Page 2135 - les-miserables

CHAPTER VI

FUTURE PROGRESS

The excavation of the sewer of Paris has been no slight
task. The last ten centuries have toiled at it without being
able to bring it to a termination, any more than they have
been able to finish Paris. The sewer, in fact, receives all the
counter-shocks of the growth of Paris. Within the bosom of
the earth, it is a sort of mysterious polyp with a thousand
antennae, which expands below as the city expands above.
Every time that the city cuts a street, the sewer stretches out
an arm. The old monarchy had constructed only twenty-
three thousand three hundred metres of sewers; that was
where Paris stood in this respect on the first of January,
1806. Beginning with this epoch, of which we shall short-
ly speak, the work was usefully and energetically resumed
and prosecuted; Napoleon built—the figures are curi-
ous—four thousand eight hundred and four metres; Louis
XVIII., five thousand seven hundred and nine; Charles X.,
ten thousand eight hundred and thirty-six; Louis-Philippe,
eighty-nine thousand and twenty; the Republic of 1848,
twenty-three thousand three hundred and eighty-one; the
present government, seventy thousand five hundred; in all,

2135