by Victor Hugo
CHAPTER V.
PRESENT PROGRESS.
At the present day the sewer is clean, cold, straight, and correct,and almost realizes the ideal of what is understood in England by theword "respectable." It is neat and gray, built with the plumb-line,--wemight almost say coquettishly. It resembles a contractor who hasbecome a Councillor of State. You almost see clearly in it, and themud behaves itself decently. At the first glance you might be inclinedto take it for one of those subterranean passages so common formerly,and so useful for the flights of monarchs and princes in the goodold times "when the people loved its kings." The present sewer is ahandsome sewer; the pure style prevails there,--the classic rectilinearAlexandrine, which, expelled from poetry, appears to have taken refugein architecture, seems blended with all the stones of this long, dark,and white vault; each vomitory is an arcade, and the Rue de Rivolisets the fashion even in the cloaca. However, if the geometric line beanywhere in its place, it is assuredly so in the stercoraceous trenchof a great city, where everything must be subordinated to the shortestroad. The sewer has at the present day assumed a certain officialaspect, and the police reports of which it is sometimes the object areno longer deficient in respect to it. The words which characterize itin the administrative language are lofty and dignified; what used tobe called a gut is now called a gallery, and what used to be a hole isnow a "look." Villon would no longer recognize the ancient lodgings heused for emergencies. This network of cellars still has its populationof rodents, pullulating more than ever; from time to time a rat, anold veteran, ventures his head at the window of the drain and examinesthe Parisians: but even these vermin are growing tame, as they aresatisfied with their subterranean palace. The cloaca no longer retainsits primitive ferocity, and the rain which sullied the sewer of oldentimes, washes that of the present day. Still, do not trust to it tooentirely, for miasmas yet inhabit it, and it is rather hypocriticalthan irreproachable. In spite of all the préfecture of police and theBoard of Health have done, it exhales a vague suspicious odor, likeTartuffe after confession. Still, we must allow that, take it alltogether, sweeping is an homage which the sewer pays to civilization,and as from this point of view Tartuffe's conscience is a progressupon the Augean stable, it is certain that the sewer of Paris has beenimproved. It is more than a progress, it is a transmutation; betweenthe old and the present sewer there is a revolution. Who effectedthis revolution? The man whom every one forgets, and whom we havenamed,--Bruneseau.
