Free The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo Page B

now arrived.
    The civilization of the Norman archipelago is moving forward and will not stop. That civilization is autochthonous, which does not prevent it from being hospitable and cosmopolitan. In the seventeenth century it felt the effects of the English revolution, and in the nineteenth century of the French revolution. It has twice felt the profound emotions of independence.
    Besides, all archipelagos are free countries. It is the mysterious work of the sea and the wind.

XIX
    A PLACE OF ASYLUM
    These islands, formerly to be dreaded, have become gentler. Once they were mere reefs: now they are refuges. These places of distress have become havens of rescue. Those who have escaped from disaster emerge here. All those who have suffered shipwreck, whether in a storm or in a revolution, come here. These men, the sailor and the exile, wet with different kinds of foam, dry themselves together in this warm sun. Chateaubriand, 57 young, poor, obscure, and without a country, was sitting on a stone on the old wharf on Guernsey, when a good woman said to him: “What do you want, my friend?” It is very sweet—almost a mysterious relief—for one banished from France to hear in the Channel Islands the language that is civilization itself, the accents of our provinces, the cries to be heard in our ports, the songs of our streets and countryside:
remi
niscitur Argos. 58 Louis XIV thrust into this ancient Norman community a valuable band of good Frenchmen speaking pure French: the revocation of the Edict of Nantes 59 revitalized the French language in the islands.
    Frenchmen who have been exiled from France like to spend their time in this archipelago in the Channel, dreaming, as they walk about amid the rocks, the dreams of men who are waiting for something— drawn by the charm of hearing their native tongue. The marquis de Rivière—the same man to whom Charles X said: “By the way, I forgot to tell you that I had made you a duke”—wept at the sight of the apple trees in Jersey, and preferred Pier Road in St. Helier to London’s Oxford Street. The duc d’Anville, who was a Rohan and a La Rochefoucauld, also lived in Pier Road. One day Monsieur d’Anville, who had an old basset hound, had occasion to consult a doctor in St. Helier about his health and thought that the doctor would be able to do something for his dog. He asked him, therefore, for a prescription for his basset. The doctor gave his advice, and the following day the duke received a bill in the following terms:
    Two consultations:
for the duke, one louis
for his dog, ten louis.
    These islands have offered shelter to men afflicted by destiny. All kinds of misfortunes have passed this way, from Charles II fleeing from Cromwell to the duc de Berry on his way to encounter Louvel. 60 Two thousand years ago Caesar, who was to meet his fate at the hands of Brutus, came here. Since the seventeenth century these islands have had fraternal feelings for the whole world; they glory in hospitality. They have the impartiality of a place of asylum.
    Royalists, they welcome the vanquished republic; Huguenots, they admit the Catholic exile. They even show him the politeness, as we have observed, of hating Voltaire as much as he does. And since, in the view of many people, and particularly of state religions, to hate our enemies is the best way of loving ourselves, Catholicism should be much loved in the Channel Islands. For a newcomer escaped from shipwreck and spending some time here in the course of his unknown destiny, these solitudes sometimes bring on a profound despondency: there is despair in the air. And then suddenly he feels a caress, a passing breath of air that raises his spirits. What is this breath of air? A note, a word, a sigh, nothing. This nothing is enough. Who in this world has not felt the power of this: a nothing!
    Some ten or twelve years ago a Frenchman who had recently landed on Guernsey was wandering along one of the