Page 2149 - les-miserables

of the Rue des Jeuneurs, without counting little ducts here
and there, before reaching the belt sewer, which alone could
conduct him to some issue sufficiently distant to be safe.
Had Jean Valjean had any idea of all that we have here
pointed out, he would speedily have perceived, merely by
feeling the wall, that he was not in the subterranean gal-
lery of the Rue Saint-Denis. Instead of the ancient stone,
instead of the antique architecture, haughty and royal even
in the sewer, with pavement and string courses of granite
and mortar costing eight hundred livres the fathom, he
would have felt under his hand contemporary cheapness,
economical expedients, porous stone filled with mortar on
a concrete foundation, which costs two hundred francs the
metre, and the bourgeoise masonry known as a petits mate-
riaux—small stuff; but of all this he knew nothing.
He advanced with anxiety, but with calmness, seeing
nothing, knowing nothing, buried in chance, that is to say,
engulfed in providence.
By degrees, we will admit, a certain horror seized upon
him. The gloom which enveloped him penetrated his spirit.
He walked in an enigma. This aqueduct of the sewer is for-
midable; it interlaces in a dizzy fashion. It is a melancholy
thing to be caught in this Paris of shadows. Jean Valjean
was obliged to find and even to invent his route without see-
ing it. In this unknown, every step that he risked might be
his last. How was he to get out? should he find an issue?
should he find it in time? would that colossal subterranean
sponge with its stone cavities, allow itself to be penetrated
and pierced? should he there encounter some unexpected

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