THE FONTIS.
Jean Valjean found himself in presence of a fontis: this sort of breaking-in was frequent at that day in the subsoil of the Champs Élysées, which was difficult to manage in hydraulic works, and not preservative of subterranean constructions, owing to its extreme fluidity. This fluidity exceeds even the inconsistency of the sands of the Quartier St. Georges, which could only be overcome by laying rubble on béton, and of the gas-infected clay strata in the Quartier des Martyrs, which are so liquid that a passage could be effected under the gallery only by means of an iron tube. When in 1836 the authorities demolished and rebuilt under the Faubourg St. Honoré the old stone sewer in which Jean Valjean is now engaged, the shifting sand which is the subsoil of the Champs Élysées as far as the Seine offered such an obstacle that the operation lasted six months, to the great annoyance of those living on the water-side, especially such as had mansions and coaches. The works were more than difficult, they were dangerous; but we must allow that it rained for four and a half months, and the Seine overflowed thrice. The fontis which Jean Valjean came across was occasioned by the shower of the previous evening. A giving way of the pavement, which was badly supported by the subjacent sand, had produced a deposit of rain-water, and when the filtering had taken place the ground broke in, and the roadway, being dislocated, fell into the mud. How far? It was impossible to say, for the darkness was denser there than anywhere else; it was a slough of mud in a cavern of night. Jean Valjean felt the pavement depart from under him as he entered the slough; there was water at top and mud underneath. He must pass it, for it was impossible to turn back; Marius was dying, and Jean Valjean worn out. Where else could he go? Jean Valjean advanced; the slough appeared but of slight depth at the first few steps, but as he advanced his legs sank in. He soon had mud up to the middle of the leg, and water up to the middle of the knee. He walked along, raising Marius with both arms as high as he could above the surface of the water; the mud now came up to his knees and the water to his waist. He could no longer draw back, and he sank in deeper and deeper. This mud, dense enough for the weight of one man, could not evidently bear two; Marius and Jean Valjean might have had a chance of getting out separately; but, for all that, Jean Valjean continued to advance, bearing the dying man, who was perhaps a corpse. The water came up to his armpits, and he felt himself drowning; he could scarce move in the depth of mud in which he was standing, for the density which was the support was also the obstacle. He still kept Marius up, and advanced with an extraordinary expenditure of strength, but he was sinking. He had only his head out of water and his two arms sustaining Marius. In the old paintings of the Deluge there is a mother holding her child in the same way. As he still sank he threw back his face to escape the water and be able to breathe; any one who saw him in this darkness would have fancied he saw a mask floating on the gloomy waters; he vaguely perceived above him Marius's hanging head and livid face; he made a desperate effort and advanced his foot, which struck against something solid,—a resting-place. It was high time.
He drew himself up, and writhed and rooted himself with a species of fury upon this support. It produced on him the effect of the first step of a staircase reascending to life. This support, met with in the mud at the supreme moment, was the beginning of the other side of the roadway, which had fallen in without breaking, and bent under the water like a plank in a single piece. A well-constructed pavement forms a curve, and possesses such firmness. This fragment of roadway, partly submerged, but solid, was a real incline, and once upon it they were saved. Jean Valjean ascended it, and attained the other side of the slough. On leaving the water his foot caught against a stone and he fell on his knees. He found that this was just, and remained on them for some time, with his soul absorbed in words addressed to God.
He rose, shivering, chilled, polluted, bent beneath the dying man he carried, all dripping with filth, but with his soul full of a strange brightness.
CHAPTER VII.
SOMETIMES ONE IS STRANDED WHERE HE THINKS TO LAND.
He set out once again; still, if he had not left his life in the fontis, he seemed to have left his strength there. This supreme effort had exhausted him, and his fatigue was now so great that he was obliged to rest every three or four paces to take breath, and leaned against the wall. Once he was obliged to sit down on the banquette in order to alter Marius's position, and believed that he should remain there. But if his vigor were dead his energy was not so, and he rose again. He walked desperately, almost quickly, went thus one hundred yards without raising his head, almost without breathing, and all at once ran against the wall. He had reached an elbow of the drain, and on arriving head down at the turning, came against the wall. He raised his eyes, and at the end of the passage down there, far, very far away, perceived a light. But this time it was no terrible light, but white, fair light. It was daylight. Jean Valjean saw the outlet. A condemned soul that suddenly saw from the middle of the furnace the issue from Gehenna would feel what Jean Valjean felt. It would fly wildly with the stumps of its burnt wings toward the radiant gate. Jean Valjean no longer felt fatigue, he no longer felt Marius's weight, he found again his muscles of steel, and ran rather than walked. As he drew nearer, the outlet became more distinctly designed; it was an arch, not so tall as the roof, which gradually contracted, and not so wide as the gallery, which grew narrower at the same time as the roof became lowered. The tunnel finished inside in the shape of a funnel,—a faulty reduction, imitated from the wickets of houses of correction, logical in a prison, but illogical in a drain, and which has since been corrected.
Jean Valjean reached the issue and then stopped; it was certainly the outlet, but they could not get out. The arch was closed by a strong grating, and this grating, which apparently rarely turned on its oxidized hinges, was fastened to the stone wall by a heavy lock, which, red with rust, seemed an enormous brick. The key-hole was visible, as well as the bolt deeply plunged into its iron box. It was one of those Bastille locks of which ancient Paris was so prodigal. Beyond the grating were the open air, the river, daylight, the bank,—very narrow but sufficient to depart,—the distant quays, Paris,—that gulf in which a man hides himself so easily,—the wide horizon, and liberty. On the right could be distinguished, down the river, the Pont de Jéna, and at the left, up stream, the Pont des Invalides; the spot would have been a favorable one to await night and escape. It was one of the most solitary points in Paris, the bank facing the Gros-Caillou. The flies went in and out through the grating bars. It might be about half-past eight in the evening, and day was drawing in: Jean Valjean laid Marius along the wall on the dry part of the way, then walked up to the grating and seized the bars with both hands; the shock was frenzied, but the effect nil. The grating did not stir. Jean Valjean seized the bars one after the other, hoping he might be able to break out the least substantial one and employ it as a lever to lift, the gate off the hinges or break the lock, but not a bar stirred. A tiger's teeth are not more solidly set in their sockets. Without a lever it was impossible to open the grating, and the obstacle was invincible.
Must he finish, then, there? What should he do? What would become of him? He had not the strength to turn back and recommence the frightful journey which he had already made. Moreover, how was he to cross again that slough from which he had only escaped by a miracle? And after the slough, was there not the police squad, which he assuredly would not escape twice; and then where should he go, and what direction take? Following the slope would not lead to his object, for if he reached another outlet he would find it obstructed by an iron plate or a grating. All the issues were indubitably closed in that way; accident had left the grating by which they entered open, but it was plain that all the other mouths of the sewer were closed. They had only succeeded in escaping into a prison.
It was all over, and all that Jean Valjean had done was useless: God opposed it. They were both caught in the dark and immense web of death, and Jean Valjean felt the fearful spider already running along the black threads in the darkness. He turned his hack to the grating and fell on the pavement near Marius, who was still motionless, and whose head had fallen between his knees. There was no outlet; that was the last drop of agony. Of whom did he think in this profound despondency? Neither of himself nor of Marius! He thought of Cosette.