These silent captures of the person, very usual with the Holy Væhme in

Germany, were admitted by German custom, which rules one half of the old

English laws, and recommended in certain cases by Norman custom, which

rules the other half. Justinian’s chief of the palace police was called

“_silentiarius imperialis_.” The English magistrates who practised the

captures in question relied upon numerous Norman texts:--_Canes latrant,

sergentes silent. Sergenter agere, id est tacere_. They quoted

Lundulphus Sagax, paragraph 16: _Facit imperator silentium_. They quoted

the charter of King Philip in 1307: _Multos tenebimus bastonerios qui,

obmutescentes, sergentare valeant_. They quoted the statutes of Henry I.

of England, cap. 53: _Surge signo jussus. Taciturnior esto. Hoc est esse

in captione regis_. They took advantage especially of the following

description, held to form part of the ancient feudal franchises of

England:--“Sous les viscomtes sont les serjans de l’espée, lesquels

doivent justicier vertueusement à l’espée tous ceux qui suient malveses

compagnies, gens diffamez d’aucuns crimes, et gens fuites et

forbannis.... et les doivent si vigoureusement et discrètement

appréhender, que la bonne gent qui sont paisibles soient gardez

paisiblement et que les malfeteurs soient espoantés.” To be thus

arrested was to be seized “à le glaive de l’espée.” (_Vetus Consuetudo

Normanniæ_, MS. part I, sect. I, ch. 11.) The jurisconsults referred

besides “_in Charta Ludovici Hutum pro Normannis_, chapter _Servientes

spathæ_.” _Servientes spathæ_, in the gradual approach of base Latin

to our idioms, became _sergentes spadæ_.

These silent arrests were the contrary of the _Clameur de Haro_, and

gave warning that it was advisable to hold one’s tongue until such time

as light should be thrown upon certain matters still in the dark. They

signified questions reserved, and showed in the operation of the police

a certain amount of _raison d’état_.

The legal term “private” was applied to arrests of this description. It

was thus that Edward III., according to some chroniclers, caused

Mortimer to be seized in the bed of his mother, Isabella of France.

This, again, we may take leave to doubt; for Mortimer sustained a siege

in his town before being captured.

Warwick, the king-maker, delighted in practising this mode of “attaching

people.” Cromwell made use of it, especially in Connaught; and it was

with this precaution of silence that Trailie Arcklo, a relation of the

Earl of Ormond, was arrested at Kilmacaugh.

These captures of the body by the mere motion of justice represented

rather the _mandat de comparution_ than the warrant of arrest. Sometimes

they were but processes of inquiry, and even argued, by the silence

imposed upon all, a certain consideration for the person seized. For the

mass of the people, little versed as they were in the estimate of such

shades of difference, they had peculiar terrors.

It must not be forgotten that in 1705, and even much later, England was

far from being what she is to-day. The general features of its

constitution were confused and at times very oppressive. Daniel Defoe,

who had himself had a taste of the pillory, characterizes the social

order of England, somewhere in his writings, as the “iron hands of the

law.” There was not only the law; there was its arbitrary

administration. We have but to recall Steele, ejected from Parliament;

Locke, driven from his chair; Hobbes and Gibbon, compelled to flight;

Charles Churchill, Hume, and Priestley, persecuted; John Wilkes sent to

the Tower. The task would be a long one, were we to count over the

victims of the statute against seditious libel. The Inquisition had, to

some extent, spread its arrangements throughout Europe, and its police

practice was taken as a guide. A monstrous attempt against all rights

was possible in England. We have only to recall the _Gazetier Cuirassé_.

In the midst of the eighteenth century, Louis XV. had writers, whose

works displeased him, arrested in Piccadilly. It is true that George II.

laid his hands on the Pretender in France, right in the middle of the

hall at the opera. Those were two long arms--that of the King of France

reaching London; that of the King of England, Paris! Such was the

liberty of the period.

CHAPTER IV.

URSUS SPIES THE POLICE.

As we have already said, according to the very severe laws of the police

of those days, the summons to follow the wapentake, addressed to an

individual, implied to all other persons present the command not to

stir.

Some curious idlers, however, were stubborn, and followed from afar off

the _cortège_ which had taken Gwynplaine into custody.

Ursus was of them. He had been as nearly petrified as any one has a

right to be. But Ursus, so often assailed by the surprises incident to a

wandering life, and by the malice of chance, was, like a ship-of-war,

prepared for action, and could call to the post of danger the whole

crew--that is to say, the aid of all his intelligence.

He flung off his stupor and began to think. He strove not to give way to

emotion, but to stand face to face with circumstances.

To look fortune in the face is the duty of every one not an idiot; to

seek not to understand, but to act.

Presently he asked himself, What could he do?

Gwynplaine being taken, Ursus was placed between two terrors--a fear for

Gwynplaine, which instigated him to follow; and a fear for himself,

which urged him to remain where he was.

Ursus had the intrepidity of a fly and the impassibility of a sensitive

plant. His agitation was not to be described. However, he took his

resolution heroically, and decided to brave the law, and to follow the

wapentake, so anxious was he concerning the fate of Gwynplaine.

His terror must have been great to prompt so much courage.

To what valiant acts will not fear drive a hare!

The chamois in despair jumps a precipice. To be terrified into

imprudence is one of the forms of fear.

Gwynplaine had been carried off rather than arrested. The operation of

the police had been executed so rapidly that the Fair field, generally

little frequented at that hour of the morning, had scarcely taken

cognizance of the circumstance.

Scarcely any one in the caravans had any idea that the wapentake had

come to take Gwynplaine. Hence the smallness of the crowd.

Gwynplaine, thanks to his cloak and his hat, which nearly concealed his

face, could not be recognized by the passers-by.

Before he went out to follow Gwynplaine, Ursus took a precaution. He

spoke to Master Nicless, to the boy Govicum, and to Fibi and Vinos, and

insisted on their keeping absolute silence before Dea, who was ignorant

of everything. That they should not utter a syllable that could make her

suspect what had occurred; that they should make her understand that the

cares of the management of the Green Box necessitated the absence of

Gwynplaine and Ursus; that, besides, it would soon be the time of her

daily siesta, and that before she awoke he and Gwynplaine would have

returned; that all that had taken place had arisen from a mistake; that

it would be very easy for Gwynplaine and himself to clear themselves

before the magistrate and police; that a touch of the finger would put

the matter straight, after which they should both return; above all,

that no one should say a word on the subject to Dea. Having given these

directions he departed.

Ursus was able to follow Gwynplaine without being remarked. Though he

kept at the greatest possible distance, he so managed as not to lose

sight of him. Boldness in ambuscade is the bravery of the timid.

After all, notwithstanding the solemnity of the attendant circumstances,

Gwynplaine might have been summoned before the magistrate for some

unimportant infraction of the law.

Ursus assured himself that the question would be decided at once.

The solution of the mystery would be made under his very eyes by the

direction taken by the _cortège_ which took Gwynplaine from Tarrinzeau

Field when it reached the entrance of the lanes of the Little Strand.

If it turned to the left, it would conduct Gwynplaine to the justice

hall in Southwark. In that case there would be little to fear, some

trifling municipal offence, an admonition from the magistrate, two or

three shillings to pay, and Gwynplaine would be set at liberty, and the

representation of “Chaos Vanquished” would take place in the evening as

usual. In that case no one would know that anything unusual had

happened.

If the _cortège_ turned to the right, matters would be serious.

There were frightful places in that direction.

When the wapentake, leading the file of soldiers between whom Gwynplaine

walked, arrived at the small streets, Ursus watched them breathlessly.

There are moments in which a man’s whole being passes into his eyes.

Which way were they going to turn?

They turned to the right.

Ursus, staggering with terror, leant against a wall that he might not

fall.

There is no hypocrisy so great as the words which we say to ourselves,

“_I wish to know the worst_!” At heart we do not wish it at all. We have

a dreadful fear of knowing it. Agony is mingled with a dim effort not to

see the end. We do not own it to ourselves, but we would draw back if we

dared; and when we have advanced, we reproach ourselves for having done

so.

Thus did Ursus. He shuddered as he thought,--

“Here are things going wrong. I should have found it out soon enough.

What business had I to follow Gwynplaine?”

Having made this reflection, man being but self-contradiction, he

increased his pace, and, mastering his anxiety, hastened to get nearer

the _cortège_, so as not to break, in the maze of small streets, the

thread between Gwynplaine and himself.

The _cortège_ of police could not move quickly, on account of its

solemnity.

The wapentake led it.

The justice of the quorum closed it.

This order compelled a certain deliberation of movement.

All the majesty possible in an official shone in the justice of the

quorum. His costume held a middle place between the splendid robe of a

doctor of music of Oxford and the sober black habiliments of a doctor of

divinity of Cambridge. He wore the dress of a gentleman under a long

_godebert_, which is a mantle trimmed with the fur of the Norwegian

hare. He was half Gothic and half modern, wearing a wig like Lamoignon,

and sleeves like Tristan l’Hermite. His great round eye watched

Gwynplaine with the fixedness of an owl’s.

He walked with a cadence. Never did honest man look fiercer.

Ursus, for a moment thrown out of his way in the tangled skein of

streets, overtook, close to Saint Mary Overy, the _cortège_, which had

fortunately been retarded in the churchyard by a fight between children

and dogs--a common incident in the streets in those days. “_Dogs and

boys_,” say the old registers of police, placing the dogs before the

boys.

A man being taken before a magistrate by the police was, after all, an

everyday affair, and each one having his own business to attend to, the

few who had followed soon dispersed. There remained but Ursus on the

track of Gwynplaine.

They passed before two chapels opposite to each other, belonging the one

to the Recreative Religionists, the other to the Hallelujah

League--sects which flourished then, and which exist to the present day.

Then the _cortège_ wound from street to street, making a zigzag,

choosing by preference lanes not yet built on, roads where the grass

grew, and deserted alleys.

At length it stopped.

It was in a little lane with no houses except two or three hovels. This

narrow alley was composed of two walls--one on the left, low; the other

on the right, high. The high wall was black, and built in the Saxon

style with narrow holes, scorpions, and large square gratings over

narrow loopholes. There was no window on it, but here and there slits,

old embrasures of _pierriers_ and archegayes. At the foot of this high

wall was seen, like the hole at the bottom of a rat-trap, a little

wicket gate, very elliptical in its arch.

This small door, encased in a full, heavy girding of stone, had a grated

peephole, a heavy knocker, a large lock, hinges thick and knotted, a

bristling of nails, an armour of plates, and hinges, so that altogether

it was more of iron than of wood.

There was no one in the lane--no shops, no passengers; but in it there

was heard a continual noise, as if the lane ran parallel to a torrent.

There was a tumult of voices and of carriages. It seemed as if on the

other side of the black edifice there must be a great street, doubtless

the principal street of Southwark, one end of which ran into the

Canterbury road, and the other on to London Bridge.

