Those friendly words thawed them.

They set to.

But neither one nor the other was angry. There were three ineffectual

rounds. The Rev. Doctor Gumdraith, one of the forty Fellows of All

Souls’ College, cried,--

“Spirit them up with gin.”

But the two umpires and the two seconds adhered to the rule. Yet it was

exceedingly cold.

First blood was claimed.

They were again set face to face.

They looked at each other, approached, stretched their arms, touched

each other’s fists, and then drew back.

All at once, Helmsgail, the little man, sprang forward. The real fight

had begun.

Phelem-ghe-Madone was struck in the face, between the eyes. His whole

face streamed with blood. The crowd cried,--

“Helmsgail has tapped his claret!”

There was applause. Phelem-ghe-Madone, turning his arms like the sails

of a windmill, struck out at random.

The Honourable Peregrine Bertie said, “Blinded;” but he was not blind

yet.

Then Helmsgail heard on all sides these encouraging words,--

“Bung up his peepers!”

On the whole, the two champions were really well matched; and,

notwithstanding the unfavourable weather, it was seen that the fight

would be a success.

The great giant, Phelem-ghe-Madone, had to bear the inconveniences of

his advantages; he moved heavily. His arms were massive as clubs; but

his chest was a mass. His little opponent ran, struck, sprang, gnashed

his teeth; redoubling vigour by quickness, from knowledge of the

science.

On the one side was the primitive blow of the fist--savage,

uncultivated, in a state of ignorance; on the other side, the civilized

blow of the fist. Helmsgail fought as much with his nerves as with his

muscles, and with as much intention as force. Phelem-ghe-Madone was a

kind of sluggish mauler--somewhat mauled himself, to begin with. It was

art against nature. It was cultivated ferocity against barbarism.

It was clear that the barbarian would be beaten, but not very quickly.

Hence the interest.

A little man against a big one, and the chances are in favour of the

little one. The cat has the best of it with a dog. Goliaths are always

vanquished by Davids.

A hail of exclamations followed the combatants.

“Bravo, Helmsgail! Good! Well done, Highlander! Now, Phelem!”

And the friends of Helmsgail repeated their benevolent exhortation,--

“Bung up his peepers!”

Helmsgail did better. Rapidly bending down and back again, with the

undulation of a serpent, he struck Phelem-ghe-Madone in the sternum. The

Colossus staggered.

“Foul blow!” cried Viscount Barnard.

Phelem-ghe-Madone sank down on the knee of his second, saying,--

“I am beginning to get warm.”

Lord Desertum consulted the umpires, and said,--

“Five minutes before time is called.”

Phelem-ghe-Madone was becoming weaker. Kilter wiped the blood from his

face and the sweat from his body with a flannel, and placed the neck of

a bottle to his mouth. They had come to the eleventh round. Phelem,

besides the scar on his forehead, had his breast disfigured by blows,

his belly swollen, and the fore part of the head scarified. Helmsgail

was untouched.

A kind of tumult arose amongst the gentlemen.

Lord Barnard repeated, “Foul blow.”

“Bets void!” said the Laird of Lamyrbau.

“I claim my stake!” replied Sir Thomas Colpepper.

And the honourable member for the borough of Saint Ives, Sir Bartholomew

Gracedieu, added, “Give me back my five hundred guineas, and I will go.

Stop the fight.”

Phelem arose, staggering like a drunken man, and said,--

“Let us go on fighting, on one condition--that I also shall have the

right to give one foul blow.”

They cried “Agreed!” from all parts of the ring. Helmsgail shrugged his

shoulders. Five minutes elapsed, and they set to again.

The fighting, which was agony to Phelem, was play to Helmsgail. Such are

the triumphs of science.

The little man found means of putting the big one into chancery--that is

to say, Helmsgail suddenly took under his left arm, which was bent like

a steel crescent, the huge head of Phelem-ghe-Madone, and held it there

under his armpits, the neck bent and twisted, whilst Helmsgail’s right

fist fell again and again like a hammer on a nail, only from below and

striking upwards, thus smashing his opponent’s face at his ease. When

Phelem, released at length, lifted his head, he had no longer a face.

That which had been a nose, eyes, and a mouth now looked only like a

black sponge, soaked in blood. He spat, and on the ground lay four of

his teeth.

Then he fell. Kilter received him on his knee.

Helmsgail was hardly touched: he had some insignificant bruises and a

scratch on his collar bone.

No one was cold now. They laid sixteen and a quarter to one on

Helmsgail.

Harry Carleton cried out,--

“It is all over with Phelem-ghe-Madone. I will lay my peerage of

Bella-aqua, and my title of Lord Bellew, against the Archbishop of

Canterbury’s old wig, on Helmsgail.”

“Give me your muzzle,” said Kilter to Phelem-ghe-Madone. And stuffing

the bloody flannel into the bottle, he washed him all over with gin. The

mouth reappeared, and he opened one eyelid. His temples seemed

fractured.

“One round more, my friend,” said Kilter; and he added, “for the honour

of the low town.”

The Welsh and the Irish understand each other, still Phelem made no sign

of having any power of understanding left.

Phelem arose, supported by Kilter. It was the twenty-fifth round. From

the way in which this Cyclops, for he had but one eye, placed himself in

position, it was evident that this was the last round, for no one

doubted his defeat. He placed his guard below his chin, with the

awkwardness of a failing man.

Helmsgail, with a skin hardly sweating, cried out,--

“I’ll back myself, a thousand to one.”

Helmsgail, raising his arm, struck out; and, what was strange, both

fell. A ghastly chuckle was heard. It was Phelem-ghe-Madone’s expression

of delight. While receiving the terrible blow given him by Helmsgail on

the skull, he had given him a foul blow on the navel.

Helmsgail, lying on his back, rattled in his throat.

The spectators looked at him as he lay on the ground, and said, “Paid

back!” All clapped their hands, even those who had lost.

Phelem-ghe-Madone had given foul blow for foul blow, and had only

asserted his right.

They carried Helmsgail off on a hand-barrow. The opinion was that he

would not recover.

Lord Robartes exclaimed, “I win twelve hundred guineas.”

Phelem-ghe-Madone was evidently maimed for life.

As she left, Josiana took the arm of Lord David, an act which was

tolerated amongst people “engaged.” She said to him,--

“It is very fine, but--”

“But what?”

“I thought it would have driven away my spleen. It has not.”

Lord David stopped, looked at Josiana, shut his mouth, and inflated his

cheeks, whilst he nodded his head, which signified attention, and said

to the duchess,--

“For spleen there is but one remedy.”

“What is it?”

“Gwynplaine.”

The duchess asked,--

“And who is Gwynplaine?”

BOOK THE SECOND.

_GWYNPLAINE AND DEA._

CHAPTER I.

WHEREIN WE SEE THE FACE OF HIM OF WHOM WE HAVE HITHERTO SEEN ONLY THE

ACTS.

Nature had been prodigal of her kindness to Gwynplaine. She had bestowed

on him a mouth opening to his ears, ears folding over to his eyes, a

shapeless nose to support the spectacles of the grimace maker, and a

face that no one could look upon without laughing.

We have just said that nature had loaded Gwynplaine with her gifts. But

was it nature? Had she not been assisted?

Two slits for eyes, a hiatus for a mouth, a snub protuberance with two

holes for nostrils, a flattened face, all having for the result an

appearance of laughter; it is certain that nature never produces such

perfection single-handed.

But is laughter a synonym of joy?

If, in the presence of this mountebank--for he was one--the first

impression of gaiety wore off, and the man were observed with attention,

traces of art were to be recognized. Such a face could never have been

created by chance; it must have resulted from intention. Such perfect

completeness is not in nature. Man can do nothing to create beauty, but

everything to produce ugliness. A Hottentot profile cannot be changed

into a Roman outline, but out of a Grecian nose you may make a

Calmuck’s. It only requires to obliterate the root of the nose and to

flatten the nostrils. The dog Latin of the Middle Ages had a reason for

its creation of the verb _denasare_. Had Gwynplaine when a child been

so worthy of attention that his face had been subjected to

transmutation? Why not? Needed there a greater motive than the

speculation of his future exhibition? According to all appearance,

industrious manipulators of children had worked upon his face. It seemed

evident that a mysterious and probably occult science, which was to

surgery what alchemy was to chemistry, had chiselled his flesh,

evidently at a very tender age, and manufactured his countenance with

premeditation. That science, clever with the knife, skilled in obtusions

and ligatures, had enlarged the mouth, cut away the lips, laid bare the

gums, distended the ears, cut the cartilages, displaced the eyelids and

the cheeks, enlarged the zygomatic muscle, pressed the scars and

cicatrices to a level, turned back the skin over the lesions whilst the

face was thus stretched, from all which resulted that powerful and

profound piece of sculpture, the mask, Gwynplaine.

Man is not born thus.

However it may have been, the manipulation of Gwynplaine had succeeded

admirably. Gwynplaine was a gift of Providence to dispel the sadness of

man.

Of what providence? Is there a providence of demons as well as of God?

We put the question without answering it.

Gwynplaine was a mountebank. He showed himself on the platform. No such

effect had ever before been produced. Hypochondriacs were cured by the

sight of him alone. He was avoided by folks in mourning, because they

were compelled to laugh when they saw him, without regard to their

decent gravity. One day the executioner came, and Gwynplaine made him

laugh. Every one who saw Gwynplaine held his sides; he spoke, and they

rolled on the ground. He was removed from sadness as is pole from pole.

Spleen at the one; Gwynplaine at the other.

Thus he rose rapidly in the fair ground and at the cross roads to the

very satisfactory renown of a horrible man.

It was Gwynplaine’s laugh which created the laughter of others, yet he

did not laugh himself. His face laughed; his thoughts did not. The

extraordinary face which chance or a special and weird industry had

fashioned for him, laughed alone. Gwynplaine had nothing to do with it.

The outside did not depend on the interior. The laugh which he had not

placed, himself, on his brow, on his eyelids, on his mouth, he could

not remove. It had been stamped for ever on his face. It was automatic,

and the more irresistible because it seemed petrified. No one could

escape from this rictus. Two convulsions of the face are infectious;

laughing and yawning. By virtue of the mysterious operation to which

Gwynplaine had probably been subjected in his infancy, every part of his

face contributed to that rictus; his whole physiognomy led to that

result, as a wheel centres in the nave. All his emotions, whatever they

might have been, augmented his strange face of joy, or to speak more

correctly, aggravated it. Any astonishment which might seize him, any

suffering which he might feel, any anger which might take possession of

him, any pity which might move him, would only increase this hilarity of

his muscles. If he wept, he laughed; and whatever Gwynplaine was,

whatever he wished to be, whatever he thought, the moment that he raised

his head, the crowd, if crowd there was, had before them one

impersonation: an overwhelming burst of laughter.

It was like a head of Medusa, but Medusa hilarious. All feeling or

thought in the mind of the spectator was suddenly put to flight by the

unexpected apparition, and laughter was inevitable. Antique art formerly

placed on the outsides of the Greek theatre a joyous brazen face, called

comedy. It laughed and occasioned laughter, but remained pensive. All

parody which borders on folly, all irony which borders on wisdom, were

condensed and amalgamated in that face. The burden of care, of

disillusion, anxiety, and grief were expressed in its impassive

countenance, and resulted in a lugubrious sum of mirth. One corner of

the mouth was raised, in mockery of the human race; the other side, in

blasphemy of the gods. Men confronted that model of the ideal sarcasm

and exemplification of the irony which each one possesses within him;

and the crowd, continually renewed round its fixed laugh, died away with

delight before its sepulchral immobility of mirth.

One might almost have said that Gwynplaine was that dark, dead mask of

ancient comedy adjusted to the body of a living man. That infernal head

of implacable hilarity he supported on his neck. What a weight for the

shoulders of a man--an everlasting laugh!

An everlasting laugh!

Let us understand each other; we will explain. The Manichæans believed

the absolute occasionally gives way, and that God Himself sometimes

abdicates for a time. So also of the will. We do not admit that it can

ever be utterly powerless. The whole of existence resembles a letter

modified in the postscript. For Gwynplaine the postscript was this: by

the force of his will, and by concentrating all his attention, and on

condition that no emotion should come to distract and turn away the

fixedness of his effort, he could manage to suspend the everlasting

rictus of his face, and to throw over it a kind of tragic veil, and then

the spectator laughed no longer; he shuddered.

This exertion Gwynplaine scarcely ever made. It was a terrible effort,

and an insupportable tension. Moreover, it happened that on the

slightest distraction, or the slightest emotion, the laugh, driven back

for a moment, returned like a tide with an impulse which was

irresistible in proportion to the force of the adverse emotion.

With this exception, Gwynplaine’s laugh was everlasting.

On seeing Gwynplaine, all laughed. When they had laughed they turned

away their heads. Women especially shrank from him with horror. The man

was frightful. The joyous convulsion of laughter was as a tribute paid;

they submitted to it gladly, but almost mechanically. Besides, when once

the novelty of the laugh had passed over, Gwynplaine was intolerable for

a woman to see, and impossible to contemplate. But he was tall, well

made, and agile, and no way deformed, excepting in his face.

This led to the presumption that Gwynplaine was rather a creation of art

than a work of nature. Gwynplaine, beautiful in figure, had probably

been beautiful in face. At his birth he had no doubt resembled other

infants. They had left the body intact, and retouched only the face.

Gwynplaine had been made to order--at least, that was probable. They had

left him his teeth; teeth are necessary to a laugh. The death’s head

retains them. The operation performed on him must have been frightful.

