Jersey, the Cæsarea of the Itinerary of Antoninus[137], has remained subject to the Crown of England since the death of Robert, Duke of Normandy[138]; we have often tried to capture it, but always unsuccessfully. The island is a remnant of our early history: the saints coming to Brittany-Armorica from Hibernia and Albion rested at Jersey. St. Hélier[139], a solitary, dwelt in the rocks of Cæsarea; he was butchered by the Vandals. In Jersey, one finds a specimen of the old Normans; it is as though one heard William the Bastard[140] speak, or the author of the _Roman du Rou._ The island is fertile: it has two towns and twelve parishes; it is covered with country-houses and herds of cattle. The ocean wind, which seems to belie its rudeness, gives Jersey exquisite honey, cream of extraordinary sweetness, and butter deep-yellow in colour and violet-scented. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre conjectures that the apple came to us from Jersey; he is mistaken: we have the apple and the pear from Greece, as we owe the peach to Persia, the lemon to Media, the plum to Syria, the cherry to Cerasus, the chestnut to Castanea, the quince to Canea, and the pomegranate to Cyprus. [Sidenote: And Jersey.] I took great pleasure in going out in the early days of May. Spring in Jersey preserves all her youth; she might still be called by her former name of Primavera, a name which, as she grew older, it left to her daughter, the first flower with which it crowns itself. * Here I will copy for you two pages from the Life of the Duc de Berry; it is as though I told you my own: "After twenty-two years of fighting, the brazen barrier with which France was girt about was forced: the hour of the Restoration drew nigh; our Princes left their retreats. Each of them made for a different point of the frontier, like travellers who, at the risk of their lives, seek to penetrate into a country of which marvels are related. Monsieur set out for Switzerland; Monseigneur le Duc d'Angoulême for Spain, and his brother for Jersey. In that island, in which some of the judges of Charles I. died unknown to their fellow-men, Monseigneur le Duc de Berry found French Royalists grown old in exile and forgotten for their virtues, as in former days the English regicides for their crime. He met old priests, henceforth consecrated to solitude; he realized with them the fiction of the poet who makes a Bourbon land on the island of Jersey after a storm. One of these confessors and martyrs might say to the heir of Henry IV., as the hermit of Jersey said to that great king: Loin de la cour alors, dans cette grotte obscure De ma religion je viens pleurer l'injure[141].