All the length of the lane, except the _cortège_ which surrounded

Gwynplaine, a watcher would have seen no other human face than the pale

profile of Ursus, hazarding a hall advance from the shadow of the corner

of the wall--looking, yet fearing to see. He had posted himself behind

the wall at a turn of the lane.

The constables grouped themselves before the wicket. Gwynplaine was in

the centre, the wapentake and his baton of iron being now behind him.

The justice of the quorum raised the knocker, and struck the door three

times. The loophole opened.

The justice of the quorum said,--

“By order of her Majesty.”

The heavy door of oak and iron turned on its hinges, making a chilly

opening, like the mouth of a cavern. A hideous depth yawned in the

shadow.

Ursus saw Gwynplaine disappear within it.

CHAPTER V.

A FEARFUL PLACE.

The wapentake entered behind Gwynplaine.

Then the justice of the quorum.

Then the constables.

The wicket was closed.

The heavy door swung to, closing hermetically on the stone sills,

without any one seeing who had opened or shut it. It seemed as if the

bolts re-entered their sockets of their own act. Some of these

mechanisms, the inventions of ancient intimidation, still exist in old

prisons--doors of which you saw no doorkeeper. With them the entrance to

a prison becomes like the entrance to a tomb.

This wicket was the lower door of Southwark Jail.

There was nothing in the harsh and worm-eaten aspect of this prison to

soften its appropriate air of rigour.

Originally a pagan temple, built by the Catieuchlans for the Mogons,

ancient English gods, it became a palace for Ethelwolf and a fortress

for Edward the Confessor; then it was elevated to the dignity of a

prison, in 1199, by John Lackland. Such was Southwark Jail. This jail,

at first intersected by a street, like Chenonceaux by a river, had been

for a century or two a gate--that is to say, the gate of the suburb; the

passage had then been walled up. There remain in England some prisons

of this nature. In London, Newgate; at Canterbury, Westgate; at

Edinburgh, Canongate. In France the Bastile was originally a gate.

Almost all the jails of England present the same appearance--a high wall

without and a hive of cells within. Nothing could be more funereal than

the appearance of those prisons, where spiders and justice spread their

webs, and where John Howard, that ray of light, had not yet penetrated.

Like the old Gehenna of Brussels, they might well have been designated

Treurenberg--_the house of tears_.

Men felt before such buildings, at once so savage and inhospitable, the

same distress that the ancient navigators suffered before the hell of

slaves mentioned by Plautus, islands of creaking chains,

_ferricrepiditæ insulæ_, when they passed near enough to hear the

clank of the fetters.

Southwark Jail, an old place of exorcisms and torture, was originally

used solely for the imprisonment of sorcerers, as was proved by two

verses engraved on a defaced stone at the foot of the wicket,--

Sunt arreptitii, vexati dæmone multo

Est energumenus, quem dæmon possidet unus.

Lines which draw a subtle delicate distinction between the demoniac and

man possessed by a devil.

At the bottom of this inscription, nailed flat against the wall, was a

stone ladder, which had been originally of wood, but which had been

changed into stone by being buried in earth of petrifying quality at a

place called Apsley Gowis, near Woburn Abbey.

The prison of Southwark, now demolished, opened on two streets, between

which, as a gate, it formerly served as means of communication. It had

two doors. In the large street a door, apparently used by the

authorities; and in the lane the door of punishment, used by the rest of

the living and by the dead also, because when a prisoner in the jail

died it was by that issue that his corpse was carried out. A liberation

not to be despised. Death is release into infinity.

It was by the gate of punishment that Gwynplaine had been taken into

prison. The lane, as we have said, was nothing but a little passage,

paved with flints, confined between two opposite walls. There is one of

the same kind at Brussels called _Rue d’une Personne_. The walls were

unequal in height. The high one was the prison; the low one, the

cemetery--the enclosure for the mortuary remains of the jail--was not

higher than the ordinary stature of a man. In it was a gate almost

opposite the prison wicket. The dead had only to cross the street; the

cemetery was but twenty paces from the jail. On the high wall was

affixed a gallows; on the low one was sculptured a Death’s head. Neither

of these walls made its opposite neighbour more cheerful.

CHAPTER VI.

THE KIND OF MAGISTRACY UNDER THE WIGS OF FORMER DAYS.

Any one observing at that moment the other side of the prison--its

façade--would have perceived the high street of Southwark, and might

have remarked, stationed before the monumental and official entrance to

the jail, a travelling carriage, recognized as such by its imperial. A

few idlers surrounded the carriage. On it was a coat of arms, and a

personage had been seen to descend from it and enter the prison.

“Probably a magistrate,” conjectured the crowd. Many of the English

magistrates were noble, and almost all had the right of bearing arms. In

France blazon and robe were almost contradictory terms. The Duke

Saint-Simon says, in speaking of magistrates, “people of that class.” In

England a gentleman was not despised for being a judge.

There are travelling magistrates in England; they are called judges of

circuit, and nothing was easier than to recognize the carriage as the

vehicle of a judge on circuit. That which was less comprehensible was,

that the supposed magistrate got down, not from the carriage itself, but

from the box, a place which is not habitually occupied by the owner.

Another unusual thing. People travelled at that period in England in two

ways--by coach, at the rate of a shilling for five miles; and by post,

paying three half-pence per mile, and twopence to the postillion after

each stage. A private carriage, whose owner desired to travel by relays,

paid as many shillings per horse per mile as the horseman paid pence.

The carriage drawn up before the jail in Southwark had four horses and

two postillions, which displayed princely state. Finally, that which

excited and disconcerted conjectures to the utmost was the circumstance

that the carriage was sedulously shut up. The blinds of the windows

were closed up. The glasses in front were darkened by blinds; every

opening by which the eye might have penetrated was masked. From without,

nothing within could be seen, and most likely from within, nothing could

be seen outside. However, it did not seem probable that there was any

one in the carriage.

Southwark being in Surrey, the prison was within the jurisdiction of the

sheriff of the county.

Such distinct jurisdictions were very frequent in England. Thus, for

example, the Tower of London was not supposed to be situated in any

county; that is to say, that legally it was considered to be in air. The

Tower recognized no authority of jurisdiction except in its own

constable, who was qualified as _custos turris_. The Tower had its

jurisdiction, its church, its court of justice, and its government

apart. The authority of its _custos_, or constable, extended, beyond

London, over twenty-one hamlets. As in Great Britain legal singularities

engraft one upon another the office of the master gunner of England was

derived from the Tower of London. Other legal customs seem still more

whimsical. Thus, the English Court of Admiralty consults and applies the

laws of Rhodes and of Oleron, a French island which was once English.

The sheriff of a county was a person of high consideration. He was

always an esquire, and sometimes a knight. He was called _spectabilis_

in the old deeds, “a man to be looked at”--kind of intermediate title

between _illustris_ and _clarissimus_; less than the first, more than

the second. Long ago the sheriffs of the counties were chosen by the

people; but Edward II., and after him Henry VI., having claimed their

nomination for the crown, the office of sheriff became a royal

emanation.

They all received their commissions from majesty, except the sheriff of

Westmoreland, whose office was hereditary, and the sheriffs of London

and Middlesex, who were elected by the livery in the common hall.

Sheriffs of Wales and Chester possessed certain fiscal prerogatives.

These appointments are all still in existence in England, but, subjected

little by little to the friction of manners and ideas, they have lost

their old aspects. It was the duty of the sheriff of the county to

escort and protect the judges on circuit. As we have two arms, he had

two officers; his right arm the under-sheriff, his left arm the justice

of the quorum. The justice of the quorum, assisted by the bailiff of the

hundred, termed the wapentake, apprehended, examined, and, under the

responsibility of the sheriff, imprisoned, for trial by the judges of

circuit, thieves, murderers, rebels, vagabonds, and all sorts of felons.

The shade of difference between the under-sheriff and the justice of the

quorum, in their hierarchical service towards the sheriff, was that the

under-sheriff accompanied and the justice of the quorum assisted.

The sheriff held two courts--one fixed and central, the county court;

and a movable court, the sheriff’s turn. He thus represented both unity

and ubiquity. He might as judge be aided and informed on legal questions

by the serjeant of the coif, called _sergens coifæ_, who is a

serjeant-at-law, and who wears under his black skull-cap a fillet of

white Cambray lawn.

The sheriff delivered the jails. When he arrived at a town in his

province, he had the right of summary trial of the prisoners, of which

he might cause either their release or the execution. This was called a

jail delivery. The sheriff presented bills of indictment to the

twenty-four members of the grand jury. If they approved, they wrote

above, _billa vera_; if the contrary, they wrote _ignoramus_. In the

latter case the accusation was annulled, and the sheriff had the

privilege of tearing up the bill. If during the deliberation a juror

died, this legally acquitted the prisoner and made him innocent, and the

sheriff, who had the privilege of arresting the accused, had also that

of setting him at liberty.

That which made the sheriff singularly feared and respected was that he

had the charge of executing all the orders of her Majesty--a fearful

latitude. An arbitrary power lodges in such commissions.

The officers termed vergers, the coroners making part of the sheriff’s

_cortège_, and the clerks of the market as escort, with gentlemen on

horseback and their servants in livery, made a handsome suite. The

sheriff, says Chamberlayne, is the “life of justice, of law, and of the

country.”

In England an insensible demolition constantly pulverizes and dissevers

laws and customs. You must understand in our day that neither the

sheriff, the wapentake, nor the justice of the quorum could exercise

their functions as they did then. There was in the England of the past a

certain confusion of powers, whose ill-defined attributes resulted in

their overstepping their real bounds at times--a thing which would be

impossible in the present day. The usurpation of power by police and

justices has ceased. We believe that even the word “wapentake” has

changed its meaning. It implied a magisterial function; now it signifies

a territorial division: it specified the centurion; it now specifies the

hundred (_centum_).

Moreover, in those days the sheriff of the county combined with

something more and something less, and condensed in his own authority,

which was at once royal and municipal, the two magistrates formerly

called in France the civil lieutenant of Paris and the lieutenant of

police. The civil lieutenant of Paris, Monsieur, is pretty well

described in an old police note: “The civil lieutenant has no dislike to

domestic quarrels, because he always has the pickings” (22nd July 1704).

As to the lieutenant of police, he was a redoubtable person, multiple

and vague. The best personification of him was René d’Argenson, who, as

was said by Saint-Simon, displayed in his face the three judges of hell

united.

The three judges of hell sat, as has already been seen, at Bishopsgate,

London.

CHAPTER VII.

SHUDDERING.

When Gwynplaine heard the wicket shut, creaking in all its bolts, he

trembled. It seemed to him that the door which had just closed was the

communication between light and darkness--opening on one side on the

living, human crowd, and on the other on a dead world; and now that

everything illumined by the sun was behind him, that he had stepped over

the boundary of life and was standing without it, his heart contracted.

What were they going to do with him? What did it all mean? Where was he?

He saw nothing around him; he found himself in perfect darkness. The

shutting of the door had momentarily blinded him. The window in the door

had been closed as well. No loophole, no lamp. Such were the precautions

of old times. It was forbidden to light the entrance to the jails, so

that the newcomers should take no observations.

