The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo Page B

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 Hélier Gosselin, like a good Catholic as he was, had the child thrown back into the flames.
    III
    â€œFOR 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 Sergenté and a furze-brake at La Roque Crespel, near Rocquaine. At that time the house at the Bû 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 rods 72 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 dénerel.” 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