Page 2147 - les-miserables

The passage along which Jean Valjean was now proceeding
was not so narrow as the first. Jean Valjean walked through
it with considerable difficulty. The rain of the preceding day
had not, as yet, entirely run off, and it created a little torrent
in the centre of the bottom, and he was forced to hug the
wall in order not to have his feet in the water.
Thus he proceeded in the gloom. He resembled the be-
ings of the night groping in the invisible and lost beneath
the earth in veins of shadow.
Still, little by little, whether it was that the distant air-
holes emitted a little wavering light in this opaque gloom, or
whether his eyes had become accustomed to the obscurity,
some vague vision returned to him, and he began once more
to gain a confused idea, now of the wall which he touched,
now of the vault beneath which he was passing. The pupil
dilates in the dark, and the soul dilates in misfortune and
ends by finding God there.
It was not easy to direct his course.
The line of the sewer re-echoes, so to speak, the line of the
streets which lie above it. There were then in Paris two thou-
sand two hundred streets. Let the reader imagine himself
beneath that forest of gloomy branches which is called the
sewer. The system of sewers existing at that epoch, placed
end to end, would have given a length of eleven leagues. We
have said above, that the actual net-work, thanks to the spe-
cial activity of the last thirty years, was no less than sixty
leagues in extent.
Jean Valjean began by committing a blunder. He thought
that he was beneath the Rue Saint-Denis, and it was a pity

2147