polyp which grew with the city above it. When the city put out a street, the sewer stretched an arm. The old monarchy had constructed only twenty-three thousand metres of sewer: that was the point reached in Paris on 1 January 1806. From that time, to which we shall refer later, the work was effectively and energetically carried forward. Napoleon – the figures are curious – built 4,804 metres, Louis XVIII built 5,709, Charles X 10,836, Louis-Philippe 89,020, the Republic of 1848 23,381 and the present regime has built 70,500; in all, at this date, 226,610 metres, or 60 leagues of sewers, constitute the vast entrails of Paris. A dark network always in growth, unknown and enormous.
As we see, the underground labyrinth of Paris is today ten times what it was at the start of the century. It is hard to conceive of the perseverance and effort needed to bring it to its present state of relative perfection. It was with great difficulty that the monarchical authority, and the revolutionary in the last decade of the eighteenth century, succeeded in digging the five leagues of sewer which existed before 1806. Every kind of obstacle hindered the operation, some due to the nature of the ground, others to the prejudice of the working population of Paris. Paris is built on a site strangely opposed to pick and shovel, to all human management. Nothing is more difficult to penetrate than the geological formation on which is set the marvellous historical formation which is Paris; underground resistance is manifest whenever, and by whatever means, the attempt is made. There are liquid clays, live springs, rocks, and the deep sludgy pits known to science as moutardes. The pick advances laboriously through chalky strata alternating with seams of very fine clay, and layers of schist encrusted with oyster-shells, relics of the prehistoric ocean. Sometimes a stream destroys the beginning of a tunnel, drenching the workers; or a fall of rubble sweeps down like a cataract, shattering the stoutest roof-props. Only recently, when it became necessary to run a sewer under the Saint-Martin canal without emptying the canal or interfering with its use, a fissure developed in the canal bottom so that more water poured into the lower gallery than the pumps could handle; a diver had to find the fissure, which was in the neck of the great basin, and it was blocked only with difficulty. Elsewhere, near the Seine and even at some distance from the river, there are shifting sands in which a man may sink. There is also the danger of asphyxiation in the foul air and burial beneath falls of earth. There is a typhus, with which the workers become slowly infected. In our time, after four months of day and night labour principally designed to rid Paris of the pouring waters of Montmartre, and after constructing the Rue Barre-du-Bec sewer some six metres underground, the foreman, Monnot, died. The engineer, Duleau, died after constructing 3,000 metres of sewer which included the formidable task of lowering the floor of the Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth cutting. No bulletins signalled these acts of bravery, more useful than any battlefield slaughter.
The Paris sewers in 1832 were very different from what they are today. Bruneseau had made a start, but it needed cholera to supply the impetus for the huge reconstruction which took place later. It is surprising to know, for example, that in 1821 a part of the ring sewer, known, as in Venice, as the Grand Canal, still lay open to the sky in the Rue des Gourdes. Not until 1823 did Paris find the 266,080 francs 6 centimes necessary to cover this disgrace. The three absorbent wells of the Combat, the cunette, and Saint-Mande, with their ancillary outlets, date from only 1836. The intestinal canal of Paris has been rebuilt and, as we have said, increased more than tenfold in the last twenty-five years.
Thirty years ago, at the time of the insurrection of 5 and 6 June, it was still in many places almost the ancient sewer. A great many streets, now cambered, were then sunken. One often saw, at a point where the gutters of two streets met, large square grilles whose thick iron bars, burnished by the feet of pedestrians, were slippery for carts and dangerous for horses. And in 1832, in countless streets, the old gothic cloaca was still shamelessly manifest in great gaping blocks of stone.
In Paris in 1806 the figure was not much more than that for May 1663 – 5,328 fathoms. After Bruneseau, on 1 January 1832, it amounted to 40,300 metres. From 1806 to 1831 an annual average of 750 metres had been built; after which the figure rose to eight and even ten thousand a year, galleries built of cemented rubble on a foundation of concrete.
Apart from economic progress, the Paris sewer is part of an immense problem of public hygiene. Paris exists between two layers, of water and of air. The water layer, some distance underground but fed by two sources, is borne on the stratum of sandstone situated between chalk and Jurassic limestone, and may be represented by a disc of some twenty-five leagues radius into which a host of rivers and streams seep. One may drink the mingled waters of Seine, Marne, Yonne, Oise, Aisne, Cher, Vienne, and Loire in a glass of water drawn from a well in Grenelle. The layer of water is healthy, coming first from the sky and then from the earth; the layer of air is unhealthy, for it comes from the sewer. All the miasmas of the cloaca are mingled with the breath of the town, hence its poor quality. It has been scientifically demonstrated that air taken from immediately above a dung-heap is purer than the air of Paris. In time, with the aid of progress, perfected mechanisms and fuller knowledge, the layer of water will be used to purify the layer of air – that is to say, to cleanse the sewer. By cleansing the sewer we mean the return of mire to the earth, of manure to the soil, and fertilizer to the fields. This simple fact will bring about a decrease in misery and increase in health for the whole community. As things are, the maladies of Paris spread some fifty leagues from the Louvre, taking this as the hub of the pestilential wheel.