That he had no remembrance of it was no proof that it had not taken

place. Surgical sculpture of the kind could never have succeeded except

on a very young child, and consequently on one having little

consciousness of what happened to him, and who might easily take a wound

for a sickness. Besides, we must remember that they had in those times

means of putting patients to sleep, and of suppressing all suffering;

only then it was called magic, while now it is called anæsthesia.

Besides this face, those who had brought him up had given him the

resources of a gymnast and an athlete. His articulations usefully

displaced and fashioned to bending the wrong way, had received the

education of a clown, and could, like the hinges of a door, move

backwards and forwards. In appropriating him to the profession of

mountebank nothing had been neglected. His hair had been dyed with ochre

once for all; a secret which has been rediscovered at the present day.

Pretty women use it, and that which was formerly considered ugly is now

considered an embellishment. Gwynplaine had yellow hair. His hair having

probably been dyed with some corrosive preparation, had left it woolly

and rough to the touch. Its yellow bristles, rather a mane than a head

of hair, covered and concealed a lofty brow, evidently made to contain

thought. The operation, whatever it had been, which had deprived his

features of harmony, and put all their flesh into disorder, had had no

effect on the bony structure of his head. The facial angle was powerful

and surprisingly grand. Behind his laugh there was a soul, dreaming, as

all our souls dream.

However, his laugh was to Gwynplaine quite a talent. He could do nothing

with it, so he turned it to account. By means of it he gained his

living.

Gwynplaine, as you have doubtless already guessed, was the child

abandoned one winter evening on the coast of Portland, and received into

a poor caravan at Weymouth.

CHAPTER II.

DEA.

That boy was at this time a man. Fifteen years had elapsed. It was in

1705. Gwynplaine was in his twenty-fifth year.

Ursus had kept the two children with him. They were a group of

wanderers. Ursus and Homo had aged. Ursus had become quite bald. The

wolf was growing gray. The age of wolves is not ascertained like that of

dogs. According to Molière, there are wolves which live to eighty,

amongst others the little koupara, and the rank wolf, the _Canis

nubilus_ of Say.

The little girl found on the dead woman was now a tall creature of

sixteen, with brown hair, slight, fragile, almost trembling from

delicacy, and almost inspiring fear lest she should break; admirably

beautiful, her eyes full of light, yet blind. That fatal winter night

which threw down the beggar woman and her infant in the snow had struck

a double blow. It had killed the mother and blinded the child. Gutta

serena had for ever paralysed the eyes of the girl, now become woman in

her turn. On her face, through which the light of day never passed, the

depressed corners of the mouth indicated the bitterness of the

privation. Her eyes, large and clear, had a strange quality:

extinguished for ever to her, to others they were brilliant. They were

mysterious torches lighting only the outside. They gave light but

possessed it not. These sightless eyes were resplendent. A captive of

shadow, she lighted up the dull place she inhabited. From the depth of

her incurable darkness, from behind the black wall called blindness, she

flung her rays. She saw not the sun without, but her soul was

perceptible from within.

In her dead look there was a celestial earnestness. She was the night,

and from the irremediable darkness with which she was amalgamated she

came out a star.

Ursus, with his mania for Latin names, had christened her Dea. He had

taken his wolf into consultation. He had said to him, “You represent

man, I represent the beasts. We are of the lower world; this little one

shall represent the world on high. Such feebleness is all-powerful. In

this manner the universe shall be complete in our hut in its three

orders--human, animal, and Divine.” The wolf made no objection.

Therefore the foundling was called Dea.

As to Gwynplaine, Ursus had not had the trouble of inventing a name for

him. The morning of the day on which he had realized the disfigurement

of the little boy and the blindness of the infant he had asked him,

“Boy, what is your name?” and the boy had answered, “They call me

Gwynplaine.” “Be Gwynplaine, then,” said Ursus.

Dea assisted Gwynplaine in his performances. If human misery could be

summed up, it might have been summed up in Gwynplaine and Dea. Each

seemed born in a compartment of the sepulchre; Gwynplaine in the

horrible, Dea in the darkness. Their existences were shadowed by two

different kinds of darkness, taken from the two formidable sides of

night. Dea had that shadow in her, Gwynplaine had it on him. There was a

phantom in Dea, a spectre in Gwynplaine. Dea was sunk in the mournful,

Gwynplaine in something worse. There was for Gwynplaine, who could see,

a heartrending possibility that existed not for Dea, who was blind; he

could compare himself with other men. Now, in a situation such as that

of Gwynplaine, admitting that he should seek to examine it, to compare

himself with others was to understand himself no more. To have, like

Dea, empty sight from which the world is absent, is a supreme distress,

yet less than to be an enigma to oneself; to feel that something is

wanting here as well, and that something, oneself; to see the universe

and not to see oneself. Dea had a veil over her, the night; Gwynplaine a

mask, his face. Inexpressible fact, it was by his own flesh that

Gwynplaine was masked! What his visage had been, he knew not. His face

had vanished. They had affixed to him a false self. He had for a face, a

disappearance. His head lived, his face was dead. He never remembered to

have seen it. Mankind was for Gwynplaine, as for Dea, an exterior fact.

It was far-off. She was alone, he was alone. The isolation of Dea was

funereal, she saw nothing; that of Gwynplaine sinister, he saw all

things. For Dea creation never passed the bounds of touch and hearing;

reality was bounded, limited, short, immediately lost. Nothing was

infinite to her but darkness. For Gwynplaine to live was to have the

crowd for ever before him and outside him. Dea was the proscribed from

light, Gwynplaine the banned of life. They were beyond the pale of hope,

and had reached the depth of possible calamity; they had sunk into it,

both of them. An observer who had watched them would have felt his

reverie melt into immeasurable pity. What must they not have suffered!

The decree of misfortune weighed visibly on these human creatures, and

never had fate encompassed two beings who had done nothing to deserve

it, and more clearly turned destiny into torture, and life into hell.

They were in a Paradise.

They were in love.

Gwynplaine adored Dea. Dea idolized Gwynplaine.

“How beautiful you are!” she would say to him.

CHAPTER III.

“OCULOS NON HABET, ET VIDET.”

Only one woman on earth saw Gwynplaine. It was the blind girl. She had

learned what Gwynplaine had done for her, from Ursus, to whom he had

related his rough journey from Portland to Weymouth, and the many

sufferings which he had endured when deserted by the gang. She knew that

when an infant dying upon her dead mother, suckling a corpse, a being

scarcely bigger than herself had taken her up; that this being, exiled,

and, as it were, buried under the refusal of the universe to aid him,

had heard her cry; that all the world being deaf to him, he had not been

deaf to her; that the child, alone, weak, cast off, without

resting-place here below, dragging himself over the waste, exhausted by

fatigue, crushed, had accepted from the hands of night a burden, another

child: that he, who had nothing to expect in that obscure distribution

which we call fate, had charged himself with a destiny; that naked, in

anguish and distress, he had made himself a Providence; that when Heaven

had closed he had opened his heart; that, himself lost, he had saved;

that having neither roof-tree nor shelter, he had been an asylum; that

he had made himself mother and nurse; that he who was alone in the world

had responded to desertion by adoption; that lost in the darkness he had

given an example; that, as if not already sufficiently burdened, he had

added to his load another’s misery; that in this world, which seemed to

contain nothing for him, he had found a duty; that where every one else

would have hesitated, he had advanced; that where every one else would

have drawn back, he consented; that he had put his hand into the jaws of

the grave and drawn out her--Dea. That, himself half naked, he had given

her his rags, because she was cold; that famished, he had thought of

giving her food and drink; that for one little creature, another little

creature had combated death; that he had fought it under every form;

under the form of winter and snow, under the form of solitude, under the

form of terror, under the form of cold, hunger, and thirst, under the

form of whirlwind, and that for her, Dea, this Titan of ten had given

battle to the immensity of night. She knew that as a child he had done

this, and that now as a man, he was strength to her weakness, riches to

her poverty, healing to her sickness, and sight to her blindness.

Through the mist of the unknown by which she felt herself encompassed,

she distinguished clearly his devotion, his abnegation, his courage.

Heroism in immaterial regions has an outline; she distinguished this

sublime outline. In the inexpressible abstraction in which thought lives

unlighted by the sun, Dea perceived this mysterious lineament of virtue.

In the surrounding of dark things put in motion, which was the only

impression made on her by reality; in the uneasy stagnation of a

creature, always passive, yet always on the watch for possible evil; in

the sensation of being ever defenceless, which is the life of the

blind--she felt Gwynplaine above her; Gwynplaine never cold, never

absent, never obscured; Gwynplaine sympathetic, helpful, and

sweet-tempered. Dea quivered with certainty and gratitude, her anxiety

changed into ecstasy, and with her shadowy eyes she contemplated on the

zenith from the depth of her abyss the rich light of his goodness. In

the ideal, kindness is the sun; and Gwynplaine dazzled Dea.

To the crowd, which has too many heads to have a thought, and too many

eyes to have a sight--to the crowd who, superficial themselves, judge

only of the surface, Gwynplaine was a clown, a merry-andrew, a

mountebank, a creature grotesque, a little more and a little less than a

beast. The crowd knew only the face.

For Dea, Gwynplaine was the saviour, who had gathered her into his arms

in the tomb, and borne her out of it; the consoler, who made life

tolerable; the liberator, whose hand, holding her own, guided her

through that labyrinth called blindness. Gwynplaine was her brother,

friend, guide, support; the personification of heavenly power; the

husband, winged and resplendent. Where the multitude saw the monster,

Dea recognized the archangel. It was that Dea, blind, perceived his

soul.

CHAPTER IV.

WELL-MATCHED LOVERS.

Ursus being a philosopher understood. He approved of the fascination of

Dea. He said, The blind see the invisible. He said, Conscience is

vision. Then, looking at Gwynplaine, he murmured, Semi-monster, but

demi-god.

Gwynplaine, on the other hand, was madly in love with Dea.

There is the invisible eye, the spirit, and the visible eye, the pupil.

He saw her with the visible eye. Dea was dazzled by the ideal;

Gwynplaine, by the real. Gwynplaine was not ugly; he was frightful. He

saw his contrast before him: in proportion as he was terrible, Dea was

sweet. He was horror; she was grace. Dea was his dream. She seemed a

vision scarcely embodied. There was in her whole person, in her Grecian

form, in her fine and supple figure, swaying like a reed; in her

shoulders, on which might have been invisible wings; in the modest

curves which indicated her sex, to the soul rather than to the senses;

in her fairness, which amounted almost to transparency; in the august

and reserved serenity of her look, divinely shut out from earth; in the

sacred innocence of her smile--she was almost an angel, and yet just a

woman.

Gwynplaine, we have said, compared himself and compared Dea.

His existence, such as it was, was the result of a double and unheard-of

choice. It was the point of intersection of two rays--one from below and

one from above--a black and a white ray. To the same crumb, perhaps

pecked at at once by the beaks of evil and good, one gave the bite, the

other the kiss. Gwynplaine was this crumb--an atom, wounded and

caressed. Gwynplaine was the product of fatality combined with

Providence. Misfortune had placed its finger on him; happiness as well.

Two extreme destinies composed his strange lot. He had on him an

anathema and a benediction. He was the elect, cursed. Who was he? He

knew not. When he looked at himself, he saw one he knew not; but this

unknown was a monster. Gwynplaine lived as it were beheaded, with a face

which did not belong to him. This face was frightful, so frightful that

it was absurd. It caused as much fear as laughter. It was a

hell-concocted absurdity. It was the shipwreck of a human face into the

mask of an animal. Never had been seen so total an eclipse of humanity

in a human face; never parody more complete; never had apparition more

frightful grinned in nightmare; never had everything repulsive to woman

been more hideously amalgamated in a man. The unfortunate heart, masked

and calumniated by the face, seemed for ever condemned to solitude under

it, as under a tombstone.

Yet no! Where unknown malice had done its worst, invisible goodness had

lent its aid. In the poor fallen one, suddenly raised up, by the side of

the repulsive, it had placed the attractive; on the barren shoal it had

set the loadstone; it had caused a soul to fly with swift wings towards

the deserted one; it had sent the dove to console the creature whom the

thunderbolt had overwhelmed, and had made beauty adore deformity. For

this to be possible it was necessary that beauty should not see the

disfigurement. For this good fortune, misfortune was required.

Providence had made Dea blind.

Gwynplaine vaguely felt himself the object of a redemption. Why had he

been persecuted? He knew not. Why redeemed? He knew not. All he knew was

that a halo had encircled his brand. When Gwynplaine had been old enough

to understand, Ursus had read and explained to him the text of Doctor

Conquest _de Denasatis_, and in another folio, Hugo Plagon, the passage,

_Naves habensmutilas_; but Ursus had prudently abstained from

“hypotheses,” and had been reserved in his opinion of what it might

mean. Suppositions were possible. The probability of violence inflicted

on Gwynplaine when an infant was hinted at, but for Gwynplaine the

result was the only evidence. His destiny was to live under a stigma.

Why this stigma? There was no answer.

Silence and solitude were around Gwynplaine. All was uncertain in the

conjectures which could be fitted to the tragical reality; excepting the

terrible fact, nothing was certain. In his discouragement Dea intervened

a sort of celestial interposition between him and despair. He perceived,

melted and inspirited by the sweetness of the beautiful girl who turned

to him, that, horrible as he was, a beautified wonder affected his

monstrous visage. Having been fashioned to create dread, he was the

object of a miraculous exception, that it was admired and adored in the

ideal by the light; and, monster that he was, he felt himself the

contemplation of a star.

Gwynplaine and Dea were united, and these two suffering hearts adored

each other. One nest and two birds--that was their story. They had

begun to feel a universal law--to please, to seek, and to find each

other.

