The great works
that the "merchants' provosts" did in this direction are fast
disappearing. Middle-aged persons alone can remember to have seen the
great holes in the rue Montmartre, rue du Temple, etc., down which the
waters poured. Those terrible open jaws were in the olden time of
immense benefit to Paris. Their place will probably be forever marked
by the sudden rise of the paved roadways at the spots where they
opened,--another archaeological detail which will be quite inexplicable
to the historian two centuries hence. One day, about 1816, a little
girl who was carrying a case of diamonds to an actress at the Ambigu,
for her part as queen, was overtaken by a shower and so nearly washed
down the great drainhole in the rue du Temple that she would have
disappeared had it not been for a passer who heard her cries.
Unluckily, she had let go the diamonds, which were, however, recovered
later at a man-hole. This event made a great noise, and gave rise to
many petitions against these engulfers of water and little girls. They
were singular constructions about five feet high, furnished with iron
railings, more or less movable, which often caused the inundation of
the neighboring cellars, whenever the artificial river produced by
sudden rains was arrested in its course by the filth and refuse
collected about these railings, which the owners of the abutting
houses sometimes forgot to open.
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