THE GREAT SEWER.
SUBTERRANEAN PARIS.
JEAN VALJEAN’S ESCAPE.
In all that he has written, Victor Hugo has produced nothing more graphic than his description of Jean Valjean in the sewers of Paris, when endeavoring to escape from the police, after the fight at the barricades. We quote his description, omitting a few paragraphs.
“It was in the sewer of Paris that Jean Valjean found himself.
“A resemblance of Paris with the sea. As in the ocean, the diver can disappear.
“The transition was marvellous. From the very centre of the city, Jean Valjean had gone out of the city, and, in the twinkling of an eye, the time of lifting a cover and closing it again, he had passed from broad day to complete obscurity, from noon to midnight, from uproar to silence, from the whirl of the thunder to the stagnation of the tomb, and, by a mutation much more prodigious still than that of the Rue Polonceau, from the most extreme peril to the most absolute security.