3.V.2.5. PRESENT PROGRESS
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 net-work 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.