Les Misérables, v. 5/5: Jean Valjean

by Victor Hugo

  CHAPTER II.

  THE OLD HISTORY OF THE SEWER.

  If we imagine Paris removed like a cover, the subterranean network ofsewers, regarded from a birds'-eye view, would represent on eitherbank a sort of large branch grafted upon the river. On the right bankthe encircling sewer will be the trunk of this branch, the secondarytubes the branches, and the blind alleys the twigs. This figure isonly summary and half correct, as the right angle, which is the usualangle in subterranean ramifications of this nature, is very rare invegetation. Our readers will form a better likeness of this strangegeometric plan by supposing that they see lying on a bed of darknesssome strange Oriental alphabet as confused as a thicket, and whoseshapeless letters are welded to each other in an apparent confusion,and as if accidentally, here by their angles and there by their ends.The sewers and drains played a great part in the Middle Ages, under theLower Empire and in the old East. Plague sprang from them and despotsdied of it. The multitudes regarded almost with a religious awe thesebeds of corruption, these monstrous cradles of death. The vermin-ditchat Benares is not more fearful than the Lion's den at Babylon.Tiglath-Pileser, according to the rabbinical books, swore by thesink of Nineveh. It was from the drain of Munster that John of Leydenproduced his false moon, and it was from the cesspool-well of Kekhschebthat his Oriental menæchmus, Mokanna, the veiled prophet of Khorassan,brought his false sun.

  The history of men is reflected in the history of the sewers, andthe Gemoniæ narrated the story of Rome. The sewer of Paris is an oldformidable thing, it has been a sepulchre, and it has been an asylum.Crime, intellect, the social protest, liberty of conscience, thought,robbery, all that human laws pursue or have pursued, have concealedthemselves in this den,--the Maillotins in the fourteenth century,the cloak-stealers in the fifteenth, the Huguenots in the sixteenth,the illuminés of Morin in the seventeenth, and the Chauffeurs in theeighteenth. One hundred years ago the nocturnal dagger-issued fromit, and the rogue in danger glided into it; the wood had the cave andParis had the drain. The Truanderie, that Gallic _picareria_, acceptedthe drain as an annex of the Court of Miracles, and at night, cunningand ferocious, entered beneath the Maubuée vomitory as into an alcove.It was very simple that those who had for their place of daily toilthe Vide-Gousset lane, or the Rue Coupe-Gorge, should have for theirnightly abode the ponceau of the Chemin-Vert or the Hure-poix cagnard.Hence comes a swarm of recollections, all sorts of phantoms haunt theselong solitary corridors, on all sides are putridity and miasma, andhere and there is a trap through which Villon inside converses withRabelais outside.

  The sewer in old Paris is the meeting-place of all exhaustions and ofall experiments; political economy sees there a detritus, and socialphilosophy a residuum. The sewer is the conscience of the city, andeverything converges and is confronted there. In this livid spot thereis darkness, but there are no secrets. Each thing has its true form, orat least its definitive form. The pile of ordure has this in its favor,that it tells no falsehood, and simplicity has taken refuge there.Basile's mask is found there, but you see the pasteboard, the threads,the inside and out, and it is marked with honest filth. Scapin's falsenose is lying close by. All the uncleanlinesses of civilization, whereno longer of service, fall into this pit of truth; they are swallowedup, but display themselves in it. This pell-mell is a confession:there no false appearance nor any plastering is possible, order takesoff its shirt, there is an absolute nudity, a rout of illusions andmirage, and there nothing but what is assuming the gloomy face of whatis finishing. Reality and disappearance. There a bottle-heel confessesintoxication, and a basket-handle talks about domesticity; there, theapple-core which has had literary opinions becomes once again theapple-core, the effigy on the double son grows frankly vert-de-grised,the saliva of Caiaphas meets the vomit of Falstaff, the louis-d'orwhich comes from the gambling-hell dashes against the nail whence hangsthe end of the suicide's rope, a livid fœtus rolls along wrappedin spangles, which danced last Shrove Tuesday at the opera, a wigwhich has judged men wallows by the side of a rottenness which wasMargotton's petticoat: it is more than fraternity, it is the extremestfamiliarity. All that painted itself is bedaubed, and the last veil istorn away. The sewer is a cynic and says everything. This sincerity ofuncleanliness pleases us and reposes the mind. When a man has spenthis time upon the earth in enduring the great airs assumed by statereasons, the oath, political wisdom, human justice, professionalprobity, the austerities of the situation, and incorruptible robes, itrelieves him to enter a sewer and see there the mire which suits it.

  It is instructive at the same time, for, as we said just now, historypasses through the sewer. St. Bartholomew filters there drop bydrop through the paving-stones, and great public assassinations,political and religious butcheries, traverse this subterranean way ofcivilization, and thrust their corpses into it. For the eye of thedreamer all historical murderers are there, in the hideous gloom,on their knees, with a bit of their winding-sheet for an apron, andmournfully sponging their task. Louis XI. is there with Tristan,Francis I. is there with Duprat, Charles IX. is there with his mother,Richelieu is there with Louis XIII., Louvois is there, Letellier isthere, Hubert and Maillard are there, scratching the stones, and tryingto efface the trace of their deeds. The brooms of these spectres canbe heard under these vaults, and the enormous fetidness of socialcatastrophes is breathed there. You see in corners red flashes, anda terrible water flows there in which blood-stained hands have beenwashed.

  The social observer should enter these shadows, for they form part ofhis laboratory. Philosophy is the microscope of thought; everythingstrives to fly from it, but nothing escapes it. Tergiversation isuseless, for what side of himself does a man show in tergiversating?His ashamed side. Philosophy pursues evil with its upright glance, anddoes not allow it to escape into nothingness. It recognizes everythingin the effacement of disappearing things, and in the diminution ofvanishing things. It reconstructs the purple after the rags, and thewoman after the tatters. With the sewer it re-makes the town; with themud it re-makes manners. It judges from the potsherds whether it werean amphora or an earthenware jar. It recognizes by a nail-mark on aparchment the difference which separates the Jewry of the Juden-gassefrom the Jewry of the Ghetto. It finds again in what is left what hasbeen,--the good, the bad, the false, the true, the patch of bloodin the palace, the ink-stain of the cavern, the tallow-drop of thebrothel, trials undergone, temptations welcome, orgies vomited up, thewrinkle which characters have formed in abasing themselves, the tracesof prostitution in the souls whose coarseness rendered them capable ofit, and on the jacket of the street-porters of Rome the mark of thenudge of Messalina.