at he is opposed by a "dark coalition of forces,"
that an "immense animosity" surrounds him; we are the witnesses of the
terrible warfare that he wages with "the silent inclemency of phenomena
going their own way, and the great general law, implacable and passive":
"a conspiracy of the indifferency of things" is against him. There is
not one interest on the reef, but two. Just as we recognise Gilliat for
the hero, we recognise, as implied by this indifferency of things, this
direction of forces to some purpose outside our purposes, yet another
character who may almost take rank as the villain of the novel, and the
two face up to one another blow for blow, feint for feint, until, in the
storm, they fight it epically out, and Gilliat remains the victor;--a
victor, however, who has still to encounter the octopus. I need say
nothing of the gruesome, repulsive excellence of that famous scene; it
will be enough to remind the reader that Gilliat is in pursuit of a crab
when he is himself assaulted by the devil fish, and that this, in its
way, is the last touch to the inner significance of the book; here,
indeed, is the true position of man in the universe.

But in "Les Travailleurs," with all its strength, with all its
eloquence, with all the beauty and fitness of its main situations, we
cannot conceal from ourselves that there is a thread of something that
will not bear calm scrutiny. There is much that is disquieting about the
storm, admirably as it begins. I am very doubtful whether it would be
possible to keep the boat from foundering in such circumstances, by any
amount of breakwater and broken rock. I do not understand the way in
which the waves are spoken of, and prefer just to take it as a loose way
of speaking, and pass on. And lastly, how does it happen that the sea
was quite calm next day? Is this great hurricane a piece of
scene-painting after all? And when we have forgiven Gilliat's prodigies
of strength (although, in soberness, he reminds us more of Porthos in
the "Vicomte de Bragelonne" than is quite desirable), what is to be said
to his suicide, and how are we to condemn in adequate terms that
unprincipled avidity after effect, which tells us that the sloop
disappeared over the horizon, and the head under the water, at one and
the same moment? Monsieur Hugo may say what he will, but we know better;
we know very well that they did not; a thing like that raises up a
despairing spirit of opposition in a man's reade