The Toilers of the Sea by Victor Hugo

lackey. When someone called at his lodging and asked for the general his landlady pointed to the colonel, saying: “There’s his toady.” Some nuances are almost imperceptible. A countryman named Lefèvre appeared before the registrar for the census. “Is it Lefèvre or Lefebvre?” he was asked. “Do you spell it with a
b
?” “Oh no!” he replied. “I am not a gentleman.”
    On Guernsey the judges wear purple robes. Surprisingly in this old Norman territory, stamped paper is unknown. Legal disputes are carried on using ordinary paper. Parliamentary discussions sometimes become quite lively. In local council meetings you will hear remarks such as these:
    One speaker to another: “You are an impertinent fellow and a rogue.”
    The chairman: “What you are saying is quite off the point.”
    Some of our colloquial Parisian turns of phrase have been imperturbably adopted into the grave language of official business. For example, the case of Dobrée versus Jehan (April 5, 1866) gave rise to a judicial summing-up that said, à propos of the deposition of one Marguerite Jehan: “This witness is completely off her head.” Another unusual use of language: we have in front of us a doctor’s prescription for a purgative: “Take one of these pills this evening and the other tomorrow morning if the first one has not paid off.”

XIII
    LOCAL PECULIARITIES
    Each island has its own coinage, its own patois, its own government, its own prejudices. Jersey is worried about having a French landowner. Suppose he wanted to buy up the whole island! On Jersey foreigners are not permitted to buy land; on Guernsey they may. On the other hand, religious austerity is less on the former island than on the latter; the Jersey Sunday is freer than the Guernsey Sunday. The Bible has greater mandatory force in St. Peter Port than in St. Helier. The purchase of a property on Guernsey is a complicated matter, particularly for an ignorant foreigner, and one of great peril: the buyer gives security on his purchase for twenty years that the commercial and financial situation of the seller shall be the same as it was at the precise moment when the sale took place. Other confusions arise from differences in the coinage and in weights and measures. The shilling, the old French
ascalin
or
chelin,
is worth twenty-five sous in England, twenty-six sous on Jersey, and twenty-four sous on Guernsey. The “Queen’s weight” also has its whims: the Guernsey pound is not the same as the Jersey pound, which is not the same as the English pound. On Guernsey land is measured in
vergées
and
vergées
in
perches.
There are different measures on Jersey. On Guernsey only French money is used, but it is called by English names. A franc is known as a tenpenny piece. The lack of symmetry is carried so far that there are more women than men in the archipelago: six women to five men. Guernsey has had many names, some of them archaeological: to scholars it is known as Granosia, while for loyal citizens it is Little England. And indeed it resembles England in geometrical form; Sark can be seen as its Ireland, though an Ireland off the east coast. In the waters around Guernsey there are two hundred varieties of shellfish and forty species of sponges. For the Romans the island was sacred to Saturn, for the Celts to Gwyn; it did not gain much by the change, for Gwyn, like Saturn, was a devourer of children. It has an old law code dating from 1331 called the Precept of Assize. Jersey for its part has three or four old Norman courts: the Court of Inheritance, which deals with cases concerning the fiefs; the Cour de Catel, a criminal court; the Cour du Billet, a commercial tribunal; and the Saturday Court, a police court. Guernsey exports vinegar, cattle, and fruit, but above all it exports itself: its main trade is in gypsum and granite. Guernsey has 305 uninhabited houses: why? The reason, for