Thus hatred had made a mistake. The persecutors of Gwynplaine, whoever

they might have been--the deadly enigma, from wherever it came--had

missed their aim. They had intended to drive him to desperation; they

had succeeded in driving him into enchantment. They had affianced him

beforehand to a healing wound. They had predestined him for consolation

by an infliction. The pincers of the executioner had softly

changed into the delicately-moulded hand of a girl. Gwynplaine was

horrible--artificially horrible--made horrible by the hand of man. They

had hoped to exile him for ever: first, from his family, if his family

existed, and then from humanity. When an infant, they had made him a

ruin; of this ruin Nature had repossessed herself, as she does of all

ruins. This solitude Nature had consoled, as she consoles all solitudes.

Nature comes to the succour of the deserted; where all is lacking, she

gives back her whole self. She flourishes and grows green amid ruins;

she has ivy for the stones and love for man.

Profound generosity of the shadows!

CHAPTER V.

THE BLUE SKY THROUGH THE BLACK CLOUD.

Thus lived these unfortunate creatures together--Dea, relying;

Gwynplaine, accepted. These orphans were all in all to each other, the

feeble and the deformed. The widowed were betrothed. An inexpressible

thanksgiving arose out of their distress. They were grateful. To whom?

To the obscure immensity. Be grateful in your own hearts. That suffices.

Thanksgiving has wings, and flies to its right destination. Your prayer

knows its way better than you can.

How many men have believed that they prayed to Jupiter, when they prayed

to Jehovah! How many believers in amulets are listened to by the

Almighty! How many atheists there are who know not that, in the simple

fact of being good and sad, they pray to God!

Gwynplaine and Dea were grateful. Deformity is expulsion. Blindness is a

precipice. The expelled one had been adopted; the precipice was

habitable.

Gwynplaine had seen a brilliant light descending on him, in an

arrangement of destiny which seemed to put, in the perspective of a

dream, a white cloud of beauty having the form of a woman, a radiant

vision in which there was a heart; and the phantom, almost a cloud and

yet a woman, clasped him; and the apparition embraced him; and the heart

desired him. Gwynplaine was no longer deformed. He was beloved. The rose

demanded the caterpillar in marriage, feeling that within the

caterpillar there was a divine butterfly. Gwynplaine the rejected was

chosen. To have one’s desire is everything. Gwynplaine had his, Dea

hers.

The abjection of the disfigured man was exalted and dilated into

intoxication, into delight, into belief; and a hand was stretched out

towards the melancholy hesitation of the blind girl, to guide her in her

darkness.

It was the penetration of two misfortunes into the ideal which absorbed

them. The rejected found a refuge in each other. Two blanks, combining,

filled each other up. They held together by what they lacked: in that in

which one was poor, the other was rich. The misfortune of the one made

the treasure of the other. Had Dea not been blind, would she have chosen

Gwynplaine? Had Gwynplaine not been disfigured, would he have preferred

Dea? She would probably have rejected the deformed, as he would have

passed by the infirm. What happiness for Dea that Gwynplaine was

hideous! What good fortune for Gwynplaine that Dea was blind! Apart from

their providential matching, they were impossible to each other. A

mighty want of each other was at the bottom of their loves, Gwynplaine

saved Dea. Dea saved Gwynplaine. Apposition of misery produced

adherence. It was the embrace of those swallowed in the abyss; none

closer, none more hopeless, none more exquisite.

Gwynplaine had a thought--“What should I be without her?” Dea had a

thought--“What should I be without him?” The exile of each made a

country for both. The two incurable fatalities, the stigmata of

Gwynplaine and the blindness of Dea, joined them together in

contentment. They sufficed to each other. They imagined nothing beyond

each other. To speak to one another was a delight, to approach was

beatitude; by force of reciprocal intuition they became united in the

same reverie, and thought the same thoughts. In Gwynplaine’s tread Dea

believed that she heard the step of one deified. They tightened their

mutual grasp in a sort of sidereal _chiaroscuro_, full of perfumes, of

gleams, of music, of the luminous architecture of dreams. They belonged

to each other; they knew themselves to be for ever united in the same

joy and the same ecstasy; and nothing could be stranger than this

construction of an Eden by two of the damned.

They were inexpressibly happy. In their hell they had created heaven.

Such was thy power, O Love! Dea heard Gwynplaine’s laugh; Gwynplaine saw

Dea’s smile. Thus ideal felicity was found, the perfect joy of life was

realized, the mysterious problem of happiness was solved; and by whom?

By two outcasts.

For Gwynplaine, Dea was splendour. For Dea, Gwynplaine was presence.

Presence is that profound mystery which renders the invisible world

divine, and from which results that other mystery--confidence. In

religions this is the only thing which is irreducible; but this

irreducible thing suffices. The great motive power is not seen; it is

felt.

Gwynplaine was the religion of Dea. Sometimes, lost in her sense of love

towards him, she knelt, like a beautiful priestess before a gnome in a

pagoda, made happy by her adoration.

Imagine to yourself an abyss, and in its centre an oasis of light, and

in this oasis two creatures shut out of life, dazzling each other. No

purity could be compared to their loves. Dea was ignorant what a kiss

might be, though perhaps she desired it; because blindness, especially

in a woman, has its dreams, and though trembling at the approaches of

the unknown, does not fear them all. As to Gwynplaine, his sensitive

youth made him pensive. The more delirious he felt, the more timid he

became. He might have dared anything with this companion of his early

youth, with this creature as innocent of fault as of the light, with

this blind girl who saw but one thing--that she adored him! But he would

have thought it a theft to take what she might have given; so he

resigned himself with a melancholy satisfaction to love angelically, and

the conviction of his deformity resolved itself into a proud purity.

These happy creatures dwelt in the ideal. They were spouses in it at

distances as opposite as the spheres. They exchanged in its firmament

the deep effluvium which is in infinity attraction, and on earth the

sexes. Their kisses were the kisses of souls.

They had always lived a common life. They knew themselves only in each

other’s society. The infancy of Dea had coincided with the youth of

Gwynplaine. They had grown up side by side. For a long time they had

slept in the same bed, for the hut was not a large bedchamber. They lay

on the chest, Ursus on the floor; that was the arrangement. One fine

day, whilst Dea was still very little, Gwynplaine felt himself grown up,

and it was in the youth that shame arose. He said to Ursus, “I will also

sleep on the floor.” And at night he stretched himself, with the old

man, on the bear skin. Then Dea wept. She cried for her bed-fellow; but

Gwynplaine, become restless because he had begun to love, decided to

remain where he was. From that time he always slept by the side of Ursus

on the planks. In the summer, when the nights were fine, he slept

outside with Homo.

When thirteen, Dea had not yet become resigned to the arrangement. Often

in the evening she said, “Gwynplaine, come close to me; that will put me

to sleep.” A man lying by her side was a necessity to her innocent

slumbers.

Nudity is to see that one is naked. She ignored nudity. It was the

ingenuousness of Arcadia or Otaheite. Dea untaught made Gwynplaine wild.

Sometimes it happened that Dea, when almost reaching youth, combed her

long hair as she sat on her bed--her chemise unfastened and falling off

revealed indications of a feminine outline, and a vague commencement of

Eve--and would call Gwynplaine. Gwynplaine blushed, lowered his eyes,

and knew not what to do in presence of this innocent creature.

Stammering, he turned his head, feared, and fled. The Daphnis of

darkness took flight before the Chloe of shadow.

Such was the idyll blooming in a tragedy.

Ursus said to them,--“Old brutes, adore each other!”

CHAPTER VI.

URSUS AS TUTOR, AND URSUS AS GUARDIAN.

Ursus added,--

“Some of these days I will play them a nasty trick. I will marry them.”

Ursus taught Gwynplaine the theory of love. He said to him,--

“Do you know how the Almighty lights the fire called love? He places

the woman underneath, the devil between, and the man at the top. A

match--that is to say, a look--and behold, it is all on fire.”

“A look is unnecessary,” answered Gwynplaine, thinking of Dea.

And Ursus replied,--

“Booby! Do souls require mortal eyes to see each other?”

Ursus was a good fellow at times. Gwynplaine, sometimes madly in love

with Dea, became melancholy, and made use of the presence of Ursus as a

guard on himself. One day Ursus said to him,--

“Bah! do not put yourself out. When in love, the cock shows himself.”

“But the eagle conceals himself,” replied Gwynplaine.

At other times Ursus would say to himself, apart,--

“It is wise to put spokes in the wheels of the Cytherean car. They love

each other too much. This may have its disadvantages. Let us avoid a

fire. Let us moderate these hearts.”

Then Ursus had recourse to warnings of this nature, speaking to

Gwynplaine when Dea slept, and to Dea when Gwynplaine’s back was

turned:--

“Dea, you must not be so fond of Gwynplaine. To live in the life of

another is perilous. Egoism is a good root of happiness. Men escape from

women. And then Gwynplaine might end by becoming infatuated with you.

His success is so great! You have no idea how great his success is!”

“Gwynplaine, disproportions are no good. So much ugliness on one side

and so much beauty on another ought to compel reflection. Temper your

ardour, my boy. Do not become too enthusiastic about Dea. Do you

seriously consider that you are made for her? Just think of your

deformity and her perfection! See the distance between her and yourself.

She has everything, this Dea. What a white skin! What hair! Lips like

strawberries! And her foot! her hand! Those shoulders, with their

exquisite curve! Her expression is sublime. She walks diffusing light;

and in speaking, the grave tone of her voice is charming. But for all

this, to think that she is a woman! She would not be such a fool as to

be an angel. She is absolute beauty. Repeat all this to yourself, to

calm your ardour.”

These speeches redoubled the love of Gwynplaine and Dea, and Ursus was

astonished at his want of success, just as one who should say, “It is

singular that with all the oil I throw on fire I cannot extinguish it.”

Did he, then, desire to extinguish their love, or to cool it even?

Certainly not. He would have been well punished had he succeeded. At the

bottom of his heart this love, which was flame for them and warmth for

him, was his delight.

But it is natural to grate a little against that which charms us; men

call it wisdom.

Ursus had been, in his relations with Gwynplaine and Dea, almost a

father and a mother. Grumbling all the while, he had brought them up;

grumbling all the while, he had nourished them. His adoption of them had

made the hut roll more heavily, and he had been oftener compelled to

harness himself by Homo’s side to help to draw it.

We may observe, however, that after the first few years, when Gwynplaine

was nearly grown up, and Ursus had grown quite old, Gwynplaine had taken

his turn, and drawn Ursus.

Ursus, seeing that Gwynplaine was becoming a man, had cast the horoscope

of his deformity. “_It has made your fortune!_” he had told him.

This family of an old man and two children, with a wolf, had become, as

they wandered, a group more and more intimately united. There errant

life had not hindered education. “To wander is to grow,” Ursus said.

Gwynplaine was evidently made to exhibit at fairs. Ursus had cultivated

in him feats of dexterity, and had encrusted him as much as possible

with all he himself possessed of science and wisdom.

Ursus, contemplating the perplexing mask of Gwynplaine’s face, often

growled,--

“He has begun well.” It was for this reason that he had perfected him

with every ornament of philosophy and wisdom.

He repeated constantly to Gwynplaine,--

“Be a philosopher. To be wise is to be invulnerable. You see what I am,

I have never shed a tears. This is the result of my wisdom. Do you think

that occasion for tears has been wanting, had I felt disposed to weep?”

Ursus, in one of his monologues in the hearing of the wolf, said,--

“I have taught Gwynplaine everything, Latin included. I have taught Dea

nothing, music included.”

He had taught them both to sing. He had himself a pretty talent for

playing on the oaten reed, a little flute of that period. He played on

it agreeably, as also on the _chiffonie_, a sort of beggar’s

hurdy-gurdy, mentioned in the Chronicle of Bertrand Duguesclin as the

“truant instrument,” which started the symphony. These instruments

attracted the crowd. Ursus would show them the chiffonie, and say, “It

is called organistrum in Latin.”

He had taught Dea and Gwynplaine to sing, according to the method of

Orpheus and of Egide Binchois. Frequently he interrupted the lessons

with cries of enthusiasm, such as “Orpheus, musician of Greece!

Binchois, musician of Picardy!”

These branches of careful culture did not occupy the children so as to

prevent their adoring each other. They had mingled their hearts together

as they grew up, as two saplings planted near mingle their branches as

they become trees.

“No matter,” said Ursus. “I will marry them.”

Then he grumbled to himself,--

“They are quite tiresome with their love.”

The past--their little past, at least--had no existence for Dea and

Gwynplaine. They knew only what Ursus had told them of it. They called

Ursus father. The only remembrance which Gwynplaine had of his infancy

was as of a passage of demons over his cradle. He had an impression of

having been trodden in the darkness under deformed feet. Was this

intentional or not? He was ignorant on this point. That which he

remembered clearly and to the slightest detail were his tragical

adventures when deserted at Portland. The finding of Dea made that

dismal night a radiant date for him.

The memory of Dea, even more than that of Gwynplaine, was lost in

clouds. In so young a child all remembrance melts away. She recollected

her mother as something cold. Had she ever seen the sun? Perhaps so. She

made efforts to pierce into the blank which was her past life.

“The sun!--what was it?”

She had some vague memory of a thing luminous and warm, of which

Gwynplaine had taken the place.

They spoke to each other in low tones. It is certain that cooing is the

most important thing in the world. Dea often said to Gwynplaine,--

“Light means that you are speaking.”

Once, no longer containing himself, as he saw through a muslin sleeve

the arm of Dea, Gwynplaine brushed its transparency with his lips--ideal

kiss of a deformed mouth! Dea felt a deep delight; she blushed like a

rose. This kiss from a monster made Aurora gleam on that beautiful brow

full of night. However, Gwynplaine sighed with a kind of terror, and as

the neckerchief of Dea gaped, he could not refrain from looking at the

whiteness visible through that glimpse of Paradise.

