The man who was apparently a sailor, and who had been listening outside,

entered the lower room of the inn, crossed it, paid the necessary

entrance money, reached the courtyard which was full of people, saw at

the bottom of it a caravan on wheels, wide open, and on the platform an

old man dressed in a bearskin, a young man looking like a mask, a blind

girl, and a wolf.

“Gracious heaven!” he cried, “what delightful people!”

CHAPTER III.

WHERE THE PASSER-BY REAPPEARS.

The Green Box, as we have just seen, had arrived in London. It was

established at Southwark. Ursus had been tempted by the bowling-green,

which had one great recommendation, that it was always fair-day there,

even in winter.

The dome of St. Paul’s was a delight to Ursus.

London, take it all in all, has some good in it. It was a brave thing to

dedicate a cathedral to St. Paul. The real cathedral saint is St. Peter.

St. Paul is suspected of imagination, and in matters ecclesiastical

imagination means heresy. St. Paul is a saint only with extenuating

circumstances. He entered heaven only by the artists’ door.

A cathedral is a sign. St. Peter is the sign of Rome, the city of the

dogma; St. Paul that of London, the city of schism.

Ursus, whose philosophy had arms so long that it embraced everything,

was a man who appreciated these shades of difference, and his attraction

towards London arose, perhaps, from a certain taste of his for St. Paul.

The yard of the Tadcaster Inn had taken the fancy of Ursus. It might

have been ordered for the Green Box. It was a theatre ready-made. It was

square, with three sides built round, and a wall forming the fourth.

Against this wall was placed the Green Box, which they were able to draw

into the yard, owing to the height of the gate. A large wooden balcony,

roofed over, and supported on posts, on which the rooms of the first

story opened, ran round the three fronts of the interior façade of the

house, making two right angles. The windows of the ground floor made

boxes, the pavement of the court the pit, and the balcony the gallery.

The Green Box, reared against the wall, was thus in front of a theatre.

It was very like the Globe, where they played “Othello,” “King Lear,”

and “The Tempest.”

In a corner behind the Green Box was a stable.

Ursus had made his arrangements with the tavern keeper, Master Nicless,

who, owing to his respect for the law, would not admit the wolf without

charging him extra.

The placard, “Gwynplaine, the Laughing Man,” taken from its nail in the

Green Box, was hung up close to the sign of the inn. The sitting-room of

the tavern had, as we have seen, an inside door which opened into the

court. By the side of the door was constructed off-hand, by means of an

empty barrel, a box for the money-taker, who was sometimes Fibi and

sometimes Vinos. This was managed much as at present. Pay and pass in.

Under the placard announcing the Laughing Man was a piece of wood,

painted white, hung on two nails, on which was written in charcoal in

large letters the title of Ursus’s grand piece, “Chaos Vanquished.”

In the centre of the balcony, precisely opposite the Green Box, and in a

compartment having for entrance a window reaching to the ground, there

had been partitioned off a space “for the nobility.” It was large enough

to hold, in two rows, ten spectators.

“We are in London,” said Ursus. “We must be prepared for the gentry.”

He had furnished this box with the best chairs in the inn, and had

placed in the centre a grand arm-chair of yellow Utrecht velvet, with a

cherry-coloured pattern, in case some alderman’s wife should come.

They began their performances. The crowd immediately flocked to them,

but the compartment for the nobility remained empty. With that exception

their success became so great that no mountebank memory could recall its

parallel. All Southwark ran in crowds to admire the Laughing Man.

The merry-andrews and mountebanks of Tarrinzeau Field were aghast at

Gwynplaine. The effect he caused was as that of a sparrow-hawk flapping

his wings in a cage of goldfinches, and feeding in their seed-trough.

Gwynplaine ate up their public.

Besides the small fry, the swallowers of swords and the grimace makers,

real performances took place on the green. There was a circus of women,

ringing from morning till night with a magnificent peal of all sorts of

instruments--psalteries, drums, rebecks, micamons, timbrels, reeds,

dulcimers, gongs, chevrettes, bagpipes, German horns, English

eschaqueils, pipes, flutes, and flageolets.

In a large round tent were some tumblers, who could not have equalled

our present climbers of the Pyrenees--Dulma, Bordenave, and

Meylonga--who from the peak of Pierrefitte descend to the plateau of

Limaçon, an almost perpendicular height. There was a travelling

menagerie, where was to be seen a performing tiger, who, lashed by the

keeper, snapped at the whip and tried to swallow the lash. Even this

comedian of jaws and claws was eclipsed in success.

Curiosity, applause, receipts, crowds, the Laughing Man monopolized

everything. It happened in the twinkling of an eye. Nothing was thought

of but the Green Box.

“‘Chaos Vanquished’ is ‘Chaos Victor,’” said Ursus, appropriating half

Gwynplaine’s success, and taking the wind out of his sails, as they say

at sea. That success was prodigious. Still it remained local. Fame does

not cross the sea easily. It took a hundred and thirty years for the

name of Shakespeare to penetrate from England into France. The sea is a

wall; and if Voltaire--a thing which he very much regretted when it was

too late--had not thrown a bridge over to Shakespeare, Shakespeare might

still be in England, on the other side of the wall, a captive in insular

glory.

The glory of Gwynplaine had not passed London Bridge. It was not great

enough yet to re-echo throughout the city. At least not at first. But

Southwark ought to have sufficed to satisfy the ambition of a clown.

Ursus said,--

“The money bag grows palpably bigger.”

They played “Ursus Rursus” and “Chaos Vanquished.”

Between the acts Ursus exhibited his power as an engastrimist, and

executed marvels of ventriloquism. He imitated every cry which occurred

in the audience--a song, a cry, enough to startle, so exact the

imitation, the singer or the crier himself; and now and then he copied

the hubbub of the public, and whistled as if there were a crowd of

people within him. These were remarkable talents. Besides this he

harangued like Cicero, as we have just seen, sold his drugs, attended

sickness, and even healed the sick.

Southwark was enthralled.

Ursus was satisfied with the applause of Southwark, but by no means

astonished.

“They are the ancient Trinobantes,” he said.

Then he added, “I must not mistake them, for delicacy of taste, for the

Atrobates, who people Berkshire, or the Belgians, who inhabited

Somersetshire, nor for the Parisians, who founded York.”

At every performance the yard of the inn, transformed into a pit, was

filled with a ragged and enthusiastic audience. It was composed of

watermen, chairmen, coachmen, and bargemen, and sailors, just ashore,

spending their wages in feasting and women. In it there were felons,

ruffians, and blackguards, who were soldiers condemned for some crime

against discipline to wear their red coats, which were lined with black,

inside out, and from thence the name of blackguard, which the French

turn into _blagueurs_. All these flowed from the street into the

theatre, and poured back from the theatre into the tap. The emptying of

tankards did not decrease their success.

Amidst what it is usual to call the scum, there was one taller than the

rest, bigger, stronger, less poverty-stricken, broader in the shoulders;

dressed like the common people, but not ragged.

Admiring and applauding everything to the skies, clearing his way with

his fists, wearing a disordered periwig, swearing, shouting, joking,

never dirty, and, at need, ready to blacken an eye or pay for a bottle.

This frequenter was the passer-by whose cheer of enthusiasm has been

recorded.

This connoisseur was suddenly fascinated, and had adopted the Laughing

Man. He did not come every evening, but when he came he led the

public--applause grew into acclamation--success rose not to the roof,

for there was none, but to the clouds, for there were plenty of them.

Which clouds (seeing that there was no roof) sometimes wept over the

masterpiece of Ursus.

His enthusiasm caused Ursus to remark this man, and Gwynplaine to

observe him.

They had a great friend in this unknown visitor.

Ursus and Gwynplaine wanted to know him; at least, to know who he was.

One evening Ursus was in the side scene, which was the kitchen-door of

the Green Box, seeing Master Nicless standing by him, showed him this

man in the crowd, and asked him,--

“Do you know that man?”

“Of course I do.”

“Who is he?”

“A sailor.”

“What is his name?” said Gwynplaine, interrupting.

“Tom-Jim-Jack,” replied the inn-keeper.

Then as he redescended the steps at the back of the Green Box, to enter

the inn, Master Nicless let fall this profound reflection, so deep as to

be unintelligible,--

“What a pity that he should not be a lord. He would make a famous

scoundrel.”

Otherwise, although established in the tavern, the group in the Green

Box had in no way altered their manner of living, and held to their

isolated habits. Except a few words exchanged now and then with the

tavern-keeper, they held no communication with any of those who were

living, either permanently or temporarily, in the inn; and continued to

keep to themselves.

Since they had been at Southwark, Gwynplaine had made it his habit,

after the performance and the supper of both family and horses--when

Ursus and Dea had gone to bed in their respective compartments--to

breathe a little the fresh air of the bowling-green, between eleven

o’clock and midnight.

A certain vagrancy in our spirits impels us to take walks at night, and

to saunter under the stars. There is a mysterious expectation in youth.

Therefore it is that we are prone to wander out in the night, without an

object.

At that hour there was no one in the fair-ground, except, perhaps, some

reeling drunkard, making staggering shadows in dark corners. The empty

taverns were shut up, and the lower room in the Tadcaster Inn was dark,

except where, in some corner, a solitary candle lighted a last reveller.

An indistinct glow gleamed through the window-shutters of the

half-closed tavern, as Gwynplaine, pensive, content, and dreaming, happy

in a haze of divine joy, passed backwards and forwards in front of the

half-open door.

Of what was he thinking? Of Dea--of nothing--of everything--of the

depths.

He never wandered far from the Green Box, being held, as by a thread, to

Dea. A few steps away from it was far enough for him.

Then he returned, found the whole Green Box asleep, and went to bed

himself.

CHAPTER IV.

CONTRARIES FRATERNIZE IN HATE.

Success is hateful, especially to those whom it overthrows. It is rare

that the eaten adore the eaters.

The Laughing Man had decidedly made a hit. The mountebanks around were

indignant. A theatrical success is a syphon--it pumps in the crowd and

creates emptiness all round. The shop opposite is done for. The

increased receipts of the Green Box caused a corresponding decrease in

the receipts of the surrounding shows. Those entertainments, popular up

to that time, suddenly collapsed. It was like a low-water mark, showing

inversely, but in perfect concordance, the rise here, the fall there.

Theatres experience the effect of tides: they rise in one only on

condition of falling in another. The swarming foreigners who exhibited

their talents and their trumpetings on the neighbouring platforms,

seeing themselves ruined by the Laughing Man, were despairing, yet

dazzled. All the grimacers, all the clowns, all the merry-andrews envied

Gwynplaine. How happy he must be with the snout of a wild beast! The

buffoon mothers and dancers on the tight-rope, with pretty children,

looked at them in anger, and pointing out Gwynplaine, would say, “What a

pity you have not a face like that!” Some beat their babes savagely for

being pretty. More than one, had she known the secret, would have

fashioned her son’s face in the Gwynplaine style. The head of an angel,

which brings no money in, is not as good as that of a lucrative devil.

One day the mother of a little child who was a marvel of beauty, and who

acted a cupid, exclaimed,--

“Our children are failures! They only succeeded with Gwynplaine.” And

shaking her fist at her son, she added, “If I only knew your father,

wouldn’t he catch it!”

Gwynplaine was the goose with the golden eggs! What a marvellous

phenomenon! There was an uproar through all the caravans. The

mountebanks, enthusiastic and exasperated, looked at Gwynplaine and

gnashed their teeth. Admiring anger is called envy. Then it howls! They

tried to disturb “Chaos Vanquished;” made a cabal, hissed, scolded,

shouted! This was an excuse for Ursus to make out-of-door harangues to

the populace, and for his friend Tom-Jim-Jack to use his fists to

re-establish order. His pugilistic marks of friendship brought him still

more under the notice and regard of Ursus and Gwynplaine. At a distance,

however, for the group in the Green Box sufficed to themselves, and held

aloof from the rest of the world, and because Tom-Jim-Jack, this leader

of the mob, seemed a sort of supreme bully, without a tie, without a

friend; a smasher of windows, a manager of men, now here, now gone,

hail-fellow-well-met with every one, companion of none.

