Hans of Iceland by Victor Hugo - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)

Victor Hugo, Delphi Classics

• Publisher: Delphi Classics (Parts Edition)
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781788772914
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Classics
• Index: Literature

This eBook features the unabridged text of 'Hans of Iceland by Victor Hugo - Delphi Classics (Illustrated)' from the bestselling edition of 'The Complete Works of Victor Hugo'.

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CHAPTER I THE MORTUARY AND ITS VISITORS.

Did you see it? did you see it? did you see it? Oh! did you see it? Who saw it? Who did see it For mercy’s sake, who saw it?

Sterne: Tristram Shandy.

That’s what comes of falling in love, Neighbor Niels. Poor Guth Stersen would not be stretched out yonder on that great black slab, like a starfish forgotten by the tide, if she had kept her mind on mending her father’s boat and patching his nets. Saint Usuph, the fisher, console our old friend in his affliction!”

“And her lover,” added a shrill, tremulous voice, “ Gill Stadt, that fine young man beside her, would not be there now, if instead of making love to Guth and seeking his luck in those accursed Roeraas mines, he had stayed at home and rocked his little brother’s cradle, under the smoky cross-beams of his mother’s hut.”

Neighbor Niels, whom the first speaker addressed, interrupted: “Your memory is growing old along with yourself. Mother Oily. Gill never had a brother, and that makes poor Widow Stadt’s grief all the harder to bear, for her home is now left utterly desolate; if she looks up to heaven for consolation, she sees nought but her old roof, where still hangs the cradle of her son, grown to be a tall young man, and dead.”

‘‘Poor mother!” replied old Oily, “it was the young man’s own fault. Why should he go to Roeraas to be a miner?”

“I do believe,” said Niels, “that those infernal mines rob us of a man for every escalin’s worth of copper which we get out of them. What do you think, Father Braal? “

Spiagudry accompanied the Bearers, and the Door closed .

“Miners are fools,” replied the fisherman. “ If he would live, the fish should not leave the water. Man should not enter the bowels of the earth.”

“But,” asked a young man in the crowd, “how if Gill Stadt had to work in the mines to win his sweetheart?”

“A man should never risk his life,” interrupted Oily, “ for affections which are far from being worth a life, or filling it. A pretty wedding-bed Gill earned for his Guth! “

“So then that young woman,” inquired a curious bystander, “ drowned herself in despair at the death of this young man? “

“Who says so? “ loudly exclaimed a soldier, pushing his way through the crowd. “ That young girl, whom I knew well, was indeed engaged to marry a young miner who was lately crushed by falling rocks in the underground tunnels of Storwaadsgrube, near Roeraas; but she was also the sweetheart of one of my mates, and as she was going to Munkholm secretly, day before yesterday, to celebrate with her lover the death of her betrothed, her boat capsized on a reef, and she was drowned.”

A confused sound of voices arose: “ Impossible, master soldier,” cried the old women. The young ones were silent; and Neighbor Niels maliciously reminded fisher Braal of his serious statement: “ That ‘s what comes of falling in love!”

The soldier was about to lose his temper with his opponents; he had already called them “ old witches from the cave of Quiragoth,” and they were not disposed to bear so grave an insult patiently, when a sharp and imperious voice, crying “ Silence, silence, you old fools! “ put an end to the dispute. All w r as still, as when the sudden crow of a cock is heard amid the cackling of the hens.

Before relating the rest of the scene, it may be well to describe the spot where it occurred. It was as the reader has doubtless guessed one of those gloomy structures which public pity and social forethought devote to unknown corpses, the last asylum of the dead, whose lives were usually sad ones; where the careless spectator, the surly or kindly observer gather, and friends often meet tearful relatives, whom long and unendurable anxiety has robbed of all but one sad hope. At the period now remote, and in the uncivilized region to which I have carried my reader, there had as yet been no attempt, as in our cities of gold and mud, to make these resting-places into ingeniously forbidding or elegantly funereal edifices. Daylight did not fall through tomb-shaped openings, into artistically sculptured vaults, upon beds which seern as if the guardian of the place were anxious to leave the dead some of the conveniences of life, and the pillow seems arranged for sleep. If the keeper’s door were left ajar, the eye, wearied with gazing upon hideous, naked corpses, had not as now the pleasure of resting upon elegant furniture and happy children. Death was there in all its deformity, iu all its horror; and there was no attempt to deck its fleshless skeleton with ribbons and gewgaws.

