Chapter 326 The Ancient History of Eryinqu

Let us imagine that Paris is uncovered like a lid, and looking straight down, this underground network of drains is like a picture of tree trunks joining the river on both banks.The sewer main on the right bank is like the trunk of the branches, the thinner pipes are like the branches, and the dead ends are like the branches. This figure is very rough, but it is roughly similar. Underground branches often appear at right angles, which is rare in plants. If we imagine this strange measured plan as a strange and messy oriental alphabet viewed horizontally on a black background, it will be a little more similar. They join each other at corners and sometimes at ends.

Sinkholes and sewers played a large role in the Middle Ages, in the late Roman Empire and in the Old East.Plagues broke out there, tyrants died there.The populace felt an almost religious horror at the sight of these hotbeds of decay, cradles of appalling death.The Vermin Pit at Benares is as dizzying as the Lion's Den at Babylon.According to the Jewish Book of Judges, Tirafar Racha revered the cesspit of Nineveh.It was from the ditch of Munster that Jean de Wright drew his false moon, and his likeness to the Eastern Mokana, the veiled prophet of Khorasan, from the cesspool of Gashbo make his false sun rise.

The history of humanity is reflected in the history of the sewer.The public display of the dead bodies of ancient Roman criminals narrates the history of Rome.The sewers of Paris are a terrible old thing, it was a tomb, it was a refuge.Sin, wisdom, social protests, freedom of belief, thought, theft, everything that human law pursues or has pursued has been hidden in this hole; the hammer-wielding tax protesters in Paris in the fourteenth century, and robbers along the road in the fifteenth century The robbers of the sixteenth century, the Protestants who suffered in distress in the sixteenth century, the Moran group in the seventeenth century, and the burnt gangsters of the eighteenth century all hid in it.A hundred years ago, there came out the murderer of the night, and the thief slipped back when he encountered danger; there were caves in the woods, and there were sewers in Paris.The beggars, the rogues of Gaul, regard the sewers as a sanctuary, and at night, cunning and fierce, they slip into the entrance and exit of the Rue Maubuet, as if retreating into a veil.

It is only natural that a man who has always worked in a money-grabbing cul-de-sac or a cut-throat street takes up residence at night in the gutters of the Green Lane or the Pont d'Urbois.There are countless memories there.All kinds of ghosts haunt this long, lonely sewer, full of mildew and miasma, and here and there is a ventilation hole, through which Villon chatted with Rabelais outside. The sewers of old Paris, where all excrement and all risk takers meet.From the point of view of political economy it is the detritus of the human body, from the point of view of social philosophy it is the rubbish heap.

The sewer is the conscience of the city, where everything is concentrated and confronted.In this dead gray place, there is its dark place, but the secret is no more.Everything took on its original shape, or at least its final shape.The advantage of the dump is that it doesn't lie.Here the simplicity hides, there is Basil's mask, but one sees the cardboard as well as the string, both inside and out, and the mask is coated with the mud of honesty.Scapan's fake nose was next to him.All the baseness and ugliness of civilized society, once useless, fall into this sewer of truth, which is the end of so many things in society that go bad day by day.They sank there, unfurled, a confession of these messy things.Here, there is no more falsehood, no more whitewashing, the filth has taken off its shirt, naked, it has crushed the fantasy and the illusion, so that the original is revealed, showing the evil aspect of the end of life.reality and annihilation.Here, a bottle bottom confesses alcoholism, a basket handle narrates servanthood; here the apple core that once had a literary perspective becomes an apple core again.The portrait on a coin has turned completely green, Caiaphas' spittle meets Fasdaff's vomit, here a louis d'or coming out of a casino bumps into a nail hanging from a hanging rope, a pale The fetus of a man, wrapped in gold-leafed garments worn for dancing at the opera at the last carnival, and the hat of a judge who has judged others, lie beside this filth that was Magdon's petticoat, which Not just friendship, but intimacy.Everything that is painted and painted becomes a messy image.The final veil is finally lifted, and the gutter is a brazen one who tells it all.

The frankness of obscenity and morality makes people feel happy and happy.When men have long endured in the world great principles of national interest--such as those pretentious oaths, political prudence, human justice, professional integrity, sternness in dealing with a situation, and the incorruptibility of judges, etc., It is indeed a pleasure to go into the gutter again and see the dirt that speaks of these things. At the same time it is also a lesson.We have just mentioned that the sewers reflect history.The blood of St. Bartholomew seeped drop by drop from the cracks in the paving stones into the gutter.A large number of assassinations, massacres in the political and religious fields, have passed through this cellar of civilization and thrown their murdered bodies into it.Here, in the contemplative eye, all the murderers of history, kneeling in the hideous gloom, grievously wipe out their deeds with the corner of the shroud they wear for their loincloths.Louis XI and Tristan are there, François I and Duprat are there, Charles IX is there with his mother, Richelieu is there with Louis XIII, Louvre is there, Le Tellier was there, and so were Abel and Maillard, scratching at the stones to erase the traces of their misdeeds.One hears the brooms of these ghosts under the vaults; one smells there the stench of a grave catastrophe in society, and sees reddish reflections in some corners.There flowed the dreadful stream of bloody hands.

It is part of his laboratory that the social observer should step into these shadowy places.Philosophy is a microscope of thought, everything tries to avoid it, but nothing slips away.Prevarications and arguments are of no avail.What side of yourself did the excuse reveal?Cheeky side.Philosophy follows evil with a straight eye, and never allows it to escape.It recognizes that which is past and forgotten, and that which has vanished and belittled.From rags it restores the royal robe, from rags it finds the woman, from cesspit it regenerates cities, from mud it regenerates customs.From one fragment it deduced whether it was an amphora or a jug.With a fingernail imprint on the parchment, it could tell the difference between Judah's native Jews and their immigrant Jews.On the little remnant it is restored, good, evil, true, false, blood in the palace, ink in the cellar, grease in the brothel, tested, tempted to accept , the vomited feast, the folds of virtue when it grovels, the sign of the soul when it is vulgar and treacherous, the traces of Mechaline's arm on the tunic of a Roman porter.