Articles and paragraphs on the same topic, also, not infrequently appeared about that time, in daily and weekly papers; of one of which the following is a portion:—“It is much to be hoped that as time and observation serve, Mr. Lee will give to the public a paper devoted to a close scientific examination of Victor Hugo’s description of the devil-fish, so as to settle to the minutest points wherein it is true to nature, and wherein the novelist has deviated from the severity of fact.” I confess the thought never before occurred to me to dissect the author’s description of the frightful animal he depicts, because I have always regarded it as an accumulation of intentionally fanciful and ingenious exaggerations, which, with great melodramatic power, he succeeded in combining into an embodiment of mysterious horror. But I accepted the suggestion, and have incorporated in a comparative analysis of M. Hugo’s stirring romance, a description of the organization of the octopus or _pieuvre_, and of those of its habits to which he alludes. Other circumstances of its life-history, which did not come within the scope of his work, are treated of in separate chapters. Before critically reviewing his narration of the incidents referred to, it may be desirable to give a brief summary of the plot of the story of which they form a part, and which made the octopus famous. CHAPTER III. “THE TOILERS OF THE SEA.” The scene of “Les Travailleurs de la Mer” is Guernsey, and the two characters brought most prominently forward are Gilliatt and Clubin. Gilliatt was a man not much liked. He avoided company, neither drank, smoked, chewed, nor snuffed; and lived in a house which, if not then haunted, was suspected of having formerly been so. None, however, could deny that he was a thorough seaman, a successful fisherman, a skilful pilot, and an expert swimmer; and subsequent events proved him to possess dauntless courage, pertinacious determination, a soft heart, and chivalrous spirit. Clubin was in every moral quality exactly the reverse. He had the reputation of being a man of severe probity, strictly religious, and of unsurpassable integrity; and thus was appointed master of a little steamer named the “Durande,” which traded between Guernsey and St. Malo, and belonged to a Monsieur Lathierry. But although Clubin had gained the good opinion of his neighbours by his cunning and adroitness, he was a consummate hypocrite, and an unscrupulous scoundrel. A former partner of Lathierry, named Rantaine, had robbed their joint cash-box ten years previously of a hundred thousand francs, fifty thousand of which, of course, belonged to Lathierry. Nothing had been seen or heard of him since he absconded, until one day Clubin caught sight of him in St. Malo, watched him enter the shop of a money-changer, and receive three bank-notes of 1000_l._ each (75,000 francs), and, at once surmising that they were the proceeds of the embezzlement, determined to possess them.