The great collecteur d'Asnières, a sectional view of which under the Rue
Royale, is shown on page 299, is five mètres, sixty centimètres, in
width, and three mètres, forty, in height; the channel for the water in
the centre is three mètres, fifty, in width, and one mètre, thirty-five,
in depth. On each side is a _banquette_, or sidewalk, ninety centimètres
wide. The collecteurs, as well as the smaller sewers of the streets and
houses, are constructed of masonry laid in mortar, and they are lined
with cement which insures their cleanliness and their sonorousness. The
former quality is maintained by an incessant surveillance, an organized
force of nine hundred and thirty-one men being constantly employed, and
an arrangement of fans or wings, mounted either upon the fronts of the
boats or attached to the bottoms of the little trucks which run on rails
along the edges of the canal of the larger sewers. These fans descend
into the canal and sweep all obstructions before them,--the sand from
the street pavements overhead constituting a large portion of this
obstructive material. The siphons are cleansed by an ingenious process
invented by Belgrand and applied by him to that of the Alma,--a large
wooden ball, eighty-five centimètres in diameter, traversing twice a
week each of the two conduits, a mètre in diameter. So thorough is this
policing of the sewers, that it is recorded that the number of heavy
leathern thigh boots furnished the _égoutiers_ is some twelve hundred or
two thousand annually, representing a value of nearly a hundred thousand
francs. One pair of these boots lasts about six months.
An analysis of the air of these sewers gives surprising results. The
proportion of carbonic acid is somewhat greater than in the air of the
streets overhead, that of ammoniacal azote is much more considerable,
and that of bacteria only half as great. Consequently, not only does the
personnel of this underground labyrinth traverse it constantly without
danger, but visitors from the upper world find amusement in exploring
it. Every fortnight, on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month,
the Préfet of the Seine, or the Chief Engineer of the _Service de
l'Assainissement de Paris_, grants permits for these visits to a certain
number of applicants,--the visitors are transported through the
collecteurs of the Châtelet to the Place de la Concorde, under the
Boulevard Sebastopol and the Rue de Rivoli, in little vehicles forming
two trains, drawn each by an electric engine; then from the Concorde to
the Madeleine, under the Rue Royale, in boats drawn by an electric tug.
The trip takes about an hour, and can be made in either direction; the
sewers are open to this invasion from Easter to the end of October,
excepting in case of storms, when the water in the canals is apt to rise
rapidly over the banquettes and drive the workmen to the _regards_ or
places of ascent provided every fifty or a hundred mètres apart. The
danger of asphyxia, which was formerly very serious, is now practically
abolished, the ventilation being assured by numerous openings in the
street gutters under the curb-stones, which are kept free from floating
materials and obstructions by a special corps of égoutiers.
For the _wagonnets de service_ in the larger sewers, an ingenious
arrangement is used,--on the little four-wheeled truck which runs on
rails along the edge of the central canal are laid two more sections of
railroad at right angles, and on these are mounted two more four-wheeled
trucks carrying each a rectangular little tank or receptacle, with a
rounded bottom. The outside rail, at each end, is blocked, so as to keep
these tanks in position while in transit,--when arrived at their
destination, the blocks are removed and the two run off on other rails
to be emptied. The Parisian sewers carry not only the drainage of the
streets and houses, but also all those various underground means of
communication which in other, and less well-ordered, municipalities have
each their own burrowing to do,--at the cost of infinite expense and
confusion. The water-pipes, the telegraphic cables, the telephone wires,
the pneumatic tubes for the postal service, and the piping for the
conveyance of motive power, are all sheltered in these underground
thoroughfares. So complete and well organized, indeed, are these égouts,
that that constant habitant of sewers, the rat, is being driven out of
them,--neither the black rat nor his enemy, the great Norway animal, can
find lodging and refuge in these cement-lined walls, as hard as steel.
The task of the hunter of rodents is greatly facilitated by all these
improved methods.