Gwynplaine extended his arms, and touched the wall on the right side and

on the left. He was in a passage. Little by little a cavernous daylight

exuding, no one knows whence, and which floats about dark places, and to

which the dilatation of the pupil adjusts itself slowly, enabled him to

distinguish a feature here and there, and the corridor was vaguely

sketched out before him.

Gwynplaine, who had never had a glimpse of penal severities, save in the

exaggerations of Ursus, felt as though seized by a sort of vague

gigantic hand. To be caught in the mysterious toils of the law is

frightful. He who is brave in all other dangers is disconcerted in the

presence of justice. Why? Is it that the justice of man works in

twilight, and the judge gropes his way? Gwynplaine remembered what Ursus

had told him of the necessity for silence. He wished to see Dea again;

he felt some discretionary instinct, which urged him not to irritate.

Sometimes to wish to be enlightened is to make matters worse; on the

other hand, however, the weight of the adventure was so overwhelming

that he gave way at length, and could not restrain a question.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “whither are you taking me?”

They made no answer.

It was the law of silent capture, and the Norman text is formal: _A

silentiariis ostio, præpositis introducti sunt_.

This silence froze Gwynplaine. Up to that moment he had believed himself

to be firm: he was self-sufficing. To be self-sufficing is to be

powerful. He had lived isolated from the world, and imagined that being

alone he was unassailable; and now all at once he felt himself under the

pressure of a hideous collective force. How was he to combat that

horrible anonyma, the law? He felt faint under the perplexity; a fear of

an unknown character had found a fissure in his armour; besides, he had

not slept, he had not eaten, he had scarcely moistened his lips with a

cup of tea. The whole night had been passed in a kind of delirium, and

the fever was still on him. He was thirsty; perhaps hungry. The craving

of the stomach disorders everything. Since the previous evening all

kinds of incidents had assailed him. The emotions which had tormented

had sustained him. Without the storm a sail would be a rag. But his was

the excessive feebleness of the rag, which the wind inflates till it

tears it. He felt himself sinking. Was he about to fall without

consciousness on the pavement? To faint is the resource of a woman, and

the humiliation of a man. He hardened himself, but he trembled. He felt

as one losing his footing.

CHAPTER VIII.

LAMENTATION.

They began to move forward.

They advanced through the passage.

There was no preliminary registry, no place of record. The prisons in

those times were not overburdened with documents. They were content to

close round you without knowing why. To be a prison, and to hold

prisoners, sufficed.

The procession was obliged to lengthen itself out, taking the form of

the corridor. They walked almost in single file; first the wapentake,

then Gwynplaine, then the justice of the quorum, then the constables,

advancing in a group, and blocking up the passage behind Gwynplaine as

with a bung. The passage narrowed. Now Gwynplaine touched the walls with

both his elbows. In the roof, which was made of flints, dashed with

cement, was a succession of granite arches jutting out, and still more

contracting the passage. He had to stoop to pass under them. No speed

was possible in that corridor. Any one trying to escape through it would

have been compelled to move slowly. The passage twisted. All entrails

are tortuous; those of a prison as well as those of a man. Here and

there, sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left, spaces in the

wall, square and closed by large iron gratings, gave glimpses of flights

of stairs, some descending and some ascending.

They reached a closed door; it opened. They passed through, and it

closed again. Then they came to a second door, which admitted them; then

to a third, which also turned on its hinges. These doors seemed to open

and shut of themselves. No one was to be seen. While the corridor

contracted, the roof grew lower, until at length it was impossible to

stand upright. Moisture exuded from the wall. Drops of water fell from

the vault. The slabs that paved the corridor were clammy as an

intestine. The diffused pallor that served as light became more and

more a pall. Air was deficient, and, what was singularly ominous, the

passage was a descent.

Close observation was necessary to perceive that there was such a

descent. In darkness a gentle declivity is portentous. Nothing is more

fearful than the vague evils to which we are led by imperceptible

degrees.

It is awful to descend into unknown depths.

How long had they proceeded thus? Gwynplaine could not tell.

Moments passed under such crushing agony seem immeasurably prolonged.

Suddenly they halted.

The darkness was intense.

The corridor widened somewhat. Gwynplaine heard close to him a noise of

which only a Chinese gong could give an idea; something like a blow

struck against the diaphragm of the abyss. It was the wapentake striking

his wand against a sheet of iron.

That sheet of iron was a door.

Not a door on hinges, but a door which was raised and let down.

Something like a portcullis.

There was a sound of creaking in a groove, and Gwynplaine was suddenly

face to face with a bit of square light. The sheet of metal had just

been raised into a slit in the vault, like the door of a mouse-trap.

An opening had appeared.

The light was not daylight, but glimmer; but on the dilated eyeballs of

Gwynplaine the pale and sudden ray struck like a flash of lightning.

It was some time before he could see anything. To see with dazzled eyes

is as difficult as to see in darkness.

At length, by degrees, the pupil of his eye became proportioned to the

light, just as it had been proportioned to the darkness, and he was able

to distinguish objects. The light, which at first had seemed too bright,

settled into its proper hue and became livid. He cast a glance into the

yawning space before him, and what he saw was terrible.

At his feet were about twenty steps, steep, narrow, worn, almost

perpendicular, without balustrade on either side, a sort of stone ridge

cut out from the side of a wall into stairs, entering and leading into

a very deep cell. They reached to the bottom.

The cell was round, roofed by an ogee vault with a low arch, from the

fault of level in the top stone of the frieze, a displacement common to

cells under heavy edifices.

The kind of hole acting as a door, which the sheet of iron had just

revealed, and on which the stairs abutted, was formed in the vault, so

that the eye looked down from it as into a well.

The cell was large, and if it was the bottom of a well, it must have

been a cyclopean one. The idea that the old word “_cul-de-basse-fosse_”

awakens in the mind can only be applied to it if it were a lair of wild

beasts.

The cell was neither flagged nor paved. The bottom was of that cold,

moist earth peculiar to deep places.

In the midst of the cell, four low and disproportioned columns sustained

a porch heavily ogival, of which the four mouldings united in the

interior of the porch, something like the inside of a mitre. This porch,

similar to the pinnacles under which sarcophagi were formerly placed,

rose nearly to the top of the vault, and made a sort of central chamber

in the cavern, if that could be called a chamber which had only pillars

in place of walls.

From the key of the arch hung a brass lamp, round and barred like the

window of a prison. This lamp threw around it--on the pillars, on the

vault, on the circular wall which was seen dimly behind the pillars--a

wan light, cut by bars of shadow.

This was the light which had at first dazzled Gwynplaine; now it threw

out only a confused redness.

There was no other light in the cell--neither window, nor door, nor

loophole.

Between the four pillars, exactly below the lamp, in the spot where

there was most light, a pale and terrible form lay on the ground.

It was lying on its back; a head was visible, of which the eyes were

shut; a body, of which the chest was a shapeless mass; four limbs

belonging to the body, in the position of the cross of Saint Andrew,

were drawn towards the four pillars by four chains fastened to each foot

and each hand.

These chains were fastened to an iron ring at the base of each column.

The form was held immovable, in the horrible position of being

quartered, and had the icy look of a livid corpse.

It was naked. It was a man.

Gwynplaine, as if petrified, stood at the top of the stairs, looking

down. Suddenly he heard a rattle in the throat.

The corpse was alive.

Close to the spectre, in one of the ogives of the door, on each side of

a great seat, which stood on a large flat stone, stood two men swathed

in long black cloaks; and on the seat an old man was sitting, dressed in

a red robe--wan, motionless, and ominous, holding a bunch of roses in

his hand.

The bunch of roses would have enlightened any one less ignorant that

Gwynplaine. The right of judging with a nosegay in his hand implied the

holder to be a magistrate, at once royal and municipal. The Lord Mayor

of London still keeps up the custom. To assist the deliberations of the

judges was the function of the earliest roses of the season.

The old man seated on the bench was the sheriff of the county of Surrey.

His was the majestic rigidity of a Roman dignitary.

The bench was the only seat in the cell.

By the side of it was a table covered with papers and books, on which

lay the long, white wand of the sheriff. The men standing by the side of

the sheriff were two doctors, one of medicine, the other of law; the

latter recognizable by the Serjeant’s coif over his wig. Both wore black

robes--one of the shape worn by judges, the other by doctors.

Men of these kinds wear mourning for the deaths of which they are the

cause.

Behind the sheriff, at the edge of the flat stone under the seat, was

crouched--with a writing-table near to him, a bundle of papers on his

knees, and a sheet of parchment on the bundle--a secretary, in a round

wig, with a pen in his hand, in the attitude of a man ready to write.

This secretary was of the class called keeper of the bag, as was shown

by a bag at his feet.

These bags, in former times employed in law processes, were termed bags

of justice.

With folded arms, leaning against a pillar, was a man entirely dressed

in leather, the hangman’s assistant.

These men seemed as if they had been fixed by enchantment in their

funereal postures round the chained man. None of them spoke or moved.

There brooded over all a fearful calm.

What Gwynplaine saw was a torture chamber. There were many such in

England.

The crypt of Beauchamp Tower long served this purpose, as did also the

cell in the Lollards’ prison. A place of this nature is still to be seen

in London, called “the Vaults of Lady Place.” In this last-mentioned

chamber there is a grate for the purpose of heating the irons.

All the prisons of King John’s time (and Southwark Jail was one) had

their chambers of torture.

The scene which is about to follow was in those days a frequent one in

England, and might even, by criminal process, be carried out to-day,

since the same laws are still unrepealed. England offers the curious

sight of a barbarous code living on the best terms with liberty. We

confess that they make an excellent family party.

Some distrust, however, might not be undesirable. In the case of a

crisis, a return to the penal code would not be impossible. English

legislation is a tamed tiger with a velvet paw, but the claws are still

there. Cut the claws of the law, and you will do well. Law almost

ignores right. On one side is penalty, on the other humanity.

Philosophers protest; but it will take some time yet before the justice

of man is assimilated to the justice of God.

Respect for the law: that is the English phrase. In England they

venerate so many laws, that they never repeal any. They save themselves

from the consequences of their veneration by never putting them into

execution. An old law falls into disuse like an old woman, and they

never think of killing either one or the other. They cease to make use

of them; that is all. Both are at liberty to consider themselves still

young and beautiful. They may fancy that they are as they were. This

politeness is called respect.

Norman custom is very wrinkled. That does not prevent many an English

judge casting sheep’s eyes at her. They stick amorously to an antiquated

atrocity, so long as it is Norman. What can be more savage than the

gibbet? In 1867 a man was sentenced to be cut into four quarters and

offered to a woman--the Queen.[18]

Still, torture was never practised in England. History asserts this as

a fact. The assurance of history is wonderful.

Matthew of Westminster mentions that the “Saxon law, very clement and

kind,” did not punish criminals by death; and adds that “it limited

itself to cutting off the nose and scooping out the eyes.” That was all!

