The sewer of Paris in the Middle Ages was legendary. In the sixteenth century, Henri II. attempted a bore, which failed. Not a hundred years ago, the cess-pool, Mercier attests the fact, was abandoned to itself, and fared as best it might.
Such was this ancient Paris, delivered over to quarrels, to indecision, and to gropings. It was tolerably stupid for a long time. Later on, '89 showed how understanding comes to cities. But in the good, old times, the capital had not much head. It did not know how to manage its own affairs either morally or materially, and could not sweep out filth any better than it could abuses. Everything presented an obstacle, everything raised a question. The sewer, for example, was refractory to every itinerary. One could no more find one's bearings in the sewer than one could understand one's position in the city; above the unintelligible, below the inextricable; beneath the confusion of tongues there reigned the confusion of caverns; Daedalus backed up Babel.
Sometimes the Paris sewer took a notion to overflow, as though this misunderstood Nile were suddenly seized with a fit of rage. There occurred, infamous to relate, inundations of the sewer. At times, that stomach of civilization digested badly, the cess-pool flowed back into the throat of the city, and Paris got an after-taste of her own filth. These resemblances of the sewer to remorse had their good points; they were warnings; very badly accepted, however; the city waxed indignant at the audacity of its mire, and did not admit that the filth should return. Drive it out better.
The inundation of 1802 is one of the actual memories of Parisians of the age of eighty. The mud spread in cross-form over the Place des Victoires, where stands the statue of Louis XIV.; it entered the Rue Saint-Honore by the two mouths to the sewer in the Champs-Elysees, the Rue Saint-Florentin through the Saint-Florentin sewer, the Rue Pierre-a-Poisson through the sewer de la Sonnerie, the Rue Popincourt, through the sewer of the Chemin-Vert, the Rue de la Roquette, through the sewer of the Rue de Lappe; it covered the drain of the Rue des Champs-Elysees to the height of thirty-five centimetres; and, to the South, through the vent of the Seine, performing its functions in inverse sense, it penetrated the Rue Mazarine, the Rue de l'Echaude, and the Rue des Marais, where it stopped at a distance of one hundred and nine metres, a few paces distant from the house in which Racine had lived, respecting, in the seventeenth century, the poet more than the King. It attained its maximum depth in the Rue Saint-Pierre, where it rose to the height of three feet above the flag-stones of the water-spout, and its maximum length in the Rue Saint-Sabin, where it spread out over a stretch two hundred and thirty-eight metres in length.
At the beginning of this century, the sewer of Paris was still a mysterious place. Mud can never enjoy a good fame; but in this case its evil renown reached the verge of the terrible. Paris knew, in a confused way, that she had under her a terrible cavern. People talked of it as of that monstrous bed of Thebes in which swarmed centipedes fifteen long feet in length, and which might have served Behemoth for a bathtub. The great boots of the sewermen never ventured further than certain well-known points. We were then very near the epoch when the scavenger's carts, from the summit of which Sainte-Foix fraternized with the Marquis de Crequi, discharged their loads directly into the sewer. As for cleaning out,-- that function was entrusted to the pouring rains which encumbered rather than swept away. Rome left some poetry to her sewer, and called it the Gemoniae; Paris insulted hers, and entitled it the Polypus-Hole. Science and superstition were in accord, in horror. The Polypus hole was no less repugnant to hygiene than to legend. The goblin was developed under the fetid covering of the Mouffetard sewer; the corpses of the Marmousets had been cast into the sewer de la Barillerie; Fagon attributed the redoubtable malignant fever of 1685 to the great hiatus of the sewer of the Marais, which remained yawning until 1833 in the Rue Saint-Louis, almost opposite the sign of the Gallant Messenger. The mouth of the sewer of the Rue de la Mortellerie was celebrated for the pestilences which had their source there; with its grating of iron, with points simulating a row of teeth, it was like a dragon's maw in that fatal street, breathing forth hell upon men. The popular imagination seasoned the sombre Parisian sink with some indescribably hideous intermixture of the infinite. The sewer had no bottom. The sewer was the lower world. The idea of exploring these leprous regions did not even occur to the police. To try that unknown thing, to cast the plummet into that shadow, to set out on a voyage of discovery in that abyss--who would have dared? It was alarming. Nevertheless, some one did present himself. The cess-pool had its Christopher Columbus.
One day, in 1805, during one of the rare apparitions which the Emperor made in Paris, the Minister of the Interior, some Decres or Cretet or other, came to the master's intimate levee. In the Carrousel there was audible the clanking of swords of all those extraordinary soldiers of the great Republic, and of the great Empire; then Napoleon's door was blocked with heroes; men from the Rhine, from the Escaut, from the Adige, and from the Nile; companions of Joubert, of Desaix, of Marceau, of Hoche, of Kleber; the aerostiers of Fleurus, the grenadiers of Mayence, the pontoon-builders of Genoa, hussars whom the Pyramids had looked down upon, artillerists whom Junot's cannon-ball had spattered with mud, cuirassiers who had taken by assault the fleet lying at anchor in the Zuyderzee; some had followed Bonaparte upon the bridge of Lodi, others had accompanied Murat in the trenches of Mantua, others had preceded Lannes in the hollow road of Montebello. The whole army of that day was present there, in the court-yard of the Tuileries, represented by a squadron or a platoon, and guarding Napoleon in repose; and that was the splendid epoch when the grand army had Marengo behind it and Austerlitz before it.--"Sire," said the Minister of the Interior to Napoleon, "yesterday I saw the most intrepid man in your Empire."--"What man is that?" said the Emperor brusquely, "and what has he done?"--"He wants to do something, Sire."--"What is it?"--"To visit the sewers of Paris."
