Chương Chương 332 · HE ALSO BEARS HIS CROSS

Jean Valjean had resumed his march and had not again paused.

This march became more and more laborious. The level of these vaults

varies; the average height is about five feet, six inches, and has been

calculated for the stature of a man; Jean Valjean was forced to bend

over, in order not to strike Marius against the vault; at every step he

had to bend, then to rise, and to feel incessantly of the wall. The

moisture of the stones, and the viscous nature of the timber framework

furnished but poor supports to which to cling, either for hand or foot.

He stumbled along in the hideous dung-heap of the city. The

intermittent gleams from the air-holes only appeared at very long

intervals, and were so wan that the full sunlight seemed like the light

of the moon; all the rest was mist, miasma, opaqueness, blackness. Jean

Valjean was both hungry and thirsty; especially thirsty; and this, like

the sea, was a place full of water where a man cannot drink. His

strength, which was prodigious, as the reader knows, and which had been

but little decreased by age, thanks to his chaste and sober life, began

to give way, nevertheless. Fatigue began to gain on him; and as his

strength decreased, it made the weight of his burden increase. Marius,

who was, perhaps, dead, weighed him down as inert bodies weigh. Jean

Valjean held him in such a manner that his chest was not oppressed, and

so that respiration could proceed as well as possible. Between his legs

he felt the rapid gliding of the rats. One of them was frightened to

such a degree that he bit him. From time to time, a breath of fresh air

reached him through the vent-holes of the mouths of the sewer, and

reanimated him.

It might have been three hours past midday when he reached the

belt-sewer.

He was, at first, astonished at this sudden widening. He found himself,

all at once, in a gallery where his outstretched hands could not reach

the two walls, and beneath a vault which his head did not touch. The

Grand Sewer is, in fact, eight feet wide and seven feet high.

At the point where the Montmartre sewer joins the Grand Sewer, two

other subterranean galleries, that of the Rue de Provence, and that of

the Abattoir, form a square. Between these four ways, a less sagacious

man would have remained undecided. Jean Valjean selected the broadest,

that is to say, the belt-sewer. But here the question again came

up—should he descend or ascend? He thought that the situation required

haste, and that he must now gain the Seine at any risk. In other terms,

he must descend. He turned to the left.

It was well that he did so, for it is an error to suppose that the

belt-sewer has two outlets, the one in the direction of Bercy, the

other towards Passy, and that it is, as its name indicates, the

subterranean girdle of the Paris on the right bank. The Grand Sewer,

which is, it must be remembered, nothing else than the old brook of

Ménilmontant, terminates, if one ascends it, in a blind sack, that is

to say, at its ancient point of departure which was its source, at the

foot of the knoll of Ménilmontant. There is no direct communication

with the branch which collects the waters of Paris beginning with the

Quartier Popincourt, and which falls into the Seine through the Amelot

sewer above the ancient Isle Louviers. This branch, which completes the

collecting sewer, is separated from it, under the Rue Ménilmontant

itself, by a pile which marks the dividing point of the waters, between

upstream and downstream. If Jean Valjean had ascended the gallery he

would have arrived, after a thousand efforts, and broken down with

fatigue, and in an expiring condition, in the gloom, at a wall. He

would have been lost.

In case of necessity, by retracing his steps a little way, and entering

the passage of the Filles-du-Calvaire, on condition that he did not

hesitate at the subterranean crossing of the Carrefour Boucherat, and

by taking the corridor Saint-Louis, then the Saint-Gilles gut on the

left, then turning to the right and avoiding the Saint-Sebastian

gallery, he might have reached the Amelot sewer, and thence, provided

that he did not go astray in the sort of F which lies under the

Bastille, he might have attained the outlet on the Seine near the

Arsenal. But in order to do this, he must have been thoroughly familiar

with the enormous madrepore of the sewer in all its ramifications and

in all its openings. Now, we must again insist that he knew nothing of

that frightful drain which he was traversing; and had any one asked him

in what he was, he would have answered: “In the night.”

His instinct served him well. To descend was, in fact, possible safety.

He left on his right the two narrow passages which branch out in the

form of a claw under the Rue Laffitte and the Rue Saint-Georges and the

long, bifurcated corridor of the Chaussée d’Antin.

A little beyond an affluent, which was, probably, the Madeleine branch,

he halted. He was extremely weary. A passably large air-hole, probably

the man-hole in the Rue d’Anjou, furnished a light that was almost

vivid. Jean Valjean, with the gentleness of movement which a brother

would exercise towards his wounded brother, deposited Marius on the

banquette of the sewer. Marius’ blood-stained face appeared under the

wan light of the air-hole like the ashes at the bottom of a tomb. His

eyes were closed, his hair was plastered down on his temples like a

painter’s brushes dried in red wash; his hands hung limp and dead. A

clot of blood had collected in the knot of his cravat; his limbs were

cold, and blood was clotted at the corners of his mouth; his shirt had

thrust itself into his wounds, the cloth of his coat was chafing the

yawning gashes in the living flesh. Jean Valjean, pushing aside the

garments with the tips of his fingers, laid his hand upon Marius’

breast; his heart was still beating. Jean Valjean tore up his shirt,

bandaged the young man’s wounds as well as he was able and stopped the

flowing blood; then bending over Marius, who still lay unconscious and

almost without breathing, in that half light, he gazed at him with

inexpressible hatred.

On disarranging Marius’ garments, he had found two things in his

pockets, the roll which had been forgotten there on the preceding

evening, and Marius’ pocketbook. He ate the roll and opened the

pocketbook. On the first page he found the four lines written by

Marius. The reader will recall them:

“My name is Marius Pontmercy. Carry my body to my grandfather, M.

Gillenormand, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6, in the Marais.”

Jean Valjean read these four lines by the light of the air-hole, and

remained for a moment as though absorbed in thought, repeating in a low

tone: “Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, number 6, Monsieur Gillenormand.” He

replaced the pocketbook in Marius’ pocket. He had eaten, his strength

had returned to him; he took Marius up once more upon his back, placed

the latter’s head carefully on his right shoulder, and resumed his

descent of the sewer.

The Grand Sewer, directed according to the course of the valley of

Ménilmontant, is about two leagues long. It is paved throughout a

notable portion of its extent.

This torch of the names of the streets of Paris, with which we are

illuminating for the reader Jean Valjean’s subterranean march, Jean

Valjean himself did not possess. Nothing told him what zone of the city

he was traversing, nor what way he had made. Only the growing pallor of

the pools of light which he encountered from time to time indicated to

him that the sun was withdrawing from the pavement, and that the day

would soon be over; and the rolling of vehicles overhead, having become

intermittent instead of continuous, then having almost ceased, he

concluded that he was no longer under central Paris, and that he was

approaching some solitary region, in the vicinity of the outer

boulevards, or the extreme outer quays. Where there are fewer houses

and streets, the sewer has fewer air-holes. The gloom deepened around

Jean Valjean. Nevertheless, he continued to advance, groping his way in

the dark.

Suddenly this darkness became terrible.