This raging envy against Gwynplaine did not give in for a few friendly

hits from Tom-Jim-Jack. The outcries having miscarried, the mountebanks

of Tarrinzeau Field fell back on a petition. They addressed to the

authorities. This is the usual course. Against an unpleasant success we

first try to stir up the crowd and then we petition the magistrate.

With the merry-andrews the reverends allied themselves. The Laughing Man

had inflicted a blow on the preachers. There were empty places not only

in the caravans, but in the churches. The congregations in the churches

of the five parishes in Southwark had dwindled away. People left before

the sermon to go to Gwynplaine. “Chaos Vanquished,” the Green Box, the

Laughing Man, all the abominations of Baal, eclipsed the eloquence of

the pulpit. The voice crying in the desert, _vox clamantis in deserto_,

is discontented, and is prone to call for the aid of the authorities.

The clergy of the five parishes complained to the Bishop of London, who

complained to her Majesty.

The complaint of the merry-andrews was based on religion. They declared

it to be insulted. They described Gwynplaine as a sorcerer, and Ursus as

an atheist. The reverend gentlemen invoked social order. Setting

orthodoxy aside they took action on the fact that Acts of Parliament

were violated. It was clever. Because it was the period of Mr. Locke,

who had died but six months previously--28th October, 1704--and when

scepticism, which Bolingbroke had imbibed from Voltaire, was taking

root. Later on Wesley came and restored the Bible, as Loyola restored

the papacy.

Thus the Green Box was battered on both sides; by the merry-andrews, in

the name of the Pentateuch, and by chaplains in the name of the police.

In the name of Heaven and of the inspectors of nuisances. The Green Box

was denounced by the priests as an obstruction, and by the jugglers as

sacrilegious.

Had they any pretext? Was there any excuse? Yes. What was the crime?

This: there was the wolf. A dog was allowable; a wolf forbidden. In

England the wolf is an outlaw. England admits the dog which barks, but

not the dog which howls--a shade of difference between the yard and the

woods.

The rectors and vicars of the five parishes of Southwark called

attention in their petitions to numerous parliamentary and royal

statutes putting the wolf beyond the protection of the law. They moved

for something like the imprisonment of Gwynplaine and the execution of

the wolf, or at any rate for their banishment. The question was one of

public importance, the danger to persons passing, etc. And on this

point, they appealed to the Faculty. They cited the opinion of the

Eighty physicians of London, a learned body which dates from Henry

VIII., which has a seal like that of the State, which can raise sick

people to the dignity of being amenable to their jurisdiction, which has

the right to imprison those who infringe its law and contravene its

ordinances, and which, amongst other useful regulations for the health

of the citizens, put beyond doubt this fact acquired by science; that if

a wolf sees a man first, the man becomes hoarse for life. Besides, he

may be bitten.

Homo, then, was a pretext.

Ursus heard of these designs through the inn-keeper. He was uneasy. He

was afraid of two claws--the police and the justices. To be afraid of

the magistracy, it is sufficient to be afraid, there is no need to be

guilty. Ursus had no desire for contact with sheriffs, provosts,

bailiffs, and coroners. His eagerness to make their acquaintance

amounted to nil. His curiosity to see the magistrates was about as great

as the hare’s to see the greyhound.

He began to regret that he had come to London. “‘Better’ is the enemy of

‘good,’” murmured he apart. “I thought the proverb was ill-considered. I

was wrong. Stupid truths are true truths.”

Against the coalition of powers--merry-andrews taking in hand the cause

of religion, and chaplains, indignant in the name of medicine--the poor

Green Box, suspected of sorcery in Gwynplaine and of hydrophobia in

Homo, had only one thing in its favour (but a thing of great power in

England), municipal inactivity. It is to the local authorities letting

things take their own course that Englishmen owe their liberty. Liberty

in England behaves very much as the sea around England. It is a tide.

Little by little manners surmount the law. A cruel system of legislation

drowned under the wave of custom; a savage code of laws still visible

through the transparency of universal liberty: such is England.

The Laughing Man, “Chaos Vanquished,” and Homo might have mountebanks,

preachers, bishops, the House of Commons, the House of Lords, her

Majesty, London, and the whole of England against them, and remain

undisturbed so long as Southwark permitted.

The Green Box was the favourite amusement of the suburb, and the local

authorities seemed disinclined to interfere. In England, indifference is

protection. So long as the sheriff of the county of Surrey, to the

jurisdiction of which Southwark belongs, did not move in the matter,

Ursus breathed freely, and Homo could sleep on his wolf’s ears.

So long as the hatred which it excited did not occasion acts of

violence, it increased success. The Green Box was none the worse for it,

for the time. On the contrary, hints were scattered that it contained

something mysterious. Hence the Laughing Man became more and more

popular. The public follow with gusto the scent of anything contraband.

To be suspected is a recommendation. The people adopt by instinct that

at which the finger is pointed. The thing which is denounced is like the

savour of forbidden fruit; we rush to eat it. Besides, applause which

irritates some one, especially if that some one is in authority, is

sweet. To perform, whilst passing a pleasant evening, both an act of

kindness to the oppressed and of opposition to the oppressor is

agreeable. You are protecting at the same time that you are being

amused. So the theatrical caravans on the bowling-green continued to

howl and to cabal against the Laughing Man. Nothing could be better

calculated to enhance his success. The shouts of one’s enemies are

useful and give point and vitality to one’s triumph. A friend wearies

sooner in praise than an enemy in abuse. To abuse does not hurt. Enemies

are ignorant of this fact. They cannot help insulting us, and this

constitutes their use. They cannot hold their tongues, and thus keep the

public awake.

The crowds which flocked to “Chaos Vanquished” increased daily.

Ursus kept what Master Nicless had said of intriguers and complaints in

high places to himself, and did not tell Gwynplaine, lest it should

trouble the ease of his acting by creating anxiety. If evil was to come,

he would be sure to know it soon enough.

CHAPTER V.

THE WAPENTAKE.

Once, however, he thought it his duty to derogate from this prudence,

for prudence’ sake, thinking that it might be well to make Gwynplaine

uneasy. It is true that this idea arose from a circumstance much graver,

in the opinion of Ursus, than the cabals of the fair or of the church.

Gwynplaine, as he picked up a farthing which had fallen when counting

the receipts, had, in the presence of the innkeeper, drawn a contrast

between the farthing, representing the misery of the people, and the

die, representing, under the figure of Anne, the parasitical

magnificence of the throne--an ill-sounding speech. This observation was

repeated by Master Nicless, and had such a run that it reached to Ursus

through Fibi and Vinos. It put Ursus into a fever. Seditious words, lèse

Majesté. He took Gwynplaine severely to task. “Watch over your

abominable jaws. There is a rule for the great--to do nothing; and a

rule for the small--to say nothing. The poor man has but one friend,

silence. He should only pronounce one syllable: ‘Yes.’ To confess and to

consent is all the right he has. ‘Yes,’ to the judge; ‘yes,’ to the

king. Great people, if it pleases them to do so, beat us. I have

received blows from them. It is their prerogative; and they lose nothing

of their greatness by breaking our bones. The ossifrage is a species of

eagle. Let us venerate the sceptre, which is the first of staves.

Respect is prudence, and mediocrity is safety. To insult the king is to

put oneself in the same danger as a girl rashly paring the nails of a

lion. They tell me that you have been prattling about the farthing,

which is the same thing as the liard, and that you have found fault with

the august medallion, for which they sell us at market the eighth part

of a salt herring. Take care; let us be serious. Consider the existence

of pains and penalties. Suck in these legislative truths. You are in a

country in which the man who cuts down a tree three years old is quietly

taken off to the gallows. As to swearers, their feet are put into the

stocks. The drunkard is shut up in a barrel with the bottom out, so that

he can walk, with a hole in the top, through which his head is passed,

and with two in the bung for his hands, so that he cannot lie down. He

who strikes another one in Westminster Hall is imprisoned for life and

has his goods confiscated. Whoever strikes any one in the king’s palace

has his hand struck off. A fillip on the nose chances to bleed, and,

behold! you are maimed for life. He who is convicted of heresy in the

bishop’s court is burnt alive. It was for no great matter that Cuthbert

Simpson was quartered on a turnstile. Three years since, in 1702, which

is not long ago, you see, they placed in the pillory a scoundrel, called

Daniel Defoe, who had had the audacity to print the names of the Members

of Parliament who had spoken on the previous evening. He who commits

high treason is disembowelled alive, and they tear out his heart and

buffet his cheeks with it. Impress on yourself notions of right and

justice. Never allow yourself to speak a word, and at the first cause of

anxiety, run for it. Such is the bravery which I counsel and which I

practise. In the way of temerity, imitate the birds; in the way of

talking, imitate the fishes. England has one admirable point in her

favour, that her legislation is very mild.”

His admonition over, Ursus remained uneasy for some time. Gwynplaine not

at all. The intrepidity of youth arises from want of experience.

However, it seemed that Gwynplaine had good reason for his easy mind,

for the weeks flowed on peacefully, and no bad consequences seemed to

have resulted from his observations about the queen.

Ursus, we know, lacked apathy, and, like a roebuck on the watch, kept a

lookout in every direction. One day, a short time after his sermon to

Gwynplaine, as he was looking out from the window in the wall which

commanded the field, he became suddenly pale.

“Gwynplaine?”

“What?”

“Look.”

“Where?”

“In the field.”

“Well.”

“Do you see that passer-by?”

“The man in black?”

“Yes.”

“Who has a kind of mace in his hand?”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“Well, Gwynplaine, that man is a wapentake.”

“What is a wapentake?”

“He is the bailiff of the hundred.”

“What is the bailiff of the hundred?”

“He is the _proepositus hundredi_.”

“And what is the _proepositus hundredi_?”

“He is a terrible officer.”

“What has he got in his hand?”

“The iron weapon.”

“What is the iron weapon?”

“A thing made of iron.”

“What does he do with that?”

“First of all, he swears upon it. It is for that reason that he is

called the wapentake.”

“And then?”

“Then he touches you with it.”

“With what?”

“With the iron weapon.”

“The wapentake touches you with the iron weapon?”

“Yes.”

“What does that mean?”

“That means, follow me.”

“And must you follow?”

“Yes.”

“Whither?”

“How should I know?”

“But he tells you where he is going to take you?”

“No.”

“How is that?”

“He says nothing, and you say nothing.”

“But--”

“He touches you with the iron weapon. All is over then. You must go.”

“But where?”

“After him.”

“But where?”

“Wherever he likes, Gwynplaine.”

“And if you resist?”

“You are hanged.”

Ursus looked out of the window again, and drawing a long breath, said,--

“Thank God! He has passed. He was not coming here.”

Ursus was perhaps unreasonably alarmed about the indiscreet remark, and

the consequences likely to result from the unconsidered words of

Gwynplaine.

Master Nicless, who had heard them, had no interest in compromising the

poor inhabitants of the Green Box. He was amassing, at the same time as

the Laughing Man, a nice little fortune. “Chaos Vanquished” had

succeeded in two ways. While it made art triumph on the stage, it made

drunkenness prosper in the tavern.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MOUSE EXAMINED BY THE CATS.

Ursus was soon afterwards startled by another alarming circumstance.

This time it was he himself who was concerned. He was summoned to

Bishopsgate before a commission composed of three disagreeable

countenances. They belonged to three doctors, called overseers. One was

a Doctor of Theology, delegated by the Dean of Westminster; another, a

Doctor of Medicine, delegated by the College of Surgeons; the third, a

Doctor in History and Civil Law, delegated by Gresham College. These

three experts _in omni re scibili_ had the censorship of everything said

in public throughout the bounds of the hundred and thirty parishes of

London, the seventy-three of Middlesex, and, by extension, the five of

Southwark.