Dea pulled up her sleeve, and stretching towards Gwynplaine her naked

arm, said,--

“Again!”

Gwynplaine fled.

The next day the game was renewed, with variations.

It was a heavenly subsidence into that sweet abyss called love.

At such things heaven smiles philosophically.

CHAPTER VII.

BLINDNESS GIVES LESSONS IN CLAIRVOYANCE.

At times Gwynplaine reproached himself. He made his happiness a case of

conscience. He fancied that to allow a woman who could not see him to

love him was to deceive her.

What would she have said could she have suddenly obtained her sight? How

she would have felt repulsed by what had previously attracted her! How

she would have recoiled from her frightful loadstone! What a cry! What

covering of her face! What a flight! A bitter scruple harassed him. He

told himself that such a monster as he had no right to love. He was a

hydra idolized by a star. It was his duty to enlighten the blind star.

One day he said to Dea,--

“You know that I am very ugly.”

“I know that you are sublime,” she answered.

He resumed,--

“When you hear all the world laugh, they laugh at me because I am

horrible.”

“I love you,” said Dea.

After a silence, she added,--

“I was in death; you brought me to life. When you are here, heaven is by

my side. Give me your hand, that I may touch heaven.”

Their hands met and grasped each other. They spoke no more, but were

silent in the plenitude of love.

Ursus, who was crabbed, had overheard this. The next day, when the three

were together, he said,--

“For that matter, Dea is ugly also.”

The word produced no effect. Dea and Gwynplaine were not listening.

Absorbed in each other, they rarely heeded such exclamations of Ursus.

Their depth was a dead loss.

This time, however, the precaution of Ursus, “Dea is also ugly,”

indicated in this learned man a certain knowledge of women. It is

certain that Gwynplaine, in his loyalty, had been guilty of an

imprudence. To have said, _I am ugly_, to any other blind girl than Dea

might have been dangerous. To be blind, and in love, is to be twofold

blind. In such a situation dreams are dreamt. Illusion is the food of

dreams. Take illusion from love, and you take from it its aliment. It is

compounded of every enthusiasm, of both physical and moral admiration.

Moreover, you should never tell a woman a word difficult to understand.

She will dream about it, and she often dreams falsely. An enigma in a

reverie spoils it. The shock caused by the fall of a careless word

displaces that against which it strikes. At times it happens, without

our knowing why, that because we have received the obscure blow of a

chance word the heart empties itself insensibly of love. He who loves

perceives a decline in his happiness. Nothing is to be feared more than

this slow exudation from the fissure in the vase.

Happily, Dea was not formed of such clay. The stuff of which other women

are made had not been used in her construction. She had a rare nature.

The frame, but not the heart, was fragile. A divine perseverance in love

was in the heart of her being.

The whole disturbance which the word used by Gwynplaine had produced in

her ended in her saying one day,--

“To be ugly--what is it? It is to do wrong. Gwynplaine only does good.

He is handsome.”

Then, under the form of interrogation so familiar to children and to

the blind, she resumed,--

“To see--what is it that you call seeing? For my own part, I cannot see;

I know. It seems that _to see_ means to hide.”

“What do you mean?” said Gwynplaine.

Dea answered,--

“To see is a thing which conceals the true.”

“No,” said Gwynplaine.

“But yes,” replied Dea, “since you say you are ugly.”

She reflected a moment, and then said, “Story-teller!”

Gwynplaine felt the joy of having confessed and of not being believed.

Both his conscience and his love were consoled.

Thus they had reached, Dea sixteen, Gwynplaine nearly twenty-five. They

were not, as it would now be expressed, “more advanced” than the first

day. Less even; for it may be remembered that on their wedding night she

was nine months and he ten years old. A sort of holy childhood had

continued in their love. Thus it sometimes happens that the belated

nightingale prolongs her nocturnal song till dawn.

Their caresses went no further than pressing hands, or lips brushing a

naked arm. Soft, half-articulate whispers sufficed them.

Twenty-four and sixteen! So it happened that Ursus, who did not lose

sight of the ill turn he intended to do them, said,--

“One of these days you must choose a religion.”

“Wherefore?” inquired Gwynplaine.

“That you may marry.”

“That is already done,” said Dea.

Dea did not understand that they could be more man and wife than they

were already.

At bottom, this chimerical and virginal content, this innocent union of

souls, this celibacy taken for marriage, was not displeasing to Ursus.

Besides, were they not already married? If the indissoluble existed

anywhere, was it not in their union? Gwynplaine and Dea! They were

creatures worthy of the love they mutually felt, flung by misfortune

into each other’s arms. And as if they were not enough in this first

link, love had survened on misfortune, and had attached them, united

and bound them together. What power could ever break that iron chain,

bound with knots of flowers? They were indeed bound together.

Dea had beauty, Gwynplaine had sight. Each brought a dowry. They were

more than coupled--they were paired: separated solely by the sacred

interposition of innocence.

Though dream as Gwynplaine would, however, and absorb all meaner

passions as he could in the contemplation of Dea and before the tribunal

of conscience, he was a man. Fatal laws are not to be eluded. He

underwent, like everything else in nature, the obscure fermentations

willed by the Creator. At times, therefore, he looked at the women who

were in the crowd, but he immediately felt that the look was a sin, and

hastened to retire, repentant, into his own soul.

Let us add that he met with no encouragement. On the face of every woman

who looked upon him he saw aversion antipathy, repugnance, and

rejection. It was clear that no other than Dea was possible for him.

This aided his repentance.

CHAPTER VIII.

NOT ONLY HAPPINESS, BUT PROSPERITY.

What true things are told in stories! The burnt scar of the invisible

fiend who has touched you is remorse for a wicked thought. In Gwynplaine

evil thoughts never ripened, and he had therefore no remorse. Sometimes

he felt regret.

Vague mists of conscience.

What was this?

Nothing.

Their happiness was complete--so complete that they were no longer even

poor.

From 1680 to 1704 a great change had taken place.

It happened sometimes, in the year 1704, that as night fell on some

little village on the coast, a great, heavy van, drawn by a pair of

stout horses, made its entry. It was like the shell of a vessel

reversed--the keel for a roof, the deck for a floor, placed on four

wheels. The wheels were all of the same size, and high as wagon wheels.

Wheels, pole, and van were all painted green, with a rhythmical

gradation of shades, which ranged from bottle green for the wheels to

apple green for the roofing. This green colour had succeeded in drawing

attention to the carriage, which was known in all the fair grounds as

The Green Box. The Green Box had but two windows, one at each extremity,

and at the back a door with steps to let down. On the roof, from a tube

painted green like the rest, smoke arose. This moving house was always

varnished and washed afresh. In front, on a ledge fastened to the van,

with the window for a door, behind the horses and by the side of an old

man who held the reins and directed the team, two gipsy women, dressed

as goddesses, sounded their trumpets. The astonishment with which the

villagers regarded this machine was overwhelming.

This was the old establishment of Ursus, its proportions augmented by

success, and improved from a wretched booth into a theatre. A kind of

animal, between dog and wolf, was chained under the van. This was Homo.

The old coachman who drove the horses was the philosopher himself.

Whence came this improvement from the miserable hut to the Olympic

caravan?

From this--Gwynplaine had become famous.

It was with a correct scent of what would succeed amongst men that Ursus

had said to Gwynplaine,--

“They made your fortune.”

Ursus, it may be remembered, had made Gwynplaine his pupil. Unknown

people had worked upon his face; he, on the other hand, had worked on

his mind, and behind this well-executed mask he had placed all that he

could of thought. So soon as the growth of the child had rendered him

fitted for it, he had brought him out on the stage--that is, he had

produced him in front of the van.

The effect of his appearance had been surprising. The passers-by were

immediately struck with wonder. Never had anything been seen to be

compared to this extraordinary mimic of laughter. They were ignorant how

the miracle of infectious hilarity had been obtained. Some believed it

to be natural, others declared it to be artificial, and as conjecture

was added to reality, everywhere, at every cross-road on the journey, in

all the grounds of fairs and fêtes, the crowd ran after Gwynplaine.

Thanks to this great attraction, there had come into the poor purse of

the wandering group, first a rain of farthings, then of heavy pennies,

and finally of shillings. The curiosity of one place exhausted, they

passed on to another. Rolling does not enrich a stone but it enriches a

caravan; and year by year, from city to city, with the increased growth

of Gwynplaine’s person and of his ugliness, the fortune predicted by

Ursus had come.

“What a good turn they did you there, my boy!” said Ursus.

This “fortune” had allowed Ursus, who was the administrator of

Gwynplaine’s success, to have the chariot of his dreams

constructed--that is to say, a caravan large enough to carry a theatre,

and to sow science and art in the highways. Moreover, Ursus had been

able to add to the group composed of himself, Homo, Gwynplaine, and Dea,

two horses and two women, who were the goddesses of the troupe, as we

have just said, and its servants. A mythological frontispiece was, in

those days, of service to a caravan of mountebanks.

“We are a wandering temple,” said Ursus.

These two gipsies, picked up by the philosopher from amongst the

vagabondage of cities and suburbs, were ugly and young, and were called,

by order of Ursus, the one Phoebe, and the other Venus.

For these read Fibi and Vinos, that we may conform to English

pronunciation.

Phoebe cooked; Venus scrubbed the temple.

Moreover, on days of performance they dressed Dea.

Mountebanks have their public life as well as princes, and on these

occasions Dea was arrayed, like Fibi and Vinos, in a Florentine

petticoat of flowered stuff, and a woman’s jacket without sleeves,

leaving the arms bare. Ursus and Gwynplaine wore men’s jackets, and,

like sailors on board a man-of-war, great loose trousers. Gwynplaine

had, besides, for his work and for his feats of strength, round his neck

and over his shoulders, an esclavine of leather. He took charge of the

horses. Ursus and Homo took charge of each other.

Dea, being used to the Green Box, came and went in the interior of the

wheeled house, with almost as much ease and certainty as those who saw.

The eye which could penetrate within this structure and its internal

arrangements might have perceived in a corner, fastened to the planks,

and immovable on its four wheels, the old hut of Ursus, placed on

half-pay, allowed to rust, and from thenceforth dispensed the labour of

rolling as Ursus was relieved from the labour of drawing it.

This hut, in a corner at the back, to the right of the door, served as

bedchamber and dressing-room to Ursus and Gwynplaine. It now contained

two beds. In the opposite corner was the kitchen.

The arrangement of a vessel was not more precise and concise than that

of the interior of the Green Box. Everything within it was in its

place--arranged, foreseen, and intended.

The caravan was divided into three compartments, partitioned from each

other. These communicated by open spaces without doors. A piece of stuff

fell over them, and answered the purpose of concealment. The compartment

behind belonged to the men, the compartment in front to the women; the

compartment in the middle, separating the two sexes, was the stage. The

instruments of the orchestra and the properties were kept in the

kitchen. A loft under the arch of the roof contained the scenes, and on

opening a trap-door lamps appeared, producing wonders of light.

Ursus was the poet of these magical representations; he wrote the

pieces. He had a diversity of talents; he was clever at sleight of hand.

Besides the voices he imitated, he produced all sorts of unexpected

things--shocks of light and darkness; spontaneous formations of figures

or words, as he willed, on the partition; vanishing figures in

chiaroscuro; strange things, amidst which he seemed to meditate,

unmindful of the crowd who marvelled at him.

One day Gwynplaine said to him,--

“Father, you look like a sorcerer!”

And Ursus replied,--

“Then I look, perhaps, like what I am.”

The Green Box, built on a clear model of Ursus’s, contained this

refinement of ingenuity--that between the fore and hind wheels the

central panel of the left side turned on hinges by the aid of chains and

pulleys, and could be let down at will like a drawbridge. As it dropped

it set at liberty three legs on hinges, which supported the panel when

let down, and which placed themselves straight on the ground like the

legs of a table, and supported it above the earth like a platform. This

exposed the stage, which was thus enlarged by the platform in front.

This opening looked for all the world like a “mouth of hell,” in the

words of the itinerant Puritan preachers, who turned away from it with

horror. It was, perhaps, for some such pious invention that Solon kicked

out Thespis.

For all that Thespis has lasted much longer than is generally believed.

The travelling theatre is still in existence. It was on those stages on

wheels that, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they performed

in England the ballets and dances of Amner and Pilkington; in France,

the pastorals of Gilbert Colin; in Flanders, at the annual fairs, the

double choruses of Clement, called Non Papa; in Germany, the “Adam and

Eve” of Theiles; and, in Italy, the Venetian exhibitions of Animuccia

and of Cafossis, the “Silvæ” of Gesualdo, the “Prince of Venosa,” the

“Satyr” of Laura Guidiccioni, the “Despair of Philene,” the “Death of

Ugolina,” by Vincent Galileo, father of the astronomer, which Vincent

Galileo sang his own music, and accompanied himself on his _viol de

gamba_; as well as all the first attempts of the Italian opera which,

from 1580, substituted free inspiration for the madrigal style.

The chariot, of the colour of hope, which carried Ursus, Gwynplaine, and

their fortunes, and in front of which Fibi and Vinos trumpeted like

figures of Fame, played its part of this grand Bohemian and literary

brotherhood. Thespis would no more have disowned Ursus than Congrio

would have disowned Gwynplaine.

Arrived at open spaces in towns or villages, Ursus, in the intervals

between the too-tooing of Fibi and Vinos, gave instructive revelations

as to the trumpetings.

“This symphony is Gregorian,” he would exclaim. “Citizens and townsmen,

the Gregorian form of worship, this great progress, is opposed in Italy

to the Ambrosial ritual, and in Spain to the Mozarabic ceremonial, and

has achieved its triumph over them with difficulty.”

