Chapter 328 Details unknown to the four

The inspection took place.It was a terrible campaign, marching against plague and choking gas in the dark of night.It is also a journey of discovery.One of the survivors of this expedition, a young and bright workman, had, some years before, recounted curious details which Brunesseau thought at the time to be related to the report he had presented to the prefect of police The official document of the report was deleted due to inappropriate style.The disinfection method at that time was very crude. As soon as Bruneseau passed the first few branch pipes of the underground network, eight of the twenty workers refused to go any further.The work is complicated, the inspection will inevitably have to be dredged, so it must be cleared, and at the same time, it must be measured to mark the water inlet, count the iron fences and nozzles, understand the details of the branches, point out the bifurcations of the flowing water, and identify the various reservoirs The limit of the trench, probe the small pipe connected to the main pipe, measure the height of each channel from the keystone, measure the width from the beginning of the vault to the bottom of the channel, and finally determine either from the bottom of the drain, or from the street level and each channel. The ordinate of the leveling at right angles to the water inlet.Their progress is painstaking.The ladder down the ditch was often sunk in three feet of mud, the lanterns flickered in the methane, and from time to time some ditch cleaners lost consciousness and were carried out.Some places are simply abysses.The land subsided, the stone floor collapsed, the gutter became a dark well, and people could not find a place to stand; a worker suddenly disappeared, and everyone dragged him out with difficulty.According to Falkwa's suggestion, everyone used large cages filled with resin-soaked old hemp to light up in places that were basically cleaned up at a certain distance.Some places on the walls are covered with deformed bacteria, almost like tumors.In this suffocating place, the stone itself seems to be sick.

Bruneseau went from upstream to downstream in his expeditions.On Louder Street, where two water pipes parted, he made out the date 1550 on a raised stone.The stone points to the stop here of Philibert Trome, who was commissioned by Henry II to inspect the underground tunnels of Paris.This stone is a mark left in the ditch in the sixteenth century.Bruneseau found seventeenth-century handicrafts on the Minceau ditch pipe and the Rue d'Elegance ditch pipe, the arched pipes of buildings from 1600 to 1650, as well as on the western part of the collecting pipe. Sections found works of the eighteenth century, which were excavated and erected in 1740 for the arch tube.These two pipelines, especially the more recent one, the work of 1740, seem to be older and older than the muddying of the sewer around the city in 1412, when the Menilmontan clear water The creek is elevated to the status of the great sewer of Paris, as a peasant rises suddenly to become the king's first page, and a country bumpkin becomes Lebel.

It is believed that in many places, mainly under the court, the secret chambers of the ancient dungeons built in the ditches were found.In ugly silence, in a secret room hangs an iron flail.All the chambers were bricked up, and some queer things were found: for example, the skeleton of an orangutan lost in the Botanic Gardens in 1800, a loss roughly related to the famous and indisputable loss at Bena in the last year of the eighteenth century Something about the ghost on Dan Street.The unlucky ghost ended up drowning in a sewage ditch. In the long arched alley leading to the Maryon Bridge, there is a rag basket that is well preserved, and those who know the goods are full of praise.The ditch cleaners finally boldly groped for the sludge with their hands. There were a lot of valuables in it, including gold and silver ornaments, gems, and coins.A giant who uses a sieve to filter this sludge can get centuries of wealth in his sieve.At the fork of the two branches of the Rue du Temple and the Rue Saint-Avoy, a curious Huguenot Protestant medal in copper was found, with a pig wearing a cardinal's crown on one side and a A wolf with a papal tiara on his head.

The rarest find was at the entrance to the Great Sewer.The entrance used to be closed with iron bars, now only some hinges remain.On one of its hinges hung a dirty shapeless rag—must have been caught in passing—was dangling in the dark until it was a rag.Bruneseau brought his lantern closer to examine the rag.It is of fine linen, and in one of the more complete corners a crown embroidered with a coat of arms is visible, with seven letters beneath: LAVBESP.This is a marquis's crown, the seven letters mean Robes ice, and everyone recognizes that it is a shroud wrapped in Maratha.According to historical research, Marat had some romantic affairs when he was young. This was the bed sheet left after he had an affair with a noble lady when he was a veterinarian at the Earl of Artois's house.This is a remnant or memento.After he died, since it was the only finer piece of material in his family, it was used to wrap his body.The old women wrapped the sad Friend of the People in the swaddling clothes in which he had been happy, and sent him to the grave.

Bruneseau ignored the cloth.They left the rag where it was and did not destroy it.Is this an expression of contempt or respect?Mara deservedly deserved on both fronts.And fate has left enough imprints there that people are hesitant to touch it.Besides, what belongs in the grave should let it stay where it chooses.In short, the relic is eccentric.A marquise slept in it, Mara rotted in it, it passed the Pantheon, and at last it came to this rat trough.This bed rag, the rag of which Watteau had drawn with pleasure in all its folds, turned out to be worthy of Dante's gaze. The entire inspection of the underground sewers of Paris took seven years, from 1805 to 1812.Bruneseau gave instructions as he walked, and under his leadership, the huge project was completed.In 1808 he deepened the trenches in the Rue Bonsault and added new pipes here and there, in 1809 he extended the trenches through the Rue Saint-Denis to the Fountain of the Holy Child, and in 181 In 〇, it was extended to the cold coat street and the women's almshouse. In 1811, it was extended to the new street of the little priest, the Mayi street, the shoulder strap street, and the palace square. In 1812, it was extended to the peace street and Ang Tan street. .At the same time, he disinfected and purified all the ditch networks.From the second year Brunesseau made his son-in-law Nacho his assistant.

Thus, at the turn of the century, the old society removed its double bottom and groomed its gutters.In any case, this time at least these things were cleaned up. Looking back at the sewers of Paris in the past, twists and turns, full of cracks and cracks, no stone paving, potholes, some weird turns, rising and falling for no reason, stench, rough, barbaric, immersed in darkness, and the paving stones are full of scars , The wall was cut by a sword, which was thrilling and frightening.The sewers branched in all directions, the ditches criss-crossed, branches and branches, like goose palms, like stars in the tunnel, like cecum and dead end; nitrous vaults, poisonous cesspools, blisters oozing from the walls and there is nothing more terrible than this ancient catacomb of sewage, which is the alimentary canal of Babylon, the hole, the pit, the abyss with open roads, the great Mole Hole, people seem to see the big blind mole wandering in the dark on the garbage dump that used to be rich and prosperous, and this mole is the past.

We repeat, this is the gutter of the past.