Les Miserables (Movie Tie-in) (9781101612774)

by Hugo, Victor; Donougher, Christine (TRN)

  There was at this time an open space in the Montmartre sewer which has since been abolished because of the pool that formed in it when the heavy rains came down. The squad were able to assemble here. Valjean saw them form a sort of circle, heads close together. The outcome of their discussion was that they had heard nothing and there was no one there. To move towards the ring sewer would be a waste of time, and it would be better to make haste towards Saint-Merry where, if any rebel had escaped, he was more likely to be found.

  The sergeant gave the order to go left towards the Seine. If they had divided into two parties and followed both directions Valjean would have been captured. It was as near as that. Probably, to guard against the possibility of an encounter with a number of rebels, they had been ordered not to separate. They turned away, leaving Valjean behind, but all he knew of it was the sudden vanishing of the lantern. For a long time he stayed motionless with his back to the wall, hearing the receding echo of that spectral patrol.

  III

  The man pursued

  It must be said for the police of that time that even in the gravest circumstances they continued imperturbably to perform their duties. An uprising was not, in their view, a reason for giving villains a free hand, nor could society be neglected because the government was in danger. Ordinary duties were correctly carried out together with extraordinary ones. In the midst of an incalculable political event, and under the threat of revolution, without letting himself be distracted by all this, the policeman pursued the criminal.

  This is precisely what happened on the Right Bank of the Seine on that afternoon of 6 June, a short way beyond the Pont des Invalides.

  There is no bank there now. The aspect of the place has changed. But on that bank, some distance apart, two men seemed to be observing one another, one seeking to avoid the other. It was like a game of chess played remotely and in silence. Neither seemed in a hurry; both moved slowly as though each feared that by hastening he might speed up the other. As it were, an appetite in pursuit of a prey, without seeming to be acting with intent. The prey was wary and constantly alert. Due distance between tracker and tracked was preserved. The would-be escaper was a puny creature; the hunter a tall robust man, hard of aspect and probably of person.

  The first, the weaker, sought to avoid the second, but he did so in a furious manner, and anyone looking closely at him would have seen in his eyes all the dark hostility of flight, the menace that resides in fear.

  The river-bank was deserted. There were no strollers, nor even a boatman on any of the barges moored here and there. The men could best be seen from the opposite bank, and to anyone viewing them at that distance the first would have appeared a ragged, furtive creature, shivering under a thin smock, while the other had an aspect of officialdom, with the coat of authority buttoned close under his chin.

  The reader would perhaps recognize the men, could he see them more closely. What was the second man seeking to do? Probably to clothe the first more warmly. When a man clothed by the State pursues a man clad in rags, it is to make him, too, a man clothed by the State. But the matter of colour is important. To be clad in blue is splendid; to be clad in red is disagreeable. There is a purple of the depths. It was probably this disagreeable purple that the first man was anxious to avoid.

  If the other let him go on without attempting to lay hands on him, it was probably because he hoped to see him reach some significant spot – the delicate operation known as ‘shadowing’. What makes this appear likely is that the uniformed man, seeing an empty fiacre pass along the quay, signalled to the driver, and the latter, evidently knowing with whom he had to deal, turned and kept pace with the two men. This was not noticed by the ragged fugitive.

  The fiacre rolled past the trees of the Champs-Élysées, its driver being visible above the parapet, whip in hand. Among the secret instructions issued to the police is the following: ‘Always have a vehicle handy, in case of need.’

  Each manoeuvring with admirable strategy, the two men drew near a ramp running from the quay down to the bank, which enabled cab-drivers reaching Passy to water their horses. This has since been abolished in the name of symmetry. The horses go thirsty, but the eye is flattered.