The room in which our actors stood was spacious and dark, which made it seem still larger; it was lighted only by a broad, low door opening upon the port of Throndhjem, and a rough hole in the ceiling, through which a dull, white light fell, mingled with rain, hail, or snow, according to the weather, upon the corpses lying directly under it. The room was divided by an iron railing, breast-high, running across it from side to side. The public entered the outer portion through the low door; in the inner part were six long black granite slabs, arranged abreast and parallel to each other. A small side door served to admit the keeper and his assistant to either section, their rooms occupying the rear of the building, close to the water. The miner and his betrothed occupied two granite beds; decomposition had already begun its work upon the young woman’s body, showing itself in large blue and purple spots running along her limbs on the line of the blood-vessels. Gill’s features were stern and set; but his body was so horribly mutilated that it was impossible to judge whether his beauty were really so great as old Oily declared.

It was before these disfigured remains, in the midst of the mute crowd, that the conversation which we have faithfully interpreted, began.

A tall, withered old man, sitting with folded arms and bent head upon a broken stool in the darkest corner of the room, had apparently paid no heed until the moment when he rose suddenly, exclaiming, “ Silence, silence, you old fools! “ and seized the soldier by the arm.

All were hushed; the soldier turned and broke into a burst of laughter at the sight of his strange interrupter, whose pale face, thin greasy locks, long fingers, and complete costume of reindeer leather amply justified this mirthful reception. But a clamor arose from the crowd of women, for a moment confounded: “ It is the keeper of the Spladgest! -That infernal doorkeeper to the dead! -That diabolical Spiagudry!- That accursed sorcerer! “

“Silence, you old fools, silence! If this be the witches’ Sabbath, hasten away and find your broomsticks; if you don’t, they’ll fly off without you. Let this worthy descendant of the god Thor alone.”

Then Spiagudry, striving to assume a gracious expression, addressed the soldier: “ You say, my good fellow, that this wretched woman -”

“Old rascal! “ muttered Oily; “yes, we are all ‘wretched women,’ to him, because our bodies, if they fall into his claws, only bring him thirty escalins’ reward, while he gets forty for the paltry carcass of a man.”

“Silence, old women!” repeated Spiagudry. “ In truth, these daughters of the Devil are like their kettles; when they wax warm, they must needs sing. Tell me, my valiant king of the sword, your comrade, this Guth’s lover, will doubtless kill himself in despair at her loss, won’t he? “

Here burst forth the long-repressed storm. “Do you hear the miscreant, the old Pagan! “ cried twenty shrill, discordant voices. “He would fain see one less man living, for the sake of the forty escalins that a dead body brings him.”

“And what if I would? “ replied the keeper of the Spladgest. “Doesn’t our gracious king and master, Christian V., -may Saint Hospitius bless him!- declare himself the natural guardian of all miners, so that when they die he may enrich his royal treasury with their paltry leavings? “

“You honor the king,” answered fisher Braal, “ by comparing the royal treasury to the strong-box of your charnelhouse, and him to yourself, Neighbor Spiagudry.”

“Neighbor, indeed!” said the keeper, shocked by such familiarity. “Your neighbor! say rather your host! since it may easily chance some day, my dear boatdweller, that I shall have to lend you one of my six stone beds for a week. Besides,” he added, with a laugh, “ if I spoke of that soldier’s death, it was merely from a desire to see the perpetuation of the custom of suicide for the sake of those great and tragic passions which ladies are wont to inspire.”

“Well, you tall corpse and keeper of corpses,” said the soldier, “ what are you after, with your amiable grimace, which looks so much like the last smile of a man who has been hanged? “

“Capital, my valiant fellow! “ replied Spiagudry. “ I always felt that there was more wit beneath the helmet of Constable Thurn, who conquered the Devil with his sword and his tongue, than under the mitre of Bishop Isleif, who wrote the history of Iceland, or the square cap of Professor Shoenning, who described our cathedral.”

“In that case, if you will take my advice, my old bag of leather, you will give up the revenues of the charnelhouse, and go and sell yourself to the viceroy’s museum of curiosities at Bergen. I swear to you, by Belphegor, that they pay their weight in gold there for rare beasts; but say, what do you want with me? “

“When the bodies brought here are found in the water, we have to give half the reward to the fisherman. I was going to ask you, therefore, illustrious heir to Constable Thurn, if you would persuade your unfortunate comrade not to drown himself, but to choose some other mode of death; it can’t matter much to him, and he would not wish to wrong the unhappy Christian who must entertain his corpse, if the loss of Guth should really drive him to that act of despair.”