Gwynplaine, scared and haggard, stood at the top of the steps, trembling

in every limb. He shuddered from head to foot. He tried to remember what

crime he had committed. To the silence of the wapentake had succeeded

the vision of torture to be endured. It was a step, indeed, forward; but

a tragic one. He saw the dark enigma of the law under the power of which

he felt himself increasing in obscurity.

The human form lying on the earth rattled in its throat again.

Gwynplaine felt some one touching him gently on his shoulder.

It was the wapentake.

Gwynplaine knew that meant that he was to descend.

He obeyed.

He descended the stairs step by step. They were very narrow, each eight

or nine inches in height. There was no hand-rail. The descent required

caution. Two steps behind Gwynplaine followed the wapentake, holding up

his iron weapon; and at the same interval behind the wapentake, the

justice of the quorum.

As he descended the steps, Gwynplaine felt an indescribable extinction

of hope. There was death in each step. In each one that he descended

there died a ray of the light within him. Growing paler and paler, he

reached the bottom of the stairs.

The larva lying chained to the four pillars still rattled in its throat.

A voice in the shadow said,--

“Approach!”

It was the sheriff addressing Gwynplaine.

Gwynplaine took a step forward.

“Closer,” said the sheriff.

The justice of the quorum murmured in the ear of Gwynplaine, so gravely

that there was solemnity in the whisper, “You are before the sheriff of

the county of Surrey.”

Gwynplaine advanced towards the victim extended in the centre of the

cell. The wapentake and the justice of the quorum remained where they

were, allowing Gwynplaine to advance alone.

When Gwynplaine reached the spot under the porch, close to that

miserable thing which he had hitherto perceived only from a distance,

but which was a living man, his fear rose to terror. The man who was

chained there was quite naked, except for that rag so hideously modest,

which might be called the vineleaf of punishment, the _succingulum_ of

the Romans, and the _christipannus_ of the Goths, of which the old

Gallic jargon made _cripagne_. Christ wore but that shred on the cross.

The terror-stricken sufferer whom Gwynplaine now saw seemed a man of

about fifty or sixty years of age. He was bald. Grizzly hairs of beard

bristled on his chin. His eyes were closed, his mouth open. Every tooth

was to be seen. His thin and bony face was like a death’s-head. His arms

and legs were fastened by chains to the four stone pillars in the shape

of the letter X. He had on his breast and belly a plate of iron, and on

this iron five or six large stones were laid. His rattle was at times a

sigh, at times a roar.

The sheriff, still holding his bunch of roses, took from the table with

the hand which was free his white wand, and standing up said, “Obedience

to her Majesty.”

Then he replaced the wand upon the table.

Then in words long-drawn as a knell, without a gesture, and immovable as

the sufferer, the sheriff, raising his voice, said,--

“Man, who liest here bound in chains, listen for the last time to the

voice of justice; you have been taken from your dungeon and brought to

this jail. Legally summoned in the usual forms, _formaliis verbis

pressus_; not regarding to lectures and communications which have been

made, and which will now be repeated, to you; inspired by a bad and

perverse spirit of tenacity, you have preserved silence, and refused to

answer the judge. This is a detestable licence, which constitutes, among

deeds punishable by cashlit, the crime and misdemeanour of overseness.”

The serjeant of the coif on the right of the sheriff interrupted him,

and said, with an indifference indescribably lugubrious in its effect,

“_Overhernessa_. Laws of Alfred and of Godrun, chapter the sixth.”

The sheriff resumed.

“The law is respected by all except by scoundrels who infest the woods

where the hinds bear young.”

Like one clock striking after another, the serjeant said,--

“_Qui faciunt vastum in foresta ubi damoe solent founinare_.”

“He who refuses to answer the magistrate,” said the sheriff, “is

suspected of every vice. He is reputed capable of every evil.”

The serjeant interposed.

“_Prodigus, devorator, profusus, salax, ruffianus, ebriosus, luxuriosus,

simulator, consumptor patrimonii, elluo, ambro, et gluto_.”

“Every vice,” said the sheriff, “means every crime. He who confesses

nothing, confesses everything. He who holds his peace before the

questions of the judge is in fact a liar and a parricide.”

“_Mendax et parricida_,” said the serjeant.

The sheriff said,--

“Man, it is not permitted to absent oneself by silence. To pretend

contumaciousness is a wound given to the law. It is like Diomede

wounding a goddess. Taciturnity before a judge is a form of rebellion.

Treason to justice is high treason. Nothing is more hateful or rash. He

who resists interrogation steals truth. The law has provided for this.

For such cases, the English have always enjoyed the right of the foss,

the fork, and chains.”

“_Anglica Charta_, year 1088,” said the serjeant. Then with the same

mechanical gravity he added, “_Ferrum, et fossam, et furcas cum aliis

libertatibus_.”

The sheriff continued,--

“Man! Forasmuch as you have not chosen to break silence, though of sound

mind and having full knowledge in respect of the subject concerning

which justice demands an answer, and forasmuch as you are diabolically

refractory, you have necessarily been put to torture, and you have been,

by the terms of the criminal statutes, tried by the ‘_Peine forte et

dure_.’ This is what has been done to you, for the law requires that I

should fully inform you. You have been brought to this dungeon. You have

been stripped of your clothes. You have been laid on your back naked on

the ground, your limbs have been stretched and tied to the four pillars

of the law; a sheet of iron has been placed on your chest, and as many

stones as you can bear have been heaped on your belly, ‘and more,’ says

the law.”

“_Plusque_,” affirmed the serjeant.

The sheriff continued,--

“In this situation, and before prolonging the torture, a second summons

to answer and to speak has been made you by me, sheriff of the county of

Surrey, and you have satanically kept silent, though under torture,

chains, shackles, fetters, and irons.”

“_Attachiamenta legalia_,” said the serjeant.

“On your refusal and contumacy,” said the sheriff, “it being right that

the obstinacy of the law should equal the obstinacy of the criminal, the

proof has been continued according to the edicts and texts. The first

day you were given nothing to eat or drink.”

“_Hoc est superjejunare_,” said the serjeant.

There was silence, the awful hiss of the man’s breathing was heard from

under the heap of stones.

The serjeant-at-law completed his quotation.

“_Adde augmentum abstinentiæ ciborum diminutione. Consuetudo

brittanica_, art. 504.”

The two men, the sheriff and the serjeant, alternated. Nothing could be

more dreary than their imperturbable monotony. The mournful voice

responded to the ominous voice; it might be said that the priest and the

deacon of punishment were celebrating the savage mass of the law.

The sheriff resumed,--

“On the first day you were given nothing to eat or drink. On the second

day you were given food, but nothing to drink. Between your teeth were

thrust three mouthfuls of barley bread. On the third day they gave you

to drink, but nothing to eat. They poured into your mouth at three

different times, and in three different glasses, a pint of water taken

from the common sewer of the prison. The fourth day is come. It is

to-day. Now, if you do not answer, you will be left here till you die.

Justice wills it.”

The Serjeant, ready with his reply, appeared.

“_Mors rei homagium est bonæ legi_.”

“And while you feel yourself dying miserably,” resumed the sheriff, “no

one will attend to you, even when the blood rushes from your throat,

your chin, and your armpits, and every pore, from the mouth to the

loins.”

“_A throtabolla_,” said the Serjeant, “_et pabu et subhircis et a

grugno usque ad crupponum_.”

The sheriff continued,--

“Man, attend to me, because the consequences concern you. If you

renounce your execrable silence, and if you confess, you will only be

hanged, and you will have a right to the meldefeoh, which is a sum of

money.”

“_Damnum confitens_,” said the Serjeant, “_habeat le meldefeoh. Leges

Inæ_, chapter the twentieth.”

“Which sum,” insisted the sheriff, “shall be paid in doitkins, suskins,

and galihalpens, the only case in which this money is to pass, according

to the terms of the statute of abolition, in the third of Henry V., and

you will have the right and enjoyment of _scortum ante mortem_, and then

be hanged on the gibbet. Such are the advantages of confession. Does it

please you to answer to justice?”

The sheriff ceased and waited.

The prisoner lay motionless.

The sheriff resumed,--

“Man, silence is a refuge in which there is more risk than safety. The

obstinate man is damnable and vicious. He who is silent before justice

is a felon to the crown. Do not persist in this unfilial disobedience.

Think of her Majesty. Do not oppose our gracious queen. When I speak to

you, answer her; be a loyal subject.”

The patient rattled in the throat.

The sheriff continued,--

“So, after the seventy-two hours of the proof, here we are at the fourth

day. Man, this is the decisive day. The fourth day has been fixed by the

law for the confrontation.”

“_Quarta die, frontem ad frontem adduce_,” growled the Serjeant.

“The wisdom of the law,” continued the sheriff, “has chosen this last

hour to hold what our ancestors called ‘judgment by mortal cold,’ seeing

that it is the moment when men are believed on their yes or their no.”

The serjeant on the right confirmed his words.

“_Judicium pro frodmortell, quod homines credendi sint per suum ya et

per suum no_. Charter of King Adelstan, volume the first, page one

hundred and sixty-three.”

There was a moment’s pause; then the sheriff bent his stern face towards

the prisoner.

“Man, who art lying there on the ground--”

He paused.

“Man,” he cried, “do you hear me?”

The man did not move.

“In the name of the law,” said the sheriff, “open your eyes.”

The man’s lids remained closed.

The sheriff turned to the doctor, who was standing on his left.

“Doctor, give your diagnostic.”

“_Probe, da diagnosticum_,” said the serjeant.

The doctor came down with magisterial stiffness, approached the man,

leant over him, put his ear close to the mouth of the sufferer, felt the

pulse at the wrist, the armpit, and the thigh, then rose again.

“Well?” said the sheriff.

“He can still hear,” said the doctor.

“Can he see?” inquired the sheriff.

The doctor answered, “He can see.”

On a sign from the sheriff, the justice of the quorum and the wapentake

advanced. The wapentake placed himself near the head of the patient. The

justice of the quorum stood behind Gwynplaine.

The doctor retired a step behind the pillars.

Then the sheriff, raising the bunch of roses as a priest about to

sprinkle holy water, called to the prisoner in a loud voice, and became

awful.

“O wretched man, speak! The law supplicates before she exterminates you.

You, who feign to be mute, remember how mute is the tomb. You, who

appear deaf, remember that damnation is more deaf. Think of the death

which is worse than your present state. Repent! You are about to be left

alone in this cell. Listen! you who are my likeness; for I am a man!

