3.V.3.4. HE ALSO BEARS HIS CROSS
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 re-animated 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 Menilmontant, 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
Menilmontant. 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 Menilmontant 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 Chaussee
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 bad 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 pocket-book
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 Menilmontant, 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.