Such theological jurisdictions still subsist in England, and do good

service. In December, 1868, by sentence of the Court of Arches,

confirmed by the decision of the Privy Council, the Reverend Mackonochie

was censured, besides being condemned in costs, for having placed

lighted candles on a table. The liturgy allows no jokes.

Ursus, then, one fine day received from the delegated doctors an order

to appear before them, which was, luckily, given into his own hands, and

which he was therefore enabled to keep secret. Without saying a word, he

obeyed the citation, shuddering at the thought that he might be

considered culpable to the extent of having the appearance of being

suspected of a certain amount of rashness. He who had so recommended

silence to others had here a rough lesson. _Garrule, sana te ipsum_.

The three doctors, delegated and appointed overseers, sat at

Bishopsgate, at the end of a room on the ground floor, in three

armchairs covered with black leather, with three busts of Minos, Æacus,

and Rhadamanthus, in the wall above their heads, a table before them,

and at their feet a form for the accused.

Ursus, introduced by a tipstaff, of placid but severe expression,

entered, perceived the doctors, and immediately in his own mind, gave to

each of them the name of the judge of the infernal regions represented

by the bust placed above his head. Minos, the president, the

representative of theology, made him a sign to sit down on the form.

Ursus made a proper bow--that is to say, bowed to the ground; and

knowing that bears are charmed by honey, and doctors by Latin, he said,

keeping his body still bent respectfully,--

“_Tres faciunt capitulum_!”

Then, with head inclined (for modesty disarms) he sat down on the form.

Each of the three doctors had before him a bundle of papers, of which he

was turning the leaves.

Minos began.

“You speak in public?”

“Yes,” replied Ursus.

“By what right?”

“I am a philosopher.”

“That gives no right.”

“I am also a mountebank,” said Ursus.

“That is a different thing.”

Ursus breathed again, but with humility.

Minos resumed,--

“As a mountebank, you may speak; as a philosopher, you must keep

silence.”

“I will try,” said Ursus.

Then he thought to himself.

“I may speak, but I must be silent. How complicated.”

He was much alarmed.

The same overseer continued,--

“You say things which do not sound right. You insult religion. You deny

the most evident truths. You propagate revolting errors. For instance,

you have said that the fact of virginity excludes the possibility of

maternity.”

Ursus lifted his eyes meekly, “I did not say that. I said that the fact

of maternity excludes the possibility of virginity.”

Minos was thoughtful, and mumbled, “True, that is the contrary.”

It was really the same thing. But Ursus had parried the first blow.

Minos, meditating on the answer just given by Ursus, sank into the

depths of his own imbecility, and kept silent.

The overseer of history, or, as Ursus called him, Rhadamanthus, covered

the retreat of Minos by this interpolation, “Accused! your audacity and

your errors are of two sorts. You have denied that the battle of

Pharsalia would have been lost because Brutus and Cassius had met a

negro.”

“I said,” murmured Ursus “that there was something in the fact that

Cæsar was the better captain.”

The man of history passed, without transition, to mythology.

“You have excused the infamous acts of Actæon.”

“I think,” said Ursus, insinuatingly, “that a man is not dishonoured by

having seen a naked woman.”

“Then you are wrong,” said the judge severely. Rhadamanthus returned to

history.

“Apropos of the accidents which happened to the cavalry of Mithridates,

you have contested the virtues of herbs and plants. You have denied that

a herb like the securiduca, could make the shoes of horses fall off.”

“Pardon me,” replied Ursus. “I said that the power existed only in the

herb sferra cavallo. I never denied the virtue of any herb,” and he

added, in a low voice, “nor of any woman.”

By this extraneous addition to his answer Ursus proved to himself that,

anxious as he was, he was not disheartened. Ursus was a compound of

terror and presence of mind.

“To continue,” resumed Rhadamanthus; “you have declared that it was

folly in Scipio, when he wished to open the gates of Carthage, to use as

a key the herb æthiopis, because the herb æthiopis has not the

property of breaking locks.”

“I merely said that he would have done better to have used the herb

lunaria.”

“That is a matter of opinion,” murmured Rhadamanthus, touched in his

turn. And the man of history was silent.

The theologian, Minos, having returned to consciousness, questioned

Ursus anew. He had had time to consult his notes.

“You have classed orpiment amongst the products of arsenic, and you have

said that it is a poison. The Bible denies this.”

“The Bible denies, but arsenic affirms it,” sighed Ursus.

The man whom Ursus called Æacus, and who was the envy of medicine, had

not yet spoken, but now looking down on Ursus, with proudly half-closed

eyes, he said,--

“The answer is not without some show of reason.”

Ursus thanked him with his most cringing smile. Minos frowned

frightfully. “I resume,” said Minos. “You have said that it is false

that the basilisk is the king of serpents, under the name of

cockatrice.”

“Very reverend sir,” said Ursus, “so little did I desire to insult the

basilisk that I have given out as certain that it has a man’s head.”

“Be it so,” replied Minos severely; “but you added that Poerius had seen

one with the head of a falcon. Can you prove it?”

“Not easily,” said Ursus.

Here he had lost a little ground.

Minos, seizing the advantage, pushed it.

“You have said that a converted Jew has not a nice smell.”

“Yes. But I added that a Christian who becomes a Jew has a nasty one.”

Minos lost his eyes over the accusing documents.

“You have affirmed and propagated things which are impossible. You have

said that Elien had seen an elephant write sentences.”

“Nay, very reverend gentleman! I simply said that Oppian had heard a

hippopotamus discuss a philosophical problem.”

“You have declared that it is not true that a dish made of beech-wood

will become covered of itself with all the viands that one can desire.”

“I said, that if it has this virtue, it must be that you received it

from the devil.”

“That I received it!”

“No, most reverend sir. I, nobody, everybody!”

Aside, Ursus thought, “I don’t know what I am saying.”

But his outward confusion, though extreme, was not distinctly visible.

Ursus struggled with it.

“All this,” Minos began again, “implies a certain belief in the devil.”

Ursus held his own.

“Very reverend sir, I am not an unbeliever with regard to the devil.

Belief in the devil is the reverse side of faith in God. The one proves

the other. He who does not believe a little in the devil, does not

believe much in God. He who believes in the sun must believe in the

shadow. The devil is the night of God. What is night? The proof of day.”

Ursus here extemporized a fathomless combination of philosophy and

religion. Minos remained pensive, and relapsed into silence.

Ursus breathed afresh.

A sharp onslaught now took place. Æacus, the medical delegate, who had

disdainfully protected Ursus against the theologian, now turned suddenly

from auxiliary into assailant. He placed his closed fist on his bundle

of papers, which was large and heavy. Ursus received this apostrophe

full in the breast,--

“It is proved that crystal is sublimated ice, and that the diamond is

sublimated crystal. It is averred that ice becomes crystal in a thousand

years, and crystal diamond in a thousand ages. You have denied this.”

“Nay,” replied Ursus, with sadness, “I only said that in a thousand

years ice had time to melt, and that a thousand ages were difficult to

count.”

The examination went on; questions and answers clashed like swords.

“You have denied that plants can talk.”

“Not at all. But to do so they must grow under a gibbet.”

“Do you own that the mandragora cries?”

“No; but it sings.”

“You have denied that the fourth finger of the left hand has a cordial

virtue.”

“I only said that to sneeze to the left was a bad sign.”

“You have spoken rashly and disrespectfully of the phoenix.”

“Learned judge, I merely said that when he wrote that the brain of the

phoenix was a delicate morsel, but that it produced headache, Plutarch

was a little out of his reckoning, inasmuch as the phoenix never

existed.”

“A detestable speech! The cinnamalker which makes its nest with sticks

of cinnamon, the rhintacus that Parysatis used in the manufacture of his

poisons, the manucodiatas which is the bird of paradise, and the

semenda, which has a threefold beak, have been mistaken for the phoenix;

but the phoenix has existed.”

“I do not deny it.”

“You are a stupid ass.”

“I desire to be thought no better.”

“You have confessed that the elder tree cures the quinsy, but you added

that it was not because it has in its root a fairy excrescence.”

“I said it was because Judas hung himself on an elder tree.”

“A plausible opinion,” growled the theologian, glad to strike his little

blow at Æacus.

Arrogance repulsed soon turns to anger. Æacus was enraged.

“Wandering mountebank! you wander as much in mind as with your feet.

Your tendencies are out of the way and suspicious. You approach the

bounds of sorcery. You have dealings with unknown animals. You speak to

the populace of things that exist but for you alone, and the nature of

which is unknown, such as the hoemorrhoüs.”

“The hoemorrhoüs is a viper which was seen by Tremellius.”

This repartee produced a certain disorder in the irritated science of

Doctor Æacus.

Ursus added, “The existence of the hoemorrhoüs is quite as true as that

of the odoriferous hyena, and of the civet described by Castellus.”

Æacus got out of the difficulty by charging home.

“Here are your own words, and very diabolical words they are. Listen.”

With his eyes on his notes, Æacus read,--

“Two plants, the thalagssigle and the aglaphotis, are luminous in the

evening, flowers by day, stars by night;” and looking steadily at Ursus,

“What have you to say to that?”

Ursus answered,--

“Every plant is a lamp. Its perfume is its light.” Æacus turned over

other pages.

“You have denied that the vesicles of the otter are equivalent to

castoreum.”

“I merely said that perhaps it may be necessary to receive the teaching

of Ætius on this point with some reserve.”

Æacus became furious.

“You practise medicine?”

“I practise medicine,” sighed Ursus timidly.

“On living things?”

“Rather than on dead ones,” said Ursus.

Ursus defended himself stoutly, but dully; an admirable mixture, in

which meekness predominated. He spoke with such gentleness that Doctor

Æacus felt that he must insult him.

“What are you murmuring there?” said he rudely.

Ursus was amazed, and restricted himself to saying,--

“Murmurings are for the young, and moans for the aged. Alas, I moan!”

Æacus replied,--

“Be assured of this--if you attend a sick person, and he dies, you will

be punished by death.”

Ursus hazarded a question.

“And if he gets well?”

“In that case,” said the doctor, softening his voice, “you will be

punished by death.”

“There is little difference,” said Ursus.

The doctor replied,--

“If death ensues, we punish gross ignorance; if recovery, we punish

presumption. The gibbet in either case.”

“I was ignorant of the circumstance,” murmured Ursus. “I thank you for

teaching me. One does not know all the beauties of the law.”

“Take care of yourself.”

“Religiously,” said Ursus.

“We know what you are about.”

“As for me,” thought Ursus, “that is more than I always know myself.”

“We could send you to prison.”

“I see that perfectly, gentlemen.”

“You cannot deny your infractions nor your encroachments.”

“My philosophy asks pardon.”

“Great audacity has been attributed to you.”

“That is quite a mistake.”

“It is said that you have cured the sick.”

“I am the victim of calumny.”

The three pairs of eyebrows which were so horribly fixed on Ursus

contracted. The three wise faces drew near to each other, and whispered.

Ursus had the vision of a vague fool’s cap sketched out above those

three empowered heads. The low and requisite whispering of the trio was

of some minutes’ duration, during which time Ursus felt all the ice and

all the scorch of agony. At length Minos, who was president, turned to

him and said angrily,--

“Go away!”

Ursus felt something like Jonas when he was leaving the belly of the

whale.

Minos continued,--

“You are discharged.”

Ursus said to himself,--

“They won’t catch me at this again. Good-bye, medicine!”

And he added in his innermost heart,--

“From henceforth I will carefully allow them to die.”

Bent double, he bowed everywhere; to the doctors, to the busts, the

tables, the walls, and retiring backwards through the door, disappeared

almost as a shadow melting into air.

