Chapter 327 Three Bruneseau

In the Middle Ages, the sewers of Paris were legendary. In the sixteenth century, Henry II tried to probe them, but failed.For nearly a hundred years, the sump has been left to its own devices, as Mercier attests to. Such was the case with old Paris, devoted to quarreling, hesitating, groping secretly, so that it remained for a long time in the stage of ignorance.It was not until 1789 that it was shown how intelligent cities can be.But in the simple ancient times, the capital was not very smart in spirit and material, and the rubbish, like the abuse, could not be eradicated.Everything becomes an obstacle, and problems arise everywhere.For example, the sewer is resistant to any route.Men are disoriented in the gutter, nor agree in the city; what is above is incomprehensible, and below is not clear; below the confusion of tongues is added confusion of cellars; on Daedalus the tower of Babel has been built. .

Sometimes the sewers of Paris suddenly overflow, as if the unknown Nile suddenly burst into anger.And so there came—the shameful thing to say—the flood in the sewer.The guts of civilization are sometimes indigested, and the filth flows back into the throats of the city, and Paris is full of the aftertaste of its sludge.The backflow of the gutter, like repentance, is of great benefit. It is a warning, but it is not welcome. The city of Paris is outraged that the filth is so rampant. It cannot allow the filth to return, and must be properly removed. The floods of 1802 are still fresh in the memory of eighty-year-old Parisians.The sludge spreads in the shape of a cross in Victory Square, where the bronze statue of Louis XIV is located. It flows from the two sewer outlets of the Elysée Square to the St. The Rue Saint-Florentin, by the mouth of the Rue des Belles, flows into the Rue Fishstone, by the mouth of the Rue Green Lane into the Rue Bourboncourt, and by the mouth of the Rue Rapp into the Rue Roquette; it floods The open ditch on the Elysée Square is as high as thirty-five centimeters; on the south side, the Seine's large trench pipe plays a role in backflowing, encroaching on the Rue Mazarin, Rue Eschette, Rue Marais, at a distance of 109 meters. Stopped, just a few steps from the old house of Racine, which in the seventeenth century honored poets more than kings.It is at its highest in the rue Saint-Pierre, three feet above the drainpipe, and in the rue Saint-Chaban it extends to a length of two hundred and thirty-eight meters at its widest point.

At the turn of the century, the sewers of Paris were still a place of mystery.Sludge never gets good reviews, and the bad reputation here inspires horror.Paris knew vaguely that there was a terrible cellar beneath it.People speak of the crypt as of the great filth-pit of Thebes, filled with innumerable centipedes fifteen feet long, which would serve as a bath for Behemoth.The big boots of the ditch cleaners never dared to venture past the few familiar spots.People were not so far from the days when scavengers swept up the rubbish in a two-wheeled cart-on the roof of which Sainte-Foy and the Marquis of Créquite lived together in friendship-the rubbish was dumped directly into the gutter, and the task of unclogging the gutter had to be done. Depends on the rainstorm.However, the heavy rain is far from being able to play the role of flushing, but instead blocks the gutter.Rome still leaves some poems about its cesspool, which it calls Romni, and Paris insults its own sewer, calling it a fetid hole; and science and superstition agree that it is terrible.Smelly holes are equally incongruous to hygiene and legend; ghostly monk pits appear under the stinking vaults of the Mufta sewers;Fangon attributed the astonishing febrile disease of 1685 to the large opening of the Marsh sewer, which remained open until 1833 on the rue Saint-Louis, almost at the sign of the "Hospitality Service" opposite.The gutter opening of the Rue Motlery, famous for producing the plague, with its barbed iron grating like a row of teeth, blows the breath of hell from the mouth of a dragon in this unhappy street.The gloomy gutters of Paris are an ugly amalgam of countless things in the popular imagination.A sewer is a bottomless pit.The gutter is Bharat.Even the police station never thought of going to check these leprosy areas.Who has the guts to explore this unknown, to measure its darkness, to dig deep into this abyss?It's a daunting thing.But someone actually recommended himself.Filth Ditch has its own Columbus.

In 1805, one day, a rare day for the emperor to appear in Paris, a minister of the interior named Tecret or Crete attended the master's wake-up reception and heard the peace of the great republic of Chongwumen. The clang of swords of the extraordinary soldiers of the great empire, the heroes thronging at the gates of Napoleon, men from the troops of the Rhine, Escaux, Adige and Nile; Joubert, Deze, Marceau, Oche , Kleber and other generals' comrades-in-arms, the motorboat observers of Fleurius, the bombardiers of Mainz, the bridge builders of Genoa, the hussars of the Battle of the Pyramids, the artillery with the smell of Juno shells, and the surprise defeat of the moored Armored men of Judze's fleet; some had accompanied Bonaparte at the Pont Lodi, some had accompanied Murat at Mantua, and some had reached the deep valley of Montebello before Lannes.All the troops of the time were assembled in the courtyard of the Tuileries Palace, represented by a squad or a row, guarding Napoleon who was resting.This was the heyday, when the great army had won the battle of Marengo and was about to crush the enemy at Austerlitz.

"Your Majesty," said Napoleon's Minister of the Interior, "yesterday I met one of the bravest men in your empire." "Who is it?" asked the Emperor roughly. "What has he done?" "He wants to do something, Your Majesty." "What's up?" "Inspecting the sewers of Paris." This man did exist, and his name was Bruneseau.