Page 2115 - les-miserables

Economically considered, the matter can be summed up
thus: Paris is a spendthrift. Paris, that model city, that pa-
tron of well-arranged capitals, of which every nation strives
to possess a copy, that metropolis of the ideal, that august
country of the initiative, of impulse and of effort, that cen-
tre and that dwelling of minds, that nation-city, that hive
of the future, that marvellous combination of Babylon and
Corinth, would make a peasant of the Fo-Kian shrug his
shoulders, from the point of view which we have just indi-
cated.
Imitate Paris and you will ruin yourselves.
Moreover, and particularly in this immemorial and
senseless waste, Paris is itself an imitator.
These surprising exhibitions of stupidity are not novel;
this is no young folly. The ancients did like the moderns.
‘The sewers of Rome,’ says Liebig, ‘have absorbed all the
well-being of the Roman peasant.’ When the Campagna of
Rome was ruined by the Roman sewer, Rome exhausted It-
aly, and when she had put Italy in her sewer, she poured in
Sicily, then Sardinia, then Africa. The sewer of Rome has
engulfed the world. This cess-pool offered its engulfment to
the city and the universe. Urbi et orbi. Eternal city, unfath-
omable sewer.
Rome sets the example for these things as well as for oth-
ers.
Paris follows this example with all the stupidity peculiar
to intelligent towns.
For the requirements of the operation upon the subject of
which we have just explained our views, Paris has beneath

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