After which the Green Box drew up in some place chosen by Ursus, and

evening having fallen, and the panel stage having been let down, the

theatre opened, and the performance began.

The scene of the Green Box represented a landscape painted by Ursus; and

as he did not know how to paint, it represented a cavern just as well as

a landscape. The curtain, which we call drop nowadays, was a checked

silk, with squares of contrasted colours.

The public stood without, in the street, in the fair, forming a

semicircle round the stage, exposed to the sun and the showers; an

arrangement which made rain less desirable for theatres in those days

than now. When they could, they acted in an inn yard, on which occasions

the windows of the different stories made rows of boxes for the

spectators. The theatre was thus more enclosed, and the audience a more

paying one. Ursus was in everything--in the piece, in the company, in

the kitchen, in the orchestra. Vinos beat the drum, and handled the

sticks with great dexterity. Fibi played on the _morache_, a kind of

guitar. The wolf had been promoted to be a utility gentleman, and

played, as occasion required, his little parts. Often when they appeared

side by side on the stage--Ursus in his tightly-laced bear’s skin, Homo

with his wolf’s skin fitting still better--no one could tell which was

the beast. This flattered Ursus.

CHAPTER IX.

ABSURDITIES WHICH FOLKS WITHOUT TASTE CALL POETRY.

The pieces written by Ursus were interludes--a kind of composition out

of fashion nowadays. One of these pieces, which has not come down to us,

was entitled “Ursus Rursus.” It is probable that he played the principal

part himself. A pretended exit, followed by a reappearance, was

apparently its praiseworthy and sober subject. The titles of the

interludes of Ursus were sometimes Latin, as we have seen, and the

poetry frequently Spanish. The Spanish verses written by Ursus were

rhymed, as was nearly all the Castilian poetry of that period. This did

not puzzle the people. Spanish was then a familiar language; and the

English sailors spoke Castilian even as the Roman sailors spoke

Carthaginian (see Plautus). Moreover, at a theatrical representation, as

at mass, Latin, or any other language unknown to the audience, is by no

means a subject of care with them. They get out of the dilemma by

adapting to the sounds familiar words. Our old Gallic France was

particularly prone to this manner of being devout. At church, under

cover of an _Immolatus_, the faithful chanted, “I will make merry;” and

under a _Sanctus_, “Kiss me, sweet.”

The Council of Trent was required to put an end to these familiarities.

Ursus had composed expressly for Gwynplaine an interlude, with which he

was well pleased. It was his best work. He had thrown his whole soul

into it. To give the sum of all one’s talents in the production is the

greatest triumph that any one can achieve. The toad which produces a

toad achieves a grand success. You doubt it? Try, then, to do as much.

Ursus had carefully polished this interlude. This bear’s cub was

entitled “Chaos Vanquished.” Here it was:--A night scene. When the

curtain drew up, the crowd, massed around the Green Box, saw nothing but

blackness. In this blackness three confused forms moved in the reptile

state--wolf, a bear, and a man. The wolf acted the wolf; Ursus, the

bear; Gwynplaine, the man. The wolf and the bear represented the

ferocious forces of Nature--unreasoning hunger and savage ignorance.

Both rushed on Gwynplaine. It was chaos combating man. No face could be

distinguished. Gwynplaine fought infolded, in a winding-sheet, and his

face was covered by his thickly-falling locks. All else was shadow. The

bear growled, the wolf gnashed his teeth, the man cried out. The man was

down; the beasts overwhelmed him. He cried for aid and succour; he

hurled to the unknown an agonized appeal. He gave a death-rattle. To

witness this agony of the prostrate man, now scarcely distinguishable

from the brutes, was appalling. The crowd looked on breathless; in one

minute more the wild beasts would triumph, and chaos reabsorb man. A

struggle--cries--howlings; then, all at once, silence.

A song in the shadows. A breath had passed, and they heard a voice.

Mysterious music floated, accompanying this chant of the invisible; and

suddenly, none knowing whence or how, a white apparition arose. This

apparition was a light; this light was a woman; this woman was a spirit.

Dea--calm, fair, beautiful, formidable in her serenity and

sweetness--appeared in the centre of a luminous mist. A profile of

brightness in a dawn! She was a voice--a voice light, deep,

indescribable. She sang in the new-born light--she, invisible, made

visible. They thought that they heard the hymn of an angel or the song

of a bird. At this apparition the man, starting up in his ecstasy,

struck the beasts with his fists, and overthrew them.

Then the vision, gliding along in a manner difficult to understand, and

therefore the more admired, sang these words in Spanish sufficiently

pure for the English sailors who were present:--

“Ora! llora!

De palabra

Nace razon.

De luz el son.”[13]

Then looking down, as if she saw a gulf beneath, she went on,--

“Noche, quita te de alli!

El alba canta hallali.”[14]

As she sang, the man raised himself by degrees; instead of lying he was

now kneeling, his hands elevated towards the vision, his knees resting

on the beasts, which lay motionless, and as if thunder-stricken.

She continued, turning towards him,--

“Es menester a cielos ir,

Y tu que llorabas reir.”[15]

And approaching him with the majesty of a star, she added,--

“Gebra barzon;

Deja, monstruo,

A tu negro

Caparazon.”[16]

And she put hot hand on his brow. Then another voice arose, deeper, and

consequently still sweeter--a voice broken and enwrapt with a gravity

both tender and wild. It was the human chant responding to the chant of

the stars. Gwynplaine, still in obscurity, his head under Dea’s hand,

and kneeling on the vanquished bear and wolf, sang,--

“O ven! ama!

Eres alma,

Soy corazon.”[17]

And suddenly from the shadow a ray of light fell full upon Gwynplaine.

Then, through the darkness, was the monster full exposed.

To describe the commotion of the crowd is impossible.

A sun of laughter rising, such was the effect. Laughter springs from

unexpected causes, and nothing could be more unexpected than this

termination. Never was sensation comparable to that produced by the ray

of light striking on that mask, at once ludicrous and terrible. They

laughed all around his laugh. Everywhere--above, below, behind, before,

at the uttermost distance; men, women, old gray-heads, rosy-faced

children; the good, the wicked, the gay, the sad, everybody. And even in

the streets, the passers-by who could see nothing, hearing the laughter,

laughed also. The laughter ended in clapping of hands and stamping of

feet. The curtain dropped: Gwynplaine was recalled with frenzy. Hence an

immense success. Have you seen “Chaos Vanquished?” Gwynplaine was run

after. The listless came to laugh, the melancholy came to laugh, evil

consciences came to laugh--a laugh so irresistible that it seemed almost

an epidemic. But there is a pestilence from which men do not fly, and

that is the contagion of joy. The success, it must be admitted, did not

rise higher than the populace. A great crowd means a crowd of nobodies.

“Chaos Vanquished” could be seen for a penny. Fashionable people never

go where the price of admission is a penny.

Ursus thought a good deal of his work, which he had brooded over for a

long time. “It is in the style of one Shakespeare,” he said modestly.

The juxtaposition of Dea added to the indescribable effect produced by

Gwynplaine. Her white face by the side of the gnome represented what

might have been called divine astonishment. The audience regarded Dea

with a sort of mysterious anxiety. She had in her aspect the dignity of

a virgin and of a priestess, not knowing man and knowing God. They saw

that she was blind, and felt that she could see. She seemed to stand on

the threshold of the supernatural. The light that beamed on her seemed

half earthly and half heavenly. She had come to work on earth, and to

work as heaven works, in the radiance of morning. Finding a hydra, she

formed a soul. She seemed like a creative power, satisfied but

astonished at the result of her creation; and the audience fancied that

they could see in the divine surprise of that face desire of the cause

and wonder at the result. They felt that she loved this monster. Did she

know that he was one? Yes; since she touched him. No; since she

accepted him. This depth of night and this glory of day united, formed

in the mind of the spectator a chiaroscuro in which appeared endless

perspectives. How much divinity exists in the germ, in what manner the

penetration of the soul into matter is accomplished, how the solar ray

is an umbilical cord, how the disfigured is transfigured, how the

deformed becomes heavenly--all these glimpses of mysteries added an

almost cosmical emotion to the convulsive hilarity produced by

Gwynplaine. Without going too deep--for spectators do not like the

fatigue of seeking below the surface--something more was understood than

was perceived. And this strange spectacle had the transparency of an

avatar.

As to Dea, what she felt cannot be expressed by human words. She knew

that she was in the midst of a crowd, and knew not what a crowd was. She

heard a murmur, that was all. For her the crowd was but a breath.

Generations are passing breaths. Man respires, aspires, and expires. In

that crowd Dea felt herself alone, and shuddering as one hanging over a

precipice. Suddenly, in this trouble of innocence in distress, prompt to

accuse the unknown, in her dread of a possible fall, Dea, serene

notwithstanding, and superior to the vague agonies of peril, but

inwardly shuddering at her isolation, found confidence and support. She

had seized her thread of safety in the universe of shadows; she put her

hand on the powerful head of Gwynplaine.

Joy unspeakable! she placed her rosy fingers on his forest of crisp

hair. Wool when touched gives an impression of softness. Dea touched a

lamb which she knew to be a lion. Her whole heart poured out an

ineffable love. She felt out of danger--she had found her saviour. The

public believed that they saw the contrary. To the spectators the being

loved was Gwynplaine, and the saviour was Dea. What matters? thought

Ursus, to whom the heart of Dea was visible. And Dea, reassured,

consoled and delighted, adored the angel whilst the people contemplated

the monster, and endured, fascinated herself as well, though in the

opposite sense, that dread Promethean laugh.

True love is never weary. Being all soul it cannot cool. A brazier comes

to be full of cinders; not so a star. Her exquisite impressions were

renewed every evening for Dea, and she was ready to weep with tenderness

whilst the audience was in convulsions of laughter. Those around her

were but joyful; she was happy.

The sensation of gaiety due to the sudden shock caused by the rictus of

Gwynplaine was evidently not intended by Ursus. He would have preferred

more smiles and less laughter, and more of a literary triumph. But

success consoles. He reconciled himself every evening to his excessive

triumph, as he counted how many shillings the piles of farthings made,

and how many pounds the piles of shillings; and besides, he said, after

all, when the laugh had passed, “Chaos Vanquished” would be found in the

depths of their minds, and something of it would remain there.

Perhaps he was not altogether wrong: the foundations of a work settle

down in the mind of the public. The truth is, that the populace,

attentive to the wolf, the bear, to the man, then to the music, to the

howlings governed by harmony, to the night dissipated by dawn, to the

chant releasing the light, accepted with a confused, dull sympathy, and

with a certain emotional respect, the dramatic poem of “Chaos

Vanquished,” the victory of spirit over matter, ending with the joy of

man.

Such were the vulgar pleasures of the people.

They sufficed them. The people had not the means of going to the noble

matches of the gentry, and could not, like lords and gentlemen, bet a

thousand guineas on Helmsgail against Phelem-ghe-madone.

CHAPTER X.

AN OUTSIDER’S VIEW OF MEN AND THINGS.

Man has a notion of revenging himself on that which pleases him. Hence

the contempt felt for the comedian.

This being charms me, diverts, distracts, teaches, enchants, consoles

me; flings me into an ideal world, is agreeable and useful to me. What

evil can I do him in return? Humiliate him. Disdain is a blow from afar.

Let us strike the blow. He pleases me, therefore he is vile. He serves

me, therefore I hate him. Where can I find a stone to throw at him?

Priest, give me yours. Philosopher, give me yours. Bossuet,

excommunicate him. Rousseau, insult him. Orator, spit the pebbles from

your mouth at him. Bear, fling your stone. Let us cast stones at the

tree, hit the fruit and eat it. “Bravo!” and “Down with him!” To repeat

poetry is to be infected with the plague. Wretched playactor, we will

put him in the pillory for his success. Let him follow up his triumph

with our hisses. Let him collect a crowd and create a solitude. Thus it

is that the wealthy, termed the higher classes, have invented for the

actor that form of isolation, applause.

The crowd is less brutal. They neither hated nor despised Gwynplaine.

Only the meanest calker of the meanest crew of the meanest merchantman,

anchored in the meanest English seaport, considered himself immeasurably

superior to this amuser of the “scum,” and believed that a calker is as

superior to an actor as a lord is to a calker.

Gwynplaine was, therefore, like all comedians, applauded and kept at a

distance. Truly, all success in this world is a crime, and must be

expiated. He who obtains the medal has to take its reverse side as well.

For Gwynplaine there was no reverse. In this sense, both sides of his

medal pleased him. He was satisfied with the applause, and content with

the isolation. In applause he was rich, in isolation happy.

To be rich in his low estate means to be no longer wretchedly poor--to

have neither holes in his clothes, nor cold at his hearth, nor emptiness

in his stomach. It is to eat when hungry and drink when thirsty. It is

to have everything necessary, including a penny for a beggar. This

indigent wealth, enough for liberty, was possessed by Gwynplaine. So far

as his soul was concerned, he was opulent. He had love. What more could

he want? Nothing.

