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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.
There was an enormous rock fish, weighing about three hundred pounds, with hideous face and shiny back, and fins; large ray, and skate, and cuttle fish the octopus, or pieuvre, described with so much exaggeration in Victor Hugo's "Travailleurs de la Mer," to say nothing of the large prawns for which the coast is famous prawns eight or ten inches long, with antennæ of twelve or fourteen inches in length.
And yet his isolation is not to be compared with the isolation of Robinson Crusoe, for example; indeed, no two books could be more instructive to set side by side than LES TRAVAILLEURS and this other of the old days before art had learnt to occupy itself with what lies outside of human will.
Sometimes they are almost lost sight of before the solemn isolation of a man against the sea and sky, as in "Les Travailleurs"; sometimes, as in "Les Misérables," they merely figure for awhile, as a beautiful episode in the epic of oppression; sometimes they are entirely absent, as in "Quatrevingt-treize."
Superstition and social exigency having been thus dealt with in the first two members of the series, it remained for LES TRAVAILLEURS DE LA MER to show man hand to hand with the elements, the last form of external force that is brought against him. And here once more the artistic effect and the moral lesson are worked out together, and are, indeed, one.
Energy, freshness, intelligent and masterly disposition: these are characteristics of Victor Hugo when his alchemy is complete, in certain figures, like Marius and Cosette, in certain scenes, like that in the opening of Les Travailleurs de la Mer, where Déruchette writes the name of Gilliatt in the snow, on Christmas morning; but always there is a certain note of strangeness discernible there, as well.
Sometimes they are almost lost sight of before the solemn isolation of a man against the sea and sky, as in LES TRAVAILLEURS; sometimes, as in LES MISERABLES, they merely figure for awhile, as a beautiful episode in the epic of oppression; sometimes they are entirely absent, as in QUATRE VINGT TREIZE. There is no hero in NOTRE DAME: in LES MISERABLES it is an old man: in L'HOMME QUI RIT it is a monster: in QUATRE VINGT TREIZE it is the Revolution.
And yet his isolation is not to be compared with the isolation of Robinson Crusoe, for example; indeed, no two books could be more instructive to set side by side than "Les Travailleurs" and this other of the old days before art had learnt to occupy itself with what lies outside of human will.
Day-dreams, but too often fulfilled the old story of centralization doing its work; look at the map of Normandy, and see how the 'chemin de fer de l'Ouest' is putting forth its arms, which like the devil-fish, in Victor Hugo's 'Travailleurs de la Mer' will one day draw irresistibly to itself, our fair 'Toiler of the sea.
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.
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