y step that he risked might be his last.
How was he to get out? should he find an issue? should he find it in time? would that colossal subterranean sponge with its stone cavities, allow itself to be penetrated and pierced? should he there encounter some unexpected knot in the darkness? should he arrive at the inextricable and the impassable? would Marius die there of hemorrhage and he of hunger? should they end by both getting lost, and by furnishing two skeletons in a nook of that night?
He did not know. He put all these questions to himself without replying to them. The intestines of Paris form a precipice.
Like the prophet, he was in the belly of the monster.
All at once, he had a surprise.
At the most unforeseen moment, and without having ceased to walk in a straight line, he perceived that he was no longer ascending; the water of the rivulet was beating against his heels, instead of meeting him at his toes. The sewer was now descending.
Why?
Was he about to arrive suddenly at the Seine?
This danger was a great one, but the peril of retreating was still greater.
He continued to advance.
It was not towards the Seine that he was proceeding.
The ridge which the soil of Paris forms on its right bank empties one of its water-sheds into the Seine and the other into the Grand Sewer. The crest of this ridge which determines the division of the waters describes a very capricious line.