The Canal Saint-Martin also brings major problems to the engineers. Temporarily dry, we must build a tunnel passing five meters below the bottom of its bed.
But naturally the most serious obstacle is the Seine. Between the Châtelet and the boulevard Saint-Michel, it is necessary to successively cross the two arms of the river (originally the line was to pass under the Institute, but the Immortals complained of this crime of lèse-majesté and Bienvenüe changed its plans) . Three boxes 36. 38 and 43 meters long by 9.60 meters wide and 9 meters high are planned for the large arm; two other boxes 20 meters long (the other dimensions remaining the same) will be used for the small arm.
Each of these five devices has a working chamber » 1.80 meters high. The first three caissons were sunk in the Seine upstream from Pont-au-Change, the other two upstream from Pont Saint-Michel, then were gradually sunk 15 meters below the river. During these long operations, we had to deplore the death of five workers.
Another feat of Bienvenüe which caused a lot of commotion in the press was the work done in front of the Opera. Three lines were to intersect at this location. Everyone knows that the Opera was built above a real pocket of water, which did not facilitate the calculations of the engineers. For a long time a huge hole dishonored the place. Then a gigantic masonry pillar was installed thanks to a metal box sunk 22 meters below the roadway.
While all this work was being done, the engineer Berlier had obtained from the municipal council the concession of another underground route, not included in the Bienvenüe program and linking Montmartre to Montparnasse. This "North-South must also pass below the bed of the Seine.
In other places, the river will be crossed in the open air.
In the meantime, the metro is rolling, its flights are getting longer. The stations are multiplying. Paris is populated by delightful aedicules announcing the entrance to the underground passages. Cast iron balustrades are adorned with long intertwined rods. The "vegetal" style, dear to the architect Guimard, triumphed in these first years of the century.
If some aesthetes are worried, geologists and archaeologists are in euphoria. Wasn't the work carried out for the construction of the metro an unexpected boon for them? Some have been able to study at their ease the geological layers serving as the foundation of our capital, others have made sensational discoveries:sarcophagi, pottery, bas-reliefs, and even... mammoth bones!
However, everything did not always go without dramatic incident.
Sometime in 1902, a journalist met a famous fortune-teller, Mrs. Kaville, and asked her to reveal her future. The clairvoyant assumed a gloomy air and announced a terrible accident for the following year, heaps of corpses. Note that it did not advance much, our globe being fertile in tragic events... Nevertheless, the Parisians did not expect a serious accident to mourn their metro.
A swarm of Apex, small unmanned craft equipped with noisemakers, was then sent to the beaches to complete the work of the dredgers. The latter had already cleared the mines and obstructions of the channels near the beaches. The Apexes, packed with 10 tons of explosives each, were to blow up the last