Listen, my brother, because I am a Christian! Listen, my son, because I

am an old man! Look at me; for I am the master of your sufferings, and I

am about to become terrible. The terrors of the law make up the majesty

of the judge. Believe that I myself tremble before myself. My own power

alarms me. Do not drive me to extremities. I am filled by the holy

malice of chastisement. Feel, then, wretched man, the salutary and

honest fear of justice, and obey me. The hour of confrontation is come,

and you must answer. Do not harden yourself in resistance. Do not that

which will be irrevocable. Think that your end belongs to me. Half man,

half corpse, listen! At least, let it not be your determination to

expire here, exhausted for hours, days, and weeks, by frightful agonies

of hunger and foulness, under the weight of those stones, alone in this

cell, deserted, forgotten, annihilated, left as food for the rats and

the weasels, gnawed by creatures of darkness while the world comes and

goes, buys and sells, whilst carriages roll in the streets above your

head. Unless you would continue to draw painful breath without remission

in the depths of this despair--grinding your teeth, weeping,

blaspheming--without a doctor to appease the anguish of your wounds,

without a priest to offer a divine draught of water to your soul. Oh! if

only that you may not feel the frightful froth of the sepulchre ooze

slowly from your lips, I adjure and conjure you to hear me. I call you

to your own aid. Have pity on yourself. Do what is asked of you. Give

way to justice. Open your eyes, and see if you recognize this man!”

The prisoner neither turned his head nor lifted his eyelids.

The sheriff cast a glance first at the justice of the quorum and then at

the wapentake.

The justice of the quorum, taking Gwynplaine’s hat and mantle, put his

hands on his shoulders and placed him in the light by the side of the

chained man. The face of Gwynplaine stood out clearly from the

surrounding shadow in its strange relief.

At the same time, the wapentake bent down, took the man’s temples

between his hands, turned the inert head towards Gwynplaine, and with

his thumbs and his first fingers lifted the closed eyelids.

The prisoner saw Gwynplaine. Then, raising his head voluntarily, and

opening his eyes wide, he looked at him.

He quivered as much as a man can quiver with a mountain on his breast,

and then cried out,--

“’Tis he! Yes; ’tis he!”

And he burst into a horrible laugh.

“’Tis he!” he repeated.

Then his head fell back on the ground, and he closed his eyes again.

“Registrar, take that down,” said the justice.

Gwynplaine, though terrified, had, up to that moment, preserved a calm

exterior. The cry of the prisoner, “’Tis he!” overwhelmed him

completely. The words, “Registrar, take that down!” froze him. It seemed

to him that a scoundrel had dragged him to his fate without his being

able to guess why, and that the man’s unintelligible confession was

closing round him like the clasp of an iron collar. He fancied himself

side by side with him in the posts of the same pillory. Gwynplaine lost

his footing in his terror, and protested. He began to stammer incoherent

words in the deep distress of an innocent man, and quivering, terrified,

lost, uttered the first random outcries that rose to his mind, and words

of agony like aimless projectiles.

“It is not true. It was not me. I do not know the man. He cannot know

me, since I do not know him. I have my part to play this evening. What

do you want of me? I demand my liberty. Nor is that all. Why have I been

brought into this dungeon? Are there laws no longer? You may as well say

at once that there are no laws. My Lord Judge, I repeat that it is not

I. I am innocent of all that can be said. I know I am. I wish to go

away. This is not justice. There is nothing between this man and me. You

can find out. My life is not hidden up. They came and took me away like

a thief. Why did they come like that? How could I know the man? I am a

travelling mountebank, who plays farces at fairs and markets. I am the

Laughing Man. Plenty of people have been to see me. We are staying in

Tarrinzeau Field. I have been earning an honest livelihood these fifteen

years. I am five-and-twenty. I lodge at the Tadcaster Inn. I am called

Gwynplaine. My lord, let me out. You should not take advantage of the

low estate of the unfortunate. Have compassion on a man who has done no

harm, who is without protection and without defence. You have before you

a poor mountebank.”

“I have before me,” said the sheriff, “Lord Fermain Clancharlie, Baron

Clancharlie and Hunkerville, Marquis of Corleone in Sicily, and a peer

of England.”

Rising, and offering his chair to Gwynplaine, the sheriff added,--

“My lord, will your lordship deign to seat yourself?”

BOOK THE FIFTH.

_THE SEA AND FATE ARE MOVED BY THE SAME BREATH._

CHAPTER I.

THE DURABILITY OF FRAGILE THINGS.

Destiny sometimes proffers us a glass of madness to drink. A hand is

thrust out of the mist, and suddenly hands us the mysterious cup in

which is contained the latent intoxication.

Gwynplaine did not understand.

He looked behind him to see who it was who had been addressed.

A sound may be too sharp to be perceptible to the ear; an emotion too

acute conveys no meaning to the mind. There is a limit to comprehension

as well as to hearing.

The wapentake and the justice of the quorum approached Gwynplaine and

took him by the arms. He felt himself placed in the chair which the

sheriff had just vacated. He let it be done, without seeking an

explanation.

When Gwynplaine was seated, the justice of the quorum and the wapentake

retired a few steps, and stood upright and motionless, behind the seat.

Then the sheriff placed his bunch of roses on the stone table, put on

spectacles which the secretary gave him, drew from the bundles of papers

which covered the table a sheet of parchment, yellow, green, torn, and

jagged in places, which seemed to have been folded in very small folds,

and of which one side was covered with writing; standing under the light

of the lamp, he held the sheet close to his eyes, and in his most

solemn tone read as follows:--

“In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

“This present day, the twenty-ninth of January, one thousand six hundred

and ninetieth year of our Lord.

“Has been wickedly deserted on the desert coast of Portland, with the

intention of allowing him to perish of hunger, of cold, and of solitude,

a child ten years old.

“That child was sold at the age of two years, by order of his most

gracious Majesty, King James the Second.

“That child is Lord Fermain Clancharlie, the only legitimate son of Lord

Linnæus Clancharlie, Baron Clancharlie and Hunkerville, Marquis of

Corleone in Sicily, a peer of England, and of Ann Bradshaw, his wife,

both deceased. That child is the inheritor of the estates and titles of

his father. For this reason he was sold, mutilated, disfigured, and put

out of the way by desire of his most gracious Majesty.

“That child was brought up, and trained to be a mountebank at markets

and fairs.

“He was sold at the age of two, after the death of the peer, his father,

and ten pounds sterling were given to the king as his purchase-money, as

well as for divers concessions, tolerations, and immunities.

“Lord Fermain Clancharlie, at the age of two years, was bought by me,

the undersigned, who write these lines, and mutilated and disfigured by

a Fleming of Flanders, called Hardquanonne, who alone is acquainted with

the secrets and modes of treatment of Doctor Conquest.

“The child was destined by us to be a laughing mask (_masca ridens_).

“With this intention Hardquanonne performed on him the operation, _Bucca

fissa usque ad aures_, which stamps an everlasting laugh upon the face.

“The child, by means known only to Hardquanonne, was put to sleep and

made insensible during its performance, knowing nothing of the operation

which he underwent.

“He does not know that he is Lord Clancharlie.

“He answers to the name of Gwynplaine.

“This fact is the result of his youth, and the slight powers of memory

he could have had when he was bought and sold, being then barely two

years old.

“Hardquanonne is the only person who knows how to perform the operation

_Bucca fissa_, and the said child is the only living subject upon which

it has been essayed.

“The operation is so unique and singular that though after long years

this child should have come to be an old man instead of a child, and his

black locks should have turned white, he would be immediately recognized

by Hardquanonne.

“At the time that I am writing this, Hardquanonne, who has perfect

knowledge of all the facts, and participated as principal therein, is

detained in the prisons of his highness the Prince of Orange, commonly

called King William III. Hardquanonne was apprehended and seized as

being one of the band of Comprachicos or Cheylas. He is imprisoned in

the dungeon of Chatham.

“It was in Switzerland, near the Lake of Geneva, between Lausanne and

Vevey, in the very house in which his father and mother died, that the

child was, in obedience with the orders of the king, sold and given up

by the last servant of the deceased Lord Linnæus, which servant died

soon after his master, so that this secret and delicate matter is now

unknown to any one on earth, excepting Hardquanonne, who is in the

dungeon of Chatham, and ourselves, now about to perish.

“We, the undersigned, brought up and kept, for eight years, for

professional purposes, the little lord bought by us of the king.

“To-day, flying from England to avoid Hardquanonne’s ill-fortune, our

fear of the penal indictments, prohibitions, and fulminations of

Parliament has induced us to desert, at night-fall, on the coast of

Portland, the said child Gwynplaine, who is Lord Fermain Clancharlie.

“Now, we have sworn secrecy to the king, but not to God.

“To-night, at sea, overtaken by a violent tempest by the will of

Providence, full of despair and distress, kneeling before Him who could

save our lives, and may, perhaps, be willing to save our souls, having

nothing more to hope from men, but everything to fear from God, having

for only anchor and resource repentance of our bad actions, resigned to

death, and content if Divine justice be satisfied, humble, penitent, and

beating our breasts, we make this declaration, and confide and deliver

it to the furious ocean to use as it best may according to the will of

God. And may the Holy Virgin aid us, Amen. And we attach our

signatures.”

The sheriff interrupted, saying,--“Here are the signatures. All in

different handwritings.”

And he resumed,--

“Doctor Gernardus Geestemunde.--Asuncion.--A cross, and at the side of

it, Barbara Fermoy, from Tyrryf Isle, in the Hebrides; Gaizdorra,

Captain; Giangirate; Jacques Quartourze, alias le Narbonnais; Luc-Pierre

Capgaroupe, from the galleys of Mahon.”

The sheriff, after a pause, resumed, a “note written in the same hand as

the text and the first signature,” and he read,--

“Of the three men comprising the crew, the skipper having been swept off

by a wave, there remain but two, and we have signed, Galdeazun; Ave

Maria, Thief.”

The sheriff, interspersing his reading with his own observations,

continued, “At the bottom of the sheet is written,--

“‘At sea, on board of the _Matutina_, Biscay hooker, from the Gulf de

Pasages.’ This sheet,” added the sheriff, “is a legal document, bearing

the mark of King James the Second. On the margin of the declaration, and

in the same handwriting there is this note, ‘The present declaration is

written by us on the back of the royal order, which was given us as our

receipt when we bought the child. Turn the leaf and the order will be

seen.’”

The sheriff turned the parchment, and raised it in his right hand, to

expose it to the light.

A blank page was seen, if the word blank can be applied to a thing so

mouldy, and in the middle of the page three words were written, two

Latin words, _Jussu regis_, and a signature, _Jeffreys_.

“_Jussu regis, Jeffreys_,” said the sheriff, passing from a grave voice

to a clear one.

Gwynplaine was as a man on whose head a tile falls from the palace of

dreams.

He began to speak, like one who speaks unconsciously.

“Gernardus, yes, the doctor. An old, sad-looking man. I was afraid of

him. Gaizdorra, Captain, that means chief. There were women, Asuncion,

and the other. And then the Provençal. His name was Capgaroupe. He used

to drink out of a flat bottle on which there was a name written in red.”

“Behold it,” said the sheriff.

He placed on the table something which the secretary had just taken out

of the bag. It was a gourd, with handles like ears, covered with wicker.

This bottle had evidently seen service, and had sojourned in the water.

