One
of the great extended scenes from the novel is Jean Valjean’s saving of Marius
by carrying him through the sewers of Paris, from section of the Barracades,
which are being destroyed and where Marius’ companions are being annihilated,
to somewhere downstream of the Seine, to freedom. Neither the play nor the last movie really
develops the sewer scene. For the play,
they set up the barricade defeat as the climax, but the story is far from over
then. That traveling through the sewers
carries several metaphors. It’s certainly
the leveling of humanity, where it makes no difference if you’re an aristocrat
or a slave. It’s also a traveling into
the underworld, a trip into hell. It’s
no coincidence that at the end an Jean Valjean, who is unrecognizable from all
the mud, mire, and slime, separately meets Thernadier and Javert, the former
the personification of greedy evil and the latter the personification of evil
through the over scrupulous adherence to the law.
I’m
going to present two scenes. The first
is when Valjean first enters the sewer. From
Volume Seven, Jean Valjean, Book
Third, Mud but the Soul, chapter 1, “The
Sewer and Its Surprises.”
It was in the sewers of
Paris that Jean Valjean found himself.
Still another resemblance
between Paris and the sea. As in the ocean, the diver may disappear there.
The transition was an
unheard-of one. In the very heart of the city, Jean Valjean had escaped from
the city, and, in the twinkling of an eye, in the time required to lift the
cover and to replace it, he had passed from broad daylight to complete
obscurity, from midday to midnight, from tumult to silence, from the whirlwind
of thunders to the stagnation of the tomb, and, by a vicissitude far more
tremendous even than that of the Rue Polonceau, from the most extreme peril to
the most absolute obscurity.
An abrupt fall into a
cavern; a disappearance into the secret trap-door of Paris; to quit that street
where death was on every side, for that sort of sepulchre where there was life,
was a strange instant. He remained for several seconds as though bewildered;
listening, stupefied. The waste-trap of safety had suddenly yawned beneath him.
Celestial goodness had, in a manner, captured him by treachery. Adorable
ambuscades of providence!
Only, the wounded man did
not stir, and Jean Valjean did not know whether that which he was carrying in
that grave was a living being or a dead corpse.
His first sensation was
one of blindness. All of a sudden, he could see nothing. It seemed to him too,
that, in one instant, he had become deaf. He no longer heard anything. The
frantic storm of murder which had been let loose a few feet above his head did
not reach him, thanks to the thickness of the earth which separated him from it,
as we have said, otherwise than faintly and indistinctly, and like a rumbling,
in the depths. He felt that the ground was solid under his feet; that was all;
but that was enough. He extended one arm and then the other, touched the walls
on both sides, and perceived that the passage was narrow; he slipped, and thus
perceived that the pavement was wet. He cautiously put forward one foot,
fearing a hole, a sink, some gulf; he discovered that the paving continued. A
gust of fetidness informed him of the place in which he stood.
After the lapse of a few
minutes, he was no longer blind. A little light fell through the man-hole
through which he had descended, and his eyes became accustomed to this cavern.
He began to distinguish something. The passage in which he had burrowed--no
other word can better express the situation--was walled in behind him. It was
one of those blind alleys, which the special jargon terms branches. In front of
him there was another wall, a wall like night. The light of the air-hole died out
ten or twelve paces from the point where Jean Valjean stood, and barely cast a
wan pallor on a few metres of the damp walls of the sewer. Beyond, the
opaqueness was massive; to penetrate thither seemed horrible, an entrance into
it appeared like an engulfment. A man could, however, plunge into that wall of
fog and it was necessary so to do. Haste was even requisite. It occurred to
Jean Valjean that the grating which he had caught sight of under the
flag-stones might also catch the eye of the soldiery, and that everything hung
upon this chance. They also might descend into that well and search it. There
was not a minute to be lost. He had deposited Marius on the ground, he picked
him up again,-- that is the real word for it,--placed him on his shoulders once
more, and set out. He plunged resolutely into the gloom.
The truth is, that they
were less safe than Jean Valjean fancied. Perils of another sort and no less
serious were awaiting them, perchance. After the lightning-charged whirlwind of
the combat, the cavern of miasmas and traps; after chaos, the sewer. Jean
Valjean had fallen from one circle of hell into another.