He left the hall slowly, like an innocent man, and rushed from the

street rapidly, like a guilty one. The officers of justice are so

singular and obscure in their ways that even when acquitted one flies

from them.

As he fled he mumbled,--

“I am well out of it. I am the savant untamed; they the savants

civilized. Doctors cavil at the learned. False science is the excrement

of the true, and is employed to the destruction of philosophers.

Philosophers, as they produce sophists, produce their own scourge. Of

the dung of the thrush is born the mistletoe, with which is made

birdlime, with which the thrush is captured. _Turdus sibi malum cacat_.”

We do not represent Ursus as a refined man. He was imprudent enough to

use words which expressed his thoughts. He had no more taste than

Voltaire.

When Ursus returned to the Green Box, he told Master Nicless that he

had been delayed by following a pretty woman, and let not a word escape

him concerning his adventure.

Except in the evening when he said in a low voice to Homo,--

“See here, I have vanquished the three heads of Cerberus.”

CHAPTER VII.

WHY SHOULD A GOLD PIECE LOWER ITSELF BY MIXING WITH A HEAP OF PENNIES?

An event happened.

The Tadcaster Inn became more and more a furnace of joy and laughter.

Never was there more resonant gaiety. The landlord and his boy were

become insufficient to draw the ale, stout, and porter. In the evening

in the lower room, with its windows all aglow, there was not a vacant

table. They sang, they shouted; the great old hearth, vaulted like an

oven, with its iron bars piled with coals, shone out brightly. It was

like a house of fire and noise.

In the yard--that is to say, in the theatre--the crowd was greater

still.

Crowds as great as the suburb of Southwark could supply so thronged the

performances of “Chaos Vanquished” that directly the curtain was

raised--that is to say, the platform of the Green Box was lowered--every

place was filled. The windows were alive with spectators, the balcony

was crammed. Not a single paving-stone in the paved yard was to be seen.

It seemed paved with faces.

Only the compartment for the nobility remained empty.

There was thus a space in the centre of the balcony, a black hole,

called in metaphorical slang, an oven. No one there. Crowds everywhere

except in that one spot.

One evening it was occupied.

It was on a Saturday, a day on which the English make all haste to amuse

themselves before the _ennui_ of Sunday. The hall was full.

We say _hall_. Shakespeare for a long time had to use the yard of an inn

for a theatre, and he called it _hall_.

Just as the curtain rose on the prologue of “Chaos Vanquished,” with

Ursus, Homo, and Gwynplaine on the stage, Ursus, from habit, cast a

look at the audience, and felt a sensation.

The compartment for the nobility was occupied. A lady was sitting alone

in the middle of the box, on the Utrecht velvet arm-chair. She was

alone, and she filled the box. Certain beings seem to give out light.

This lady, like Dea, had a light in herself, but a light of a different

character.

Dea was pale, this lady was pink. Dea was the twilight, this lady,

Aurora. Dea was beautiful, this lady was superb. Dea was innocence,

candour, fairness, alabaster--this woman was of the purple, and one felt

that she did not fear the blush. Her irradiation overflowed the box, she

sat in the midst of it, immovable, in the spreading majesty of an idol.

Amidst the sordid crowd she shone out grandly, as with the radiance of a

carbuncle. She inundated it with so much light that she drowned it in

shadow, and all the mean faces in it underwent eclipse. Her splendour

blotted out all else.

Every eye was turned towards her.

Tom-Jim-Jack was in the crowd. He was lost like the rest in the nimbus

of this dazzling creature.

The lady at first absorbed the whole attention of the public, who had

crowded to the performance, thus somewhat diminishing the opening

effects of “Chaos Vanquished.”

Whatever might be the air of dreamland about her, for those who were

near she was a woman; perchance too much a woman.

She was tall and amply formed, and showed as much as possible of her

magnificent person. She wore heavy earrings of pearls, with which were

mixed those whimsical jewels called “keys of England.” Her upper dress

was of Indian muslin, embroidered all over with gold--a great luxury,

because those muslin dresses then cost six hundred crowns. A large

diamond brooch closed her chemise, the which she wore so as to display

her shoulders and bosom, in the immodest fashion of the time; the

chemisette was made of that lawn of which Anne of Austria had sheets so

fine that they could be passed through a ring. She wore what seemed like

a cuirass of rubies--some uncut, but polished, and precious stones were

sewn all over the body of her dress. Then, her eyebrows were blackened

with Indian ink; and her arms, elbows, shoulders, chin, and nostrils,

with the top of her eyelids, the lobes of her ears, the palms of her

hands, the tips of her fingers, were tinted with a glowing and

provoking touch of colour. Above all, she wore an expression of

implacable determination to be beautiful. This reached the point of

ferocity. She was like a panther, with the power of turning cat at will,

and caressing. One of her eyes was blue, the other black.

Gwynplaine, as well as Ursus, contemplated her.

The Green Box somewhat resembled a phantasmagoria in its

representations. “Chaos Vanquished” was rather a dream than a piece; it

generally produced on the audience the effect of a vision. Now, this

effect was reflected on the actors. The house took the performers by

surprise, and they were thunderstruck in their turn. It was a rebound of

fascination.

The woman watched them, and they watched her.

At the distance at which they were placed, and in that luminous mist

which is the half-light of a theatre, details were lost and it was like

a hallucination. Of course it was a woman, but was it not a chimera as

well? The penetration of her light into their obscurity stupefied them.

It was like the appearance of an unknown planet. It came from a world of

the happy. Her irradiation amplified her figure. The lady was covered

with nocturnal glitterings, like a milky way. Her precious stones were

stars. The diamond brooch was perhaps a pleiad. The splendid beauty of

her bosom seemed supernatural. They felt, as they looked upon the

star-like creature, the momentary but thrilling approach of the regions

of felicity. It was out of the heights of a Paradise that she leant

towards their mean-looking Green Box, and revealed to the gaze of its

wretched audience her expression of inexorable serenity. As she

satisfied her unbounded curiosity, she fed at the same time the

curiosity of the public.

It was the Zenith permitting the Abyss to look at it.

Ursus, Gwynplaine, Vinos, Fibi, the crowd, every one had succumbed to

her dazzling beauty, except Dea, ignorant in her darkness.

An apparition was indeed before them; but none of the ideas usually

evoked by the word were realized in the lady’s appearance.

There was nothing about her diaphanous, nothing undecided, nothing

floating, no mist. She was an apparition; rose-coloured and fresh, and

full of health. Yet, under the optical condition in which Ursus and

Gwynplaine were placed, she looked like a vision. There are fleshy

phantoms, called vampires. Such a queen as she, though a spirit to the

crowd, consumes twelve hundred thousand a year, to keep her health.

Behind the lady, in the shadow, her page was to be perceived, _el mozo_,

a little child-like man, fair and pretty, with a serious face. A very

young and very grave servant was the fashion at that period. This page

was dressed from top to toe in scarlet velvet, and had on his skull-cap,

which was embroidered with gold, a bunch of curled feathers. This was

the sign of a high class of service, and indicated attendance on a very

great lady.

The lackey is part of the lord, and it was impossible not to remark, in

the shadow of his mistress, the train-bearing page. Memory often takes

notes unconsciously; and, without Gwynplaine’s suspecting it, the round

cheeks, the serious mien, the embroidered and plumed cap of the lady’s

page left some trace on his mind. The page, however, did nothing to call

attention to himself. To do so is to be wanting in respect. He held

himself aloof and passive at the back of the box, retiring as far as the

closed door permitted.

Notwithstanding the presence of her train-bearer, the lady was not the

less alone in the compartment, since a valet counts for nothing.

However powerful a diversion had been produced by this person, who

produced the effect of a personage, the _dénouement_ of “Chaos

Vanquished” was more powerful still. The impression which it made was,

as usual, irresistible. Perhaps, even, there occurred in the hall, on

account of the radiant spectator (for sometimes the spectator is part of

the spectacle), an increase of electricity. The contagion of

Gwynplaine’s laugh was more triumphant than ever. The whole audience

fell into an indescribable epilepsy of hilarity, through which could be

distinguished the sonorous and magisterial ha! ha! of Tom-Jim-Jack.

Only the unknown lady looked at the performance with the immobility of a

statue, and with her eyes, like those of a phantom, she laughed not. A

spectre, but sun-born.

The performance over, the platform drawn up, and the family reassembled

in the Green Box, Ursus opened and emptied on the supper-table the bag

of receipts. From a heap of pennies there slid suddenly forth a Spanish

gold onza. “Hers!” cried Ursus.

The onza amidst the pence covered with verdigris was a type of the lady

amidst the crowd.

“She has paid an onza for her seat,” cried Ursus with enthusiasm.

Just then, the hotel-keeper entered the Green Box, and, passing his arm

out of the window at the back of it, opened the loophole in the wall of

which we have already spoken, which gave a view over the field, and

which was level with the window; then he made a silent sign to Ursus to

look out. A carriage, swarming with plumed footmen carrying torches and

magnificently appointed, was driving off at a fast trot.

Ursus took the piece of gold between his forefinger and thumb

respectfully, and, showing it to Master Nicless, said,--

“She is a goddess.”

Then his eyes falling on the carriage which was about to turn the corner

of the field, and on the imperial of which the footmen’s torches lighted

up a golden coronet, with eight strawberry leaves, he exclaimed,--

“She is more. She is a duchess.”

The carriage disappeared: The rumbling of its wheels died away in the

distance.

Ursus remained some moments in an ecstasy, holding the gold piece

between his finger and thumb, as in a monstrance, elevating it as the

priest elevates the host.

Then he placed it on the table, and, as he contemplated it, began to

talk of “Madam.”

The innkeeper replied,--

“She was a duchess.” Yes. They knew her title. But her name? Of that

they were ignorant. Master Nicless had been close to the carriage, and

seen the coat of arms and the footmen covered with lace. The coachman

had a wig on which might have belonged to a Lord Chancellor. The

carriage was of that rare design called, in Spain, _cochetumbon_, a

splendid build, with a top like a tomb, which makes a magnificent

support for a coronet. The page was a man in miniature, so small that he

could sit on the step of the carriage outside the door. The duty of

those pretty creatures was to bear the trains of their mistresses. They

also bore their messages. And did you remark the plumed cap of the

page? How grand it was! You pay a fine if you wear those plumes without

the right of doing so. Master Nicless had seen the lady, too, quite

close. A kind of queen. Such wealth gives beauty. The skin is whiter,

the eye more proud, the gait more noble, and grace more insolent.

Nothing can equal the elegant impertinence of hands which never work.

Master Nicless told the story of all the magnificence, of the white skin

with the blue veins, the neck, the shoulders, the arms, the touch of

paint everywhere, the pearl earrings, the head-dress powdered with gold;

the profusion of stones, the rubies, the diamonds.

“Less brilliant than her eyes,” murmured Ursus.

Gwynplaine said nothing.

Dea listened.

“And do you know,” said the tavern-keeper, “the most wonderful thing of

all?”

“What?” said Ursus.

“I saw her get into her carriage.”

“What then?”

“She did not get in alone.”

“Nonsense!”

“Some one got in with her.”

“Who?”

“Guess.”

“The king,” said Ursus.

“In the first place,” said Master Nicless, “there is no king at present.

We are not living under a king. Guess who got into the carriage with the

duchess.”

“Jupiter,” said Ursus.

The hotel-keeper replied,--

“Tom-Jim-Jack!”

Gwynplaine, who had not said a word, broke silence.

“Tom-Jim-Jack!” he cried.

There was a pause of astonishment, during which the low voice of Dea was

heard to say,--

“Cannot this woman be prevented coming.”

CHAPTER VIII.

SYMPTOMS OF POISONING.

The “apparition” did not return. It did not reappear in the theatre, but

it reappeared to the memory of Gwynplaine. Gwynplaine was, to a certain

degree, troubled. It seemed to him that for the first time in his life

he had seen a woman.

