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.