When he had advanced
fifty paces, he was obliged to halt. A problem presented itself. The passage
terminated in another gut which he encountered across his path. There two ways
presented themselves. Which should he take? Ought he to turn to the left or to
the right? How was he to find his bearings in that black labyrinth? This
labyrinth, to which we have already called the reader's attention, has a clue,
which is its slope. To follow to the slope is to arrive at the river.
This Jean Valjean
instantly comprehended.
He said to himself that
he was probably in the sewer des Halles; that if he were to choose the path to
the left and follow the slope, he would arrive, in less than a quarter of an
hour, at some mouth on the Seine between the Pont au Change and the Pont-Neuf,
that is to say, he would make his appearance in broad daylight on the most
densely peopled spot in Paris. Perhaps he would come out on some man-hole at
the intersection of streets. Amazement of the passers-by at beholding two
bleeding men emerge from the earth at their feet. Arrival of the police, a call
to arms of the neighboring post of guards. Thus they would be seized before they
had even got out. It would be better to plunge into that labyrinth, to confide
themselves to that black gloom, and to trust to Providence for the outcome.
He ascended the incline,
and turned to the right.
When he had turned the
angle of the gallery, the distant glimmer of an air-hole disappeared, the
curtain of obscurity fell upon him once more, and he became blind again.
Nevertheless, he advanced as rapidly as possible. Marius' two arms were passed
round his neck, and the former's feet dragged behind him. He held both these
arms with one hand, and groped along the wall with the other. Marius' cheek
touched his, and clung there, bleeding. He felt a warm stream which came from
Marius trickling down upon him and making its way under his clothes. But a humid
warmth near his ear, which the mouth of the wounded man touched, indicated
respiration, and consequently, life. The passage along which Jean Valjean was
now proceeding was not so narrow as the first. Jean Valjean walked through it
with considerable difficulty. The rain of the preceding day had not, as yet,
entirely run off, and it created a little torrent in the centre of the bottom,
and he was forced to hug the wall in order not to have his feet in the water.
Thus he proceeded in the
gloom. He resembled the beings of the night groping in the invisible and lost
beneath the earth in veins of shadow.
Still, little by little,
whether it was that the distant air-holes emitted a little wavering light in
this opaque gloom, or whether his eyes had become accustomed to the obscurity,
some vague vision returned to him, and he began once more to gain a confused
idea, now of the wall which he touched, now of the vault beneath which he was
passing. The pupil dilates in the dark, and the soul dilates in misfortune and
ends by finding God there.
Now
only Victor Hugo could have a character find God in the bowels of a sewer! The second passage is also from Volume Five,
Book Third, but from Chapter VI, “The Fontis.”
Here we see the epic strength of Jean Valjean. He has been walking through the sewer unknown
amount of time, perhaps a day, carrying the unconscious body of Marius on his
shoulders. Valjean is close to eighty
years in age, so not a youth, and carrying a lifeless body is no small feat
even for twenty minutes.
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. He still held Marius on high, and with
an unheard-of expenditure of force, he advanced still; but he was sinking. He
had only his head above the water now and his two arms holding up Marius. In
the old paintings of the deluge there is a mother holding her child thus.
He sank still deeper, he
turned his face to the rear, to escape the water, and in order that he might be
able to breathe; anyone who had seen him in that gloom would have thought that
what he beheld was a mask floating on the shadows; he caught a faint glimpse
above him of the drooping head and livid face of Marius; he made a desperate
effort and launched his foot forward; his foot struck something solid; a point
of support. It was high time.
He straightened himself
up, and rooted himself upon that point of support with a sort of fury. This
produced upon him the effect of the first step in a staircase leading back to
life.
The point of support,
thus encountered in the mire at the supreme moment, was the beginning of the
other water-shed of the pavement, which had bent but had not given way, and
which had curved under the water like a plank and in a single piece. Well built
pavements form a vault and possess this sort of firmness. This fragment of the
vaulting, partly submerged, but solid, was a veritable inclined plane, and,
once on this plane, he was safe. Jean Valjean mounted this inclined plane and
reached the other side of the quagmire.
As he emerged from the
water, he came in contact with a stone and fell upon his knees. He reflected
that this was but just, and he remained there for some time, with his soul
absorbed in words addressed to God.
He rose to his feet,
shivering, chilled, foul-smelling, bowed beneath the dying man whom he was
dragging after him, all dripping with slime, and his soul filled with a strange
light.
The
heroic carrying of Marius is emulating the passion of Christ to the cross. The water spewing wall that Valjean comes to
a metaphor for a baptismal font, where he and Marius are reborn before God.
