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!"
BOOK THIRD.--MUD BUT THE SOUL
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 the gallery des Martyrs was by means of a cast-iron pipe.