Les Misérables, v. 5/5: Jean Valjean

  CHAPTER I.

  THE CLOACA AND THE SURPRISES.

  It was in the sewer of Paris that Jean Valjean found himself. This isa further resemblance of Paris with the sea, as in the ocean the divercan disappear there. It was an extraordinary transition, in the veryheart of the city. Jean Valjean had left the city, and in a twinkling,the time required to lift a trap and let it fall again, he had passedfrom broad daylight to complete darkness, from midday to midnight, fromnoise to silence, from the uproar of thunder to the stagnation of thetomb, and, by an incident far more prodigious even than that of theRue Polonceau, from the extremest peril to the most absolute security.A sudden fall into a cellar, disappearance in the oubliette of Paris,leaving this street where death was all around for this species ofsepulchre in which was life,--it was a strange moment. He stood forsome minutes as if stunned, listening and amazed. The trap-door ofsafety had suddenly opened beneath him, and the Celestial Goodnesshad to some extent taken him by treachery. Admirable ambuscades ofProvidence! Still, the wounded man did not stir, and Jean Valjean didnot know whether what he was carrying in this pit were alive or dead.

  His first sensation was blindness, for he all at once could seenothing. He felt too that in a moment he had become deaf, for he couldhear nothing more. The frenzied storm of murder maintained a few yardsabove him only reached him confusedly and indistinctly, and like anoise from a depth. He felt that he had something solid under his feet,but that was all; still, it was sufficient. He stretched out one arm,then the other; he touched the wall on both sides and understood thatthe passage was narrow; his foot slipped, and he understood that thepavement was damp. He advanced one foot cautiously, fearing a hole, acesspool, or some gulf, and satisfied himself that the pavement wentonwards. A fetid gust warned him of the spot where he was. At theexpiration of a few minutes he was no longer blind, a little lightfell through the trap by which he descended, and his eye grew used tothis vault He began to distinguish something. The passage in which hehad run to earth--no other word expresses the situation better--waswalled up behind him; it was one of those blind alleys called in theprofessional language branches. Before him he had another wall,--a wallof night. The light of the trap expired ten or twelve feet from thespot where Jean Valjean was, and scarce produced a livid whiteness ona few yards of the damp wall of the sewer. Beyond that the opaquenesswas massive; to pierce it appeared horrible, and to enter it seemedlike being swallowed up. Yet it was possible to bury one's self in thiswall of fog, and it must be done; and must even be done quickly. JeanValjean thought that the grating which he had noticed in the streetmight also be noticed by the troops, and that all depended on chance.They might also come down into the well and search, so he had not aminute to lose. He had laid Marius on the ground and now picked himup,--that is again the right expression,--took him on his shoulders,and set out. He resolutely entered the darkness.

  The truth is, that they were less saved than Jean Valjean believed;perils of another nature, but equally great, awaited them. After theflashing whirlwind of the combat came the cavern of miasmas and snares;after the chaos, the cloaca. Jean Valjean had passed from one circle ofthe Inferno into another. When he had gone fifty yards he was obligedto stop, for a question occurred to him; the passage ran into another,which it intersected, and two roads offered themselves. Which shouldhe take? Ought he to turn to the left, or right? How was he to findhis way in this black labyrinth? This labyrinth, we have said, has aclew in its slope, and following the slope leads to the river. JeanValjean understood this immediately; he said to himself that he wasprobably in the sewer of the markets; that if he turned to the left andfollowed the incline he would arrive in a quarter of an hour at someopening on the Seine between the Pont au Change and the Pont Neuf,that is to say, appear in broad daylight in the busiest part of Paris.Perhaps he might come out at some street opening, and passers-by wouldbe stupefied at seeing two blood-stained men emerge from the ground attheir feet. The police would come up and they would be carried off tothe nearest guard-room; they would be prisoners before they had comeout. It would be better, therefore, to bury himself in the labyrinth,confide in the darkness, and leave the issue to Providence.

  He went up the incline and turned to the right; when he had gone roundthe corner of the gallery the distant light from the trap disappeared,the curtain of darkness fell on him again, and he became blind oncemore. For all that he advanced as rapidly as he could; Marius's armswere passed round life neck, and his feet hung down behind. He heldthe two arms with one hand and felt the wall with the other. Marius'scheek touched his and was glued to it, as it was bloody, and he felta warm stream which came from Marius drip on him and penetrate hisclothing. Still, a warm breath in his ear, which touched the woundedman's mouth, indicated respiration, and consequently life. The passagein which Jean Valjean was now walking was not so narrow as the former,and he advanced with some difficulty. The rain of the previous nighthad not yet passed off, and formed a small torrent in the centre,and he was forced to hug the wall in order not to lave his feet inthe water. He went on thus darkly, like a creature of the nightgroping in the invisible, and subterraneously lost in the veins ofgloom. Still, by degrees, either that a distant grating sent a littlefloating light into this opaque mist, or that his eyes grew accustomedto the obscurity, he regained some vague vision, and began to noticeconfusedly, at one moment the wall he was touching, at another thevault under which he was passing. The pupil is dilated at night andeventually finds daylight in it, in the same way as the soul is dilatedin misfortune and eventually finds God in it.

