He extended one arm and then the other, touched the walls on both sides, and perceived that the passage was narrow; he slipped, and thus perceived that the pavement was wet. He cautiously put forward one foot, fearing a hole, a sink, some gulf; he discovered that the paving continued.
A gust of fetidness informed him of the place in which he stood.
After the lapse of a few minutes, he was no longer blind.
A little light fell through the man-hole through which he had descended, and his eyes became accustomed to this cavern.
He began to distinguish something. The passage in which he had burrowed--no other word can better express the situation--was walled in behind him.
It was one of those blind alleys, which the special jargon terms branches. In front of him there was another wall, a wall like night. The light of the air-hole died out ten or twelve paces from the point where Jean Valjean stood, and barely cast a wan pallor on a few metres of the damp walls of the sewer.
Beyond, the opaqueness was massive; to penetrate thither seemed horrible, an entrance into it appeared like an engulfment.
A man could, however, plunge into that wall of fog and it was necessary so to do.