He made that first stumble, a strange dream. We should beware of the

nature of the reveries that fasten on us. Reverie has in it the mystery

and subtlety of an odour. It is to thought what perfume is to the

tuberose. It is at times the exudation of a venomous idea, and it

penetrates like a vapour. You may poison yourself with reveries, as with

flowers. An intoxicating suicide, exquisite and malignant. The suicide

of the soul is evil thought. In it is the poison. Reverie attracts,

cajoles, lures, entwines, and then makes you its accomplice. It makes

you bear your half in the trickeries which it plays on conscience. It

charms; then it corrupts you. We may say of reverie as of play, one

begins by being a dupe, and ends by being a cheat.

Gwynplaine dreamed.

He had never before seen Woman. He had seen the shadow in the women of

the populace, and he had seen the soul in Dea.

He had just seen the reality.

A warm and living skin, under which one felt the circulation of

passionate blood; an outline with the precision of marble and the

undulation of the wave; a high and impassive mien, mingling refusal with

attraction, and summing itself up in its own glory; hair of the colour

of the reflection from a furnace; a gallantry of adornment producing in

herself and in others a tremor of voluptuousness, the half-revealed

nudity betraying a disdainful desire to be coveted at a distance by the

crowd; an ineradicable coquetry; the charm of impenetrability,

temptation seasoned by the glimpse of perdition, a promise to the senses

and a menace to the mind; a double anxiety, the one desire, the other

fear. He had just seen these things. He had just seen Woman.

He had seen more and less than a woman; he had seen a female.

And at the same time an Olympian. The female of a god.

The mystery of sex had just been revealed to him.

And where? On inaccessible heights--at an infinite distance.

O mocking destiny! The soul, that celestial essence, he possessed; he

held it in his hand. It was Dea. Sex, that terrestrial embodiment, he

perceived in the heights of heaven. It was that woman.

A duchess!

“More than a goddess,” Ursus had said.

What a precipice! Even dreams dissolved before such a perpendicular

height to escalade.

Was he going to commit the folly of dreaming about the unknown beauty?

He debated with himself.

He recalled all that Ursus had said of high stations which are almost

royal. The philosopher’s disquisitions, which had hitherto seemed so

useless, now became landmarks for his thoughts. A very thin layer of

forgetfulness often lies over our memory, through which at times we

catch a glimpse of all beneath it. His fancy ran on that august world,

the peerage, to which the lady belonged, and which was so inexorably

placed above the inferior world, the common people, of which he was one.

And was he even one of the people? Was not he, the mountebank, below the

lowest of the low? For the first time since he had arrived at the age of

reflection, he felt his heart vaguely contracted by a sense of his

baseness, and of that which we nowadays call abasement. The paintings

and the catalogues of Ursus, his lyrical inventories, his dithyrambics

of castles, parks, fountains, and colonnades, his catalogues of riches

and of power, revived in the memory of Gwynplaine in the relief of

reality mingled with mist. He was possessed with the image of this

zenith. That a man should be a lord!--it seemed chimerical. It was so,

however. Incredible thing! There were lords! But were they of flesh and

blood, like ourselves? It seemed doubtful. He felt that he lay at the

bottom of all darkness, encompassed by a wall, while he could just

perceive in the far distance above his head, through the mouth of the

pit, a dazzling confusion of azure, of figures, and of rays, which was

Olympus. In the midst of this glory the duchess shone out resplendent.

He felt for this woman a strange, inexpressible longing, combined with a

conviction of the impossibility of attainment. This poignant

contradiction returned to his mind again and again, notwithstanding

every effort. He saw near to him, even within his reach, in close and

tangible reality, the soul; and in the unattainable--in the depths of

the ideal--the flesh. None of these thoughts attained to certain shape.

They were as a vapour within him, changing every instant its form, and

floating away. But the darkness which the vapour caused was intense.

He did not form even in his dreams any hope of reaching the heights

where the duchess dwelt. Luckily for him.

The vibration of such ladders of fancy, if ever we put our foot upon

them, may render our brains dizzy for ever. Intending to scale Olympus,

we reach Bedlam; any distinct feeling of actual desire would have

terrified him. He entertained none of that nature.

Besides, was he likely ever to see the lady again? Most probably not. To

fall in love with a passing light on the horizon, madness cannot reach

to that pitch. To make loving eyes at a star even, is not

incomprehensible. It is seen again, it reappears, it is fixed in the

sky. But can any one be enamoured of a flash of lightning?

Dreams flowed and ebbed within him. The majestic and gallant idol at the

back of the box had cast a light over his diffused ideas, then faded

away. He thought, yet thought not of it; turned to other

things--returned to it. It rocked about in his brain--nothing more. It

broke his sleep for several nights. Sleeplessness is as full of dreams

as sleep.

It is almost impossible to express in their exact limits the abstract

evolutions of the brain. The inconvenience of words is that they are

more marked in form than ideas. All ideas have indistinct boundary

lines, words have not. A certain diffused phase of the soul ever escapes

words. Expression has its frontiers, thought has none.

The depths of our secret souls are so vast that Gwynplaine’s dreams

scarcely touched Dea. Dea reigned sacred in the centre of his soul;

nothing could approach her.

Still (for such contradictions make up the soul of man) there was a

conflict within him. Was he conscious of it? Scarcely.

In his heart of hearts he felt a collision of desires. We all have our

weak points. Its nature would have been clear to Ursus; but to

Gwynplaine it was not.

Two instincts--one the ideal, the other sexual--were struggling within

him. Such contests occur between the angels of light and darkness on the

edge of the abyss.

At length the angel of darkness was overthrown. One day Gwynplaine

suddenly thought no more of the unknown woman.

The struggle between two principles--the duel between his earthly and

his heavenly nature--had taken place within his soul, and at such a

depth that he had understood it but dimly. One thing was certain, that

he had never for one moment ceased to adore Dea.

He had been attacked by a violent disorder, his blood had been fevered;

but it was over. Dea alone remained.

Gwynplaine would have been much astonished had any one told him that Dea

had ever been, even for a moment, in danger; and in a week or two the

phantom which had threatened the hearts of both their souls faded away.

Within Gwynplaine nothing remained but the heart, which was the hearth,

and the love, which was its fire.

Besides, we have just said that “the duchess” did not return.

Ursus thought it all very natural. “The lady with the gold piece” is a

phenomenon. She enters, pays, and vanishes. It would be too much joy

were she to return.

As to Dea, she made no allusion to the woman who had come and passed

away. She listened, perhaps, and was sufficiently enlightened by the

sighs of Ursus, and now and then by some significant exclamation, such

as,--

“_One does not get ounces of gold every day!_”

She spoke no more of the “woman.” This showed deep instinct. The soul

takes obscure precautions, in the secrets of which it is not always

admitted itself. To keep silence about any one seems to keep them afar

off. One fears that questions may call them back. We put silence between

us, as if we were shutting a door.

So the incident fell into oblivion.

Was it ever anything? Had it ever occurred? Could it be said that a

shadow had floated between Gwynplaine and Dea? Dea did not know of it,

nor Gwynplaine either. No; nothing had occurred. The duchess herself was

blurred in the distant perspective like an illusion. It had been but a

momentary dream passing over Gwynplaine, out of which he had awakened.

When it fades away, a reverie, like a mist, leaves no trace behind; and

when the cloud has passed on, love shines out as brightly in the heart

as the sun in the sky.

CHAPTER IX.

ABYSSUS ABYSSUM VOCAT.

Another face, disappeared--Tom-Jim-Jack’s. Suddenly he ceased to

frequent the Tadcaster Inn.

Persons so situated as to be able to observe other phases of fashionable

life in London, might have seen that about this time the _Weekly

Gazette_, between two extracts from parish registers, announced the

departure of Lord David Dirry-Moir, by order of her Majesty, to take

command of his frigate in the white squadron then cruising off the coast

of Holland.

Ursus, perceiving that Tom-Jim-Jack did not return, was troubled by his

absence. He had not seen Tom-Jim-Jack since the day on which he had

driven off in the same carriage with the lady of the gold piece. It was,

indeed, an enigma who this Tom-Jim-Jack could be, who carried off

duchesses under his arm. What an interesting investigation! What

questions to propound! What things to be said. Therefore Ursus said not

a word.

Ursus, who had had experience, knew the smart caused by rash curiosity.

Curiosity ought always to be proportioned to the curious. By listening,

we risk our ear; by watching, we risk our eye. Prudent people neither

hear nor see. Tom-Jim-Jack had got into a princely carriage. The

tavern-keeper had seen him. It appeared so extraordinary that the sailor

should sit by the lady that it made Ursus circumspect. The caprices of

those in high life ought to be sacred to the lower orders. The reptiles

called the poor had best squat in their holes when they see anything out

of the way. Quiescence is a power. Shut your eyes, if you have not the

luck to be blind; stop up your ears, if you have not the good fortune to

be deaf; paralyze your tongue, if you have not the perfection of being

mute. The great do what they like, the little what they can. Let the

unknown pass unnoticed. Do not importune mythology. Do not interrogate

appearances. Have a profound respect for idols. Do not let us direct our

gossiping towards the lessenings or increasings which take place in

superior regions, of the motives of which we are ignorant. Such things

are mostly optical delusions to us inferior creatures. Metamorphoses are

the business of the gods: the transformations and the contingent

disorders of great persons who float above us are clouds impossible to

comprehend and perilous to study. Too much attention irritates the

Olympians engaged in their gyrations of amusement or fancy; and a

thunderbolt may teach you that the bull you are too curiously examining

is Jupiter. Do not lift the folds of the stone-coloured mantles of those

terrible powers. Indifference is intelligence. Do not stir, and you will

be safe. Feign death, and they will not kill you. Therein lies the

wisdom of the insect. Ursus practised it.

The tavern-keeper, who was puzzled as well, questioned Ursus one day.

“Do you observe that Tom-Jim-Jack never comes here now!”

“Indeed!” said Ursus. “I have not remarked it.”

Master Nicless made an observation in an undertone, no doubt touching

the intimacy between the ducal carriage and Tom-Jim-Jack--a remark

which, as it might have been irreverent and dangerous, Ursus took care

not to hear.

Still Ursus was too much of an artist not to regret Tom-Jim-Jack. He

felt some disappointment. He told his feeling to Homo, of whose

discretion alone he felt certain. He whispered into the ear of the wolf,

“Since Tom-Jim-Jack ceased to come, I feel a blank as a man, and a chill

as a poet.” This pouring out of his heart to a friend relieved Ursus.

His lips were sealed before Gwynplaine, who, however, made no allusion

to Tom-Jim-Jack. The fact was that Tom-Jim-Jack’s presence or absence

mattered not to Gwynplaine, absorbed as he was in Dea.

Forgetfulness fell more and more on Gwynplaine. As for Dea, she had not

even suspected the existence of a vague trouble. At the same time, no

more cabals or complaints against the Laughing Man were spoken of. Hate

seemed to have let go its hold. All was tranquil in and around the Green

Box. No more opposition from strollers, merry-andrews, nor priests; no

more grumbling outside. Their success was unclouded. Destiny allows of

such sudden serenity. The brilliant happiness of Gwynplaine and Dea was

for the present absolutely cloudless. Little by little it had risen to a

degree which admitted of no increase. There is one word which expresses

the situation--apogee. Happiness, like the sea, has its high tide. The

worst thing for the perfectly happy is that it recedes.

There are two ways of being inaccessible: being too high and being too

low. At least as much, perhaps, as the first is the second to be

desired. More surely than the eagle escapes the arrow, the animalcule

escapes being crushed. This security of insignificance, if it had ever

existed on earth, was enjoyed by Gwynplaine and Dea, and never before

had it been so complete. They lived on, daily more and more ecstatically

wrapt in each other. The heart saturates itself with love as with a

divine salt that preserves it, and from this arises the incorruptible

constancy of those who have loved each other from the dawn of their

lives, and the affection which keeps its freshness in old age. There is

such a thing as the embalmment of the heart. It is of Daphnis and Chloë

that Philemon and Baucis are made. The old age of which we speak,

evening resembling morning, was evidently reserved for Gwynplaine and

Dea. In the meantime they were young.

