The first law of safety is to get rid of every sort of load.
Every sewerman who felt the ground giving way beneath him began by flinging away his sack of tools, or his back-basket, or his hod.
The fontis were due to different causes: the friability of the soil; some landslip at a depth beyond the reach of man; the violent summer rains; the incessant flooding of winter; long, drizzling showers.
Sometimes the weight of the surrounding houses on a marly or sandy soil forced out the vaults of the subterranean galleries and caused them to bend aside, or it chanced that a flooring vault burst and split under this crushing thrust.
In this manner, the heaping up of the Parthenon, obliterated, a century ago, a portion of the vaults of Saint-Genevieve hill.
When a sewer was broken in under the pressure of the houses, the mischief was sometimes betrayed in the street above by a sort of space, like the teeth of a saw, between the paving-stones; this crevice was developed in an undulating line throughout the entire length of the cracked vault, and then, the evil being visible, the remedy could be promptly applied.
It also frequently happened, that the interior ravages were not revealed by any external scar, and in that case, woe to the sewermen.
When they entered without precaution into the sewer, they were liable to be lost.
Ancient registers make mention of several scavengers who were buried in fontis in this manner.
They give many names; among others, that of the sewerman who was swallowed up in a quagmire under the man-hole of the Rue Careme-Prenant, a certain Blaise Poutrain; this Blaise Poutrain was the brother of Nicholas Poutrain, who was the last grave-digger of the cemetery called the Charnier des Innocents, in 1785, the epoch when that cemetery expired.
There was also that young and charming Vicomte d’Escoubleau, of whom we have just spoken, one of the heroes of the siege of Lerida, where they delivered the assault in silk stockings, with violins at their head.
D’Escoubleau, surprised one night at his cousin’s, the Duchesse de Sourdis’, was drowned in a quagmire of the Beautreillis sewer, in which he had taken refuge in order to escape from the Duke.
Madame de Sourdis, when informed of his death, demanded her smelling-bottle, and forgot to weep, through sniffling at her salts.
In such cases, there is no love which holds fast; the sewer extinguishes it.
Hero refuses to wash the body of Leander. Thisbe stops her nose in the presence of Pyramus and says:
“Phew!”
CHAPTER VI—THE FONTIS
Jean Valjean found himself in the presence of a fontis.
This sort of quagmire was common at that period in the subsoil of the Champs-Elysees, difficult to handle in the hydraulic works and a bad preservative of the subterranean constructions, on account of its excessive fluidity.
This fluidity exceeds even the inconsistency of the sands of the Quartier Saint-Georges, which could only be conquered by a stone construction on a concrete foundation, and the clayey strata, infected with gas, of the Quartier des Martyrs, which are so liquid that the only way in which a passage was effected under the gallery des Martyrs was by means of a cast-iron pipe.
When, in 1836, the old stone sewer beneath the Faubourg Saint-Honore, in which we now see Jean Valjean, was demolished for the purpose of reconstructing it, the quicksand, which forms the subsoil of the Champs-Elysees as far as the Seine, presented such an obstacle, that the operation lasted nearly six months, to the great clamor of the dwellers on the riverside, particularly those who had hotels and carriages.
The work was more than unhealthy; it was dangerous.
It is true that they had four months and a half of rain, and three floods of the Seine.
The fontis which Jean Valjean had encountered was caused by the downpour of the preceding day.
The pavement, badly sustained by the subjacent sand, had given way and had produced a stoppage of the water.
Infiltration had taken place, a slip had followed.
The dislocated bottom had sunk into the ooze.
To what extent?
Impossible to say.
The obscurity was more dense there than elsewhere.
It was a pit of mire in a cavern of night.
Jean Valjean felt the pavement vanishing beneath his feet.
He entered this slime.
There was water on the surface, slime at the bottom.
He must pass it.
To retrace his steps was impossible.
Marius was dying, and Jean Valjean exhausted.
Besides, where was he to go?
Jean Valjean advanced.
Moreover, the pit seemed, for the first few steps, not to be very deep.
But in proportion as he advanced, his feet plunged deeper.
Soon he had the slime up to his calves and water above his knees.
He walked on, raising Marius in his arms, as far above the water as he could.
The mire now reached to his knees, and the water to his waist.
He could no longer retreat.
This mud, dense enough for one man, could not, obviously, uphold two.
Marius and Jean Valjean would have stood a chance of extricating themselves singly.
Jean Valjean continued to advance, supporting the dying man, who was, perhaps, a corpse.
The water came up to his arm-pits; he felt that he was sinking; it was only with difficulty that he could move in the depth of ooze which he had now reached.
The density, which was his support, was also an obstacle.