Chapter 331 A sewer and its unexpected place

Jean Valjean was in the sewers of Paris. This is another similarity between Paris and the sea.Just like in the swamp, divers can also get lost in the sewers. This transfer is amazing.Right in the middle of the city, Jean Valjean left the city; in an instant, with the lid lifted and closed again, he passed from broad day to absolute darkness, from noon to midnight, from noise to silence, from thunderous From the vortex to the lifeless tomb, the turning point is even more incredible than the turn of Polonceau Street, from extreme danger to absolute safety. It was a strange moment to fall suddenly into the cellar, to disappear in the dungeons of Paris, to leave the streets of death to come to this living tomb.He felt dizzy for a while, so he listened carefully, demented and out of order.This life-saving trap suddenly opened under him.The merciful God seems to have fooled him.This is a lovely ambush arranged by heaven!

But the wounded did not move, and Jean Valjean did not know whether it was the living or the dead that he brought into the sewer. His first feeling was that of blindness.Suddenly he couldn't see anything.He felt that for a minute he too was deaf and could hear nothing.The fierce and murderous roar was only a few feet above him, but because of the thick earth separating him, it reached him, we have mentioned, and became faint and indistinct, like a sound in the depths of the earth.He just needs to feel solid under his feet, and that's enough.He stretched out one arm, then the other, and touched the wall on both sides, and found the passage narrow; his foot slipped, and found the flagstones wet.He took a step cautiously, for fear of a hole or a well or a pit.He found that the stone road stretched forward.A stench reminded him where he was.

Before long, he was no longer blind.A little light came in from the ventilation hole he had slid down, and his vision had adjusted to the cellar.He began to discern things.The subterranean passage in which he had taken refuge--there is no other word for it--had a wall behind it.This is a dead end, and the term is called a branch pipe.Before him, there was another wall, a wall of night.The light from the ventilation hole disappeared ten or twelve steps in front of Jean Valjean, and could only produce a little dull white on the wet wall of the sewer several meters long, and a black mass at a distance; It's scary, going in is like being swallowed.But one can still break into this foggy wall, and must do so, even hastily.Jean Valjean recalled that the iron grate he had discovered under the paving stones might also be discovered by the soldiers, who, by chance, might step out of the trap and search it.There is not a moment to lose at this moment.Having put Marius on the ground, he picked him up again, "picked up" was the proper word, put him on his back and walked forward, resolutely into the darkness.

In fact, they were not saved as Jean Valjean thought.Another danger, not necessarily less, awaited them.After the lightning-fast struggle came the cellar full of traps and rotting smells, and after the chaos came the cesspit.Jean Valjean fell from one circle of hell into another. He had to stop after fifty paces, and there was a problem.This roadway leads to another horizontal pipe.Two roads appeared in front of me.Which one to choose?Should he go left or right?How to orientate in the dark maze?This labyrinth, we have already pointed out, has a leading line, which is its slope, and with it, it leads to the river.

Jean Valjean knew at once. He thought he was probably in the gutter of the vegetable market, so if he took the left road and went down the slope, in a quarter of an hour he would reach an exit of the Seine between the Pont de la Bourse and the Pont Neuf, which is equivalent to Said to appear in the most populous part of Paris in broad daylight.He might come to a crossroads crowded with loafers.How amazed the passers-by to see two bloody figures emerging from the ground beneath their feet.The police will come suddenly, with armed security police nearby.They will be arrested before they are out of the cave.So it's better to get into this labyrinth of twists and turns, trust in this darkness, and let fate be the only way out in the future.

He went uphill and turned right. As he turned the corner, the light from the distant vent disappeared, and darkness fell in front of him again, blinding him again.But he kept going, walking as fast as he could.Marius had his arms round his neck, and his feet hung behind him.He grasped the arms with one hand and groped for the wall with the other.Marius' cheek was pressed against his, and bleeding.He felt a stream of lukewarm water from Marius running over him and soaking his clothes, but there was still a moist heat from the mouth of the wounded close to his ear, which showed that he was still breathing, Therefore there is life.Jean Valjean was now taking a wider passage than the first.Jean Valjean walked with difficulty.Last night's rain has not yet drained, forming a small torrent in the middle of the ditch.He had to walk against the wall so that his feet would not be in the water.He proceeded thus in the dark, like a man in the night who gropes where he cannot see, and gets lost in the dark veins of the subterranean.

However, slowly, maybe a little floating light penetrated into the dense fog from the ventilation hole in the distance, maybe his eyes have become accustomed to this darkness, and he has a little blurred vision again, and he begins to blur Realized that sometimes he was touching the wall, and sometimes he was walking through the vault, and the pupils dilated in the night, and found light there, and the same soul, dilated in calamity, found God at last. It is not easy to discern the direction. It can be said that the line of the sewer mirrors the line of the street it overlaps.There were 2,200 streets in Paris at that time, and we can imagine the so-called sewers underground with their forests of black branches.The sewer, which was completed at that time, was eleven leagues long if the sections were connected.We have already mentioned that the present road network, thanks to the special toil of the last thirty years, is no less than sixty leagues.

