this was executed like that which one does in dreams, with
the strength of a giant and the rapidity of an eagle; this took only a
few minutes.

Jean Valjean found himself with Marius, who was still unconscious, in a
sort of long, subterranean corridor.

There reigned profound peace, absolute silence, night.

The impression which he had formerly experienced when falling from the
wall into the convent recurred to him. Only, what he was carrying to-day
was not Cosette; it was Marius. He could barely hear the formidable
tumult in the wine-shop, taken by assault, like a vague murmur overhead.

BOOK SECOND.--THE INTESTINE OF THE LEVIATHAN

CHAPTER I--THE LAND IMPOVERISHED BY THE SEA

Paris casts twenty-five millions yearly into the water. And this without
metaphor. How, and in what manner? Day and night. With what object? With
no object. With what intention? With no intention. Why? For no
reason. By means of what organ? By means of its intestine. What is its
intestine? The sewer.

Twenty-five millions is the most moderate approximative figure which the
valuations of special science have set upon it.

Science, after having long groped about, now knows that the most
fecundating and the most efficacious of fertilizers is human manure.
The Chinese, let us confess it to our shame, knew it before us. Not
a Chinese peasant--it is Eckberg who says this,--goes to town without
bringing back with him, at the two extremities of his bamboo pole, two
full buckets of what we designate as filth. Thanks to human dung, the
earth in China is still as young as in the days of Abraham. Chinese
wheat yields a hundred fold of the seed. There is no guano comparable
in fertility with the detritus of a capital. A great city is the most
mighty of dung-makers. Certain success would attend the experiment
of employing the city to manure the plain. If our gold is manure, our
manure, on the other hand, is gold.

What is done with this golden manure? It is swept into the abyss.

Fleets of vessels are despatched, at great expense, to collect the dung
of petrels and penguins at the South Pole, and the incalculable element
of opulence which we have on hand, we send to the sea. All the human and
animal manure which the world wastes, restored to the land instead of
being cast into the water, would suffice to nourish the world.

Those heaps of filth at the gate-posts, those tumbrils of mud which
jolt through the street by night, those terrib