  It seemed likely that the man in the smock intended to climb this ramp and attempt to escape by the Champs-Élysées, a place abounding in trees but also in policemen. That part of the quay is very little distant from the house brought from Moret to Paris in 1824 by Colonel Brack, known as the house of François I. There is a guard-post very near it

  Surprisingly, the pursued man did not go up the ramp to the quay, but continued to move along the bank. His position was plainly becoming desperate. Apart from plunging into the Seine, what was he to do? He had no access to the quay other than the ramp or stairway, and he was near the spot, at the bend of the Seine towards the Pont d’Iéna, where the bank, growing ever more narrow, finally vanished underwater. There he would find himself trapped between the sheer wall on his right and the river on his left, with authority close behind him. It is true that the ending of the bank was concealed from him by a heap of rubble some seven or eight feet high, the remains of some demolition. But did he really hope to hide behind it? Surely not. The ingenuousness of thieves is not so great.

  The heap of rubble formed a sort of hillock running from the water’s edge to the quay wall. The fugitive reached this hillock and hurried round it, so that his pursuer could not see him. The latter, not seeing, was himself unseen; accordingly he abandoned all pretence and quickened his pace. He reached the heap and went round it, and then stood still in amazement. The man he was pursuing was not there! He had completely disappeared. Only some thirty feet of bank lay beyond the heap before it vanished into the river. The fugitive could not have plunged into the Seine or climbed on to the quay without being seen by his pursuer. What had become of him?

  The man in the buttoned coat went to the extreme end of the bank and stood there reflecting, fists clenched and eyes gleaming. Suddenly he clapped a hand to his forehead. He had seen, at the point where the bank ended, a wide, low iron grille with a heavy lock and three massive hinges. It opened as much on to the river as on to the bank, and a dark stream flowed from it, running into the Seine.

  Beyond the thick, rusty bars a dark vaulted corridor was to be seen. The man folded his arms and looked angrily at the grille. Since this served no purpose, he attempted to force it open, but it resisted all his shaking. It must certainly have been opened, although he had heard nothing, which was strange considering its rusty state. And it had been closed. This meant that whoever had opened it had done so not with a hook but with a key. The idea dawned suddenly on the pursuer and drew from him a roar of indignation:

  ‘Upon my soul, a government key!’

  Calming down immediately, he gave vent to his thoughts in a series of ironic monosyllables:

  ‘Well! Well! Well! Well!’

  Having said this, and hoping for he knew not what – to see the man emerge or other men arrive – he settled down by the heap of rubble to keep watch with the patience of a game-dog.

  The driver of the fiacre, following all his movements, had come to a stop near the parapet above him. Foreseeing a long wait, he put nosebags on his horses. Occasional strollers from the Pont d’Iéna paused to observe those two motionless features of the landscape – the man on the bank and the fiacre on the quay.

  IV

  He too bears his cross

  Jean Valjean had resumed his journey without again stopping. It became more and more laborious. The height of the passageway varies, being of an average five feet six inches; Valjean had to bend down to prevent Marius rubbing against the roof, and he had to feel his way constantly along the wall. The dampness of the stone and the slipperiness of the floor offered insecure hand- and foot-holds. He staggered in the horrid excrement of the town. The lights of vent-holes appeared only at long intervals, so pallid that what was sunlight might have been moonlight; all else was mist, miasma, and darkness. Va
ljean was both hungry and thirsty, especially thirsty, in that place of water where there was none to drink. Even his great strength, so little diminished with age, was beginning to flag, and the weight of his burden increased with his fatigue. He was carrying Marius so as best to allow him freedom to breathe. He felt the scuttle of rats between his feet, and one was so startled as to bite him. From time to time he was revived by a gust of fresh air from the vent-holes.

  It was perhaps three o’clock in the afternoon when he reached the ring sewer. He was at first astonished by the suddenly increased width, finding himself in a passageway where his outstretched hands could not touch both walls nor his head the roof. This main sewer is in fact eight feet wide and seven feet high.

  At the point where the Montmartre sewer joins the main sewer two other passageways form an intersection. Faced by four alternatives, a less sagacious man might have been undecided. Valjean took the widest way, the ring sewer. But here again the question arose – to go up or down? He felt that time was running out and that he must at all costs try to reach the Seine. That is to say, downward; and he turned to the left.

