Where banditry once prospered commerce now rules: a superb transformation. It has been the work of centuries, no doubt, but also of men. This magnanimous example is given by a microscopic archipelago. Such little nations as these are the proof of civilization. Let us love them and venerate them. These microcosms reflect on a small scale the great process of development of mankind in all its phases. Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney: once the haunts of animals and bandits, now workshops. Once wild reefs, now ports.
For the observer of the series of transformations that are called history no spectacle is more moving than the sight of these nocturnal sea peoples climbing up slowly and by degrees to the sunlight of civilization. The man of the shadows has turned around and now faces the dawn. Nothing can be greater, nothing more moving. Once a pirate, now a workman; once a savage, now a citizen; once a wolf, now a man. Is he any less daring than he used to be? No: only this daring is heading toward the light. What a magnificent difference between the shipping of the present day--coastal and inland shipping, commercial shipping, honest and fraternal shipping--and the shapeless old dromond, which had for its motto Homo homini monstrum! 68 The barrier has become a bridge; the obstacle has become a help. These people were pirates: now they are pilots. And they are more enterprising and bolder than ever. This country has remained the country of adventure while becoming the country of probity. The lower has been the starting point, the more impressive is the ascent. The droppings of the nest on the eggs in it arouse admiration of the bird's wingspan. We now think indulgently of the piracy formerly practiced in the Norman archipelago. In the presence of all these charming and serene vessels being triumphantly guided through these mazes of waves and reefs by the lenticular beacon and the electric lighthouse, we think, with the satisfied conscience inherent in the progress that has been achieved, of these old wild and furtive seamen who sailed their boats without a compass over dark seas lividly lighted from promontory to promontory, long distances apart, by ancient braziers with flickering flames, tormented in their iron cages by the tremendous winds of the deep.
PART I
SIEUR CLUBIN
BOOK I
THE MAKING OF A BAD REPUTATION
I
A WORD WRITTEN ON A BLANK PAGE
The Christmas of 182-in Guernsey was unusual. On Christmas Day it snowed. In the Channel Islands a winter in which it freezes is memorable, and snow is an event.
On that Christmas morning the road that skirts the sea between St. Peter Port and the Vale was covered in white. It had been snowing from midnight until dawn. About nine o'clock, just after sunrise, since it was not yet time for the Anglicans to go to St. Sampson's Church and the Wesleyans to the Eldad Chapel, the road was practically deserted. In the whole stretch between the first and second Martello towers there were only three people--a child, a man, and a woman. These three, walking at some distance from one another, had apparently no connection with one another. The child, whose age might be about eight, had stopped and was looking curiously at the snow. The man was perhaps a hundred paces behind the woman. Like her, he was making for St. Sampson. Youngish, he looked like a workman or seaman or something of that kind. He was dressed in his workaday clothes, a jacket of coarse brown cloth and trousers with tarpaulin leggings--suggesting that, notwithstanding the holy day, he was not on his way to church or chapel. His thick shoes of rough leather, the soles studded with large nails, left prints on the snow more like the lock of a prison gate than a man's footprint. The woman for her part was evidently dressed for church: she wore a wide padded cloak of black ribbed silk, under which was a smart dress of Irish poplin striped white and pink, and but for her red stockings could have been taken for a Parisienne. She walked with a light and lively step, a gait that had not yet borne the weight of life and that revealed her to be a young girl. She had the fugitive grace of bearing that marks the most delicate of transitions-- adolescence, the mingling of two twilight periods, the first emergence of a woman in the final stage of childhood. The man was paying no attention to her.
Suddenly, near a clump of holm oaks at the corner of a field, at a spot known as the Basses Maisons, she turned back, and the movement caught the man's eye. She stopped, seemed to look at him for a moment, and then bent down, and the man thought he saw her writing something in the snow with her finger. She straightened up and continued on her way, walking more quickly; then turned back again, now laughing, and disappeared off the road to the left into the path lined by hedges that leads to the Ivy Castle. When she turned around for the second time the man recognized Deruchette, a charming local girl.
