The sewer of Paris in the Middle Ages was legendary. In the sixteenth century a king attempted a bore, which failed. Not a hundred years ago the cesspool was abandoned to itself, and fared as best it might. Such was this ancient Paris, delivered over to quarrels, to indecision, and to gropings. The capital had not much head. It could not sweep out filth any better than it could abuses. One could no more find one's bearings in the sewer than one could understand one's position in the city. Beneath the confusion of tongues there reigned the confusion of caverns. Sometimes the Paris sewer took a notion to overflow, as though this misunderstood river were suddenly seized with a fit of rage. The cesspool flowed back into the throat of the city, and Paris got an after-taste of her own filth. These resemblances of the sewer to remorse had their good points. They were warnings, very badly accepted. The city waxed indignant at the audacity of its mire, and did not admit that the filth should return. Drive it out better.
The inundation of 1802 is one of the actual memories of old Parisians. The mud spread in a cross over a public square, entered the famous streets, and, to the south, stopped a few paces from the house in which a poet had lived, respecting, in that century, the poet more than the king. At the beginning of this century the sewer of Paris was still a mysterious place. Paris knew, in a confused way, that she had under her a terrible cavern. The great boots of the sewermen never ventured further than certain well-known points. Rome left some poetry to her sewer. Paris insulted hers, and entitled it the Polypus-Hole. Science and superstition were in accord, in horror. The idea of exploring these leprous regions did not even occur to the police. To try that unknown thing, to set out on a voyage of discovery in that abyss, who would have dared. It was alarming. Nevertheless, some one did present himself. The cesspool had its Christopher Columbus.
One day, in 1805, during one of the rare apparitions which the Emperor made in Paris, the Minister of the Interior came to the master's intimate levee. In the yard there was audible the clanking of swords of all those extraordinary soldiers of the great Republic and of the great Empire. The whole army of that day was present there, guarding the master in repose, in the splendid epoch when the grand army had one victory behind it and another before it. Sire, said the minister, yesterday I saw the most intrepid man in your Empire. What man is that, said the Emperor brusquely, and what has he done. He wants to do something, Sire. What is it. To visit the sewers of Paris. This man existed and his name was Bruneseau.
Coming Up in Chapter 326
The visit took place. It was a formidable campaign, a nocturnal battle against pestilence and suffocation. It was, at the same time, a voyage of discovery. Hardly had Bruneseau crossed the first articulations of that subterranean network, when eight labourers out of the twenty refused to go any further.