Ursus looked on this love as a doctor examines his case. He had what was

in those days termed a hippocratical expression of face. He fixed his

sagacious eyes on Dea, fragile and pale, and growled out, “It is lucky

that she is happy.” At other times he said, “She is lucky for her

health’s sake.” He shook his head, and at times read attentively a

portion treating of heart-disease in Aviccunas, translated by Vossiscus

Fortunatus, Louvain, 1650, an old worm-eaten book of his.

Dea, when fatigued, suffered from perspirations and drowsiness, and took

a daily _siesta_, as we have already seen. One day, while she was lying

asleep on the bearskin, Gwynplaine was out, and Ursus bent down softly

and applied his ear to Dea’s heart. He seemed to listen for a few

minutes, and then stood up, murmuring, “She must not have any shock. It

would find out the weak place.”

The crowd continued to flock to the performance of “Chaos Vanquished.”

The success of the Laughing Man seemed inexhaustible. Every one rushed

to see him; no longer from Southwark only, but even from other parts of

London. The general public began to mingle with the usual audience,

which no longer consisted of sailors and drivers only; in the opinion of

Master Nicless, who was well acquainted with crowds, there were in the

crowd gentlemen and baronets disguised as common people. Disguise is one

of the pleasures of pride, and was much in fashion at that period. This

mixing of the aristocratic element with the mob was a good sign, and

showed that their popularity was extending to London. The fame of

Gwynplaine has decidedly penetrated into the great world. Such was the

fact. Nothing was talked of but the Laughing Man. He was talked about

even at the Mohawk Club, frequented by noblemen.

In the Green Box they had no idea of all this. They were content to be

happy. It was intoxication to Dea to feel, as she did every evening, the

crisp and tawny head of Gwynplaine. In love there is nothing like habit.

The whole of life is concentrated in it. The reappearance of the stars

is the custom of the universe. Creation is nothing but a mistress, and

the sun is a lover. Light is a dazzling caryatid supporting the world.

Each day, for a sublime minute, the earth, covered by night, rests on

the rising sun. Dea, blind, felt a like return of warmth and hope within

her when she placed her hand on the head of Gwynplaine.

To adore each other in the shadows, to love in the plenitude of silence;

who could not become reconciled to such an eternity?

One evening Gwynplaine, feeling within him that overflow of felicity

which, like the intoxication of perfumes, causes a sort of delicious

faintness, was strolling, as he usually did after the performance, in

the meadow some hundred paces from the Green Box. Sometimes in those

high tides of feeling in our souls we feel that we would fain pour out

the sensations of the overflowing heart. The night was dark but clear.

The stars were shining. The whole fair-ground was deserted. Sleep and

forgetfulness reigned in the caravans which were scattered over

Tarrinzeau Field.

One light alone was unextinguished. It was the lamp of the Tadcaster

Inn, the door of which was left ajar to admit Gwynplaine on his return.

Midnight had just struck in the five parishes of Southwark, with the

breaks and differences of tone of their various bells. Gwynplaine was

dreaming of Dea. Of whom else should he dream? But that evening, feeling

singularly troubled, and full of a charm which was at the same time a

pang, he thought of Dea as a man thinks of a woman. He reproached

himself for this. It seemed to be failing in respect to her. The

husband’s attack was forming dimly within him. Sweet and imperious

impatience! He was crossing the invisible frontier, on this side of

which is the virgin, on the other, the wife. He questioned himself

anxiously. A blush, as it were, overspread his mind. The Gwynplaine of

long ago had been transformed, by degrees, unconsciously in a mysterious

growth. His old modesty was becoming misty and uneasy. We have an ear of

light, into which speaks the spirit; and an ear of darkness, into which

speaks the instinct. Into the latter strange voices were making their

proposals. However pure-minded may be the youth who dreams of love, a

certain grossness of the flesh eventually comes between his dream and

him. Intentions lose their transparency. The unavowed desire implanted

by nature enters into his conscience. Gwynplaine felt an indescribable

yearning of the flesh, which abounds in all temptation, and Dea was

scarcely flesh. In this fever, which he knew to be unhealthy, he

transfigured Dea into a more material aspect, and tried to exaggerate

her seraphic form into feminine loveliness. It is thou, O woman, that we

require.

Love comes not to permit too much of paradise. It requires the fevered

skin, the troubled life, the unbound hair, the kiss electrical and

irreparable, the clasp of desire. The sidereal is embarrassing, the

ethereal is heavy. Too much of the heavenly in love is like too much

fuel on a fire: the flame suffers from it. Gwynplaine fell into an

exquisite nightmare; Dea to be clasped in his arms--Dea clasped in them!

He heard nature in his heart crying out for a woman. Like a Pygmalion in

a dream modelling a Galathea out of the azure, in the depths of his soul

he worked at the chaste contour of Dea--a contour with too much of

heaven, too little of Eden. For Eden is Eve, and Eve was a female, a

carnal mother, a terrestrial nurse; the sacred womb of generations; the

breast of unfailing milk; the rocker of the cradle of the newborn world,

and wings are incompatible with the bosom of woman. Virginity is but the

hope of maternity. Still, in Gwynplaine’s dreams, Dea, until now, had

been enthroned above flesh. Now, however, he made wild efforts in

thought to draw her downwards by that thread, sex, which ties every girl

to earth. Not one of those birds is free. Dea, like all the rest, was

within this law; and Gwynplaine, though he scarcely acknowledged it,

felt a vague desire that she should submit to it. This desire possessed

him in spite of himself, and with an ever-recurring relapse. He pictured

Dea as woman. He came to the point of regarding her under a hitherto

unheard-of form; as a creature no longer of ecstasy only, but of

voluptuousness; as Dea, with her head resting on the pillow. He was

ashamed of this visionary desecration. It was like an attempt at

profanation. He resisted its assault. He turned from it, but it returned

again. He felt as if he were committing a criminal assault. To him Dea

was encompassed by a cloud. Cleaving that cloud, he shuddered, as though

he were raising her chemise. It was in April. The spine has its dreams.

He rambled at random with the uncertain step caused by solitude. To have

no one by is a provocative to wander. Whither flew his thoughts? He

would not have dared to own it to himself. To heaven? No. To a bed. You

were looking down upon him, O ye stars.

Why talk of a man in love? Rather say a man possessed. To be possessed

by the devil, is the exception; to be possessed by a woman, the rule.

Every man has to bear this alienation of himself. What a sorceress is a

pretty woman! The true name of love is captivity.

Man is made prisoner by the soul of a woman; by her flesh as well, and

sometimes even more by the flesh than by the soul. The soul is the true

love, the flesh, the mistress.

We slander the devil. It was not he who tempted Eve. It was Eve who

tempted him. The woman began. Lucifer was passing by quietly. He

perceived the woman, and became Satan.

The flesh is the cover of the unknown. It is provocative (which is

strange) by its modesty. Nothing could be more distracting. It is full

of shame, the hussey!

It was the terrible love of the surface which was then agitating

Gwynplaine, and holding him in its power. Fearful the moment in which

man covets the nakedness of woman! What dark things lurk beneath the

fairness of Venus!

Something within him was calling Dea aloud, Dea the maiden, Dea the

other half of a man, Dea flesh and blood, Dea with uncovered bosom. That

cry was almost driving away the angel. Mysterious crisis through which

all love must pass and in which the Ideal is in danger! Therein is the

predestination of Creation. Moment of heavenly corruption! Gwynplaine’s

love of Dea was becoming nuptial. Virgin love is but a transition. The

moment was come. Gwynplaine coveted the woman.

He coveted a woman!

Precipice of which one sees but the first gentle slope!

The indistinct summons of nature is inexorable. The whole of woman--what

an abyss!

Luckily, there was no woman for Gwynplaine but Dea--the only one he

desired, the only one who could desire him.

Gwynplaine felt that vague and mighty shudder which is the vital claim

of infinity. Besides there was the aggravation of the spring. He was

breathing the nameless odours of the starry darkness. He walked forward

in a wild feeling of delight. The wandering perfumes of the rising sap,

the heady irradiations which float in shadow, the distant opening of

nocturnal flowers, the complicity of little hidden nests, the murmurs of

waters and of leaves, soft sighs rising from all things, the freshness,

the warmth, and the mysterious awakening of April and May, is the vast

diffusion of sex murmuring, in whispers, their proposals of

voluptuousness, till the soul stammers in answer to the giddy

provocation. The ideal no longer knows what it is saying.

Any one observing Gwynplaine walk would have said, “See!--a drunken

man!”

He almost staggered under the weight of his own heart, of spring, and of

the night.

The solitude in the bowling-green was so peaceful that at times he spoke

aloud. The consciousness that there is no listener induces speech.

He walked with slow steps, his head bent down, his hands behind him, the

left hand in the right, the fingers open.

Suddenly he felt something slipped between his fingers.

He turned round quickly.

In his hand was a paper, and in front of him a man.

It was the man who, coming behind him with the stealth of a cat, had

placed the paper in his fingers.

The paper was a letter.

The man, as he appeared pretty clearly in the starlight, was small,

chubby-cheeked, young, sedate, and dressed in a scarlet livery, exposed

from top to toe through the opening of a long gray cloak, then called a

capenoche, a Spanish word contracted; in French it was _cape-de-nuit_.

His head was covered by a crimson cap, like the skull-cap of a cardinal,

on which servitude was indicated by a strip of lace. On this cap was a

plume of tisserin feathers. He stood motionless before Gwynplaine, like

a dark outline in a dream.

Gwynplaine recognized the duchess’s page.

Before Gwynplaine could utter an exclamation of surprise, he heard the

thin voice of the page, at once childlike and feminine in its tone,

saying to him,--

“At this hour to-morrow, be at the corner of London Bridge. I will be

there to conduct you--”

“Whither?” demanded Gwynplaine.

“Where you are expected.”

Gwynplaine dropped his eyes on the letter, which he was holding

mechanically in his hand.

When he looked up the page was no longer with him.

He perceived a vague form lessening rapidly in the distance. It was the

little valet. He turned the corner of the street, and solitude reigned

again.

Gwynplaine saw the page vanish, then looked at the letter. There are

moments in our lives when what happens seems not to happen. Stupor keeps

us for a moment at a distance from the fact.

Gwynplaine raised the letter to his eyes, as if to read it, but soon

perceived that he could not do so for two reasons--first, because he had

not broken the seal; and, secondly, because it was too dark.

It was some minutes before he remembered that there was a lamp at the

inn. He took a few steps sideways, as if he knew not whither he was

going.

A somnambulist, to whom a phantom had given a letter, might walk as he

did.

At last he made up his mind. He ran rather than walked towards the inn,

stood in the light which broke through the half-open door, and by it

again examined the closed letter. There was no design on the seal, and

on the envelope was written, “_To Gwynplaine_.” He broke the seal, tore

the envelope, unfolded the letter, put it directly under the light, and

read as follows:--

“You are hideous; I am beautiful. You are a player; I am a duchess. I am

the highest; you are the lowest. I desire you! I love you! Come!”

BOOK THE FOURTH.

_THE CELL OF TORTURE._

CHAPTER I.

THE TEMPTATION OF ST. GWYNPLAINE.

One jet of flame hardly makes a prick in the darkness; another sets fire

to a volcano.

Some sparks are gigantic.

Gwynplaine read the letter, then he read it over again. Yes, the words

were there, “I love you!”

Terrors chased each other through his mind.

The first was, that he believed himself to be mad.

He was mad; that was certain: He had just seen what had no existence.

