This cavern has for its object the destruction of everything.
Of everything.
Including the upper superior mines, which it execrates.
It not only undermines, in its hideous swarming, the actual social order; it undermines philosophy, it undermines human thought, it undermines civilization, it undermines revolution, it undermines progress.
Its name is simply theft, prostitution, murder, assassination.
It is darkness, and it desires chaos.
Its vault is formed of ignorance.
All the others, those above it, have but one object—to suppress it.
It is to this point that philosophy and progress tend, with all their organs simultaneously, by their amelioration of the real, as well as by their contemplation of the absolute.
Destroy the cavern Ignorance and you destroy the lair Crime.
Let us condense, in a few words, a part of what we have just written.
The only social peril is darkness.
Humanity is identity.
All men are made of the same clay.
There is no difference, here below, at least, in predestination.
The same shadow in front, the same flesh in the present, the same ashes afterwards.
But ignorance, mingled with the human paste, blackens it.
This incurable blackness takes possession of the interior of a man and is there converted into evil.
CHAPTER III—BABET, GUEULEMER, CLAQUESOUS, AND MONTPARNASSE
A quartette of ruffians, Claquesous, Gueulemer, Babet, and Montparnasse governed the third lower floor of Paris, from 1830 to 1835.
Gueulemer was a Hercules of no defined position.
For his lair he had the sewer of the Arche-Marion.
He was six feet high, his pectoral muscles were of marble, his biceps of brass, his breath was that of a cavern, his torso that of a colossus, his head that of a bird.
One thought one beheld the Farnese Hercules clad in duck trousers and a cotton velvet waistcoat.
Gueulemer, built after this sculptural fashion, might have subdued monsters; he had found it more expeditious to be one.
A low brow, large temples, less than forty years of age, but with crow’s-feet, harsh, short hair, cheeks like a brush, a beard like that of a wild boar; the reader can see the man before him.
His muscles called for work, his stupidity would have none of it.
He was a great, idle force.
He was an assassin through coolness.
He was thought to be a creole.
He had, probably, somewhat to do with Marshal Brune, having been a porter at Avignon in 1815.
After this stage, he had turned ruffian.
The diaphaneity of Babet contrasted with the grossness of Gueulemer.
Babet was thin and learned.
He was transparent but impenetrable.
Daylight was visible through his bones, but nothing through his eyes.
He declared that he was a chemist.
He had been a jack of all trades.
He had played in vaudeville at Saint-Mihiel.
He was a man of purpose, a fine talker, who underlined his smiles and accentuated his gestures.
His occupation consisted in selling, in the open air, plaster busts and portraits of “the head of the State.” In addition to this, he extracted teeth.
He had exhibited phenomena at fairs, and he had owned a booth with a trumpet and this poster:
“Babet, Dental Artist, Member of the Academies, makes physical experiments on metals and metalloids, extracts teeth, undertakes stumps abandoned by his brother practitioners.
Price: one tooth, one franc, fifty centimes; two teeth, two francs; three teeth, two francs, fifty.
Take advantage of this opportunity.” This Take advantage of this opportunity meant: Have as many teeth extracted as possible. He had been married and had had children.
He did not know what had become of his wife and children.
He had lost them as one loses his handkerchief.
Babet read the papers, a striking exception in the world to which he belonged.
One day, at the period when he had his family with him in his booth on wheels, he had read in the Messager, that a woman had just given birth to a child, who was doing well, and had a calf’s muzzle, and he exclaimed:
“There’s a fortune! my wife has not the wit to present me with a child like that!”