3.V.2.2. ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE SEWER
LET the reader imagine Paris lifted off like a cover, the
subterranean
net-work 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 Munster that John of Leyden produced his false
moon, and it was from the cess-pool 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 Germoniae 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 Maubuee 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 foetus 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-Barthelemys
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, Francois I. with Duprat, Charles IX. is
there with his mother, Richelieu is there with Louis XIII.,
Louvois is there, Letellier is there, Hebert 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
cess-pool, it re-constitutes 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.