Jean Valjean was mistaken at first, thinking that he was under the Rue Saint-Denis, but unfortunately he was not there.Below the rue Saint-Denis there is an old stone ditch from the time of Louis XIII, which leads directly to the main aqueduct called the Grand Aqueduct, which has only one corner, on the right; Saint-Martin ditch, with its four arms in the shape of a cross.The entrance of the canal of the Lane des Fascières is close to the Corinth Hotel, but it never connects with the underground canal of the Rue Saint-Denis; it leads to the canal of Montmartre, where Jean Valjean is.There are so many opportunities to get lost here, the Montmartre sewers are one of the most intricate mazes of the ancient network of pipes.Fortunately, Jean Valjean had already passed through the sewer of the vegetable market, the plan of which presents innumerable tangled branches like parrot perches, but he had more than one difficulty before him. There was more than one corner, which appeared like a question mark in the darkness: first, to his left, was the Gypsum Kiln Street sewer, this troublesome thing, with its messy branches in T and Z shapes, from The ground floor of the Post Office Building and under the Maishi Round Pavilion to the Seine River, ending in a Y shape; second, on his right, is the curved alleyway of Clock Face Street and its three forks, all of which are dead ends; third, on his left, is a branch of the Rue de Mai, almost like a long-handled fork at the entrance, which zigzags down to the sewerage cellar below the Louvre, with many branches in all directions; and finally, on the right, under the Rue de Hunger There are some small hidden places here and there that have not been counted before reaching the main ditch; the main ditch is the only one that can lead him to a farther and therefore safer exit.

If Jean Valjean had an idea of ​​all that we have here pointed out, he had only to touch the wall of the ditch to quickly understand that he was not in the underground ditch of the Rue Saint-Denis.He would feel that he was not dealing with old polished stones, that ancient building, noble and stately even in the gutter, with a foundation of granite and fat-lime mortar, which cost eight hundred livres a tad. Ass; what he will feel is a modern cheap, economical saving measure, crushed terrazzo mixed with hydraulic mortar, with a layer of concrete underneath, costing two hundred francs a meter, what bourgeois masonry calls it "Gravel cargo".But Jean Valjean knew nothing about it.

He was anxious, but calmly walked on, seeing nothing, knowing nothing, by luck, in other words by the blessing of heaven. Gradually, so to speak, a fear came over him.The darkness that surrounded him entered his heart.He walks in a riddle.This sewer is terrible, its crossings are dizzying.It was a miserable thing to be captured in this dark Paris.Jean Valjean had to find, that is to say, blindly probing his way.In this strange land, every step he ventured could be his last.How did he get out of here?Can he find a way out?Will he be found in time?Could this gigantic subterranean sponge with its stone cavities be drilled in and out?Are there any unexpected bumps in the dark?Will it go to a place that is intricate and impossible to cross?Would Marius die of blood and hunger?Are they going to get lost here in the end and leave two bones in this corner of the night?He knows nothing.He asked himself but could not answer himself.The gut of Paris is an abyss.Like the prophet, he is in the belly of the devil.

Suddenly he encountered something that surprised him.At the most unexpected moment, he kept going straight on, only to find that he was no longer uphill, and that the water of the creek was hitting his heels instead of rushing against his toes.The gutter is descending.Why is that?Will he suddenly reach the Seine?The danger is great, but the danger of retreat is greater.So he moved on. He was not walking towards the Seine at all.Paris has a donkey-back-shaped terrain on the right bank of the river, with slopes on both sides, and the sewage on one side flows into the Seine River, and the other side flows into the main canal.The top of the donkey-backed slope that separates the two waters is a line of variable flow. The highest watershed is after the Rue Count Michel, in the Saint-Ava ditch; near the boulevard, in the Louvre ditch ; near the vegetable market, in the Montmartre ditch.Jean Valjean reached the highest peak of this divide.He walked to the main canal, his line was right, but he didn't know it. Every time he encountered a branch pipe, he would touch the corner. If he found that the exit was narrower than the roadway he was in, he would not go in and continue the original route.He believes that the narrow road leads to a dead end, which can only lead him away from the goal, that is, from the way out.He was right.Thus he avoids the four traps which the darkness protrudes toward him, and the four labyrinths which we have enumerated. For a moment it seemed to him that he had escaped the panic-stricken Paris below, where traffic was cut off by barricades, and that he was back below Paris, alive and well.He suddenly heard a thunderous sound above his head. It was far away but continuous. It turned out to be the rolling sound of vehicles. He walked about half an hour, or at least this was his own estimation, and he did not think of taking a rest, but only changed his grip on Marius' hand.The darkness seemed deeper, but the depth reassured him. Suddenly he saw his own shadow in front of him.It was set off by a barely visible red light that made the path beneath his feet and the vault over his head a fuzzy purple, and moved across the sticky walls of the alleys to his left and right. .He looked back in amazement. Behind him, in the ditch he had just passed, he felt that far away from him, a terrible starlight pierced the heavy darkness and seemed to be watching him. This is the dark star of the security police rising in the gutter. Behind this starlight were eight to ten dark figures, moving about in a straight, blurred, frightening manner.