Le Rant de Les Misérables, part 53

Last time, on Les Misérables…

– We learned a whole bunch of stuff, such as how much Victor Hugo loves poop (hint: it is a lot).
– Also, Parisian sewers! Kind of gross!
– But full of treasure.
– So, y’know, if you’re feeling up for some profitable urban exploration… check ’em out, maybe?

…and now, the thrilling continuation!

JEAN VALJEAN

Book Three: Mire, But Soul

Chapter I: The Cloaca and Its Surprises

And now we come to the reason Victor Hugo spent nineteen pages telling us all about the history and trivia of the Parisian sewer system: Jean Valjean is in it.

(So is Marius, by virtue of being carried on Valjean’s back, but since he remains unconscious we’ll mostly be focusing on Valjean.)

pg. 1276:

Sudden fall into a cave; disappearance in the dungeon of Paris; leaving that street in which death was everywhere for this kind of sepulcher in which there was life, it was a strange moment.

Take a shot.

The sewer is the polar opposite of the street Valjean has escaped. While the street is loud, brightly lit, and dangerous, the sewer is silent, engulfed in pure darkness, and comparatively safe.

pg. 1277:

The frenzied storm of murder raging a few feet above him only reached him, as we have said, thanks to the thickness of the earth that separated him from it, stifled and indistinct, and like a rumbling at a great depth.

I just really like the phrase “frenzied storm of murder.”

Readjusting the weight of Marius on his back, Valjean ventures forward into the labyrinth.

pg. 1277:

The truth is they were not so safe as Jean Valjean supposed.

Oh come on now.

Valjean tries to reason about which sewer he’s in, which street it’s under, and which direction will take him to safety. This reasoning leads him to the uphill path. Meanwhile, Marius continues to be unconscious.

pg. 1278:

Marius’s cheek touched [Valjean’s] and stuck to it, being bloody. He felt a warm stream, which came from Marius, flow over him and penetrate his clothing. Still, a moist warmth at his ear, which touched the wounded mans mouth, indicated breathing, and consequently life.

Yeah, he’ll be fine.

Hugo then tells us that Valjean’s reasoning re: his location in the sewers of Paris is like 500% incorrect. Whoops.

pg. 1280:

If Jean Valjean had had any notion of what we have here pointed out, he would have quickly perceived, merely from feeling the wall, that he was not in the underground gallery of the Rue Saint-Denis. Instead of the old hewn stone, instead of the ancient architecture, haughty and royal even in the sewer, with floor and running courses of granite, and mortar of thick lime, which cost seventy-five dollars a yard, he would have felt beneath his hand the contemporary economy, the economical expedient, the millstone grit laid in hydraulic cement on a bed of concrete, which cost thirty-five dollars a yard, the bourgeois masonry known as “small materials”; but he knew nothing of all this.

We can’t all be architecture nerds, Hugo.

So yeah, Valjean wanders around as best he can in absolute darkness for who knows how long. Then, suddenly, he sees his shadow! Contrary to popular belief, this does not mean six more weeks of winter; it means there’s a light in the tunnel. A red one. Held by people who are not Valjean.

pg. 1282:

It was the somber star of the police that was rising in the sewer.

Behind this star were moving in disorder eight or ten black forms, straight, indistinct, terrible.

Well, poop.

Chapter II: Explanation

Because of the riot, the police have been ordered to search the sewers for escaping insurgents. Such as Valjean and Marius. However! Valjean is crouched in a shadowy place and the light of the police lantern can’t quite reach him, so as soon as he stops walking, the police have a huddle and determine amongst themselves that there is no one there and they should turn around and go back.

pg. 1283-1284:

Before going away, the sergeant, to ease the police conscience, discharged his carbine in the direction they were abandoning, toward Jean Valjean. The detonation rolled from echo to echo in the crypt like a rumbling of this titanic bowel. Some plaster that fell into the stream and spatter the water a few steps from Jean Valjean made him aware that the ball had struck the arch above his head.

With that, the police wander off.

Chapter III: The Stalker and the Stalked

Meanwhile, back on the surface, there’s another low-key police chase happening. Two dudes, one in ragged workman’s attire, the other one in a uniform buttoned up to the throat, are walking along the bank of the Seine. Uniform guy is tailing workman. Both are reluctant to break into a run lest the other one also start running. So for now, they walk.

pg. 1285:

The reader might recognize these two men, if he could see them closer.

…y’know, for once I actually can’t. Well played, Hugo.

There’s also a fiacre rolling along the road parallel to the riverbank.

pg. 1286:

One of the secret instructions of the police to officers contains this article: “Always have a vehicle within call, in case of need.

Good to know.

Towards the end of the path on the bank of the Seine is a pile of rubbish. The workman ducks behind it. The uniformed man follows, in no particular hurry, since there’s nowhere for the workman to go from behind the rubbish that the uniformed man cannot follow. Or so he thinks. Once the uniformed man gets to the rubbish pile, the workman has vanished. But how!? Oh, right, the sewer grate. Shoot.

pg. 1287:

The man crossed his arms and looked at the grating reproachfully.

You know what you did, grating.

pg. 1287:

This look not enough, he tried to push it; he shook it, it resisted firmly.