It may be said that for ten centuries the sewer has been the disease of Paris, the evil in the city’s blood. Popular instinct has never doubted it. The trade of sewage worker was more perilous and nearly as repugnant to the people as the trade of executioner, and held in abhorrence. High wages were needed to induce a mason to vanish into that foetid ooze. ‘To go into the sewer is to go into the grave,’ men said. All sorts of legends covered that colossal sink with horror, that dreadful place which bears the impress of the revolution of the earth and of men, in which the remains of every cataclysm is to be found, from the Flood to the death of Marat.
Book Three
Mire, But the Soul
I
The cloaca and its surprises
JEAN VALJEAN was in the Paris sewer. And here is another resemblance between Paris and the sea: as with the sea, the diver can vanish into it.
The change was unbelievable. In the very heart of the town, Valjean had left the town; in a matter of moments, the time to lift a lid and let it fall, he had passed from daylight into total darkness, from midday to midnight, from tumult to silence and the stillness of the tomb; and, by a chance even more prodigious than that in the Rue Polonceau, from utmost peril to absolute safety. He stayed for some moments listening, as though in a stupor. The trapdoor of salvation had suddenly opened beneath him. Celestial benevolence had in some sort caught him by betrayal; the wonderful ambushes of Providence!
Meanwhile the injured man did not move, and Valjean did not know whether his burden was living or dead.
His first sensation was one of utter blindness; he could see nothing. It seemed to him also that he had suddenly become deaf. He could hear nothing. The tempest of slaughter going on only a few feet above his head reached him only as a distant murmur. He cou
ld feel solid ground beneath his feet and that was all, but it was enough. He reached out one arm and then the other, touching the wall on either side, and perceived the narrowness of the passage; he slipped, and knew that the floor was wet. He cautiously advanced a foot, fearing a pitfall, and noted that the floor continued. A gust of foetid air told him where he was.
After some moments, as his eyes became adjusted, he began to see by the dim light of the hatchway by which he had entered. He could make out that the passage in which he had landed was walled up behind him. It was a dead-end. In front of him was another wall, a wall of darkness. The light from the hatchway died a few paces from where he stood, throwing a pallid gleam on a few feet of damp wall. Beyond was massive blackness, to enter which was to be swallowed up. Nevertheless it could and must be done, and with speed. Valjean reflected that the grille he had perceived might also be seen by the soldiers, who might come in search of him. There was no time to be lost. He had laid Marius on the ground; he picked him up and taking him on his shoulders marched resolutely into the darkness.
The truth is that they were less safe than Valjean supposed. Other dangers no less fearful, might await them. After the turbulence of battle came the cave of evil mists and pitfalls; after chaos, the cloaca. Valjean had moved from one circle of Hell into another. After walking fifty paces he had to stop. A question had arisen. The passage ran into another, so that now there were two ways he might go. Which to choose – left or right? How was he to steer in that black labyrinth? But the labyrinth, as we have said, provides a clue – its slope. Follow the downward slope and you must come to the river.
Jean Valjean instantly realized this. He thought that he was probably in the sewer of Les Halles, and that if he went left, following the slope, he would arrive within a quarter of an hour at some outlet to the Seine between the Pont-au-Change and the Pont-Neuf – appear, that is to say, in broad daylight in the most frequented part of Paris, perhaps even at a crossroads, to the stupefaction of the passers-by. Arrest would then be certain. It was better to press deeper into the labyrinthine darkness, trusting to chance to provide a way out. He moved upwards, turning to the right.
When he had turned the corner into the new passageway the distant light from the hatch vanished completely and he was again blind. He pressed on nonetheless, as rapidly as he could. Marius’s arms were round his neck while his feet hung down behind. He held both arms with one hand, following the wall with the other. Marius’s cheek was pressed against his own and stuck to it, since it was bleeding; he felt the warm stream trickling beneath his clothes. But the faint breathing in his ear was a sign of life. The passage he was now following was less narrow than the first, but he struggled painfully along it. Yesterday’s rain had not yet drained away; it made a stream in the middle of the floor, and he had to keep close to the wall if he was not to have his feet in water. Thus he went darkly on, like some creature of the night.
But little by little, either because widely spaced openings let through a glimmer of light, or because his eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness, he recovered some degree of sight, so that he had a dim perception of the wall he was touching or the vaulted roof. The pupil dilates in darkness and in the end finds light, just as the soul dilates in misfortune and in the end finds God.
It was difficult to choose his path. The direction of the sewers in general follows that of the streets above them. At that time there were 2,200 streets in Paris; and one may picture a similar tangle below. The system of sewers existing at that time laid end to end would have had a length of eleven leagues. As we have said, the present network, thanks to the work of the past thirty years has a length of not less than sixty leagues.