The twilight spectres were making game of him, poor wretch! The little

man in scarlet was the will-o’-the-wisp of a dream. Sometimes, at night,

nothings condensed into flame come and laugh at us. Having had his laugh

out, the visionary being had disappeared, and left Gwynplaine behind

him, mad.

Such are the freaks of darkness.

The second terror was, to find out that he was in his right senses.

A vision? Certainly not. How could that be? Had he not a letter in his

hand? Did he not see an envelope, a seal, paper, and writing? Did he not

know from whom that came? It was all clear enough. Some one took a pen

and ink, and wrote. Some one lighted a taper, and sealed it with wax.

Was not his name written on the letter--“_To Gwynplaine_?” The paper was

scented. All was clear.

Gwynplaine knew the little man. The dwarf was a page. The gleam was a

livery. The page had given him a rendezvous for the same hour on the

morrow, at the corner of London Bridge.

Was London Bridge an illusion?

No, no. All was clear. There was no delirium. All was reality.

Gwynplaine was perfectly clear in his intellect. It was not a

phantasmagoria, suddenly dissolving above his head, and fading into

nothingness. It was something which had really happened to him. No,

Gwynplaine was not mad, nor was he dreaming. Again he read the letter.

Well, yes! But then?

That then was terror-striking.

There was a woman who desired him! If so, let no one ever again

pronounce the word incredible! A woman desire him! A woman who had seen

his face! A woman who was not blind! And who was this woman? An ugly

one? No; a beauty. A gipsy? No; a duchess!

What was it all about, and what could it all mean? What peril in such a

triumph! And how was he to help plunging into it headlong?

What! that woman! The siren, the apparition, the lady in the visionary

box, the light in the darkness! It was she! Yes; it was she!

The crackling of the fire burst out in every part of his frame. It was

the strange, unknown lady, she who had previously so troubled his

thoughts; and his first tumultuous feelings about this woman returned,

heated by the evil fire. Forgetfulness is nothing but a palimpsest: an

incident happens unexpectedly, and all that was effaced revives in the

blanks of wondering memory.

Gwynplaine thought that he had dismissed that image from his

remembrance, and he found that it was still there; and she had put her

mark in his brain, unconsciously guilty of a dream. Without his

suspecting it, the lines of the engraving had been bitten deep by

reverie. And now a certain amount of evil had been done, and this train

of thought, thenceforth, perhaps, irreparable, he took up again eagerly.

What! she desired him! What! the princess descend from her throne, the

idol from its shrine, the statue from its pedestal, the phantom from its

cloud! What! from the depths of the impossible had this chimera come!

This deity of the sky! This irradiation! This nereid all glistening

with jewels! This proud and unattainable beauty, from the height of her

radiant throne, was bending down to Gwynplaine! What! had she drawn up

her chariot of the dawn, with its yoke of turtle-doves and dragons,

before Gwynplaine, and said to him, “Come!” What! this terrible glory of

being the object of such abasement from the empyrean, for Gwynplaine!

This woman, if he could give that name to a form so starlike and

majestic, this woman proposed herself, gave herself, delivered herself

up to him! Wonder of wonders! A goddess prostituting herself for him!

The arms of a courtesan opening in a cloud to clasp him to the bosom of

a goddess, and that without degradation! Such majestic creatures cannot

be sullied. The gods bathe themselves pure in light; and this goddess

who came to him knew what she was doing. She was not ignorant of the

incarnate hideousness of Gwynplaine. She had seen the mask which was his

face; and that mask had not caused her to draw back. Gwynplaine was

loved notwithstanding it!

Here was a thing surpassing all the extravagance of dreams. He was loved

in consequence of his mask. Far from repulsing the goddess, the mask

attracted her. Gwynplaine was not only loved; he was desired. He was

more than accepted; he was chosen. He, chosen!

What! there, where this woman dwelt, in the regal region of

irresponsible splendour, and in the power of full, free will; where

there were princes, and she could take a prince; nobles, and she could

take a noble; where there were men handsome, charming, magnificent, and

she could take an Adonis: whom did she take? Gnafron! She could choose

from the midst of meteors and thunders, the mighty six-winged seraphim,

and she chose the larva crawling in the slime. On one side were

highnesses and peers, all grandeur, all opulence, all glory; on the

other, a mountebank. The mountebank carried it! What kind of scales

could there be in the heart of this woman? By what measure did she weigh

her love? She took off her ducal coronet, and flung it on the platform

of a clown! She took from her brow the Olympian aureola, and placed it

on the bristly head of a gnome! The world had turned topsy-turvy. The

insects swarmed on high, the stars were scattered below, whilst the

wonder-stricken Gwynplaine, overwhelmed by a falling ruin of light, and

lying in the dust, was enshrined in a glory. One all-powerful,

revolting against beauty and splendour, gave herself to the damned of

night; preferred Gwynplaine to Antinoüs; excited by curiosity, she

entered the shadows, and descending within them, and from this

abdication of goddess-ship was rising, crowned and prodigious, the

royalty of the wretched. “You are hideous. I love you.” These words

touched Gwynplaine in the ugly spot of pride. Pride is the heel in which

all heroes are vulnerable. Gwynplaine was flattered in his vanity as a

monster. He was loved for his deformity. He, too, was the exception, as

much and perhaps more than the Jupiters and the Apollos. He felt

superhuman, and so much a monster as to be a god. Fearful bewilderment!

Now, who was this woman? What did he know about her? Everything and

nothing. She was a duchess, that he knew; he knew, also, that she was

beautiful and rich; that she had liveries, lackeys, pages, and footmen

running with torches by the side of her coroneted carriage. He knew that

she was in love with him; at least she said so. Of everything else he

was ignorant. He knew her title, but not her name. He knew her thought;

he knew not her life. Was she married, widow, maiden? Was she free? Of

what family was she? Were there snares, traps, dangers about her? Of the

gallantry existing on the idle heights of society; the caves on those

summits, in which savage charmers dream amid the scattered skeletons of

the loves which they have already preyed on; of the extent of tragic

cynicism to which the experiments of a woman may attain who believes

herself to be beyond the reach of man--of things such as these

Gwynplaine had no idea. Nor had he even in his mind materials out of

which to build up a conjecture, information concerning such things being

very scanty in the social depths in which he lived. Still he detected a

shadow; he felt that a mist hung over all this brightness. Did he

understand it? No. Could he guess at it? Still less. What was there

behind that letter? One pair of folding doors opening before him,

another closing on him, and causing him a vague anxiety. On the one side

an avowal; on the other an enigma--avowal and enigma, which, like two

mouths, one tempting, the other threatening, pronounce the same word,

Dare!

Never had perfidious chance taken its measures better, nor timed more

fitly the moment of temptation. Gwynplaine, stirred by spring, and by

the sap rising in all things, was prompt to dream the dream of the

flesh. The old man who is not to be stamped out, and over whom none of

us can triumph, was awaking in that backward youth, still a boy at

twenty-four.

It was just then, at the most stormy moment of the crisis, that the

offer was made him, and the naked bosom of the Sphinx appeared before

his dazzled eyes. Youth is an inclined plane. Gwynplaine was stooping,

and something pushed him forward. What? the season, and the night. Who?

the woman.

Were there no month of April, man would be a great deal more virtuous.

The budding plants are a set of accomplices! Love is the thief, Spring

the receiver.

Gwynplaine was shaken.

There is a kind of smoke of evil, preceding sin, in which the conscience

cannot breathe. The obscure nausea of hell comes over virtue in

temptation. The yawning abyss discharges an exhalation which warns the

strong and turns the weak giddy. Gwynplaine was suffering its mysterious

attack.

Dilemmas, transient and at the same time stubborn, were floating before

him. Sin, presenting itself obstinately again and again to his mind, was

taking form. The morrow, midnight? London Bridge, the page? Should he

go? “Yes,” cried the flesh; “No,” cried the soul.

Nevertheless, we must remark that, strange as it may appear at first

sight, he never once put himself the question, “Should he go?” quite

distinctly. Reprehensible actions are like over-strong brandies--you

cannot swallow them at a draught. You put down your glass; you will see

to it presently; there is a strange taste even about that first drop.

One thing is certain: he felt something behind him pushing him, forward

towards the unknown. And he trembled. He could catch a glimpse of a

crumbling precipice, and he drew back, stricken by the terror encircling

him. He closed his eyes. He tried hard to deny to himself that the

adventure had ever occurred, and to persuade himself into doubting his

reason. This was evidently his best plan; the wisest thing he could do

was to believe himself mad.

Fatal fever! Every man, surprised by the unexpected, has at times felt

the throb of such tragic pulsations. The observer ever listens with

anxiety to the echoes resounding from the dull strokes of the

battering-ram of destiny striking against a conscience.

Alas! Gwynplaine put himself questions. Where duty is clear, to put

oneself questions is to suffer defeat.

There are invasions which the mind may have to suffer. There are the

Vandals of the soul--evil thoughts coming to devastate our virtue. A

thousand contrary ideas rushed into Gwynplaine’s brain, now following

each other singly, now crowding together. Then silence reigned again,

and he would lean his head on his hands, in a kind of mournful

attention, as of one who contemplates a landscape by night.

Suddenly he felt that he was no longer thinking. His reverie had reached

that point of utter darkness in which all things disappear.

He remembered, too, that he had not entered the inn. It might be about

two o’clock in the morning.

He placed the letter which the page had brought him in his side-pocket;

but perceiving that it was next his heart, he drew it out again,

crumpled it up, and placed it in a pocket of his hose. He then directed

his steps towards the inn, which he entered stealthily, and without

awaking little Govicum, who, while waiting up for him, had fallen asleep

on the table, with his arms for a pillow. He closed the door, lighted a

candle at the lamp, fastened the bolt, turned the key in the lock,

taking, mechanically, all the precautions usual to a man returning home

late, ascended the staircase of the Green Box, slipped into the old

hovel which he used as a bedroom, looked at Ursus who was asleep, blew

out his candle, and did not go to bed.

Thus an hour passed away. Weary, at length, and fancying that bed and

sleep were one, he laid his head upon the pillow without undressing,

making darkness the concession of closing his eyes. But the storm of

emotions which assailed him had not waned for an instant. Sleeplessness

is a cruelty which night inflicts on man. Gwynplaine suffered greatly.

For the first time in his life, he was not pleased with himself. Ache of

heart mingled with gratified vanity. What was he to do? Day broke at

last; he heard Ursus get up, but did not raise his eyelids. No truce for

him, however. The letter was ever in his mind. Every word of it came

back to him in a kind of chaos. In certain violent storms within the

soul thought becomes a liquid. It is convulsed, it heaves, and

something rises from it, like the dull roaring of the waves. Flood and

flow, sudden shocks and whirls, the hesitation of the wave before the

rock; hail and rain clouds with the light shining through their breaks;

the petty flights of useless foam; wild swell broken in an instant;

great efforts lost; wreck appearing all around; darkness and universal

dispersion--as these things are of the sea, so are they of man.

Gwynplaine was a prey to such a storm.

At the acme of his agony, his eyes still closed, he heard an exquisite

voice saying, “Are you asleep, Gwynplaine?” He opened his eyes with a

start, and sat up. Dea was standing in the half-open doorway. Her

ineffable smile was in her eyes and on her lips. She was standing there,

charming in the unconscious serenity of her radiance. Then came, as it

were, a sacred moment. Gwynplaine watched her, startled, dazzled,

awakened. Awakened from what?--from sleep? no, from sleeplessness. It

was she, it was Dea; and suddenly he felt in the depths of his being the

indescribable wane of the storm and the sublime descent of good over

evil; the miracle of the look from on high was accomplished; the blind

girl, the sweet light-bearer, with no effort beyond her mere presence,

dissipated all the darkness within him; the curtain of cloud was

dispersed from the soul as if drawn by an invisible hand, and a sky of

azure, as though by celestial enchantment, again spread over

Gwynplaine’s conscience. In a moment he became by the virtue of that

angel, the great and good Gwynplaine, the innocent man. Such mysterious

confrontations occur to the soul as they do to creation. Both were

silent--she, who was the light; he, who was the abyss; she, who was

divine; he, who was appeased; and over Gwynplaine’s stormy heart Dea

shone with the indescribable effect of a star shining on the sea.

