Page 2117 - les-miserables

CHAPTER II

ANCIENT HISTORY

OF THE SEWER

Let the reader imagine Paris lifted off like a cover, the
subterranean net-work of sewers, from a bird’s eye view,
will outline on the banks a species of large branch graft-
ed on the river. On the right bank, the belt sewer will form
the trunk of this branch, the secondary ducts will form the
branches, and those without exit the twigs.
This figure is but a summary one and half exact, the right
angle, which is the customary angle of this species of sub-
terranean ramifications, being very rare in vegetation.
A more accurate image of this strange geometrical plan
can be formed by supposing that one is viewing some ec-
centric oriental alphabet, as intricate as a thicket, against a
background of shadows, and the misshapen letters should
be welded one to another in apparent confusion, and as at
haphazard, now by their angles, again by their extremities.
Sinks and sewers played a great part in the Middle Ages,
in the Lower Empire and in the Orient of old. The mass-
es regarded these beds of decomposition, these monstrous

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