thout.

The sewer in ancient Paris is the rendezvous of all exhaustions and
of all attempts. Political economy therein spies a detritus, social
philosophy there beholds a residuum.

The sewer is the conscience of the city. Everything there converges
and confronts everything else. In that livid spot there are shades, but
there are no longer any secrets. Each thing bears its true form, or at
least, its definitive form. The mass of filth has this in its favor,
that it is not a liar. Ingenuousness has taken refuge there. The mask
of Basil is to be found there, but one beholds its cardboard and its
strings and the inside as well as the outside, and it is accentuated
by honest mud. Scapin's false nose is its next-door neighbor. All the
uncleannesses of civilization, once past their use, fall into this
trench of truth, where the immense social sliding ends. They are
there engulfed, but they display themselves there. This mixture is a
confession. There, no more false appearances, no plastering over is
possible, filth removes its shirt, absolute denudation puts to the rout
all illusions and mirages, there is nothing more except what really
exists, presenting the sinister form of that which is coming to an end.
There, the bottom of a bottle indicates drunkenness, a basket-handle
tells a tale of domesticity; there the core of an apple which has
entertained literary opinions becomes an apple-core once more; the
effigy on the big sou becomes frankly covered with verdigris, Caiphas'
spittle meets Falstaff's puking, the louis-d'or which comes from
the gaming-house jostles the nail whence hangs the rope's end of the
suicide. A livid foetus rolls along, enveloped in the spangles which
danced at the Opera last Shrove-Tuesday, a cap which has pronounced
judgment on men wallows beside a mass of rottenness which was formerly
Margoton's petticoat; it is more than fraternization, it is equivalent
to addressing each other as thou. All which was formerly rouged, is
washed free. The last veil is torn away. A sewer is a cynic. It tells
everything.

The sincerity of foulness pleases us, and rests the soul. When one has
passed one's time in enduring upon earth the spectacle of the great airs
which reasons of state, the oath, political sagacity, human justice,
professional probity, the austerities of situation, incorruptible robes
all assume, it solaces one to enter a sewer and to behold the mire which
befits it.

This is instructive at the sam