Feeling no need to hasten his pace, he walked on and in a few moments came to the clump of holm oaks. He was no longer thinking of the girl, and it is possible that if at that moment a porpoise had emerged from the sea or a robin from the bushes he would have continued on his way, with eyes only for the robin or the porpoise. But as chance had it he was looking down, and his glance fell mechanically on the spot where the girl had stopped. There were two small footprints, and beside them he saw the word she had traced in the snow: "Gilliatt."
It was his own name. He was called Gilliatt.
He stood motionless for some time, looking at the name, the little footprints and the snow; then continued thoughtfully on his way.
II
THE BU DE LA RUE69
Gilliatt lived in the parish of St. Sampson. He was not liked in the parish. There were reasons for this.
In the first place, he lived in a "ghostly" or haunted house. Sometimes, on Jersey or Guernsey, either in the country or in the town, in some desolate area or in a populous street, you will come across a house whose entrance is barricaded. The doorway is blocked by a holly bush, and the ground-floor windows are closed by unsightly structures of planks nailed together; while the windows on the upper floors are both closed and open: they are bolted shut, but all the panes are broken. If there is an inner courtyard, it is overgrown by grass and the enclosing wall is crumbling. If there is a garden it is a wilderness of nettles, brambles, and hemlock, home to rare insects. The chimneys are cracked and the roof is falling in. Inside, so far as can be seen, the rooms are dismantled; the woodwork is rotten, the stonework is covered with mold. The wallpaper is peeling off the walls, and you can study old wallpaper styles--the griffins of the Empire, the swags of the Directory, the balusters and cippi of Louis XVI. The dense growth of spiders' webs full of trapped flies points to the deep peace enjoyed by the spiders. Sometimes you will see a broken jar left on a shelf. This is a haunted house--a house to which the Devil comes at night.
A house, like a man, can become a corpse: it can be killed by superstition, and then it becomes a place of dread. Such dead houses are by no means uncommon in the Channel Islands.
Country people and seagoing folk are worried by the Devil. The people of the Channel--the English archipelago and the French coastal regions--have very clear ideas about him. The Devil has agents throughout the world. It is well established that Belphegor is the ambassador of Hell in France, Hutgin in Italy, Belial in Turkey, Thammuz in Spain, Martinet in Switzerland, and Mammon in England. Satan is an emperor like other emperors: Satan Caesar. His household is well staffed: Dagon is controller of the pantry, Succor Benoth chief of the eunuchs, Asmodeus banker of the gaming house, Kobal manager of the theater, Verdelet grand master of ceremonies, Nybbas the court fool. The learned Wierus, a good strygologist and a well-informed demonographer, calls Nybbas the great parodist.
The Norman fishermen of the Channel need to take a great many precautions when they are at sea because of the illusions created by the Devil. It was long believed that Saint Maclou lived on the great square stack of Ortach, in the open sea between Alderney and the Casquets, and in the past many old seamen declared that they had frequently seen him in the distance, sitting on the rock and reading a book. And so seamen sailing past the rock made many genuflections as they passed until the fable was dissipated and gave place to the truth. It was discovered, and is now general
ly known, that the rock was inhabited not by a saint but by a devil. This devil, one Jochmus, had been clever enough to be accepted for several centuries as Saint Maclou. The Church itself, of course, sometimes falls into errors of this kind. The devils Raguhel, Oribel, and Tobiel were saints until 745, when Pope Zacharias, having found them out, ejected them. In order to carry out such expulsions, which are undoubtedly beneficial, it is necessary to know your way about with devils.
The oldest inhabitants of the region say--but facts of this kind belong to the past--that the Catholic population of the Norman archipelago was formerly, in spite of itself, more closely in communication with the Devil than the Huguenot population. Why? We do not know.