  To direct himself was difficult, for the sewers represent, so to speak,the outline of the streets standing over them. There were in the Parisof that day two thousand two hundred streets, and imagine beneath themthat forest of dark branches called the sewer. The system of sewersexisting at that day, if placed end on end, would have given a lengthof eleven leagues. We have already said that the present network, owingto the special activity of the last thirty years, is no less than sixtyleagues. Jean Valjean began by deceiving himself; he fancied that hewas under the Rue St. Denis, and it was unlucky that he was not so.There is under that street an old stone drain, dating from Louis XIII.,which runs straight to the collecting sewer, called the Great Sewer,with only one turn on the right, by the old Cour des Miracles, and asingle branch, the St. Martin sewer, whose four arms cut each other atright angles. But the passage of the Little Truanderie, whose entrancewas near the Corinth wine-shop, never communicated with the sewer ofthe Rue St. Denis; it falls into the Montmartre sewer, and that iswhere Jean Valjean now was. There opportunities for losing himself wereabundant, for the Montmartre drain is one of the most labyrinthianof the old network. Luckily Jean Valjean had left behind him thesewer of the markets, whose geometrical plan represents a number ofentangled top-gallant-masts; but he had before him more than oneembarrassing encounter, and more than one street corner--for they arestreets--offering itself in the obscurity as a note of interrogation.In the first place on his left, the vast Plâtrière sewer, a sort ofChinese puzzle, thrusting forth and intermingling its chaos of T and Zunder the Post Office, and the rotunda of the grain-markets, as far asthe Seine, where it terminates in Y; secondly, on his right the curvedpassage of the Rue du Cadran, with its three teeth, which are so manyblind alleys; thirdly, on his left the Mail branch, complicated almostat the entrance by a species of fork, and running with repeated zigzagsto the great cesspool of the Louvre, which ramifies in every direction;and lastly, on his right the blind alley of the Rue des Jeûneurs,without counting other pitfalls, ere he reached the engirdling sewer,which alone could lead him to some issue sufficiently distant to besafe.

  Had Jean Valjean had any notion of all we have just stated he wouldhave quickly perceived, merely by feeling the wall, that he was notin the subterranean gallery of the Rue St. Denis. Instead of the oldfreestone, instead of the old architecture, haughty and royal evenin the sewer, with its arches and continuous courses of granite,which cost eight hundred livres the fath
om, he would feel under hishand modern cheapness, the economic expedient, brick-work supportedon a layer of béton, which costs two hundred francs the metre,--thatbourgeois masonry known as _à petits matériaux_; but he knew nothingof all this. He advanced anxiously but calmly, seeing nothing,hearing nothing, plunged into chance, that is to say, swallowed up inProvidence. By degrees, however, we are bound to state that a certainamount of horror beset him, and the shadow which enveloped him enteredhis mind. He was walking in an enigma. This aqueduct of the cloaca isformidable, for it intersects itself in a vertiginous manner, and it isa mournful thing to be caught in this Paris of darkness. Jean Valjeanwas obliged to find, and almost invent, his road without seeing it. Inthis unknown region each step that he ventured might be his last. Howwas he to get out of it? Would he find an issue? Would he find it intime? Could he pierce and penetrate this colossal subterranean spongewith its passages of stone? Would he meet there some unexpected knotof darkness? Would he arrive at something inextricable and impassable?Would Marius die of hemorrhage, and himself of hunger? Would they bothend by being lost there, and form two skeletons in a corner of thisnight? He did not know; he asked himself all this and could not find ananswer. The intestines of Paris are a precipice, and like the prophethe was in the monster's belly.

  He suddenly had a surprise; at the most unexpected moment, and withoutceasing to walk in a straight line, he perceived that he was no longerascending; the water of the gutter plashed against his heels insteadof coming to his toes. The sewer was now descending; why? Was he aboutto reach the Seine suddenly? That danger was great, but the peril ofturning back was greater still, and he continued to advance. He wasnot proceeding toward the Seine; the shelving ridge which the soil ofParis makes on the right bank empties one of its water-sheds into theSeine and the other into the Great Sewer. The crest of this ridge,which determines the division of the waters, designs a most capriciousline; the highest point is in the Sainte Avoye sewer, beyond the RueMichel-le-comte, in the Louvre sewer, near the boulevards, and in theMontmartre drain, near the markets. This highest point Jean Valjeanhad reached, and he was proceeding toward the engirdling sewer, or inthe right direction, but he knew it not. Each time that he reached abranch he felt the corners, and if he found the opening narrower thanthe passage in which he was he did not enter, but continued his march,correctly judging that any narrower way must end in a blind alley, andcould only take him from his object, that is to say, an outlet. He thusavoided the fourfold snare laid for him in the darkness by the fourlabyrinths which we have enumerated. At a certain moment he recognizedthat he was getting from under that part of Paris petrified by theriot, where the barricades had suppressed circulation, and returningunder living and normal Paris. He suddenly heard above his head asound like thunder, distant but continuous; it was the rolling ofvehicles.

  He had been walking about half an hour, at least that was thecalculation he made, and had not thought of resting; he had merelychanged the hand which held Marius up. The darkness was more profoundthan ever, but this darkness reassured him. All at once he saw hisshadow before him; it stood out upon a faint and almost indistinctredness, which vaguely impurpled the roadway at his feet and the vaultabove his head, and glided along the greasy walls of the passage.Stupefied, he turned around.

  Behind him, in the part of the passage he had come from, at a distancewhich appeared immense, shone a sort of horrible star, obliteratingthe dark density, which seemed to be looking at him. It was thegloomy police star rising in the sewer. Behind this star there movedconfusedly nine or ten black, upright, indistinct, and terrible forms.