Valjean started by making a mistake. He thought he was under the Rue Saint-Denis and it was unfortunate that he was not. There is an old stone sewer dating from Louis XIII under the Rue Saint-Denis, having only a single turn, under the former Cour des Miracles, and a single branch, the Saint-Martin sewer, of which the four arms intersect. But the Petite-Truanderie passage, of which the entrance is near the Corinth tavern, has never communicated with that under the Rue Saint-Denis; it runs into the Montmartre sewer, and this was the way Valjean had followed. Here there are endless chances of going astray, the Montmartre sewer being one of the most labyrinthine of all. Fortunately he had left behind him the Les Halles sewer, the plan of which is like a forest of ship’s masts; but more than one perplexity lay ahead of him, more than one street corner (for streets are what they really are) offered itself in the darkness like a question mark. First, on his left, the huge Plâtrière sewer, a sort of Chinese puzzle, running with countless twists and turns under the Hotel des Postes and the cornmarket to the Seine; secondly, on his right, the Rue du Cadran with its three blind alleys; thirdly, again on the left, a sort of fork zig-zagging into the basin of the Louvre; and finally, on the right, the blind alley of the Rue des Jeûneurs, without counting small offshoots here and there–all this before he reached the ring sewer, which alone could take him to some place sufficiently far off to be safe.
Had Valjean known all this he would have realized, simply by feeling the wall, that he could not be under the Rue Saint-Denis. Instead of the old cut stone, the costly old-time architecture which had dignity even in its sewers, he would have felt cheap modern materials under his hand, bourgeois masonry; but he knew nothing of this. He went anxiously but calmly ahead, seeing and knowing nothing, trusting to chance, or to Providence.
And by degrees the horror grew upon him, the darkness pierced his soul. He was walking through a riddle. He had to pick his way, almost to invent it, without seeing it. Every step he took might be his last. Would he find a way out, and in time? Would this huge underground sponge with interstices of stone allow itself to be conquered? Would he come to some impenetrable place where Marius would bleed to death and he himself would die of hunger, leaving two skeletons in the darkness? He asked himself these questions and had no answer; he was Jonah in the body of the whale.
Suddenly he was startled. He perceived that he was no longer going uphill. The stream washed round the heels of his boots, instead of round the toes. The sewer was going downwards. Would he arrive suddenly at the Seine? The danger was great, but the danger of turning back was greater still. He pressed on.
He was not going towards the Seine. The ridge of sand on the right bank caused one of the streams to flow into the Seine, the other into the main sewer. The crest of the ridge follows a capricious line, its culminating point, where the streams separate, being beneath the Rue Sainte-Avoye and the Rue Montmartre. This was the point which Valjean had reached. He was on the right road moving towards the ring-sewer; but this he did not know.
Whenever he came to a branch he measured its dimensions with his hand, and if he found the opening less wide than the passage he was following he passed it, rightly considering that every smaller passageway must be a dead end. Thus he avoided the fourfold trap we have described.
A moment came when he realized that he had left behind the Paris petrified by the uprising and was under the Paris living its everyday life. There was a sound like distant steady thunder above his head, the sound of cartwheels. He had been walking for half an hour, according to his reckoning, without any thought of rest, only changing the hand with which he held Marius. The darkness was greater than ever, but this reassured him.
Suddenly he saw his own shadow, faintly visible on the floor of the passage in front of him. He was conscious of a dim light on the viscous walls. He looked back in stupefaction.
Behind him, at what seemed a great distance, there shone a dim, flickering light, as it were a star that was observing him. It was a police lantern, and within its glow some eight or ten moving figures were to be seen.
II
Explanation
On that morning a search of the sewers had been ordered, since it was considered that these might be used by the defeated rebels. Hidden Paris was to be ransacked while General Bugeaud cleared the open streets: a combined
operation involving both the army and the police. Three squads of police agents and sewage men were exploring the underside of Paris, one the Right Bank, the second the Left Bank and the third the Cité. The police were armed with carbines, batons, swords and daggers. What Jean Valjean now saw was the lantern of the right-bank squad.
The squad had visited the curved passage and the three deadends under the Rue du Cadran. Valjean had passed them while they were in one of the dead-ends, which he found to be narrower than the main passageway. The police, emerging from the Cadran passageway, had thought they heard footsteps in the direction of the ring sewer. They were those of Valjean. The sergeant raised his lantern and they stared in his direction.
It was a bad moment for Valjean. Fortunately, although he could see the lantern, the lantern saw very little. It was light and he was in shadow, far from it and buried in darkness. He stopped, pressed against the wall. He did not know what was behind him. Sleeplessness, lack of food, and strong emotion had brought him to a state of hallucination. He saw a glow and moving forms, but did not know what they were.
When he ceased to move the sound ceased. The men listened and heard nothing, stared and saw nothing. They consulted together.
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