第 三百二十五 章 · ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE SEWER

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

species of large branch grafted on the river. On the right bank, the

belt sewer will form the trunk of this branch, the secondary ducts will

form the branches, and those without exit the twigs.

This figure is but a summary one and half exact, the right angle, which

is the customary angle of this species of subterranean ramifications,

being very rare in vegetation.

A more accurate image of this strange geometrical plan can be formed by

supposing that one is viewing some eccentric oriental alphabet, as

intricate as a thicket, against a background of shadows, and the

misshapen letters should be welded one to another in apparent

confusion, and as at haphazard, now by their angles, again by their

extremities.

Sinks and sewers played a great part in the Middle Ages, in the Lower

Empire and in the Orient of old. The masses regarded these beds of

decomposition, these monstrous cradles of death, with a fear that was

almost religious. The vermin ditch of Benares is no less conducive to

giddiness than the lions’ ditch of Babylon. Teglath-Phalasar, according

to the rabbinical books, swore by the sink of Nineveh. It was from the

sewer of Münster that John of Leyden produced his false moon, and it

was from the cesspool of Kekscheb that oriental menalchme, Mokanna, the

veiled prophet of Khorassan, caused his false sun to emerge.

The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers. The

Germoniæ58 narrated Rome. The sewer of Paris has been an ancient and

formidable thing. It has been a sepulchre, it has served as an asylum.

Crime, intelligence, social protest, liberty of conscience, thought,

theft, all that human laws persecute or have persecuted, is hidden in

that hole; the _maillotins_ in the fourteenth century, the _tire-laine_

of the fifteenth, the Huguenots in the sixteenth, Morin’s _illuminated_

in the seventeenth, the _chauffeurs_ [brigands] in the eighteenth. A

hundred years ago, the nocturnal blow of the dagger emerged thence, the

pickpocket in danger slipped thither; the forest had its cave, Paris

had its sewer. Vagrancy, that Gallic _picareria_, accepted the sewer as

the adjunct of the Cour des Miracles, and at evening, it returned

thither, fierce and sly, through the Maubuée outlet, as into a

bed-chamber.

It was quite natural, that those who had the blind-alley Vide-Gousset,

[Empty-Pocket] or the Rue Coupe-Gorge [Cut-Throat], for the scene of

their daily labor, should have for their domicile by night the culvert

of the Chemin-Vert, or the catch basin of Hurepoix. Hence a throng of

souvenirs. All sorts of phantoms haunt these long, solitary corridors;

everywhere is putrescence and miasma; here and there are

breathing-holes, where Villon within converses with Rabelais without.

The sewer in ancient Paris is the rendezvous of all exhaustions and of

all attempts. Political economy therein spies a detritus, social

philosophy there beholds a residuum.

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. Each thing bears its true form, or at

least, its definitive form. The mass of filth has this in its favor,

that it is not a liar. Ingenuousness has taken refuge there. The mask

of Basil is to be found there, but one beholds its cardboard and its

strings and the inside as well as the outside, and it is accentuated by

honest mud. Scapin’s false nose is its next-door neighbor. All the

uncleannesses of civilization, once past their use, fall into this

trench of truth, where the immense social sliding ends. They are there

engulfed, but they display themselves there. This mixture is a

confession. There, no more false appearances, no plastering over is

possible, filth removes its shirt, absolute denudation puts to the rout

all illusions and mirages, there is nothing more except what really

exists, presenting the sinister form of that which is coming to an end.

There, the bottom of a bottle indicates drunkenness, a basket-handle

tells a tale of domesticity; there the core of an apple which has

entertained literary opinions becomes an apple-core once more; the

effigy on the big sou becomes frankly covered with verdigris, Caiphas’

spittle meets Falstaff’s puking, the louis-d’or which comes from the

gaming-house jostles the nail whence hangs the rope’s end of the

suicide. A livid fœtus rolls along, enveloped in the spangles which

danced at the Opera last Shrove-Tuesday, a cap which has pronounced

judgment on men wallows beside a mass of rottenness which was formerly

Margoton’s petticoat; it is more than fraternization, it is equivalent

to addressing each other as _thou_. 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 in enduring upon earth the spectacle of the great

airs which reasons of state, the oath, political sagacity, human

justice, professional probity, the austerities of situation,

incorruptible robes all assume, it solaces one to enter a sewer and to

behold the mire which befits it.

This is instructive at the same time. We have just said that history

passes through the sewer. The Saint-Barthélemys filter through there,

drop by drop, between the paving-stones. Great public assassinations,

political and religious butcheries, traverse this underground passage

of civilization, and thrust their corpses there. For the eye of the

thinker, all historic murderers are to be found there, in that hideous

penumbra, on their knees, with a scrap of their winding-sheet for an

apron, dismally sponging out their work. Louis XI. is there with

Tristan, François I. with Duprat, Charles IX. is there with his mother,

Richelieu is there with Louis XIII., Louvois is there, Letellier is

there, Hébert and Maillard are there, scratching the stones, and trying

to make the traces of their actions disappear. Beneath these vaults one

hears the brooms of spectres. One there breathes the enormous fetidness

of social catastrophes. One beholds reddish reflections in the corners.

There flows a terrible stream, in which bloody hands have been washed.

The social observer should enter these shadows. They form a part of his

laboratory. Philosophy is the microscope of the thought. Everything

desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it. Tergiversation is

useless. What side of oneself does one display in evasions? the

shameful side. Philosophy pursues with its glance, probes the evil, and

does not permit it to escape into nothingness. In the obliteration of

things which disappear, in the watching of things which vanish, it

recognizes all. It 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; from the potsherd it infers

the amphora or the jug. By the imprint of a finger-nail on a piece of

parchment, it recognizes the difference which separates the Jewry of

the Judengasse from the Jewry of the Ghetto. It re-discovers in what

remains that which has been, good, evil, the true, the blood-stain of

the palace, the ink-blot of the cavern, the drop of sweat from the

brothel, trials undergone, temptations welcomed, orgies cast forth, the

turn which characters have taken as they became abased, the trace of

prostitution in souls of which their grossness rendered them capable,

and on the vesture of the porters of Rome the mark of Messalina’s

elbowing.