You may think that had the offer been made to him to remove his

deformity he would have grasped at it. Yet he would have refused it

emphatically. What! to throw off his mask and have his former face

restored; to be the creature he had perchance been created, handsome and

charming? No, he would never have consented to it. For what would he

have to support Dea? What would have become of that poor child, the

sweet blind girl who loved him? Without his rictus, which made him a

clown without parallel, he would have been a mountebank, like any other;

a common athlete, a picker up of pence from the chinks in the pavement,

and Dea would perhaps not have had bread every day. It was with deep and

tender pride that he felt himself the protector of the helpless and

heavenly creature. Night, solitude, nakedness, weakness, ignorance,

hunger, and thirst--seven yawning jaws of misery--were raised around

her, and he was the St. George fighting the dragon. He triumphed over

poverty. How? By his deformity. By his deformity he was useful, helpful,

victorious, great. He had but to show himself, and money poured in. He

was a master of crowds, the sovereign of the mob. He could do everything

for Dea. Her wants he foresaw; her desires, her tastes, her fancies, in

the limited sphere in which wishes are possible to the blind, he

fulfilled. Gwynplaine and Dea were, as we have already shown, Providence

to each other. He felt himself raised on her wings; she felt herself

carried in his arms. To protect the being who loves you, to give what

she requires to her who shines on you as your star, can anything be

sweeter? Gwynplaine possessed this supreme happiness, and he owed it to

his deformity. His deformity had raised him above all. By it he had

gained the means of life for himself and others; by it he had gained

independence, liberty, celebrity, internal satisfaction and pride. In

his deformity he was inaccessible. The Fates could do nothing beyond

this blow in which they had spent their whole force, and which he had

turned into a triumph. This lowest depth of misfortune had become the

summit of Elysium. Gwynplaine was imprisoned in his deformity, but with

Dea. And this was, as we have already said, to live in a dungeon of

paradise. A wall stood between them and the living world. So much the

better. This wall protected as well as enclosed them. What could affect

Dea, what could affect Gwynplaine, with such a fortress around them? To

take from him his success was impossible. They would have had to deprive

him of his face. Take from him his love. Impossible. Dea could not see

him. The blindness of Dea was divinely incurable. What harm did his

deformity do Gwynplaine? None. What advantage did it give him? Every

advantage. He was beloved, notwithstanding its horror, and perhaps for

that very cause. Infirmity and deformity had by instinct been drawn

towards and coupled with each other. To be beloved, is not that

everything? Gwynplaine thought of his disfigurement only with gratitude.

He was blessed in the stigma. With joy he felt that it was irremediable

and eternal. What a blessing that it was so! While there were highways

and fairgrounds, and journeys to take, the people below and the sky

above, they would be sure to live, Dea would want nothing, and they

should have love. Gwynplaine would not have changed faces with Apollo.

To be a monster was his form of happiness.

Thus, as we said before, destiny had given him all, even to overflowing.

He who had been rejected had been preferred.

He was so happy that he felt compassion for the men around him. He

pitied the rest of the world. It was, besides, his instinct to look

about him, because no one is always consistent, and a man’s nature is

not always theoretic; he was delighted to live within an enclosure, but

from time to time he lifted his head above the wall. Then he retreated

again with more joy into his loneliness with Dea, having drawn his

comparisons. What did he see around him?

What were those living creatures of which his wandering life showed him

so many specimens, changed every day? Always new crowds, always the same

multitude, ever new faces, ever the same miseries. A jumble of ruins.

Every evening every phase of social misfortune came and encircled his

happiness.

The Green Box was popular.

Low prices attract the low classes. Those who came were the weak, the

poor, the little. They rushed to Gwynplaine as they rushed to gin. They

came to buy a pennyworth of forgetfulness. From the height of his

platform Gwynplaine passed those wretched people in review. His spirit

was enwrapt in the contemplation of every succeeding apparition of

widespread misery. The physiognomy of man is modelled by conscience, and

by the tenor of life, and is the result of a crowd of mysterious

excavations. There was never a suffering, not an anger, not a shame, not

a despair, of which Gwynplaine did not see the wrinkle. The mouths of

those children had not eaten. That man was a father, that woman a

mother, and behind them their families might be guessed to be on the

road to ruin. There was a face already marked by vice, on the threshold

of crime, and the reasons were plain--ignorance and indigence. Another

showed the stamp of original goodness, obliterated by social pressure,

and turned to hate. On the face of an old woman he saw starvation; on

that of a girl, prostitution. The same fact, and although the girl had

the resource of her youth, all the sadder for that! In the crowd were

arms without tools; the workers asked only for work, but the work was

wanting. Sometimes a soldier came and seated himself by the workmen,

sometimes a wounded pensioner; and Gwynplaine saw the spectre of war.

Here Gwynplaine read want of work; there man-farming, slavery. On

certain brows he saw an indescribable ebbing back towards animalism, and

that slow return of man to beast, produced on those below by the dull

pressure of the happiness of those above. There was a break in the gloom

for Gwynplaine. He and Dea had a loophole of happiness; the rest was

damnation. Gwynplaine felt above him the thoughtless trampling of the

powerful, the rich, the magnificent, the great, the elect of chance.

Below he saw the pale faces of the disinherited. He saw himself and Dea,

with their little happiness, so great to themselves, between two worlds.

That which was above went and came, free, joyous, dancing, trampling

under foot; above him the world which treads, below the world which is

trodden upon. It is a fatal fact, and one indicating a profound social

evil, that light should crush the shadow! Gwynplaine thoroughly grasped

this dark evil. What! a destiny so reptile? Shall a man drag himself

thus along with such adherence to dust and corruption, with such vicious

tastes, such an abdication of right, or such abjectness that one feels

inclined to crush him under foot? Of what butterfly is, then, this

earthly life the grub?

What! in the crowd which hungers and which denies everywhere, and before

all, the questions of crime and shame (the inflexibility of the law

producing laxity of conscience), is there no child that grows but to be

stunted, no virgin but matures for sin, no rose that blooms but for the

slime of the snail?

His eyes at times sought everywhere, with the curiosity of emotion, to

probe the depths of that darkness, in which there died away so many

useless efforts, and in which there struggled so much weariness:

families devoured by society, morals tortured by the laws, wounds

gangrened by penalties, poverty gnawed by taxes, wrecked intelligence

swallowed up by ignorance, rafts in distress alive with the famished,

feuds, dearth, death-rattles, cries, disappearances. He felt the vague

oppression of a keen, universal suffering. He saw the vision of the

foaming wave of misery dashing over the crowd of humanity. He was safe

in port himself, as he watched the wreck around him. Sometimes he laid

his disfigured head in his hands and dreamed.

What folly to be happy! How one dreams! Ideas were born within him.

Absurd notions crossed his brain.

Because formerly he had succoured an infant, he felt a ridiculous desire

to succour the whole world. The mists of reverie sometimes obscured his

individuality, and he lost his ideas of proportion so far as to ask

himself the question, “What can be done for the poor?” Sometimes he was

so absorbed in his subject as to express it aloud. Then Ursus shrugged

his shoulders and looked at him fixedly. Gwynplaine continued his

reverie.

“Oh; were I powerful, would I not aid the wretched? But what am I? An

atom. What can I do? Nothing.”

He was mistaken. He was able to do a great deal for the wretched. He

could make them laugh; and, as we have said, to make people laugh is to

make them forget. What a benefactor on earth is he who can bestow

forgetfulness!

CHAPTER XI.

GWYNPLAINE THINKS JUSTICE, AND URSUS TALKS TRUTH.

A philosopher is a spy. Ursus, a watcher of dreams, studied his pupil.

Our monologues leave on our brows a faint reflection, distinguishable to

the eye of a physiognomist. Hence what occurred to Gwynplaine did not

escape Ursus. One day, as Gwynplaine was meditating, Ursus pulled him by

his jacket, and exclaimed,--

“You strike me as being an observer! You fool! Take care; it is no

business of yours. You have one thing to do--to love Dea. You have two

causes of happiness--the first is, that the crowd sees your muzzle; the

second is, that Dea does not. You have no right to the happiness you

possess, for no woman who saw your mouth would consent to your kiss; and

that mouth which has made your fortune, and that face which has given

you riches, are not your own. You were not born with that countenance.

It was borrowed from the grimace which is at the bottom of the infinite.

You have stolen your mask from the devil. You are hideous; be satisfied

with having drawn that prize in the lottery. There are in this world

(and a very good thing too) the happy by right and the happy by luck.

You are happy by luck. You are in a cave wherein a star is enclosed. The

poor star belongs to you. Do not seek to leave the cave, and guard your

star, O spider! You have in your web the carbuncle, Venus. Do me the

favour to be satisfied. I see your dreams are troubled. It is idiotic of

you. Listen; I am going to speak to you in the language of true poetry.

Let Dea eat beefsteaks and mutton chops, and in six months she will be

as strong as a Turk; marry her immediately, give her a child, two

children, three children, a long string of children. That is what I call

philosophy. Moreover, it is happiness, which is no folly. To have

children is a glimpse of heaven. Have brats--wipe them, blow their

noses, dirt them, wash them, and put them to bed. Let them swarm about

you. If they laugh, it is well; if they howl, it is better--to cry is to

live. Watch them suck at six months, crawl at a year, walk at two, grow

tall at fifteen, fall in love at twenty. He who has these joys has

everything For myself, I lacked the advantage; and that is the reason

why I am a brute. God, a composer of beautiful poems and the first of

men of letters, said to his fellow-workman, Moses, ‘Increase and

multiply.’ Such is the text. Multiply, you beast! As to the world, it is

as it is; you cannot make nor mar it. Do not trouble yourself about it.

Pay no attention to what goes on outside. Leave the horizon alone. A

comedian is made to be looked at, not to look. Do you know what there is

outside? The happy by right. You, I repeat, are the happy by chance. You

are the pickpocket of the happiness of which they are the proprietors.

They are the legitimate possessors; you are the intruder. You live in

concubinage with luck. What do you want that you have not already?

Shibboleth help me! This fellow is a rascal. To multiply himself by Dea

would be pleasant, all the same. Such happiness is like a swindle. Those

above who possess happiness by privilege do not like folks below them to

have so much enjoyment. If they ask you what right you have to be happy,

you will not know what to answer. You have no patent, and they have.

Jupiter, Allah, Vishnu, Sabaoth, it does not matter who, has given them

the passport to happiness. Fear them. Do not meddle with them, lest they

should meddle with you. Wretch! do you know what the man is who is happy

by right? He is a terrible being. He is a lord. A lord! He must have

intrigued pretty well in the devil’s unknown country before he was

born, to enter life by the door he did. How difficult it must have been

to him to be born! It is the only trouble he has given himself; but,

just heavens, what a one!--to obtain from destiny, the blind blockhead,

to mark him in his cradle a master of men. To bribe the box-keeper to

give him the best place at the show. Read the memoranda in the old hut,

which I have placed on half-pay. Read that breviary of my wisdom, and

you will see what it is to be a lord. A lord is one who has all and is

all. A lord is one who exists above his own nature. A lord is one who

has when young the rights of an old man; when old, the success in

intrigue of a young one; if vicious, the homage of respectable people;

if a coward, the command of brave men; if a do-nothing, the fruits of

labour; if ignorant, the diploma of Cambridge or Oxford; if a fool, the

admiration of poets; if ugly, the smiles of women; if a Thersites, the

helm of Achilles; if a hare, the skin of a lion. Do not misunderstand my

words. I do not say that a lord must necessarily be ignorant, a coward,

ugly, stupid, or old. I only mean that he may be all those things

without any detriment to himself. On the contrary. Lords are princes.

The King of England is only a lord, the first peer of the peerage; that

is all, but it is much. Kings were formerly called lords--the Lord of

Denmark, the Lord of Ireland, the Lord of the Isles. The Lord of Norway

was first called king three hundred years ago. Lucius, the most ancient

king in England, was spoken to by Saint Telesphonis as my Lord Lucius.

The lords are peers--that is to say, equals--of whom? Of the king. I do

not commit the mistake of confounding the lords with parliament. The

assembly of the people which the Saxons before the Conquest called

_wittenagemote_, the Normans, after the Conquest, entitled

_parliamentum_. By degrees the people were turned out. The king’s

letters clause convoking the Commons, addressed formerly _ad concilium

impendendum_, are now addressed _ad consentiendum_. To say yes is their

liberty. The peers can say no; and the proof is that they have said it.

The peers can cut off the king’s head. The people cannot. The stroke of

the hatchet which decapitated Charles I. is an encroachment, not on the

king, but on the peers, and it was well to place on the gibbet the

carcass of Cromwell. The lords have power. Why? Because they have

riches. Who has turned over the leaves of the Doomsday Book? It is the

proof that the lords possess England. It is the registry of the estates

of subjects, compiled under William the Conqueror; and it is in the

charge of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. To copy anything in it you

have to pay twopence a line. It is a proud book. Do you know that I was

domestic doctor to a lord, who was called Marmaduke, and who had

thirty-six thousand a year? Think of that, you hideous idiot! Do you

know that, with rabbits only from the warrens of Earl Lindsay, they

could feed all the riffraff of the Cinque Ports? And the good order

kept! Every poacher is hung. For two long furry ears sticking out of a

game bag I saw the father of six children hanging on the gibbet. Such is

the peerage. The rabbit of a great lord is of more importance than God’s

image in a man.

