CHAPTER V

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.