icate the
currents at the point where they parted, to define the respective bounds
of the divers basins, to sound the small sewers grafted on the principal
sewer, to measure the height under the key-stone of each drain, and the
width, at the spring of the vaults as well as at the bottom, in order
to determine the arrangements with regard to the level of each
water-entrance, either of the bottom of the arch, or on the soil of the
street. They advanced with toil. The lanterns pined away in the foul
atmosphere. From time to time, a fainting sewerman was carried out.
At certain points, there were precipices. The soil had given away, the
pavement had crumbled, the sewer had changed into a bottomless well;
they found nothing solid; a man disappeared suddenly; they had great
difficulty in getting him out again. On the advice of Fourcroy, they
lighted large cages filled with tow steeped in resin, from time to time,
in spots which had been sufficiently disinfected. In some places, the
wall was covered with misshapen fungi,--one would have said tumors; the
very stone seemed diseased within this unbreathable atmosphere.

Bruneseau, in his exploration, proceeded down hill. At the point of
separation of the two water-conduits of the Grand-Hurleur, he deciphered
upon a projecting stone the date of 1550; this stone indicated the
limits where Philibert Delorme, charged by Henri II. with visiting the
subterranean drains of Paris, had halted. This stone was the mark of
the sixteenth century on the sewer; Bruneseau found the handiwork of
the seventeenth century once more in the Ponceau drain of the old Rue
Vielle-du-Temple, vaulted between 1600 and 1650; and the handiwork of
the eighteenth in the western section of the collecting canal, walled
and vaulted in 1740. These two vaults, especially the less ancient, that
of 1740, were more cracked and decrepit than the masonry of the belt
sewer, which dated from 1412, an epoch when the brook of fresh water of
Menilmontant was elevated to the dignity of the Grand Sewer of Paris, an
advancement analogous to that of a peasant who should become first valet
de chambre to the King; something like Gros-Jean transformed into Lebel.

Here and there, particularly beneath the Court-House, they thought they
recognized the hollows of ancient dungeons, excavated in the very sewer
itself. Hideous place! An iron neck-collar was hanging in one of these
cells. They walled them all up. Some of their finds were si