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.