CHAPTER II.

FROM GAY TO GRAVE.

How simple is a miracle! It was breakfast hour in the Green Box, and Dea

had merely come to see why Gwynplaine had not joined their little

breakfast table.

“It is you!” exclaimed Gwynplaine; and he had said everything. There was

no other horizon, no vision for him now but the heavens where Dea was.

His mind was appeased--appeased in such a manner as he alone can

understand who has seen the smile spread swiftly over the sea when the

hurricane had passed away. Over nothing does the calm come so quickly as

over the whirlpool. This results from its power of absorption. And so it

is with the human heart. Not always, however.

Dea had but to show herself, and all the light that was in Gwynplaine

left him and went to her, and behind the dazzled Gwynplaine there was

but a flight of phantoms. What a peacemaker is adoration! A few minutes

afterwards they were sitting opposite each other, Ursus between them,

Homo at their feet. The teapot, hung over a little lamp, was on the

table. Fibi and Vinos were outside, waiting.

They breakfasted as they supped, in the centre compartment. From the

position in which the narrow table was placed, Dea’s back was turned

towards the aperture in the partition which was opposite the entrance

door of the Green Box. Their knees were touching. Gwynplaine was pouring

out tea for Dea. Dea blew gracefully on her cup. Suddenly she sneezed.

Just at that moment a thin smoke rose above the flame of the lamp, and

something like a piece of paper fell into ashes. It was the smoke which

had caused Dea to sneeze.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Nothing,” replied Gwynplaine.

And he smiled. He had just burnt the duchess’s letter.

The conscience of the man who loves is the guardian angel of the woman

whom he loves.

Unburdened of the letter, his relief was wondrous, and Gwynplaine felt

his integrity as the eagle feels its wings.

It seemed to him as if his temptation had evaporated with the smoke, and

as if the duchess had crumbled into ashes with the paper.

Taking up their cups at random, and drinking one after the other from

the same one, they talked. A babble of lovers, a chattering of sparrows!

Child’s talk, worthy of Mother Goose or of Homer! With two loving

hearts, go no further for poetry; with two kisses for dialogue, go no

further for music.

“Do you know something?”

“No.”

“Gwynplaine, I dreamt that we were animals, and had wings.”

“Wings; that means birds,” murmured Gwynplaine.

“Fools! it means angels,” growled Ursus.

And their talk went on.

“If you did not exist, Gwynplaine?”

“What then?”

“It could only be because there was no God.”

“The tea is too hot; you will burn yourself, Dea.”

“Blow on my cup.”

“How beautiful you are this morning!”

“Do you know that I have a great many things to say to you?”

“Say them.”

“I love you.”

“I adore you.”

And Ursus said aside, “By heaven, they are polite!”

Exquisite to lovers are their moments of silence! In them they gather,

as it were, masses of love, which afterwards explode into sweet

fragments.

“Do you know! In the evening, when we are playing our parts, at the

moment when my hand touches your forehead--oh, what a noble head is

yours, Gwynplaine!--at the moment when I feel your hair under my

fingers, I shiver; a heavenly joy comes over me, and I say to myself, In

all this world of darkness which encompasses me, in this universe of

solitude, in this great obscurity of ruin in which I am, in this quaking

fear of myself and of everything, I have one prop; and he is there. It

is he--it is you.”

“Oh! you love me,” said Gwynplaine. “I, too, have but you on earth. You

are all in all to me. Dea, what would you have me do? What do you

desire? What do you want?”

Dea answered,--

“I do not know. I am happy.”

“Oh,” replied Gwynplaine, “we are happy.”

Ursus raised his voice severely,--

“Oh, you are happy, are you? That’s a crime. I have warned you already.

You are happy! Then take care you aren’t seen. Take up as little room as

you can. Happiness ought to stuff itself into a hole. Make yourselves

still less than you are, if that can be. God measures the greatness of

happiness by the littleness of the happy. The happy should conceal

themselves like malefactors. Oh, only shine out like the wretched

glowworms that you are, and you’ll be trodden on; and quite right too!

What do you mean by all that love-making nonsense? I’m no duenna, whose

business it is to watch lovers billing and cooing. I’m tired of it all,

I tell you; and you may both go to the devil.”

And feeling that his harsh tones were melting into tenderness, he

drowned his emotion in a loud grumble.

“Father,” said Dea, “how roughly you scold!”

“It’s because I don’t like to see people too happy.”

Here Homo re-echoed Ursus. His growl was heard from beneath the lovers’

feet.

Ursus stooped down, and placed his hand on Homo’s head.

“That’s right; you’re in bad humour, too. You growl. The bristles are

all on end on your wolf’s pate. You don’t like all this love-making.

That’s because you are wise. Hold your tongue, all the same. You have

had your say and given your opinion; be it so. Now be silent.”

The wolf growled again. Ursus looked under the table at him.

“Be still, Homo! Come, don’t dwell on it, you philosopher!”

But the wolf sat up, and looked towards the door, showing his teeth.

“What’s wrong with you now?” said Ursus. And he caught hold of Homo by

the skin of the neck.

Heedless of the wolf’s growls, and wholly wrapped up in her own thoughts

and in the sound of Gwynplaine’s voice, which left its after-taste

within her, Dea was silent, and absorbed by that kind of esctasy

peculiar to the blind, which seems at times to give them a song to

listen to in their souls, and to make up to them for the light which

they lack by some strain of ideal music. Blindness is a cavern, to which

reaches the deep harmony of the Eternal.

While Ursus, addressing Homo, was looking down, Gwynplaine had raised

his eyes. He was about to drink a cup of tea, but did not drink it. He

placed it on the table with the slow movement of a spring drawn back;

his fingers remained open, his eyes fixed. He scarcely breathed.

A man was standing in the doorway, behind Dea. He was clad in black,

with a hood. He wore a wig down to his eyebrows, and held in his hand

an iron staff with a crown at each end. His staff was short and massive.

He was like Medusa thrusting her head between two branches in Paradise.

Ursus, who had heard some one enter and raised his head without loosing

his hold of Homo, recognized the terrible personage. He shook from head

to foot, and whispered to Gwynplaine,--

“It’s the wapentake.”

Gwynplaine recollected. An exclamation of surprise was about to escape

him, but he restrained it. The iron staff, with the crown at each end,

was called the iron weapon. It was from this iron weapon, upon which the

city officers of justice took the oath when they entered on their

duties, that the old wapentakes of the English police derived their

qualification.

Behind the man in the wig, the frightened landlord could just be

perceived in the shadow.

Without saying a word, a personification of the Muta Themis of the old

charters, the man stretched his right arm over the radiant Dea, and

touched Gwynplaine on the shoulder with the iron staff, at the same time

pointing with his left thumb to the door of the Green Box behind him.

These gestures, all the more imperious for their silence, meant, “Follow

me.”

_Pro signo exeundi, sursum trahe_, says the old Norman record.

He who was touched by the iron weapon had no right but the right of

obedience. To that mute order there was no reply. The harsh penalties of

the English law threatened the refractory. Gwynplaine felt a shock under

the rigid touch of the law; then he sat as though petrified.

If, instead of having been merely grazed on the shoulder, he had been

struck a violent blow on the head with the iron staff, he could not have

been more stunned. He knew that the police-officer summoned him to

follow; but why? _That_ he could not understand.

On his part Ursus, too, was thrown into the most painful agitation, but

he saw through matters pretty distinctly. His thoughts ran on the

jugglers and preachers, his competitors, on informations laid against

the Green Box, on that delinquent the wolf, on his own affair with the

three Bishopsgate commissioners, and who knows?--perhaps--but that

would be too fearful--Gwynplaine’s unbecoming and factious speeches

touching the royal authority.

He trembled violently.

Dea was smiling.

Neither Gwynplaine nor Ursus pronounced a word. They had both the same

thought--not to frighten Dea. It may have struck the wolf as well, for

he ceased growling. True, Ursus did not loose him.

Homo, however, was a prudent wolf when occasion required. Who is there

who has not remarked a kind of intelligent anxiety in animals? It may be

that to the extent to which a wolf can understand mankind he felt that

he was an outlaw.

Gwynplaine rose.

Resistance was impracticable, as Gwynplaine knew. He remembered Ursus’s

words, and there was no question possible. He remained standing in front

of the wapentake. The latter raised the iron staff from Gwynplaine’s

shoulder, and drawing it back, held it out straight in an attitude of

command--a constable’s attitude which was well understood in those days

by the whole people, and which expressed the following order: “Let this

man, and no other, follow me. The rest remain where they are. Silence!”

No curious followers were allowed. In all times the police have had a

taste for arrests of the kind. This description of seizure was termed

sequestration of the person.

The wapentake turned round in one motion, like a piece of mechanism

revolving on its own pivot, and with grave and magisterial step

proceeded towards the door of the Green Box.

Gwynplaine looked at Ursus. The latter went through a pantomime composed

as follows: he shrugged his shoulders, placed both elbows close to his

hips, with his hands out, and knitted his brows into chevrons--all which

signifies, “We must submit to the unknown.”

Gwynplaine looked at Dea. She was in her dream. She was still smiling.

He put the ends of his fingers to his lips, and sent her an unutterable

kiss.

Ursus, relieved of some portion of his terror now that the wapentake’s

back was turned, seized the moment to whisper in Gwynplaine’s ear,--

“On your life, do not speak until you are questioned.”

Gwynplaine, with the same care to make no noise as he would have taken

in a sickroom, took his hat and cloak from the hook on the partition,

wrapped himself up to the eyes in the cloak, and pushed his hat over his

forehead. Not having been to bed, he had his working clothes still on,

and his leather esclavin round his neck. Once more he looked at Dea.

Having reached the door, the wapentake raised his staff and began to

descend the steps; then Gwynplaine set out as if the man was dragging

him by an invisible chain. Ursus watched Gwynplaine leave the Green Box.

At that moment the wolf gave a low growl; but Ursus silenced him, and

whispered, “He is coming back.”

In the yard, Master Nicless was stemming, with servile and imperious

gestures, the cries of terror raised by Vinos and Fibi, as in great

distress they watched Gwynplaine led away, and the mourning-coloured

garb and the iron staff of the wapentake.

The two girls were like petrifactions: they were in the attitude of

stalactites. Govicum, stunned, was looking open-mouthed out of a window.

The wapentake preceded Gwynplaine by a few steps, never turning round or

looking at him, in that icy ease which is given by the knowledge that

one is the law.

In death-like silence they both crossed the yard, went through the dark

taproom, and reached the street. A few passers-by had collected about

the inn door, and the justice of the quorum was there at the head of a

squad of police. The idlers, stupefied, and without breathing a word,

opened out and stood aside, with English discipline, at the sight of the

constable’s staff. The wapentake moved off in the direction of the

narrow street then called the Little Strand, running by the Thames; and

Gwynplaine, with the justice of the quorum’s men in ranks on each side,

like a double hedge, pale, without a motion except that of his steps,

wrapped in his cloak as in a shroud, was leaving the inn farther and

farther behind him as he followed the silent man, like a statue

following a spectre.

CHAPTER III.

LEX, REX, FEX.

Unexplained arrest, which would greatly astonish an Englishman nowadays,

was then a very usual proceeding of the police. Recourse was had to it,

notwithstanding the Habeas Corpus Act, up to George II.’s time,

especially in such delicate cases as were provided for by _lettres de

cachet_ in France; and one of the accusations against which Walpole had

to defend himself was that he had caused or allowed Neuhoff to be

arrested in that manner. The accusation was probably without foundation,

for Neuhoff, King of Corsica, was put in prison by his creditors.