“You are quite mistaken, my charitable and hospitable friend. My comrade will not have the pleasure of occupying an apartment in your tempting tavern with its six beds. Don’t you suppose he has already consoled himself with another Valkyria for the death of that girl? He had long been tired of your Guth, by my beard!”

At these words, the storm, which Spiagudry had for a moment drawn upon his own head, again burst more furiously than ever upon the luckless soldier.

“What, miserable scamp!” shrieked the old women; “ is that the way you forget us? And yet we love such good-for-nothings! “

The young girls still kept silence. Some of them even thought greatly against their will, of course -that this graceless fellow was very good-looking.

“Oh, ho! “said the soldier; “has the witches’ Sabbath come round again? Beelzebub’s punishment is frightful indeed if he be condemned to hear such choruses once a week! “

No one can sa...

Table of contents

• Title page
• VICTOR HUGO
• COPYRIGHT
• Victor Hugo: Parts Edition
• Parts Edition Contents
• Hans of Iceland
• CONTENTS
• CHAPTER I THE MORTUARY AND ITS VISITORS.
• CHAPTER II. MUNCKHOLM FORTRESS.
• CHAPTER III THE DANDY’S CONFESSIONS.
• CHAPTER IV MASTER AND MAN.
• CHAPTER V THE BITTERNESS OP CAPTIVITY.
• CHAPTER VI GOLD IS OFTEN BOUGHT TOO DEARLY.
• CHAPTER VII CHECKMATED.
• CHAPTER VIII BE FAITHFUL AND SILENT.
• CHAPTER IX THE CODE OF HONOR.
• CHAPTER X TUTOR AND PUPIL.
• CHAPTER XI PLOTS AND COUNTERPLOTS.
• CHAPTER XII SATAN’S ARMORY.
• CHAPTER XIII THE LOVING CUP.
• CHAPTER XIV GREEK MEETS GREEK.
• CHAPTER XV THE CHAPLAIN’S FREE PASS.
• CHAPTER XVI THE WOMAN AND HER MASTER.
• CHAPTER XVII THE RALLYING-CRY.
• CHAPTER XVIII THE PROMISED REWARDS.
• CHAPTER XIX THE GOVERNOR’S PERPLEXITIES.
• CHAPTER XX THE STRAY SHOT STRUCK HOME.
• CHAPTER XXI HIS FEARS WERE MORE THAN REALIZED.
• CHAPTER XXII FRIENDSHIP HAS CLAIMS.
• CHAPTER XXIII SWORD AND GOWN.
• CHAPTER XXIV BEELZEBUB HIMSELF.
• CHAPTER XXV THE DEMON AT BAY.
• CHAPTER XXVI DEVOURED ALIVE.
• CHAPTER XXVII THE RASH INTRUDER.
• CHAPTER XXVIII THE CREDULOUS HUNTER.
• CHAPTER XXIX THE ASTROLOGER’S PAPERS.
• CHAPTER XXX THE CAUSE OF FREEDOM.
• CHAPTER XXXI NO QUARTER GIVEN.
• CHAPTER XXXII THE WILD-CAT IN THE THICKET.
• CHAPTER XXXIII TREACHERY AND VENGEANCE.
• CHAPTER XXXIV THE BLACK STICK IN WAITING.
• CHAPTER XXXV THE FATHER OF THE FAMILY.
• CHAPTER XXXVI THEY JUDGED HIM AS THEMSELVES.
• CHAPTER XXXVII THE VICTIM OF HIS OWN DEVICES.
• CHAPTER XXXVIII TILL DEATH US DOTH SEVER.
• CHAPTER XXXIX THE MONSTER IN HIS TRUE COLORS.
• CHAPTER XL THE MOTLEY DRESS.
• CHAPTER XLI LIKE MEETS LIKE AND SHUDDERS.
• CHAPTER XLII THE SCHEMER OUTWITTED.
• CHAPTER XLIII GHASTLY TROPHIES.
• CHAPTER XLIV BROTHERLY LOVE.
• CHAPTER XLV STRICT JUSTICE.
• CHAPTER XLVI THOUGH LOST TO SIGHT, TO MEMORY DEAR.
• CHAPTER XLVII
• CHAPTER XLVIII.
• CHAPTER XLIX.
• CHAPTER L
• CHAPTER LI
• CONCLUSION.
• The Delphi Classics Catalogue