“Lords exist, you trespasser, do you see? and we must think it good that

they do; and even if we do not, what harm will it do them? The people

object, indeed! Why? Plautus himself would never have attained the

comicality of such an idea. A philosopher would be jesting if he advised

the poor devil of the masses to cry out against the size and weight of

the lords. Just as well might the gnat dispute with the foot of an

elephant. One day I saw a hippopotamus tread upon a molehill; he crushed

it utterly. He was innocent. The great soft-headed fool of a mastodon

did not even know of the existence of moles. My son, the moles that are

trodden on are the human race. To crush is a law. And do you think that

the mole himself crushes nothing? Why, it is the mastodon of the

fleshworm, who is the mastodon of the globeworm. But let us cease

arguing. My boy, there are coaches in the world; my lord is inside, the

people under the wheels; the philosopher gets out of the way. Stand

aside, and let them pass. As to myself, I love lords, and shun them. I

lived with one; the beauty of my recollections suffices me. I remember

his country house, like a glory in a cloud. My dreams are all

retrospective. Nothing could be more admirable than Marmaduke Lodge in

grandeur, beautiful symmetry, rich avenues, and the ornaments and

surroundings of the edifice. The houses, country seats, and palaces of

the lords present a selection of all that is greatest and most

magnificent in this flourishing kingdom. I love our lords. I thank them

for being opulent, powerful, and prosperous. I myself am clothed in

shadow, and I look with interest upon the shred of heavenly blue which

is called a lord. You enter Marmaduke Lodge by an exceedingly spacious

courtyard, which forms an oblong square, divided into eight spaces, each

surrounded by a balustrade; on each side is a wide approach, and a

superb hexagonal fountain plays in the midst; this fountain is formed of

two basins, which are surmounted by a dome of exquisite openwork,

elevated on six columns. It was there that I knew a learned Frenchman,

Monsieur l’Abbé du Cros, who belonged to the Jacobin monastery in the

Rue Saint Jacques. Half the library of Erpenius is at Marmaduke Lodge,

the other half being at the theological gallery at Cambridge. I used to

read the books, seated under the ornamented portal. These things are

only shown to a select number of curious travellers. Do you know, you

ridiculous boy, that William North, who is Lord Grey of Rolleston, and

sits fourteenth on the bench of Barons, has more forest trees on his

mountains than you have hairs on your horrible noddle? Do you know that

Lord Norreys of Rycote, who is Earl of Abingdon, has a square keep a

hundred feet high, having this device--_Virtus ariete fortior_; which

you would think meant that virtue is stronger than a ram, but which

really means, you idiot, that courage is stronger than a

battering-machine. Yes, I honour, accept, respect, and revere our lords.

It is the lords who, with her royal Majesty, work to procure and

preserve the advantages of the nation. Their consummate wisdom shines in

intricate junctures. Their precedence over others I wish they had not;

but they have it. What is called principality in Germany, grandeeship in

Spain, is called peerage in England and France. There being a fair show

of reason for considering the world a wretched place enough, heaven felt

where the burden was most galling, and to prove that it knew how to make

happy people, created lords for the satisfaction of philosophers. This

acts as a set-off, and gets heaven out of the scrape, affording it a

decent escape from a false position. The great are great. A peer,

speaking of himself, says _we_. A peer is a plural. The king qualifies

the peer _consanguinei nostri_. The peers have made a multitude of wise

laws; amongst others, one which condemns to death any one who cuts down

a three-year-old poplar tree. Their supremacy is such that they have a

language of their own. In heraldic style, black, which is called sable

for gentry, is called saturne for princes, and diamond for peers.

Diamond dust, a night thick with stars, such is the night of the happy!

Even amongst themselves these high and mighty lords have their own

distinctions. A baron cannot wash with a viscount without his

permission. These are indeed excellent things, and safeguards to the

nation. What a fine thing it is for the people to have twenty-five

dukes, five marquises, seventy-six earls, nine viscounts, and sixty-one

barons, making altogether a hundred and seventy-six peers, of which some

are your grace, and some my lord! What matter a few rags here and there,

withal: everybody cannot be dressed in gold. Let the rags be. Cannot you

see the purple? One balances the other. A thing must be built of

something. Yes, of course, there are the poor--what of them! They line

the happiness of the wealthy. Devil take it! our lords are our glory!

The pack of hounds belonging to Charles, Baron Mohun, costs him as much

as the hospital for lepers in Moorgate, and for Christ’s Hospital,

founded for children, in 1553, by Edward VI. Thomas Osborne, Duke of

Leeds, spends yearly on his liveries five thousand golden guineas. The

Spanish grandees have a guardian appointed by law to prevent their

ruining themselves. That is cowardly. Our lords are extravagant and

magnificent. I esteem them for it. Let us not abuse them like envious

folks. I feel happy when a beautiful vision passes. I have not the

light, but I have the reflection. A reflection thrown on my ulcer, you

will say. Go to the devil! I am a Job, delighted in the contemplation of

Trimalcion. Oh, that beautiful and radiant planet up there! But the

moonlight is something. To suppress the lords was an idea which Orestes,

mad as he was, would not have dared to entertain. To say that the lords

are mischievous or useless is as much as to say that the state should be

revolutionized, and that men are not made to live like cattle, browsing

the grass and bitten by the dog. The field is shorn by the sheep, the

sheep by the shepherd. It is all one to me. I am a philosopher, and I

care about life as much as a fly. Life is but a lodging. When I think

that Henry Bowes Howard, Earl of Berkshire, has in his stable

twenty-four state carriages, of which one is mounted in silver and

another in gold--good heavens! I know that every one has not got

twenty-four state carriages; but there is no need to complain for all

that. Because you were cold one night, what was that to him? It concerns

you only. Others besides you suffer cold and hunger. Don’t you know

that without that cold, Dea would not have been blind, and if Dea were

not blind she would not love you? Think of that, you fool! And, besides,

if all the people who are lost were to complain, there would be a pretty

tumult! Silence is the rule. I have no doubt that heaven imposes silence

on the damned, otherwise heaven itself would be punished by their

everlasting cry. The happiness of Olympus is bought by the silence of

Cocytus. Then, people, be silent! I do better myself; I approve and

admire. Just now I was enumerating the lords, and I ought to add to the

list two archbishops and twenty-four bishops. Truly, I am quite affected

when I think of it! I remember to have seen at the tithe-gathering of

the Rev. Dean of Raphoe, who combined the peerage with the church, a

great tithe of beautiful wheat taken from the peasants in the

neighbourhood, and which the dean had not been at the trouble of

growing. This left him time to say his prayers. Do you know that Lord

Marmaduke, my master, was Lord Grand Treasurer of Ireland, and High

Seneschal of the sovereignty of Knaresborough in the county of York? Do

you know that the Lord High Chamberlain, which is an office hereditary

in the family of the Dukes of Ancaster, dresses the king for his

coronation, and receives for his trouble forty yards of crimson velvet,

besides the bed on which the king has slept; and that the Usher of the

Black Rod is his deputy? I should like to see you deny this, that the

senior viscount of England is Robert Brent, created a viscount by Henry

V. The lords’ titles imply sovereignty over land, except that of Earl

Rivers, who takes his title from his family name. How admirable is the

right which they have to tax others, and to levy, for instance, four

shillings in the pound sterling income-tax, which has just been

continued for another year! And all the time taxes on distilled spirits,

on the excise of wine and beer, on tonnage and poundage, on cider, on

perry, on mum, malt, and prepared barley, on coals, and on a hundred

things besides. Let us venerate things as they are. The clergy

themselves depend on the lords. The Bishop of Man is subject to the Earl

of Derby. The lords have wild beasts of their own, which they place in

their armorial bearings. God not having made enough, they have invented

others. They have created the heraldic wild boar, who is as much above

the wild boar as the wild boar is above the domestic pig and the lord

is above the priest. They have created the griffin, which is an eagle to

lions, and a lion to eagles, terrifying lions by his wings, and eagles

by his mane. They have the guivre, the unicorn, the serpent, the

salamander, the tarask, the dree, the dragon, and the hippogriff. All

these things, terrible to us, are to them but an ornament and an

embellishment. They have a menagerie which they call the blazon, in

which unknown beasts roar. The prodigies of the forest are nothing

compared to the inventions of their pride. Their vanity is full of

phantoms which move as in a sublime night, armed with helm and cuirass,

spurs on their heels and the sceptres in their hands, saying in a grave

voice, ‘We are the ancestors!’ The canker-worms eat the roots, and

panoplies eat the people. Why not? Are we to change the laws? The

peerage is part of the order of society. Do you know that there is a

duke in Scotland who can ride ninety miles without leaving his own

estate? Do you know that the Archbishop of Canterbury has a revenue of

£40,000 a year? Do you know that her Majesty has £700,000 sterling from

the civil list, besides castles, forests, domains, fiefs, tenancies,

freeholds, prebendaries, tithes, rent, confiscations, and fines, which

bring in over a million sterling? Those who are not satisfied are hard

to please.”

“Yes,” murmured Gwynplaine sadly, “the paradise of the rich is made out

of the hell of the poor.”

CHAPTER XII.

URSUS THE POET DRAGS ON URSUS THE PHILOSOPHER.

Then Dea entered. He looked at her, and saw nothing but her. This is

love; one may be carried away for a moment by the importunity of some

other idea, but the beloved one enters, and all that does not appertain

to her presence immediately fades away, without her dreaming that

perhaps she is effacing in us a world.

Let us mention a circumstance. In “Chaos Vanquished,” the word

_monstruo_, addressed to Gwynplaine, displeased Dea. Sometimes, with the

smattering of Spanish which every one knew at the period, she took it

into her head to replace it by _quiero_, which signifies, “I wish it.”

Ursus tolerated, although not without an expression of impatience, this

alteration in his text. He might have said to Dea, as in our day

Moessard said to Vissot, _Tu manques de respect au repertoire_.

“The Laughing Man.”

Such was the form of Gwynplaine’s fame. His name, Gwynplaine, little

known at any time, had disappeared under his nickname, as his face had

disappeared under its grin.

His popularity was like his visage--a mask.

His name, however, was to be read on a large placard in front of the

Green Box, which offered the crowd the following narrative composed by

Ursus:--

“Here is to be seen Gwynplaine, deserted at the age of ten, on the night

of the 29th of January, 1690, by the villainous Comprachicos, on the

coast of Portland. The little boy has grown up, and is called now, THE

LAUGHING MAN.”

The existence of these mountebanks was as an existence of lepers in a

leper-house, and of the blessed in one of the Pleiades. There was every

day a sudden transition from the noisy exhibition outside, into the most

complete seclusion. Every evening they made their exit from this world.

They were like the dead, vanishing on condition of being reborn next

day. A comedian is a revolving light, appearing one moment, disappearing

the next, and existing for the public but as a phantom or a light, as

his life circles round. To exhibition succeeded isolation. When the

performance was finished, whilst the audience were dispersing, and their

murmur of satisfaction was dying away in the streets, the Green Box shut

up its platform, as a fortress does its drawbridge, and all

communication with mankind was cut off. On one side, the universe; on

the other, the caravan; and this caravan contained liberty, clear

consciences, courage, devotion, innocence, happiness, love--all the

constellations.

Blindness having sight and deformity beloved sat side by side, hand

pressing hand, brow touching brow, and whispered to each other,

intoxicated with love.

The compartment in the middle served two purposes--for the public it was

a stage, for the actors a dining-room.

Ursus, ever delighting in comparisons, profited by the diversity of its

uses to liken the central compartment in the Green Box to the arradach

in an Abyssinian hut.

Ursus counted the receipts, then they supped. In love all is ideal. In

love, eating and drinking together affords opportunities for many sweet

promiscuous touches, by which a mouthful becomes a kiss. They drank ale

or wine from the same glass, as they might drink dew out of the same

lily. Two souls in love are as full of grace as two birds. Gwynplaine

waited on Dea, cut her bread, poured out her drink, approached her too

close.

“Hum!” cried Ursus, and he turned away, his scolding melting into a

smile.

The wolf supped under the table, heedless of everything which did

actually not concern his bone.

Fibi and Vinos shared the repast, but gave little trouble. These

vagabonds, half wild and as uncouth as ever, spoke in the gipsy language

to each other.

At length Dea re-entered the women’s apartment with Fibi and Vinos.

Ursus chained up Homo under the Green Box; Gwynplaine looked after the

horses, the lover becoming a groom, like a hero of Homer’s or a paladin

of Charlemagne’s. At midnight, all were asleep, except the wolf, who,

alive to his responsibility, now and then opened an eye. The next

morning they met again. They breakfasted together, generally on ham and

tea. Tea was introduced into England in 1678. Then Dea, after the

Spanish fashion, took a siesta, acting on the advice of Ursus, who

considered her delicate, and slept some hours, while Gwynplaine and

Ursus did all the little jobs of work, without and within, which their

wandering life made necessary. Gwynplaine rarely wandered away from the

Green Box, except on unfrequented roads and in solitary places. In

cities he went out only at night, disguised in a large, slouched hat, so

as not to exhibit his face in the street.

His face was to be seen uncovered only on the stage.

The Green Box had frequented cities but little. Gwynplaine at

twenty-four had never seen towns larger than the Cinque Ports. His

renown, however, was increasing. It began to rise above the populace,

and to percolate through higher ground. Amongst those who were fond of,

and ran after, strange foreign curiosities and prodigies, it was known

that there was somewhere in existence, leading a wandering life, now

here, now there, an extraordinary monster. They talked about him, they

sought him, they asked where he was. The laughing man was becoming

decidedly famous. A certain lustre was reflected on “Chaos Vanquished.”

So much so, that, one day, Ursus, being ambitious, said,--

“We must go to London.”

BOOK THE THIRD.

_THE BEGINNING OF THE FISSURE._

CHAPTER I.

THE TADCASTER INN.

At that period London had but one bridge--London Bridge, with houses

built upon it. This bridge united London to Southwark, a suburb which

was paved with flint pebbles taken from the Thames, divided into small

streets and alleys, like the City, with a great number of buildings,

houses, dwellings, and wooden huts jammed together, a pell-mell mixture

of combustible matter, amidst which fire might take its pleasure, as

1666 had proved. Southwark was then pronounced Soudric, it is now

pronounced Sousouorc, or near it; indeed, an excellent way of

pronouncing English names is not to pronounce them. Thus, for

Southampton, say Stpntn.

It was the time when “Chatham” was pronounced _je t’aime_.

The Southwark of those days resembles the Southwark of to-day about as

much as Vaugirard resembles Marseilles. It was a village--it is a city.

