Read Online The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo - Free Book Online Page B

though no one knows what personage it represents and whom it immortalizes. 47 It stands in the center of the main square in St. Helier. An anonymous statue is still a statue: it flatters the self-esteem of the local people and probably celebrates the glory of someone. Nothing emerges more slowly from the earth than a statue, and nothing grows faster. When it is not an oak it is a mushroom. Shakespeare is still waiting for his statue in England; Beccaria is still waiting for his statue in Italy; but it seems that Monsieur Dupin is going to have his in France. 48 It is gratifying to see such public homage being rendered to men who have been an honor to a country, as in London, for example, where emotion, admiration, regret, and the crowds of mourners reached successive crescendos at the funerals of Wellington, Palmerston, and the boxer Tom Sayers.
    Jersey has a Hangman’s Hill, which Guernsey lacks. Sixty years ago a man was hanged on Jersey for taking twelve sous from a drawer— though it must be said that about the same time in England a child of thirteen was hanged for stealing cakes and in France an innocent man, Lesurques, was guillotined. Such are the beauties of the death penalty.
    Nowadays Jersey, more progressive than London, would not tolerate the gallows. The death penalty has been tacitly abolished.
    In prison the inmates’ reading is carefully watched. A prisoner has the right to read only the Bible. In 1830 a Frenchman condemned to death, named Béasse, was allowed to read the tragedies of Voltaire while waiting for the gallows. Such an enormity would not be tolerated nowadays. This Béasse was the second-last man to be hanged on Guernsey. Tapner 49 is, and will be, let us hope, the last.
    Until 1825 the salary of the bailiff of Guernsey was thirty
livres
tournois,
or about fifty francs—the same as in the time of Edward III. Now he gets three hundred pounds sterling. On Jersey the royal court is called the Cohue. A woman who goes to law is called the
actrice.
On Guernsey criminals are sentenced to be flogged; on Jersey the accused is put in an iron cage.
    People laugh at the relics of saints, but venerate Charles II’s old boots, which are respectfully preserved in St. Ouen’s Manor. Tithes are still collected: as you go about the island you will come across the tithe-collectors’ stores.
Jambage
seems to have been abolished, but
poulage
50 is still strictly enforced. The author of these lines pays two hens a year to the queen of England.
    Taxes, curiously, are assessed on the total fortune, actual or surmised, of the taxpayer. This has the disadvantage of not attracting great consumers to the island. Monsieur de Rothschild, if he owned a pretty cottage on Guernsey that had cost some 20,000 francs, would pay an annual 1.5 million francs in tax. It must be added that if he lived there only five months in the year he would pay nothing. It is the sixth month that is to be dreaded.
    The climate is an extended spring. Winter there may be, and of course summer, but not in excess: never Senegal, never Siberia. The Channel Islands are England’s Îles d’Hyères. Albion’s delicate chests are sent there. Such a Guernsey parish as St. Martin’s, for example, ranks as a minor Nice. No Vale of Tempe, no Gémenos, no Val Suzon surpasses the Vallée des Vaux on Jersey or the Vallée des Talbots on Guernsey. On the southern slopes at least nothing can be greener, milder, and fresher than this archipelago.
    High life is possible here; for these small islands have their own great world, their high society. They speak French, as we have noted; the best people say, for example:
“Elle a-z-une rose à son chapeau”
(“She has a rose in her hat”). 51 Apart from that their conversation is charming.
    Jersey admires General Don; Guernsey admires General Doyle. These were governors in the early part of this century. Jersey has a Don Street, Guernsey a Doyle