What is certain is that this minority was formerly much troubled by the Devil. He had taken a liking to the Catholics and sought to associate with them, which might suggest that the Devil is more Catholic than Protestant. One of his most intolerable familiarities was to pay nocturnal visits to Catholic marital beds at a time when the husband was fast asleep and the wife just falling asleep. This inevitably gave rise to misunderstandings. Patouillet believed that Voltaire was conceived in this way, and this is not at all improbable. This case is well known, and is described in books of exorcisms under the heading "De erroribus nocturnis et de semine diabolorum." The Devil was particularly active at St. Helier toward the end of the last century, probably as a punishment for the crimes of the Revolution. The consequences of the excesses of the Revolution are incalculable. At any rate this possible arrival of the Devil at night, when people cannot see clearly, when they are asleep, embarrassed many orthodox women believers. To give birth to a Voltaire is not a pleasant thought. One woman, worried, consulted her confessor about the best way to clear up misunderstandings of this kind. The confessor replied: "To be sure whether it is the Devil or your husband, feel his forehead, and if you find horns you will be sure. . . ." "Sure of what?" asked the woman.
The house in which Gilliatt lived had been haunted but was so no longer. But this made it all the more suspect. Everyone knows that when a witch or warlock takes up residence in a house the Devil decides that the house is sufficiently well kept and obligingly gives up calling there unless he is summoned, like the doctor.
The house was called the Bu de la Rue. It was situated at the tip of a tongue of land, or rather of rock, that formed a small private anchorage in the creek of Houmet Paradis.70 The water here is deep. The house stood by itself on the point, almost off the island, with just enough land to make a small garden. The garden was sometimes drowned by high tides. Between St. Sampson harbor and the creek of Houmet Paradis is the large hill that is crowned by the complex of towers and ivy known as Vale Castle or the Archangel's Castle, so that the Bu de la Rue could not be seen from St. Sampson.
Witches and warlocks are by no means uncommon on Guernsey. In certain parishes they still practice their profession, and the nineteenth century makes no difference. Some of their practices are decidedly criminal. They boil up gold. They gather herbs at midnight. They cast the evil eye on people's livestock. They are consulted by the local people; they ask to be brought the "water" of sick people in bottles, and are heard to murmur, "The water seems very sad." One day in March 1856 one of them found seven devils in the "water" of a sick person. They are fearsome and are feared. One of them recently bewitched a baker "along with his oven." Another is villainous enough to wafer and seal with great care envelopes "that contain nothing." Another again goes so far as to have three bottles labeled B on a shelf in his house. These monstrous facts are well authenticated. Some witches and warlocks are obliging and, for two or three guineas, will take over your illnesses. Then they writhe about on their bed, groaning. While they are writhing you say: "There! I'm all right again." Others will cure you of all ills by tying a handkerchief around your body: a remedy so simple that it is surprising no one has thought of it before. Last century the Royal Court of Guernsey put them on a pile of faggots and burned them alive. Nowadays it sentences them to eight weeks in prison, four weeks on bread and water alternating with four weeks in solitary confinement. Amant alterna catenae.71
The last witch-burning on Guernsey was in 1747. It took place in one of the squares in the town, the Carrefour du Bordage. Between 1565 and 1700 eleven witches and warlocks were burned in the square. As a rule they confessed their guilt, and were helped to confess by the use of torture. The Carrefour du Bordage also rendered other services to society and religion. Heretics, too, were burned there. In the reign of Mary Tudor, among other Huguenots, a mother and her two daughters were burned. The mother was called Perrotine Massy. One of the daughters was with child and gave birth while at the stake. In the words of the chronicle, "her belly burst open" and from it emerged a living infant. The newborn child rolled out of the fire and was picked up by an onlooker called House. Thereupon Bailiff Helier Gosselin, like a good Catholic as he was, had the child thrown back into the flames.
III
"FOR YOUR WIFE, WHEN YOU MARRY"
Let us return to Gilliatt.
