sur Victor Hugo, 1905; P.
Stapfers, Victor Hugo a Guernsey, 1905.

PREFACE

Religion, Society, and Nature! these are the three struggles of man.
They constitute at the same time his three needs. He has need of a
faith; hence the temple. He must create; hence the city. He must live;
hence the plough and the ship. But these three solutions comprise three
perpetual conflicts. The mysterious difficulty of life results from all
three. Man strives with obstacles under the form of superstition, under
the form of prejudice, and under the form of the elements. A triple
[Greek: anagke] weighs upon us. There is the fatality of dogmas, the
oppression of human laws, the inexorability of nature. In _Notre Dame de
Paris_ the author denounced the first; in the _Miserables_ he
exemplified the second; in this book he indicates the third. With these
three fatalities mingles that inward fatality--the supreme [Greek:
anagke], the human heart.

HAUTEVILLE HOUSE,
_March, 1866_.

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
TO THE
ROCK OF HOSPITALITY AND LIBERTY
TO THAT PORTION OF OLD NORMAN GROUND
INHABITED BY
THE NOBLE LITTLE NATION OF THE SEA
TO THE ISLAND OF GUERNSEY
SEVERE YET KIND, MY PRESENT ASYLUM
PERHAPS MY TOMB

V.H.

CONTENTS

PART I

SIEUR CLUBIN

Book I.--THE HISTORY OF A BAD REPUTATION

CHAP. PAGE

I. A Word written on a White Page 1

II. The Bu de la Rue 3

III. For your Wife: when you Marry 7

IV. An Unpopular Man 9

V. More Suspicious Facts about Gilliatt 18

VI. The Dutch Sloop 20

VII. A Fit Tenant for a Haunted House 25

VIII. The Gild-Holm-'Ur Seat 27

Book II.--MESS LETHIERRY

I. A Troubled Life, but a Quiet Conscience 30

II. A Certain Predilection 32

III. The Old Sea Language 33

IV. One is Vulnerable where one Loves 35

Book III.--DURANDE AND DERUCHETTE

I. Prattle and Smoke 37

II. The Old Story of Uto