This man existed and his name was Bruneseau.
①迈尔西埃（Mercier，1740-1814），法国作家，著有《巴黎景象》。
②代达罗斯，迷宫，源出希腊神话中为克里特国王建造迷宫的建筑师之名。
③巴别塔，《圣经》中挪亚的子孙没有建成的通天塔。
有时巴黎的阴渠突然泛滥，好象这不为人知的尼罗河突然发怒了。于是就出现了棗说来可耻棗阴渠里的洪水。这文明的肠胃有时消化不良，污物倒流到城市的喉头，巴黎就充满了它的污泥的回味。阴沟倒流与悔悟类似，大有益处，这是警告，但并不受欢迎，巴黎城因泥垢如此猖狂而愤慨了，它不能允许污秽再回来，必须妥善清除。
一八○二年的水灾是八十岁的巴黎人记忆犹新之事。污泥浆在胜利广场，即路易十四的铜像所在处，扩散成十字形，它由爱丽舍广场的两个阴沟出口流到圣奥诺雷街，由圣弗洛朗丹的阴沟口流到圣弗洛朗丹街，由钟声街的沟口流到鱼石街，由绿径街的沟口流到波邦古街，由拉普街的沟口流入洛盖特街；它淹没了爱丽舍广场的街边明沟高达三十五公分；在南边，塞纳河的大沟管起了倒流作用，它侵占了马萨林街、埃旭特街、沼泽街，在一百○九米的地方停止了，离拉辛的旧居正好不过几步路，它在十七世纪，尊重诗人胜过国王。它在圣皮埃尔街水位最高，比排水管高出三尺，在圣沙班街，它的面积最宽处扩展到二百三十八米长。
在本世纪初，巴黎的阴渠仍是一个神秘处所。污泥始终不能获得好评，而这里的坏名声却又引起恐怖。巴黎模模糊糊知道它下面有个可怕的地窖。人们谈起这地窖就如谈到底比斯的庞大污秽坑一样，里面有无数的十五尺长的蜈蚣，这坑可以作为比希莫特①的澡盆。清沟工人的大靴子从不敢冒险越过那几处熟悉的地点。当时人们离清道夫用两轮马车扫除垃圾的时代还不远棗在车顶上圣福瓦和克来基侯爵友好共处棗，垃圾直接就往阴沟中倒，至于疏通阴沟的任务就只好依赖暴雨了。而暴雨却远远不能起到冲洗的作用，反而使阴沟堵塞。罗马还留下一些有关它的污坑的诗，称它为喏木尼，巴黎侮辱它自己的阴渠，称它为臭洞；从科学和迷信方面看，人们一致认为它是恐怖的。臭洞对卫生和传奇同样都很不协调；鬼怪僧侣②坑出现在穆夫达阴渠的臭拱顶下；所有马穆塞③的尸体都被抛入巴利勒利阴沟中。法贡④把一六八五年惊人的恶性热病归咎于沼泽区阴渠的大敞口，直到一八三三年仍在圣路易街上露天敞开着，差不多就在“殷勤服务处”的招牌对面。莫特勒里街的阴沟敞口因产生瘟疫而著名，它那带刺的铁栅栏好象一排牙齿，它在这不幸的街道上好象张开龙嘴向人们吹送着地狱的气息。在群众的想象里巴黎阴暗的排水沟是一种丑恶的无数东西的混合物。阴沟是无底坑。阴沟是巴拉特⑤。连警署也未曾有过去查看一下这些癞病区的想法。探索这不为人知之物，测量它的黑暗，深入发掘这沉渊，谁有这个胆量呀？这是一件令人畏缩的事。可是居然有人自荐。污秽沟自有它的哥伦布。
①比希莫特（Béhémoth），《圣经》中提及的陆上巨大怪兽，魔鬼的象征。
②鬼怪僧侣（Moine－Bourru），穿僧侣法衣的捣乱鬼，伤害他们遇到的人。
③马穆塞（Marmousets），系指查理五世或查理六世时的顾问团，勃艮第公爵将他们处死或流放。
④法贡（Fagon，1638-1718），路易十四的第一个医生。
⑤巴拉特（barathrum），雅典城西弃置罪犯尸体的山谷。
在一八○五年，有一天，是皇帝难得在巴黎出现的日子，一个内政大臣叫特克雷或克雷特的，参加了主子的起床接见，听得见崇武门伟大的共和国的和伟大帝国的非凡士兵们佩剑的铿锵声，英雄们拥挤在拿破仑的门口，从莱茵河、埃斯科河、阿迪杰河和尼罗河部队里来的人；茹贝尔、德泽、马索、奥什、克莱贝尔等将军的战友，弗勒律斯的汽艇观察员，美因茨的投弹手，热那亚的架桥兵，金字塔战役的轻骑兵，有着茹诺炮弹硝烟味的炮兵，突击打败了停泊在茹德泽的舰队的装甲兵；有些曾跟随波拿巴在洛迪桥参战，有些曾陪同缪拉在曼图亚作战，还有一些曾赶在拉纳之前到达芒泰贝洛的深洼路。所有当时的军队都集合在杜伊勒里宫的院子里，以一班或一排为代表，守卫着在休息的拿破仑。这是极盛时代，当时的大军已获得马伦哥战役的胜利，并将在奥斯特里茨大败敌军。
“陛下，”拿破仑的内政大臣说，“昨天我见到了一个您的帝国中最勇敢的人。”
“是什么人？”皇帝粗暴地问，“他做了什么事？”
“他想做一件事，陛下。”
“什么事？”
“视察巴黎的阴渠。”
这个人确实是存在的，他名叫勃吕纳梭。