There was a story among the local people that toward the end of the French Revolution a woman with a small child had come to live on Guernsey. She was English--unless perhaps she was French. She had an odd name that in the Guernsey pronunciation and the countryfolk's spelling became Gilliatt. She lived alone with the child, who some said was her nephew, others her son, others again a grandson, still others no relation at all. She had a little money--just enough to live in a poor way. She had bought a piece of grazing land at La Sergente and a furze-brake at La Roque Crespel, near Rocquaine. At that time the house at the Bu de la Rue was haunted. It had been unoccupied for more than thirty years, and it was falling into ruin. The garden had been too frequently invaded by the sea to produce any crops. Apart from the noises that were heard and the lights that were seen at night, the most frightening thing about the house was that, if you left a ball of wool, needles, and a plateful of soup on the chimneypiece at night, in the morning you would find the soup eaten, the plate empty, and a newly knitted pair of mittens. This wretched dwelling, along with its resident demon, was for sale for a few pounds sterling. The woman bought it, evidently tempted by the Devil. Or by the low price.
She not only bought it: she moved into it along with her child; and from that moment the house quieted down. The house has got what it wants, said the local people. The haunting ceased. No cries were now heard at daybreak. No lights were seen apart from the tallow candle that the woman lit in the evening. A witch's candle is the Devil's torch, they say; and with this explanation people were satisfied.
The woman made good use of the few rods72 of land she possessed. She had a good cow, of the kind that produces yellow butter. She grew white beans, cabbages, and Golden Drop potatoes. Like everyone else, she sold "parsnips by the barrel, onions by the hundred, and beans by the denerel."73 She did not go to market, but sold her produce through Guilbert Falliot, at Les Abreveurs Saint-Sampson. Falliot's ledgers show that on one occasion he sold on her behalf a dozen bushels of "three-month" potatoes, the earliest variety.
The house had been patched up--just enough to make it habitable. It was only in very bad weather that rain dripped into the rooms. It consisted of a ground floor and a loft. The ground floor was divided into three rooms, two for sleeping and one for meals. A ladder led up to the loft. The woman did the cooking and taught the child to read. She did not go to any church, which led people to conclude, all things considered, that she must be French.
Not to go "anywhere" was a bad sign.
In short, people did not know what to make of the newcomers.
That she was French is probable. Volcanoes cast out stones, revolutions people. Families are removed to distant places, destinies are transferred to other countries, groups of family and friends are scattered and broken up, and strangers fall from the clouds--some in Germany, others in England, others again in America. They surprise the people of the country. Where have these unknowns come from? They have been spewed
out by the Vesuvius smoking over there. Various names are given to these aerolites, these people who have been expelled and ruined, who have been eliminated by fate: they are called emigres, refugees, adventurers.
If they stay in their new country they are tolerated; if they move on, people are relieved. Sometimes they are completely inoffensive, strangers--at least so far as the women are concerned--to the events that have driven them from home, feeling neither hate nor anger; involuntary projectiles, astonished at their fate. They put down roots again wherever they can. They were doing no harm to anyone and do not understand what has happened to them. I have seen a wretched tuft of grass tossed into the air by the explosion of a mine. The French Revolution cast more people to great distances than any other explosion.
The woman known on Guernsey as "la Gilliatt" was perhaps one such tuft of grass. The woman grew old, the child grew up. They lived alone, avoided by their neighbors. They were sufficient unto themselves. The she-wolf and the cub groom one another. This was another of the formulas that the good feeling of their neighbors applied to them. The child became a youth, the youth became a man, and then-- since the old skins of life must always be sloughed off--the woman died. She left him the field at La Sergente, the furze-brake at La Roque Crespel, the house at the Bu de la Rue, and, in the words of the official inventory, "a hundred golden guineas in the foot of a stocking." The house was adequately furnished with two oak chests, two beds, six chairs, a table, and the necessary domestic utensils. On a shelf were a few books, and in a corner was a very ordinary trunk, which had to be opened for the inventory. The trunk was of tawny leather, ornamented with arabesques of copper nails and pewter stars, and contained a bride's trousseau, new and complete, of fine Dunkirk cloth, chemises, and skirts, together with silk dresses and a paper on which was written, in the dead woman's hand, "For your wife, when you marry."