Shells and seaweed adhered to it. It was encrusted and damascened over

with the rust of ocean. There was a ring of tar round its neck, showing

that it had been hermetically sealed. Now it was unsealed and open. They

had, however, replaced in the flask a sort of bung made of tarred oakum,

which had been used to cork it.

“It was in this bottle,” said the sheriff, “that the men about to perish

placed the declaration which I have just read. This message addressed to

justice has been faithfully delivered by the sea.”

The sheriff increased the majesty of his tones, and continued,--

“In the same way that Harrow Hill produces excellent wheat, which is

turned into fine flour for the royal table, so the sea renders every

service in its power to England, and when a nobleman is lost finds and

restores him.”

Then he resumed,--

“On this flask, as you say, there is a name written in red.”

He raised his voice, turning to the motionless prisoner,--

“Your name, malefactor, is here. Such are the hidden channels by which

truth, swallowed up in the gulf of human actions, floats to the

surface.”

The sheriff took the gourd, and turned to the light one of its sides,

which had, no doubt, been cleaned for the ends of justice. Between the

interstices of wicker was a narrow line of red reed, blackened here and

there by the action of water and of time.

The reed, notwithstanding some breakages, traced distinctly in the

wicker-work these twelve letters--Hardquanonne.

Then the sheriff, resuming that monotonous tone of voice which resembles

nothing else, and which may be termed a judicial accent, turned towards

the sufferer.

“Hardquanonne! when by us, the sheriff, this bottle, on which is your

name, was for the first time shown, exhibited, and presented to you, you

at once, and willingly, recognized it as having belonged to you. Then,

the parchment being read to you which was contained, folded and enclosed

within it, you would say no more; and in the hope, doubtless, that the

lost child would never be recovered, and that you would escape

punishment, you refuse to answer. As the result of your refusal, you

have had applied to you the _peine forte et dure_; and the second

reading of the said parchment, on which is written the declaration and

confession of your accomplices, was made to you, but in vain.

“This is the fourth day, and that which is legally set apart for the

confrontation, and he who was deserted on the twenty-ninth of January,

one thousand six hundred and ninety, having been brought into your

presence, your devilish hope has vanished, you have broken silence, and

recognized your victim.”

The prisoner opened his eyes, lifted his head, and, with a voice

strangely resonant of agony, but which had still an indescribable calm

mingled with its hoarseness, pronounced in excruciating accents, from

under the mass of stones, words to pronounce each of which he had to

lift that which was like the slab of a tomb placed upon him. He spoke,--

“I swore to keep the secret. I have kept it as long as I could. Men of

dark lives are faithful, and hell has its honour. Now silence is

useless. So be it! For this reason I speak. Well--yes; ’tis he! We did

it between us--the king and I: the king, by his will; I, by my art!”

And looking at Gwynplaine,--

“Now laugh for ever!”

And he himself began to laugh.

This second laugh, wilder yet than the first, might have been taken for

a sob.

The laughed ceased, and the man lay back. His eyelids closed.

The sheriff, who had allowed the prisoner to speak, resumed,--

“All which is placed on record.”

He gave the secretary time to write, and then said,--

“Hardquanonne, by the terms of the law, after confrontation followed by

identification, after the third reading of the declarations of your

accomplices, since confirmed by your recognition and confession, and

after your renewed avowal, you are about to be relieved from these

irons, and placed at the good pleasure of her Majesty to be hung as

_plagiary_.”

“_Plagiary_,” said the serjeant of the coif. “That is to say, a buyer

and seller of children. Law of the Visigoths, seventh book, third

section, paragraph _Usurpaverit_, and Salic law, section the

forty-first, paragraph the second, and law of the Frisons, section the

twenty-first, _Deplagio_; and Alexander Nequam says,--

“‘_Qui pueros vendis, plagiarius est tibi nomen_.’”

The sheriff placed the parchment on the table, laid down his spectacles,

took up the nosegay, and said,--

“End of _la peine forte et dure_. Hardquanonne, thank her Majesty.”

By a sign the justice of the quorum set in motion the man dressed in

leather.

This man, who was the executioner’s assistant, “groom of the gibbet,”

the old charters call him, went to the prisoner, took off the stones,

one by one, from his chest, and lifted the plate of iron up, exposing

the wretch’s crushed sides. Then he freed his wrists and ankle-bones

from the four chains that fastened him to the pillars.

The prisoner, released alike from stones and chains, lay flat on the

ground, his eyes closed, his arms and legs apart, like a crucified man

taken down from a cross.

“Hardquanonne,” said the sheriff, “arise!”

The prisoner did not move.

The groom of the gibbet took up a hand and let it go; the hand fell

back. The other hand, being raised, fell back likewise.

The groom of the gibbet seized one foot and then the other, and the

heels fell back on the ground.

The fingers remained inert, and the toes motionless. The naked feet of

an extended corpse seem, as it were, to bristle.

The doctor approached, and drawing from the pocket of his robe a little

mirror of steel, put it to the open mouth of Hardquanonne. Then with his

fingers he opened the eyelids. They did not close again; the glassy

eyeballs remained fixed.

The doctor rose up and said,--

“He is dead.”

And he added,--

“He laughed; that killed him.”

“’Tis of little consequence,” said the sheriff. “After confession, life

or death is a mere formality.”

Then pointing to Hardquanonne by a gesture with the nosegay of roses,

the sheriff gave the order to the wapentake,--

“A corpse to be carried away to-night.”

The wapentake acquiesced by a nod.

And the sheriff added,--

“The cemetery of the jail is opposite.”

The wapentake nodded again.

The sheriff, holding in his left hand the nosegay and in his right the

white wand, placed himself opposite Gwynplaine, who was still seated,

and made him a low bow; then assuming another solemn attitude, he turned

his head over his shoulder, and looking Gwynplaine in the face, said,--

“To you here present, we Philip Denzill Parsons, knight, sheriff of the

county of Surrey, assisted by Aubrey Dominick, Esq., our clerk and

registrar, and by our usual officers, duly provided by the direct and

special commands of her Majesty, in virtue of our commission, and the

rights and duties of our charge, and with authority from the Lord

Chancellor of England, the affidavits having been drawn up and recorded,

regard being had to the documents communicated by the Admiralty, after

verification of attestations and signatures, after declarations read and

heard, after confrontation made, all the statements and legal

information having been completed, exhausted, and brought to a good and

just issue--we signify and declare to you, in order that right may be

done, that you are Fermain Clancharlie, Baron Clancharlie and

Hunkerville, Marquis de Corleone in Sicily, and a peer of England; and

God keep your lordship!”

And he bowed to him.

The serjeant on the right, the doctor, the justice of the quorum, the

wapentake, the secretary, all the attendants except the executioner,

repeated his salutation still more respectfully, and bowed to the ground

before Gwynplaine.

“Ah,” said Gwynplaine, “awake me!”

And he stood up, pale as death.

“I come to awake you indeed,” said a voice which had not yet been heard.

A man came out from behind the pillars. As no one had entered the cell

since the sheet of iron had given passage to the _cortège_ of police, it

was clear that this man had been there in the shadow before Gwynplaine

had entered, that he had a regular right of attendance, and had been

present by appointment and mission. The man was fat and pursy, and wore

a court wig and a travelling cloak.

He was rather old than young, and very precise.

He saluted Gwynplaine with ease and respect--with the ease of a

gentleman-in-waiting, and without the awkwardness of a judge.

“Yes,” he said; “I have come to awaken you. For twenty-five years you

have slept. You have been dreaming. It is time to awake. You believe

yourself to be Gwynplaine; you are Clancharlie. You believe yourself to

be one of the people; you belong to the peerage. You believe yourself to

be of the lowest rank; you are of the highest. You believe yourself a

player; you are a senator. You believe yourself poor; you are wealthy.

You believe yourself to be of no account; you are important. Awake, my

lord!”

Gwynplaine, in a low voice, in which a tremor of fear was to be

distinguished, murmured,--

“What does it all mean?”

“It means, my lord,” said the fat man, “that I am called Barkilphedro;

that I am an officer of the Admiralty; that this waif, the flask of

Hardquanonne, was found on the beach, and was brought to be unsealed by

me, according to the duty and prerogative of my office; that I opened it

in the presence of two sworn jurors of the Jetsam Office, both members

of Parliament, William Brathwait, for the city of Bath, and Thomas

Jervois, for Southampton; that the two jurors deciphered and attested

the contents of the flask, and signed the necessary affidavit conjointly

with me; that I made my report to her Majesty, and by order of the queen

all necessary and legal formalities were carried out with the discretion

necessary in a matter so delicate; that the last form, the

confrontation, has just been carried out; that you have £40,000 a year;

that you are a peer of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, a legislator

and a judge, a supreme judge, a sovereign legislator, dressed in purple

and ermine, equal to princes, like unto emperors; that you have on your

brow the coronet of a peer, and that you are about to wed a duchess, the

daughter of a king.”

Under this transfiguration, overwhelming him like a series of

thunderbolts, Gwynplaine fainted.

CHAPTER II.

THE WAIF KNOWS ITS OWN COURSE.

All this had occurred owing to the circumstance of a soldier having

found a bottle on the beach. We will relate the facts. In all facts

there are wheels within wheels.

One day one of the four gunners composing the garrison of Castle Calshor

picked up on the sand at low water a flask covered with wicker, which

had been cast up by the tide. This flask, covered with mould, was corked

by a tarred bung. The soldier carried the waif to the colonel of the

castle, and the colonel sent it to the High Admiral of England. The

Admiral meant the Admiralty; with waifs, the Admiralty meant

Barkilphedro.

Barkilphedro, having uncorked and emptied the bottle, carried it to the

queen. The queen immediately took the matter into consideration.

Two weighty counsellors were instructed and consulted--namely, the Lord

Chancellor, who is by law the guardian of the king’s conscience; and the

Lord Marshal, who is referee in Heraldry and in the pedigrees of the

nobility. Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, a Catholic peer, who is

hereditary Earl Marshal of England, had sent word by his deputy Earl

Marshal, Henry Howard, Earl Bindon, that he would agree with the Lord

Chancellor. The Lord Chancellor was William Cowper. We must not confound

this chancellor with his namesake and contemporary William Cowper, the

anatomist and commentator on Bidloo, who published a treatise on

muscles, in England, at the very time that Etienne Abeille published a

history of bones, in France. A surgeon is a very different thing from a

lord. Lord William Cowper is celebrated for having, with reference to

the affair of Talbot Yelverton, Viscount Longueville, propounded this

opinion: That in the English constitution the restoration of a peer is

more important than the restoration of a king. The flask found at

Calshor had awakened his interest in the highest degree. The author of a

maxim delights in opportunities to which it may be applied. Here was a

case of the restoration of a peer. Search was made. Gwynplaine, by the

inscription over his door, was soon found. Neither was Hardquanonne

dead. A prison rots a man, but preserves him--if to keep is to preserve.

