Three years after Les Misérables, Hugo wrote a fragment called The Sea and the Wind that was initially supposed to have formed part of Toilers of the Sea. In it he wrote: ‘One can hear the sob of creation. The sea is the great mourner. She takes on all sorrows; the ocean laments on behalf of all those who suffer.’ In the same extract he acknowledged the siren call of the sea on a sunny day, when the ‘grandiose hilarity of a clear sky spreads over the sea’, and ‘the whole immensity of the ocean is a caress, and the waves sigh, and the reefs sing and the seaweed kisses the rock’ and so forth. But of course this letter-writer did not throw the bottle into the sea on a balmy summer’s day.

I turned to another of Hugo’s works, The Man Who Laughs. The story is set on the English coast on a stormy January night in 1690. Pirates escaping from a raid abandon their latest victim, a child whom their ‘diabolic surgery has transformed into a monster destined as a fairground amusement’. With their knives they had carved a big happy grin into the child’s face. However, retribution stalks the pirate ship, for she immediately runs into a succession of terrible storms. The ship begins to founder and all hope of escape or rescue is abandoned.

The ship’s doctor advises the rest of the crew: ‘Let us throw our crimes into the sea. They are weighing on us. That is what is sinking the ship. Let us not think about rescue any more, let us think about our salvation . . .’ He writes a note explaining their crime, and the torchlight illuminates the pale faces of the multinational band of sailors. Occasional sobs break the silence. The ship continues to sink.