rthenon,
obliterated, a century ago, a portion of the vaults of Saint-Genevieve
hill. When a sewer was broken in under the pressure of the houses, the
mischief was sometimes betrayed in the street above by a sort of space,
like the teeth of a saw, between the paving-stones; this crevice was
developed in an undulating line throughout the entire length of the
cracked vault, and then, the evil being visible, the remedy could be
promptly applied. It also frequently happened, that the interior ravages
were not revealed by any external scar, and in that case, woe to the
sewermen. When they entered without precaution into the sewer, they were
liable to be lost. Ancient registers make mention of several scavengers
who were buried in fontis in this manner. They give many names; among
others, that of the sewerman who was swallowed up in a quagmire under
the man-hole of the Rue Careme-Prenant, a certain Blaise Poutrain; this
Blaise Poutrain was the brother of Nicholas Poutrain, who was the last
grave-digger of the cemetery called the Charnier des Innocents, in 1785,
the epoch when that cemetery expired.

There was also that young and charming Vicomte d'Escoubleau, of whom we
have just spoken, one of the heroes of the siege of Lerida, where they
delivered the assault in silk stockings, with violins at their head.
D'Escoubleau, surprised one night at his cousin's, the Duchess de
Sourdis', was drowned in a quagmire of the Beautreillis sewer, in which
he had taken refuge in order to escape from the Duke. Madame de Sourdis,
when informed of his death, demanded her smelling-bottle, and forgot to
weep, through sniffling at her salts. In such cases, there is no love
which holds fast; the sewer extinguishes it. Hero refuses to wash the
body of Leander. Thisbe stops her nose in the presence of Pyramus and
says: "Phew!"

CHAPTER VI--THE FONTIS

Jean Valjean found himself in the presence of a fontis.

This sort of quagmire was common at that period in the subsoil of the
Champs-Elysees, difficult to handle in the hydraulic works and a bad
preservative of the subterranean constructions, on account of its
excessive fluidity. This fluidity exceeds even the inconsistency of the
sands of the Quartier Saint-Georges, which could only be conquered by
a stone construction on a concrete foundation, and the clayey strata,
infected with gas, of the Quartier des Martyrs, which are so liquid
that the only way in which a passage was effected under