People placed in Bastiles were rarely removed. There is little more

change in the dungeon than in the tomb. Hardquanonne was still in prison

at Chatham. They had only to put their hands on him. He was transferred

from Chatham to London. In the meantime information was sought in

Switzerland. The facts were found to be correct. They obtained from the

local archives at Vevey, at Lausanne, the certificate of Lord Linnæus’s

marriage in exile, the certificate of his child’s birth, the certificate

of the decease of the father and mother; and they had duplicates, duly

authenticated, made to answer all necessary requirements.

All this was done with the most rigid secrecy, with what is called royal

promptitude, and with that mole-like silence recommended and practised

by Bacon, and later on made law by Blackstone, for affairs connected

with the Chancellorship and the state, and in matters termed

parliamentary. The _jussu regis_ and the signature _Jeffreys_ were

authenticated. To those who have studied pathologically the cases of

caprice called “our good will and pleasure,” this _jussu regis_ is very

simple. Why should James II., whose credit required the concealment of

such acts, have allowed that to be written which endangered their

success? The answer is, cynicism--haughty indifference. Oh! you believe

that effrontery is confined to abandoned women? The _raison d’état_ is

equally abandoned. _Et se cupit ante videri_. To commit a crime and

emblazon it, there is the sum total of history. The king tattooes

himself like the convict. Often when it would be to a man’s greatest

advantage to escape from the hands of the police or the records of

history, he would seem to regret the escape so great is the love of

notoriety. Look at my arm! Observe the design! _I_ am Lacenaire! See, a

temple of love and a burning heart pierced through with an arrow! _Jussu

regis_. It is I, James the Second. A man commits a bad action, and

places his mark upon it. To fill up the measure of crime by effrontery,

to denounce himself, to cling to his misdeeds, is the insolent bravado

of the criminal. Christina seized Monaldeschi, had him confessed and

assassinated, and said,--

“I am the Queen of Sweden, in the palace of the King of France.”

There is the tyrant who conceals himself, like Tiberius; and the tyrant

who displays himself, like Philip II. One has the attributes of the

scorpion, the other those rather of the leopard. James II. was of this

latter variety. He had, we know, a gay and open countenance, differing

so far from Philip. Philip was sullen, James jovial. Both were equally

ferocious. James II. was an easy-minded tiger; like Philip II., his

crimes lay light upon his conscience. He was a monster by the grace of

God. Therefore he had nothing to dissimulate nor to extenuate, and his

assassinations were by divine right. He, too, would not have minded

leaving behind him those archives of Simancas, with all his misdeeds

dated, classified, labelled, and put in order, each in its compartment,

like poisons in the cabinet of a chemist. To set the sign-manual to

crimes is right royal.

Every deed done is a draft drawn on the great invisible paymaster. A

bill had just come due with the ominous endorsement, _Jussu regis_.

Queen Anne, in one particular unfeminine, seeing that she could keep a

secret, demanded a confidential report of so grave a matter from the

Lord Chancellor--one of the kind specified as “report to the royal ear.”

Reports of this kind have been common in all monarchies. At Vienna there

was “a counsellor of the ear”--an aulic dignitary. It was an ancient

Carlovingian office--the _auricularius_ of the old palatine deeds. He

who whispers to the emperor.

William, Baron Cowper, Chancellor of England, whom the queen believed in

because he was short-sighted like herself, or even more so, had

committed to writing a memorandum commencing thus: “Two birds were

subject to Solomon--a lapwing, the hudbud, who could speak all

languages; and an eagle, the simourganka, who covered with the shadow of

his wings a caravan of twenty thousand men. Thus, under another form,

Providence,” etc. The Lord Chancellor proved the fact that the heir to a

peerage had been carried off, mutilated, and then restored. He did not

blame James II., who was, after all, the queen’s father. He even went so

far as to justify him. First, there are ancient monarchical maxims. _E

senioratu eripimus. In roturagio cadat_. Secondly, there is a royal

right of mutilation. Chamberlayne asserts the fact.[19] _Corpora et bona

nostrorum subjectorum nostra sunt_, said James I., of glorious and

learned memory. The eyes of dukes of the blood royal have been plucked

out for the good of the kingdom. Certain princes, too near to the

throne, have been conveniently stifled between mattresses, the cause of

death being given out as apoplexy. Now to stifle is worse than to

mutilate. The King of Tunis tore out the eyes of his father, Muley

Assem, and his ambassadors have not been the less favourably received by

the emperor. Hence the king may order the suppression of a limb like the

suppression of a state, etc. It is legal. But one law does not destroy

another. “If a drowned man is cast up by the water, and is not dead, it

is an act of God readjusting one of the king. If the heir be found, let

the coronet be given back to him. Thus was it done for Lord Alla, King

of Northumberland, who was also a mountebank. Thus should be done to

Gwynplaine, who is also a king, seeing that he is a peer. The lowness of

the occupation which he has been obliged to follow, under constraint of

superior power, does not tarnish the blazon: as in the case of

Abdolmumen, who was a king, although he had been a gardener; that of

Joseph, who was a saint, although he had been a carpenter; that of

Apollo, who was a god, although he had been a shepherd.”

In short, the learned chancellor concluded by advising the

reinstatement, in all his estates and dignities, of Lord Fermain

Clancharlie, miscalled Gwynplaine, on the sole condition that he should

be confronted with the criminal Hardquanonne, and identified by the

same. And on this point the chancellor, as constitutional keeper of the

royal conscience, based the royal decision. The Lord Chancellor added in

a postscript that if Hardquanonne refused to answer he should be

subjected to the _peine forte et dure_, until the period called the

_frodmortell_, according to the statute of King Athelstane, which orders

the confrontation to take place on the fourth day. In this there is a

certain inconvenience, for if the prisoner dies on the second or third

day the confrontation becomes difficult; still the law must be obeyed.

The inconvenience of the law makes part and parcel of it. In the mind of

the Lord Chancellor, however, the recognition of Gwynplaine by

Hardquanonne was indubitable.

Anne, having been made aware of the deformity of Gwynplaine, and not

wishing to wrong her sister, on whom had been bestowed the estates of

Clancharlie, graciously decided that the Duchess Josiana should be

espoused by the new lord--that is to say, by Gwynplaine.

The reinstatement of Lord Fermain Clancharlie was, moreover, a very

simple affair, the heir being legitimate, and in the direct line.

In cases of doubtful descent, and of peerages in abeyance claimed by

collaterals, the House of Lords must be consulted. This (to go no

further back) was done in 1782, in the case of the barony of Sydney,

claimed by Elizabeth Perry; in 1798, in that of the barony of Beaumont,

claimed by Thomas Stapleton; in 1803, in that of the barony of

Stapleton; in 1803, in that of the barony of Chandos, claimed by the

Reverend Tymewell Brydges; in 1813, in that of the earldom of Banbury,

claimed by General Knollys, etc., etc. But the present was no similar

case. Here there was no pretence for litigation; the legitimacy was

undoubted, the right clear and certain. There was no point to submit to

the House, and the Queen, assisted by the Lord Chancellor, had power to

recognize and admit the new peer.

Barkilphedro managed everything.

The affair, thanks to him, was kept so close, the secret was so

hermetically sealed, that neither Josiana nor Lord David caught sight of

the fearful abyss which was being dug under them. It was easy to deceive

Josiana, entrenched as she was behind a rampart of pride. She was

self-isolated. As to Lord David, they sent him to sea, off the coast of

Flanders. He was going to lose his peerage, and had no suspicion of it.

One circumstance is noteworthy.

It happened that at six leagues from the anchorage of the naval station

commanded by Lord David, a captain called Halyburton broke through the

French fleet. The Earl of Pembroke, President of the Council, proposed

that this Captain Halyburton should be made vice-admiral. Anne struck

out Halyburton’s name, and put Lord David Dirry-Moir’s in its place,

that he might, when no longer a peer, have the satisfaction of being a

vice-admiral.

Anne was well pleased. A hideous husband for her sister, and a fine step

for Lord David. Mischief and kindness combined.

Her Majesty was going to enjoy a comedy. Besides, she argued to herself

that she was repairing an abuse of power committed by her august father.

She was reinstating a member of the peerage. She was acting like a

great queen; she was protecting innocence according to the will of God

that Providence in its holy and impenetrable ways, etc., etc. It is very

sweet to do a just action which is disagreeable to those whom we do not

like.

To know that the future husband of her sister was deformed, sufficed the

queen. In what manner Gwynplaine was deformed, and by what kind of

ugliness, Barkilphedro had not communicated to the queen, and Anne had

not deigned to inquire. She was proudly and royally disdainful. Besides,

what could it matter? The House of Lords could not but be grateful. The

Lord Chancellor, its oracle, had approved. To restore a peer is to

restore the peerage. Royalty on this occasion had shown itself a good

and scrupulous guardian of the privileges of the peerage. Whatever might

be the face of the new lord, a face cannot be urged in objection to a

right. Anne said all this to herself, or something like it, and went

straight to her object, an object at once grand, womanlike, and

regal--namely, to give herself a pleasure.

The queen was then at Windsor--a circumstance which placed a certain

distance between the intrigues of the court and the public. Only such

persons as were absolutely necessary to the plan were in the secret of

what was taking place. As to Barkilphedro, he was joyful--a circumstance

which gave a lugubrious expression to his face. If there be one thing in

the world which can be more hideous than another, ’tis joy.

He had had the delight of being the first to taste the contents of

Hardquanonne’s flask. He seemed but little surprised, for astonishment

is the attribute of a little mind. Besides, was it not all due to him,

who had waited so long on duty at the gate of chance? Knowing how to

wait, he had fairly won his reward.

This _nil admirari_ was an expression of face. At heart we may admit

that he was very much astonished. Any one who could have lifted the mask

with which he covered his inmost heart even before God would have

discovered this: that at the very time Barkilphedro had begun to feel

finally convinced that it would be impossible--even to him, the intimate

and most infinitesimal enemy of Josiana--to find a vulnerable point in

her lofty life. Hence an access of savage animosity lurked in his mind.

He had reached the paroxysm which is called discouragement. He was all

the more furious, because despairing. To gnaw one’s chain--how tragic

and appropriate the expression! A villain gnawing at his own

powerlessness!

Barkilphedro was perhaps just on the point of renouncing not his desire

to do evil to Josiana, but his hope of doing it; not the rage, but the

effort. But how degrading to be thus baffled! To keep hate thenceforth

in a case, like a dagger in a museum! How bitter the humiliation!

All at once to a certain goal--Chance, immense and universal, loves to

bring such coincidences about--the flask of Hardquanonne came, driven

from wave to wave, into Barkilphedro’s hands. There is in the unknown an

indescribable fealty which seems to be at the beck and call of evil.

Barkilphedro, assisted by two chance witnesses, disinterested jurors of

the Admiralty, uncorked the flask, found the parchment, unfolded, read

it. What words could express his devilish delight!