According to Hugo, this indicates that the workman has a key to the sewer and can come and go as he pleases––no muss, no fuss.

pg. 1288:

This obvious fact immediately struck the mind of the man who was exerting himself, shaking the grating, and forced out of him this indignant reaction:

“That’s a bit much! A government key!”

I say!

Lacking a key himself, the uniformed man stands by the rubbish pile and waits for something to happen. As does the fiacre.

Chapter IV: He Also Bears His Cross

The Valjean/Jesus parallels are not subtle.

Anyway, returning to the sewer, Valjean is carrying his cross Marius on his back. It involves a lot of stooping, since the ceiling of the sewer is just barely taller than the height of the average man, and Valjean does not want to bonk Marius on the head any more than is absolutely necessary. The audience, meanwhile, is fully in favor of head-bonking, but since when does Hugo listen to the audience.

Valjean also gets bit by a rat, which he shrugs off. Personally, I would be more concerned about a wild animal bite, particularly if I was also wading through sewage at the time, but what the hey, I’m not Jean Valjean.

They come to another crossroads (literal, not metaphorical), and this time Valjean thinks his best bet is to head towards the river, so he goes downhill instead of up. He walks on and on before stopping for a rest near a place where a manhole off in the distance gives some light.

pg. 1290:

With all the gentleness of a brother for his wounded sibling, Jean Valjean laid Marius on the side bank of the sewer.

In case you’ve forgotten, Valjean’s first reaction to finding out Cosette and Marius were an item was to wish Marius dead. Oh how times have changed.

Valjean strips Marius, checks for a heartbeat, then rips up his own shirt for bandages, a gesture that would be much sweeter and make a lot more sense if they weren’t IN A FLIPPING SEWER. You are both going to walk out of here with horrible infections. Just so you know.

While he’s stripping Marius, he finds a piece of bread in one coat pocket and Marius’s notebook in the other. He eats the bread (YOU FOOL WAIT UNTIL YOU HAVE CLEAN WATER TO WASH YOUR HANDS AUGH YOU ARE GOING TO GET ALL KINDS OF TYPHOID) and reads the note Marius left in his notebook re: where to take his body post-barricade. Armed with food in his belly (FOOD TAINTED BY SEWER WATER UGH) and this new information, Valjean picks Marius back up and goes on his way in the darkness.

pg. 1291:

This obscurity suddenly became terrible.

Oh dagnabbit.

Chapter V: For Sand As Well As Woman There Is a Finesse That Is Perfidy

…what?

Wacky title aside, Hugo opens this chapter with a three-page description of what it’s like to die via quicksand. It is completely horrifying, like something out of Poe, and I heartily encourage you to read it for yourself but like hell if I’m typing any of it up because I would like to sleep tonight thank you very much.

Hugo goes on to tell us that the Parisian sewer is absolutely lousy with these quicksand pits, which he calls “fontis”. He also provides us with a short list of people who have died this way.

pg. 1296:

There was also that young and charming Vicomte d’Escoubleau, of whom we have spoken, one of the heroes of the siege of Lerida, where they mounted the assault in silk stockings, led by violins. D’Escoubleau, surprised one night with his cousin, the Duchesse de Sourdis, was drowned in a quagmire of the Beautreillis sewer, in which he had taken refuge to escape from the Duc. Mme. de Sourdis, when this death was described to her, called for her smelling salts, and forgot to weep through too much inhalation of salts. In such a case, there is no persisting love; the cloaca extinguishes it. Hero refuses to wash Leander’s corpse. Thisbe stops her nose at sight of Pyramus.

Chapter VI: The Fontis

pg. 1296:

Jean Valjean found himself faced with a fontis.

Naturally.

So yeah, Valjean accidentally steps into a fontis and starts sinking. (Which is kind of a surprise, considering all the Jesus parallels––you’d think he could just walk across it.) Rather than dropping Marius to reduce his weight and give himself a better chance of survival, he keeps on marching.

pg. 1297:

Now he had only his head out of the water, and his arms supporting Marius. In the old pictures of the deluge, there is a mother doing thus with her child.

Valjean is team mom, pass it on.

His persistence pays off: he finds a foothold in the fontis and is able to climb up and out onto the other side.

pg. 1298:

On coming out of the water, he struck against a stone, and fell onto his knees. This seemed fitting, and he stayed there for some time, his soul lost in unspoken prayer to God.

He rose, shivering, chilled, filthy, bending beneath this dying man, whom he was dragging on, all dripping with slime, his soul filled with a strange light.

Chapter VII: Sometimes We Go Around When We Expect to Get Ashore

Speaking of strange lights, Valjean sees one up ahead. Unlike the red police lantern, this is the pure white sunlight of the outdoors. Huzzah! Valjean forgets how tired he is and runs toward it; as Hugo puts it, “he found his knees of steel again” (pg. 1299). Once he reaches the source of the light, he finds it to be an archway with a steel grate over it. He tries to pull it open, but it won’t budge. I call shenanigans, because this is the same dude who lifts carts recreationally. Come on. And yet, the grating remains closed, despite Valjean’s best efforts.

pg. 1300:

He had only succeeded in escaping into a prison.

It was over. All that Jean Valjean had done was useless. God refused him.

pg. 1300:

Of whom did he think in this overwhelming dejection? Neither of himself nor of Marius. He thought of Cosette.