It is difficult nowadays to conceive the condition of the streets of a
mediæval city, and Paris was no exception. Not only were they very
crooked--each householder building where he chose, with very little
consideration for the general alignment, badly paved or not at all,
unsewered and dark, but they were the receptacles for absolutely all the
refuse of the dwellings. The butcher, the baker, and the
candlestick-maker threw everything out of the windows, and nobody
carried it away. The first vaulted sewer was constructed in the reign of
Charles VI, in the Rue Montmartre, by Hugues Aubriot, _prévôt_ of the
merchants; but the state of the public thoroughfares remained much as it
had been in the preceding century. The houses were built on the level of
the streets, and inundated at every violent shower, the choked-up
gutters refusing to carry off the sudden flood. Even the kings of France
struggled in vain against the universal infection,--"incommoded in their
Hôtels Saint-Pol and des Tourelles, they were constantly protesting to
the municipality of Paris; Louis XII, François I, and Henri II vainly
attempted to secure the removal of the égout Sainte-Catherine; this
unwholesome neighborhood even caused François I to change his property
of Chanteloup for the locality of the Tuileries." In 1473, the Parlement
ordered the Lieutenant Criminel to clear away the filth which obstructed
the entrance to Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet and along the course
formerly traversed by the Bièvre, and three years later a more general
effort at reformation was made. The main streets, the surroundings of
the Palais, were submitted to a sort of system of cleaning, the cost of
which was defrayed by a tax laid upon the inhabitants thus favored. The
aqueduct of Belleville had been constructed in 1244, to supply the
fountain of the monastery of Saint-Martin-des-Champs, and afterward
furnished water to most of the fountains of Paris; in 1457, it had been
repaired by the _prévôt_ of the merchants, and thus supplied a means of
cleansing the streets. In 1265, there was existing a fountain in the
upper part of the Faubourg Saint-Denis, known as the Fontaine
Saint-Lazare, and fed by the aqueduct of Saint-Gervais--from
Romainville, near Vincennes--constructed in the last years of the reign
of Philippe-Auguste. The fountain of the Innocents, that of Maubuée, and
that of the Halles were also watered by this aqueduct of the
Pré-Saint-Gervais. The Cité and the quartier Saint-Jacques were for
centuries the most pestilential quarters of the capital, and, despite
the various measures taken to ameliorate them, it was not till the reign
of Henri IV that the evil was effectively attacked by the widening of
the streets so as to permit the noblesse and the bourgeoisie to traverse
them in carriages.
To such a height had the deposits of refuse outside the city walls
attained, that, in 1525, during the panic that prevailed in Paris at the
news of the captivity of François I, Jean Briçonnet, President of the
Chambre des Comptes, secured the passage of an ordinance directing their
razing, as from their summits an enemy could command the city walls!
During this reign, however, considerable progress was made in cleansing
and embellishing the capital; the king particularly enjoined upon the
municipality the importance of paving and sweeping the streets, and a
royal edict of November, 1539, prescribed minute regulations for the
conduct of the inhabitants and the measures to be taken that would be
considered very satisfactory, if enforced, at the present day. The
paving of the streets, which had been commenced under Philippe-Auguste,
had proceeded so slowly that in 1545 the greater portion of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain was not yet paved, and the Cardinal de Tournon, Abbé of
Saint-Germain-des-Prés, undertook the task. A decree of the court, March
30, 1545, ordered the commencement in the Rue de Seine; but when the
cardinal desired to straighten the street lines also, he encountered a
vigorous opposition on the part of the inhabitants. The Parlement was
obliged to come to his assistance, and a decree of the 21st of the
following October directed that all those who had valid reasons for
opposing this measure should appear by means of a procureur, within the
space of three days, to state them.
Five years later, another public-spirited citizen, Gilles de Froissez,
an iron-master, proposed to bring the water of the Seine to aid in the
great task of cleaning the city, and was instrumental in beginning this
good work. In 1605, still another, François Miron, paid out of his own
pocket for the facing with masonry of the égout de Ponceau from the Rue
Saint-Denis to the Rue Saint-Martin. Various other open sewers were
gradually transformed into covered ones, but under Louis XIV, while the
total length of the first was only two thousand three hundred and
fifty-three mètres, that of the latter, including the long _égout de
ceinture_, or stream of Ménilmontant, was eight thousand and thirty-six.
Marie de Médicis, having begun, in 1613, to plant the trees for the park
of her proposed palace on the site of the old Hôtel du Luxembourg, was
desirous of securing a supply of water for her fountains, and
arrangements were made to divide that which was to be brought from the
source at Rungis by the Aqueduct of Arcueil. The old one built by the
Romans in this locality--whence its name, _Arculi_--had fallen to ruins;
one Hugues Cosnier had engaged, the preceding year, to construct a new
one in three years, which should bring thirty inches of water to the
Faubourg Saint-Germain, eighteen for the palace and twelve for the
inhabitants. The work was carried out by Jacques Debrosse, between 1613
and 1624; and on his handsome, dressed-stone construction there was
erected another in rough stone, less high but twice as long, between
1868 and 1872.
[Illustration: THE PUMPS OF PONT NOTRE-DAME, FROM THE QUAI DE GESVRES,
AS THEY APPEARED IN 1861. THEY WERE DEMOLISHED IN 1866.