  It was well that he did so, for the main sewer, being nothing but the former stream of Ménilmontant, ends, if one goes upwards, in a cul-de-sac, at the spring which was its original source. Had Valjean gone upwards he would finally have arrived, exhausted, at a blank wall. At a pinch, by turning back he might eventually have reached the Amelot sewer and thence, if he did not go astray in the maze beneath the Bastille, have come to the outlet to the Seine near the Arsenal. But for this he would have needed a detailed knowledge of the system, and, we must repeat, he knew nothing of it. Had he been asked where he was he could only have answered, ‘In darkness.’

  Instinct served him well. Descent was the way of safety. A little way beyond an effluent which probably came from the Madeleine, he stopped. A large hatchway, probably in the Rue d’Anjou, gave a light that was almost bright. With the gentleness of a man handling a wounded brother, Valjean laid Marius down at the edge of the sewer. Marius’s bloodstained face in the pallid light of the hatchway was like a face of death. His eyes were closed, the hair plastered to his temples, his hands limp and dangling, and there was blood at the corners of his mouth. Gently thrusting inside his shirt, Valjean laid a hand on his chest and found that his heart was still beating. Tearing strips off his own shirt, he bandaged Marius’s wounds as best he could.

  Then, bending over the unconscious form in that dim light, he stared at him with inexpressible hatred.

  He found two objects in Marius’s clothing, the piece of bread left from the day before and his wallet. He ate the bread and, opening the wallet, found on the first page the lines Marius had written: ‘My name is Marius Pontmercy. My body is to be taken to the house of my grandfather, M. Gillenormand, 6 Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, in the Marais.’

  Valjean pored over the message, memorizing the address; then he replaced the wallet in Marius’s pocket. He had eaten and regained his strength. Taking Marius on his back with his head on his right shoulder, he resumed his downward path.

  The main sewer, following the slope of the Ménilmontant valley, is nearly two leagues in length, and paved to a large extent; but the list of names with which we have enlightened the reader was not known to Valjean. He did not know what part of the town he was passing under or how far he had come. Only the increasing dimness of the occasional hatchways told him that the sun was setting, and the rumble of vehicles above his head had now almost ceased. He concluded that he was no longer under the centre of Paris but was nearing some outlying district where there were fewer streets and houses and, in consequence, fewer hatchways. He pressed on, feeling his way in the darkness, which suddenly became terrible.

  V

  The treachery of sand

  He found that he was moving in water, and that what he had under his feet was not stone but sludge.

  It happens sometimes on the sea coast that a man walking at low tide far out along the beach suddenly finds that he is moving with difficulty. The going is heavy beneath his feet, no longer sand but glue. The surface is dry, but every footprint fills with water. Yet all the beach wears the same aspect, so that the eye cannot distinguish between what is firm and what is not. The walker continues on his way, tending to move inland and feeling no disquiet. Why should he? But it is as though the heaviness of his feet increases with every step he takes. Suddenly he sinks several inches. He pauses, and looking down at his feet sees that they have disappeared. He picks up his feet and tries to turn back, but only sinks in deeper. The sand is over his ankles. He struggles and finds it reaching his calves. With indescribable terror he realizes that he is in a patch of shifting sand, where a man cannot walk any more than a fish can swim. He flings away whatever he is carrying, shedding his cargo like a vessel in distress. It is too late, the sand has reached his knees.

  He shouts, waving hat or handkerchief, while the sand gains upon him. If the beach is deserted and there is no heroic rescuer at hand, then he is done for, destined to be swallowed up, condemned to that appalling burial which can be neither hastened nor delayed, which may take hours, dragging down a strong and healthy man the more remorselessly the more he struggles. He sees the world vanish from his gaze; sky, land, and sea. There is nothing he can do. The sand creeps up to his stomach, his chest. He waves his arms, shouts and groans in torment; the sand reaches his shoulders and neck, until nothing is left but staring eyes and a crying mouth that is suddenly silenced. Only an extended arm remains. The man is gone.

