Chương Chương 327 · PRESENT PROGRESS

To-day the sewer is clean, cold, straight, correct. It almost realizes

the ideal of what is understood in England by the word “respectable.”

It is proper and grayish; laid out by rule and line; one might almost

say as though it came out of a bandbox. It resembles a tradesman who

has become a councillor of state. One can almost see distinctly there.

The mire there comports itself with decency. At first, one might

readily mistake it for one of those subterranean corridors, which were

so common in former days, and so useful in flights of monarchs and

princes, in those good old times, “when the people loved their kings.”

The present sewer is a beautiful sewer; the pure style reigns there;

the classical rectilinear alexandrine which, driven out of poetry,

appears to have taken refuge in architecture, seems mingled with all

the stones of that long, dark and whitish vault; each outlet is an

arcade; the Rue de Rivoli serves as pattern even in the sewer. However,

if the geometrical line is in place anywhere, it is certainly in the

drainage trench of a great city. There, everything should be

subordinated to the shortest road. The sewer has, nowadays, assumed a

certain official aspect. The very police reports, of which it sometimes

forms the subject, no longer are wanting in respect towards it. The

words which characterize it in administrative language are sonorous and

dignified. What used to be called a gut is now called a gallery; what

used to be called a hole is now called a surveying orifice. Villon

would no longer meet with his ancient temporary provisional lodging.

This network of cellars has its immemorial population of prowlers,

rodents, swarming in greater numbers than ever; from time to time, an

aged and veteran rat risks his head at the window of the sewer and

surveys the Parisians; but even these vermin grow tame, so satisfied

are they with their subterranean palace. The cesspool no longer retains

anything of its primitive ferocity. The rain, which in former days

soiled the sewer, now washes it. Nevertheless, do not trust yourself

too much to it. Miasmas still inhabit it. It is more hypocritical than

irreproachable. The prefecture of police and the commission of health

have done their best. But, in spite of all the processes of

disinfection, it exhales, a vague, suspicious odor like Tartuffe after

confession.

Let us confess, that, taking it all in all, this sweeping is a homage

which the sewer pays to civilization, and as, from this point of view,

Tartuffe’s conscience is a progress over the Augean stables, it is

certain that the sewers of Paris have been improved.

It is more than progress; it is transmutation. Between the ancient and

the present sewer there is a revolution. What has effected this

revolution?

The man whom all the world forgets, and whom we have mentioned,

Bruneseau.