Nevertheless, a considerable trade was carried on there. The long old

Cyclopean wall by the Thames was studded with rings, to which were

anchored the river barges.

This wall was called the Effroc Wall, or Effroc Stone. York, in Saxon

times, was called Effroc. The legend related that a Duke of Effroc had

been drowned at the foot of the wall. Certainly the water there was deep

enough to drown a duke. At low water it was six good fathoms. The

excellence of this little anchorage attracted sea vessels, and the old

Dutch tub, called the _Vograat_, came to anchor at the Effroc Stone. The

_Vograat_ made the crossing from London to Rotterdam, and from Rotterdam

to London, punctually once a week. Other barges started twice a day,

either for Deptford, Greenwich, or Gravesend, going down with one tide

and returning with the next. The voyage to Gravesend, though twenty

miles, was performed in six hours.

The _Vograat_ was of a model now no longer to be seen, except in naval

museums. It was almost a junk. At that time, while France copied Greece,

Holland copied China. The _Vograat_, a heavy hull with two masts, was

partitioned perpendicularly, so as to be water-tight, having a narrow

hold in the middle, and two decks, one fore and the other aft. The decks

were flush as in the iron turret-vessels of the present day, the

advantage of which is that in foul weather, the force of the wave is

diminished, and the inconvenience of which is that the crew is exposed

to the action of the sea, owing to there being no bulwarks. There was

nothing to save any one on board from falling over. Hence the frequent

falls overboard and the losses of men, which have caused the model to

fall into disuse. The _Vograat_ went to Holland direct, and did not even

call at Gravesend.

An old ridge of stones, rock as much as masonry, ran along the bottom of

the Effroc Stone, and being passable at all tides, was used as a passage

on board the ships moored to the wall. This wall was, at intervals,

furnished with steps. It marked the southern point of Southwark. An

embankment at the top allowed the passers-by to rest their elbows on the

Effroc Stone, as on the parapet of a quay. Thence they could look down

on the Thames; on the other side of the water London dwindled away into

fields.

Up the river from the Effroc Stone, at the bend of the Thames which is

nearly opposite St. James’s Palace, behind Lambeth House, not far from

the walk then called Foxhall (Vauxhall, probably), there was, between a

pottery in which they made porcelain, and a glass-blower’s, where they

made ornamental bottles, one of those large unenclosed spaces covered

with grass, called formerly in France _cultures_ and _mails_, and in

England bowling-greens. Of bowling-green, a green on which to roll a

ball, the French have made _boulingrin_. Folks have this green inside

their houses nowadays, only it is put on the table, is a cloth instead

of turf, and is called billiards.

It is difficult to see why, having boulevard (boule-vert), which is the

same word as bowling-green, the French should have adopted _boulingrin_.

It is surprising that a person so grave as the Dictionary should indulge

in useless luxuries.

The bowling-green of Southwark was called Tarrinzeau Field, because it

had belonged to the Barons Hastings, who are also Barons Tarrinzeau and

Mauchline. From the Lords Hastings the Tarrinzeau Field passed to the

Lords Tadcaster, who had made a speculation of it, just as, at a later

date, a Duke of Orleans made a speculation of the Palais Royal.

Tarrinzeau Field afterwards became waste ground and parochial property.

Tarrinzeau Field was a kind of permanent fair ground covered with

jugglers, athletes, mountebanks, and music on platforms; and always full

of “fools going to look at the devil,” as Archbishop Sharp said. To look

at the devil means to go to the play.

Several inns, which harboured the public and sent them to these

outlandish exhibitions, were established in this place, which kept

holiday all the year round, and thereby prospered. These inns were

simply stalls, inhabited only during the day. In the evening the

tavern-keeper put into his pocket the key of the tavern and went away.

One only of these inns was a house, the only dwelling in the whole

bowling-green, the caravans of the fair ground having the power of

disappearing at any moment, considering the absence of any ties in the

vagabond life of all mountebanks.

Mountebanks have no roots to their lives.

This inn, called the Tadcaster, after the former owners of the ground,

was an inn rather than a tavern, an hotel rather than an inn, and had a

carriage entrance and a large yard.

The carriage entrance, opening from the court on the field, was the

legitimate door of the Tadcaster Inn, which had, beside it, a small

bastard door, by which people entered. To call it bastard is to mean

preferred. This lower door was the only one used, It opened into the

tavern, properly so called, which was a large taproom, full of tobacco

smoke, furnished with tables, and low in the ceiling. Over it was a

window on the first floor, to the iron bars of which was fastened and

hung the sign of the inn. The principal door was barred and bolted, and

always remained closed.

It was thus necessary to cross the tavern to enter the courtyard.

At the Tadcaster Inn there was a landlord and a boy. The landlord was

called Master Nicless, the boy Govicum. Master Nicless--Nicholas,

doubtless, which the English habit of contraction had made Nicless, was

a miserly widower, and one who respected and feared the laws. As to his

appearance, he had bushy eyebrows and hairy hands. The boy, aged

fourteen, who poured out drink, and answered to the name of Govicum,

wore a merry face and an apron. His hair was cropped close, a sign of

servitude.

He slept on the ground floor, in a nook in which they formerly kept a

dog. This nook had for window a bull’s-eye looking on the bowling-green.

CHAPTER II.

OPEN-AIR ELOQUENCE.

One very cold and windy evening, on which there was every reason why

folks should hasten on their way along the street, a man, who was

walking in Tarrinzeau Field close under the walls of the tavern, stopped

suddenly. It was during the last months of winter between 1704 and 1705.

This man, whose dress indicated a sailor, was of good mien and fine

figure, things imperative to courtiers, and not forbidden to common

folk.

Why did he stop? To listen. What to? To a voice apparently speaking in

the court on the other side of the wall, a voice a little weakened by

age, but so powerful notwithstanding that it reached the passer-by in

the street. At the same time might be heard in the enclosure, from which

the voice came, the hubbub of a crowd.

This voice said,--

“Men and women of London, here I am! I cordially wish you joy of being

English. You are a great people. I say more: you are a great populace.

Your fisticuffs are even better than your sword thrusts. You have an

appetite. You are the nation which eats other nations--a magnificent

function! This suction of the world makes England preeminent. As

politicians and philosophers, in the management of colonies,

populations, and industry, and in the desire to do others any harm which

may turn to your own good, you stand alone. The hour will come when two

boards will be put up on earth--inscribed on one side, Men; on the

other, Englishmen. I mention this to your glory, I, who am neither

English nor human, having the honour to be a bear. Still more--I am a

doctor. That follows. Gentlemen, I teach. What? Two kinds of

things--things which I know, and things which I do not. I sell my drugs

and I sell my ideas. Approach and listen. Science invites you. Open your

ear; if it is small, it will hold but little truth; if large, a great

deal of folly will find its way in. Now, then, attention! I teach the

Pseudoxia Epidemica. I have a comrade who will make you laugh, but I can

make you think. We live in the same box, laughter being of quite as old

a family as thought. When people asked Democritus, ‘How do you know?’ he

answered, ‘I laugh.’ And if I am asked, ‘Why do you laugh?’ I shall

answer, ‘I know.’ However, I am not laughing. I am the rectifier of

popular errors. I take upon myself the task of cleaning your intellects.

They require it. Heaven permits people to deceive themselves, and to be

deceived. It is useless to be absurdly modest. I frankly avow that I

believe in Providence, even where it is wrong. Only when I see

filth--errors are filth--I sweep them away. How am I sure of what I

know? That concerns only myself. Every one catches wisdom as he can.

Lactantius asked questions of, and received answers from, a bronze head

of Virgil. Sylvester II. conversed with birds. Did the birds speak? Did

the Pope twitter? That is a question. The dead child of the Rabbi

Elcazer talked to Saint Augustine. Between ourselves, I doubt all these

facts except the last. The dead child might perhaps talk, because under

its tongue it had a gold plate, on which were engraved divers

constellations. Thus he deceived people. The fact explains itself. You

see my moderation. I separate the true from the false. See! here are

other errors in which, no doubt, you partake, poor ignorant folks that

you are, and from which I wish to free you. Dioscorides believed that

there was a god in the henbane; Chrysippus in the cynopaste; Josephus in

the root bauras; Homer in the plant moly. They were all wrong. The

spirits in herbs are not gods but devils. I have tested this fact. It is

not true that the serpent which tempted Eve had a human face, as Cadmus

relates. Garcias de Horto, Cadamosto, and John Hugo, Archbishop of

Treves, deny that it is sufficient to saw down a tree to catch an

elephant. I incline to their opinion. Citizens, the efforts of Lucifer

are the cause of all false impressions. Under the reign of such a prince

it is natural that meteors of error and of perdition should arise. My

friends, Claudius Pulcher did not die because the fowls refused to come

out of the fowl house. The fact is, that Lucifer, having foreseen the

death of Claudius Pulcher, took care to prevent the birds feeding. That

Beelzebub gave the Emperor Vespasian the virtue of curing the lame and

giving sight to the blind, by his touch, was an act praiseworthy in

itself, but of which the motive was culpable. Gentlemen, distrust those

false doctors, who sell the root of the bryony and the white snake, and

who make washes with honey and the blood of a cock. See clearly through

that which is false. It is not quite true that Orion was the result of a

natural function of Jupiter. The truth is that it was Mercury who

produced this star in that way. It is not true that Adam had a navel.

When St. George killed the dragon he had not the daughter of a saint

standing by his side. St. Jerome had not a clock on the chimney-piece of

his study; first, because living in a cave, he had no study; secondly,

because he had no chimney-piece; thirdly, because clocks were not yet

invented. Let us put these things right. Put them right. O gentlefolks,

who listen to me, if any one tells you that a lizard will be born in

your head if you smell the herb valerian; that the rotting carcase of

the ox changes into bees, and that of the horse into hornets; that a man

weighs more when dead than when alive; that the blood of the he-goat

dissolves emeralds; that a caterpillar, a fly, and a spider, seen on the

same tree, announces famine, war, and pestilence; that the falling

sickness is to be cured by a worm found in the head of a buck--do not

believe him. These things are errors. But now listen to truths. The skin

of a sea-calf is a safeguard against thunder. The toad feeds upon earth,

which causes a stone to come into his head. The rose of Jericho blooms

on Christmas Eve. Serpents cannot endure the shadow of the ash tree. The

elephant has no joints, and sleeps resting upright against a tree. Make

a toad sit upon a cock’s egg, and he will hatch a scorpion which will

become a salamander. A blind person will recover sight by putting one

hand on the left side of the altar and the other on his eyes. Virginity

does not hinder maternity. Honest people, lay these truths to heart.

Above all, you can believe in Providence in either of two ways, either

as thirst believes in the orange, or as the ass believes in the whip.

Now I am going to introduce you to my family.”

Here a violent gust of wind shook the window-frames and shutters of the

inn, which stood detached. It was like a prolonged murmur of the sky.

The orator paused a moment, and then resumed.

“An interruption; very good. Speak, north wind. Gentlemen, I am not

angry. The wind is loquacious, like all solitary creatures. There is no

one to keep him company up there, so he jabbers. I resume the thread of

my discourse. Here you see associated artists. We are four--_a lupo

principium_. I begin by my friend, who is a wolf. He does not conceal

it. See him! He is educated, grave, and sagacious. Providence, perhaps,

entertained for a moment the idea of making him a doctor of the

university; but for that one must be rather stupid, and that he is not.

I may add that he has no prejudices, and is not aristocratic. He chats

sometimes with bitches; he who, by right, should consort only with

she-wolves. His heirs, if he have any, will no doubt gracefully combine

the yap of their mother with the howl of their father. Because he does

howl. He howls in sympathy with men. He barks as well, in condescension

to civilization--a magnanimous concession. Homo is a dog made perfect.

Let us venerate the dog. The dog--curious animal! sweats with its tongue

and smiles with its tail. Gentlemen, Homo equals in wisdom, and

surpasses in cordiality, the hairless wolf of Mexico, the wonderful

xoloïtzeniski. I may add that he is humble. He has the modesty of a wolf

who is useful to men. He is helpful and charitable, and says nothing

about it. His left paw knows not the good which his right paw does.

These are his merits. Of the other, my second friend, I have but one

word to say. He is a monster. You will admire him. He was formerly

abandoned by pirates on the shores of the wild ocean. This third one is

blind. Is she an exception? No, we are all blind. The miser is blind; he

sees gold, and he does not see riches. The prodigal is blind; he sees

the beginning, and does not see the end. The coquette is blind; she does

not see her wrinkles. The learned man is blind; he does not see his own

ignorance. The honest man is blind; he does not see the thief. The thief

is blind; he does not see God. God is blind; the day that he created the

world He did not see the devil manage to creep into it. I myself am

blind; I speak, and do not see that you are deaf. This blind girl who

accompanies us is a mysterious priestess. Vesta has confided to her her

torch. She has in her character depths as soft as a division in the wool

of a sheep. I believe her to be a king’s daughter, though I do not

assert it as a fact. A laudable distrust is the attribute of wisdom. For

my own part, I reason and I doctor, I think and I heal. _Chirurgus sum_.

I cure fevers, miasmas, and plagues. Almost all our melancholy and

sufferings are issues, which if carefully treated relieve us quietly

from other evils which might be worse. All the same I do not recommend

you to have an anthrax, otherwise called carbuncle. It is a stupid

malady, and serves no good end. One dies of it--that is all. I am

neither uncultivated nor rustic. I honour eloquence and poetry, and live

in an innocent union with these goddesses. I conclude by a piece of

advice. Ladies and gentlemen, on the sunny side of your dispositions,

cultivate virtue, modesty, honesty, probity, justice, and love. Each one

here below may thus have his little pot of flowers on his window-sill.

My lords and gentlemen, I have spoken. The play is about to begin.”