  This fateful occurrence, still possible on some seashores, was also possible thirty years ago in the Paris sewer. During the work begun in 1833 the underground network was subject to sudden collapses, when in particularly friable stretches of soil the bottom, whether of paving stones as in the old sewers, or concrete, as in the new, gave way. There were crevasses composed of shifting sand from the seashore, neither earth nor water. Sometimes the depth was very great.

  Terrible to the in such a fashion. Death may mitigate its horror with dignity; at the stake or in a shipwreck nobility is possible. But this suffocation in the sewer is unclean. It is humiliating. Filth is synonymous with shame; it is squalid and infamous. To die in a butt of Malmsey, like the Duke of Clarence, may pass; but to die in a pit of slime … There is the darkness of Hell, the filth of evil; the dying man does not know whether he is to become a ghost or a toad.

  Everywhere else the grave is sinister; here it is shapeless. The depth of these pits varied as did their length and density, according to the nature of the subsoil. Some were three or four feet in depth, others eight or ten; some had no bottom. The slime was almost solid in some places, almost liquid in others. A man might have taken a day to be swallowed up in the Lunière pit, a few minutes only in that of Phélippeaux, depending on the thickness of the slime. A child might be safe where a man would be lost. The first resource was to rid oneself of every burden, fling away one’s bag of tools or whatever it might be; and this was what every sewage-man did when he felt the ground unsafe beneath his feet.

  The pits were due to various causes: the friability of the earth, collapses at some lower level, heavy showers in summer, incessant rain in winter, long steady drizzle. Sometimes the weight of the houses broke the roof of a gallery or caused a floor to give way. The settling of the Panthéon, a quarter of a century ago, destroyed a part of the caves under the Mont Sainte-Geneviève. When such things happened the evil in some cases was manifest in cracks in the street, and could be quickly remedied. But it also happened that nothing was visible from above, in which case, woe to the sewage-men. Entering the collapsed place unawares, they might be lost. Such cases are entered in the records. There are a number of names, including that of one Blaise Poutrain, buried in a pit under the Rue Carème-Prenant.

  There was also the youthful and charming Vicomte d’Escoubleau, one of the heroes of the siege of Lerida, which they assailed in silk stockings, violins leading the way. D’Escoubleau, surprised one nig
ht in the bed of his cousin the Duchesse de Sourdis, was drowned in a pit in the Beautrellis sewer, when he sought to escape from the Duke. Madame de Sourdis, learning the manner of his death, called for her smelling salts and was too busy inhaling them to weep. No love can survive such an event. Hero refuses to wash the corpse of Leander; This be holds her nose before Pyramus, saying, ‘Pooh!’.

  VI

  The pit

  Jean Valjean had come to a pit. These were numerous under the Champs-Élysées, which because of its excessive fluidity did not lend itself to the work of construction and conservation. When in 1836 the old stone sewer beneath the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, where we find Valjean at this moment, was rebuilt, the shifting sand which runs from the Champs-Élysées to the Seine delayed the operation for six months, to the indignation of the surface dwellers, particularly those with private houses and carriages. The work was not only difficult but dangerous. It is true that there were four and a half months of rain, and the Seine was three times flooded.

  The pit Valjean reached had been caused by the rain of the previous day. A depression in the flooring, insufficiently supported by the sand beneath, had led to a flood of rainwater, and the collapse of the floor had followed. The broken floor had subsided into the swamp, it was impossible to say over what distance. The darkness was greater here than anywhere else. It was a hole of mud in a cavern of night.

  Valjean felt the surface slip away from under him, water on top, sludge beneath. He had to go on. Marius was at death’s door and he himself exhausted. So he struggled on, and at first the bog did not seem unduly deep. But then it grew deeper – slime halfway up his legs and water above his knees. He had to keep Marius as best he could above the water, which had now reached his waist. The mire, thick enough to support a single man, evidently could not sustain two. Either of them might have passed through separately. Valjean went on, carrying what might already be a corpse.