Ancient History of the Sewer — Les Misérables

Let the reader imagine Paris lifted off like a cover. The subterranean network of sewers, from a bird's-eye view, will outline on the banks a large branch grafted on the river. The belt sewer forms the trunk, the secondary ducts the branches, those without exit the twigs. This figure is but a summary one and half exact. A more accurate image is some eccentric alphabet, intricate as a thicket, against a background of shadows. Sinks and sewers played a great part in the Middle Ages. The masses regarded these beds of decomposition with a fear that was almost religious. The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers. The sewer of Paris has been a sepulchre. It has served as an asylum. Crime, intelligence, social protest, liberty of conscience, thought, theft, all that human laws persecute, is hidden in that hole. The forest had its cave. Paris had its sewer.

The sewer in ancient Paris is the rendezvous of all exhaustions and of all attempts. The sewer is the conscience of the city. Everything there converges and confronts everything else. In that livid spot there are shades, but there are no longer any secrets. The mass of filth has this in its favor, that it is not a liar. Each thing bears its true form. This mixture is a confession. There, no more false appearances, no plastering over is possible. Filth removes its shirt. There is nothing more except what really exists. The bottom of a bottle indicates drunkenness. A basket-handle tells a tale of domesticity. All which was formerly rouged is washed free. The last veil is torn away. A sewer is a cynic. It tells everything.

The sincerity of foulness pleases us, and rests the soul. When one has passed one's time enduring the great airs of the oath, of human justice, of professional probity, it solaces one to enter a sewer and to behold the mire which befits it. This is instructive at the same time. History passes through the sewer. Great public assassinations traverse this underground passage and thrust their corpses there. For the eye of the thinker, the historic murderers are to be found there on their knees, trying to sponge out their work. Beneath these vaults one hears the brooms of spectres. The social observer should enter these shadows. They form a part of his laboratory. Philosophy reconstructs the purple from the rag, and the woman from the scrap of her dress. From the cesspool it reconstitutes the city. From mud it reconstructs manners. It re-discovers in what remains that which has been.