It is strange to think that the sea, the wind, space, the ebb and flow

of the tide, storms, calms, breezes, should have given themselves so

much trouble to bestow happiness on a scoundrel. That co-operation had

continued for fifteen years. Mysterious efforts! During fifteen years

the ocean had never for an instant ceased from its labours. The waves

transmitted from one to another the floating bottle. The shelving rocks

had shunned the brittle glass; no crack had yawned in the flask; no

friction had displaced the cork; the sea-weeds had not rotted the osier;

the shells had not eaten out the word “Hardquanonne;” the water had not

penetrated into the waif; the mould had not rotted the parchment; the

wet had hot effaced the writing. What trouble the abyss must have taken!

Thus that which Gernardus had flung into darkness, darkness had handed

back to Barkilphedro. The message sent to God had reached the devil.

Space had committed an abuse of confidence, and a lurking sarcasm which

mingles with events had so arranged that it had complicated the loyal

triumph of the lost child’s becoming Lord Clancharlie with a venomous

victory: in doing a good action, it had mischievously placed justice at

the service of iniquity. To save the victim of James II. was to give a

prey to Barkilphedro. To reinstate Gwynplaine was to crush Josiana.

Barkilphedro had succeeded, and it was for this that for so many years

the waves, the surge, the squalls had buffeted, shaken, thrown, pushed,

tormented, and respected this bubble of glass, which bore within it so

many commingled fates. It was for this that there had been a cordial

co-operation between the winds, the tides, and the tempests--a vast

agitation of all prodigies for the pleasure of a scoundrel; the infinite

co-operating with an earthworm! Destiny is subject to such grim

caprices.

Barkilphedro was struck by a flash of Titanic pride. He said to himself

that it had all been done to fulfil his intentions. He felt that he was

the object and the instrument.

But he was wrong. Let us clear the character of chance.

Such was not the real meaning of the remarkable circumstance of which

the hatred of Barkilphedro was to profit. Ocean had made itself father

and mother to an orphan, had sent the hurricane against his

executioners, had wrecked the vessel which had repulsed the child, had

swallowed up the clasped hands of the storm-beaten sailors, refusing

their supplications and accepting only their repentance; the tempest

received a deposit from the hands of death. The strong vessel containing

the crime was replaced by the fragile phial containing the reparation.

The sea changed its character, and, like a panther turning nurse, began

to rock the cradle, not of the child, but of his destiny, whilst he grew

up ignorant of all that the depths of ocean were doing for him.

The waves to which this flask had been flung watching over that past

which contained a future; the whirlwind breathing kindly on it; the

currents directing the frail waif across the fathomless wastes of water;

the caution exercised by seaweed, the swells, the rocks; the vast froth

of the abyss, taking under its protection an innocent child; the wave

imperturbable as a conscience; chaos re-establishing order; the

worldwide shadows ending in radiance; darkness employed to bring to

light the star of truth; the exile consoled in his tomb; the heir given

back to his inheritance; the crime of the king repaired; divine

premeditation obeyed; the little, the weak, the deserted child with

infinity for a guardian--all this Barkilphedro might have seen in the

event on which he triumphed. This is what he did not see. He did not

believe that it had all been done for Gwynplaine. He fancied that it had

been effected for Barkilphedro, and that he was well worth the trouble.

Thus it is ever with Satan.

Moreover, ere we feel astonished that a waif so fragile should have

floated for fifteen years undamaged, we should seek to understand the

tender care of the ocean. Fifteen years is nothing. On the 4th of

October 1867, on the coast of Morbihan, between the Isle de Croix, the

extremity of the peninsula de Gavres, and the Rocher des Errants, the

fishermen of Port Louis found a Roman amphora of the fourth century,

covered with arabesques by the incrustations of the sea. That amphora

had been floating fifteen hundred years.

Whatever appearance of indifference Barkilphedro tried to exhibit, his

wonder had equalled his joy. Everything he could desire was there to his

hand. All seemed ready made. The fragments of the event which was to

satisfy his hate were spread out within his reach. He had nothing to do

but to pick them up and fit them together--a repair which it was an

amusement to execute. He was the artificer.

Gwynplaine! He knew the name. _Masca ridens_. Like every one else, he

had been to see the Laughing Man. He had read the sign nailed up against

the Tadcaster Inn as one reads a play-bill that attracts a crowd. He had

noted it. He remembered it directly in its most minute details; and, in

any case, it was easy to compare them with the original. That notice, in

the electrical summons which arose in his memory, appeared in the depths

of his mind, and placed itself by the side of the parchment signed by

the shipwrecked crew, like an answer following a question, like the

solution following an enigma; and the lines--“Here is to be seen

Gwynplaine, deserted at the age of ten, on the 29th of January, 1690, on

the coast at Portland”--suddenly appeared to his eyes in the splendour

of an apocalypse. His vision was the light of _Mene, Tekel, Upharsin_,

outside a booth. Here was the destruction of the edifice which made the

existence of Josiana. A sudden earthquake. The lost child was found.

There was a Lord Clancharlie; David Dirry-Moir was nobody. Peerage,

riches, power, rank--all these things left Lord David and entered

Gwynplaine. All the castles, parks, forests, town houses, palaces,

domains, Josiana included, belonged to Gwynplaine. And what a climax for

Josiana! What had she now before her? Illustrious and haughty, a player;

beautiful, a monster. Who could have hoped for this? The truth was that

the joy of Barkilphedro had become enthusiastic. The most hateful

combinations are surpassed by the infernal munificence of the

unforeseen. When reality likes, it works masterpieces. Barkilphedro

found that all his dreams had been nonsense; reality were better.

The change he was about to work would not have seemed less desirable had

it been detrimental to him. Insects exist which are so savagely

disinterested that they sting, knowing that to sting is to die.

Barkilphedro was like such vermin.

But this time he had not the merit of being disinterested. Lord David

Dirry-Moir owed him nothing, and Lord Fermain Clancharlie was about to

owe him everything. From being a _protégé_ Barkilphedro was about to

become a protector. Protector of whom? Of a peer of England. He was

going to have a lord of his own, and a lord who would be his creature.

Barkilphedro counted on giving him his first impressions. His peer would

be the morganatic brother-in-law of the queen. His ugliness would please

the queen in the same proportion as it displeased Josiana. Advancing by

such favour, and assuming grave and modest airs, Barkilphedro might

become a somebody. He had always been destined for the church. He had a

vague longing to be a bishop.

Meanwhile he was happy.

Oh, what a great success! and what a deal of useful work had chance

accomplished for him! His vengeance--for he called it his vengeance--had

been softly brought to him by the waves. He had not lain in ambush in

vain.

He was the rock, Josiana was the waif. Josiana was about to be dashed

against Barkilphedro, to his intense villainous ecstasy.

He was clever in the art of suggestion, which consists in making in the

minds of others a little incision into which you put an idea of your

own. Holding himself aloof, and without appearing to mix himself up in

the matter, it was he who arranged that Josiana should go to the Green

Box and see Gwynplaine. It could do no harm. The appearance of the

mountebank, in his low estate, would be a good ingredient in the

combination; later on it would season it.

He had quietly prepared everything beforehand. What he most desired was

something unspeakably abrupt. The work on which he was engaged could

only be expressed in these strange words--the construction of a

thunderbolt.

All preliminaries being complete, he had watched till all the necessary

legal formalities had been accomplished. The secret had not oozed out,

silence being an element of law.

The confrontation of Hardquanonne with Gwynplaine had taken place.

Barkilphedro had been present. We have seen the result.

The same day a post-chaise belonging to the royal household was suddenly

sent by her Majesty to fetch Lady Josiana from London to Windsor, where

the queen was at the time residing.

Josiana, for reasons of her own, would have been very glad to disobey,

or at least to delay obedience, and put off her departure till next day;

but court life does not permit of these objections. She was obliged to

set out at once, and to leave her residence in London, Hunkerville

House, for her residence at Windsor, Corleone Lodge.

The Duchess Josiana left London at the very moment that the wapentake

appeared at the Tadcaster Inn to arrest Gwynplaine and take him to the

torture cell of Southwark.

When she arrived at Windsor, the Usher of the Black Rod, who guards the

door of the presence chamber, informed her that her Majesty was in

audience with the Lord Chancellor, and could not receive her until the

next day; that, consequently, she was to remain at Corleone Lodge, at

the orders of her Majesty; and that she should receive the queen’s

commands direct, when her Majesty awoke the next morning. Josiana

entered her house feeling very spiteful, supped in a bad humour, had the

spleen, dismissed every one except her page, then dismissed him, and

went to bed while it was yet daylight.

When she arrived she had learned that Lord David Dirry-Moir was expected

at Windsor the next day, owing to his having, whilst at sea, received

orders to return immediately and receive her Majesty’s commands.

CHAPTER III.

AN AWAKENING.

“No man could pass suddenly from Siberia into Senegal without

losing consciousness.”--HUMBOLDT.

The swoon of a man, even of one the most firm and energetic, under the

sudden shock of an unexpected stroke of good fortune, is nothing

wonderful. A man is knocked down by the unforeseen blow, like an ox by

the poleaxe. Francis d’Albescola, he who tore from the Turkish ports

their iron chains, remained a whole day without consciousness when they

made him pope. Now the stride from a cardinal to a pope is less than

that from a mountebank to a peer of England.

No shock is so violent as a loss of equilibrium.

When Gwynplaine came to himself and opened his eyes it was night. He was

in an armchair, in the midst of a large chamber lined throughout with

purple velvet, over walls, ceiling, and floor. The carpet was velvet.

Standing near him, with uncovered head, was the fat man in the

travelling cloak, who had emerged from behind the pillar in the cell at

Southwark. Gwynplaine was alone in the chamber with him. From the chair,

by extending his arms, he could reach two tables, each bearing a branch

of six lighted wax candles. On one of these tables there were papers and

a casket, on the other refreshments; a cold fowl, wine, and brandy,

served on a silver-gilt salver.

Through the panes of a high window, reaching from the ceiling to the

floor, a semicircle of pillars was to be seen, in the clear April night,

encircling a courtyard with three gates, one very wide, and the other

two low. The carriage gate, of great size, was in the middle; on the

right, that for equestrians, smaller; on the left, that for foot

passengers, still less. These gates were formed of iron railings, with

glittering points. A tall piece of sculpture surmounted the central one.

The columns were probably in white marble, as well as the pavement of

the court, thus producing an effect like snow; and framed in its sheet

of flat flags was a mosaic, the pattern of which was vaguely marked in

the shadow. This mosaic, when seen by daylight, would no doubt have

disclosed to the sight, with much emblazonry and many colours, a

gigantic coat-of-arms, in the Florentine fashion. Zigzags of balustrades

rose and fell, indicating stairs of terraces. Over the court frowned an

immense pile of architecture, now shadowy and vague in the starlight.

Intervals of sky, full of stars, marked out clearly the outline of the

palace. An enormous roof could be seen, with the gable ends vaulted;

garret windows, roofed over like visors; chimneys like towers; and

entablatures covered with motionless gods and goddesses.

Beyond the colonnade there played in the shadow one of those fairy

fountains in which, as the water falls from basin to basin, it combines

the beauty of rain with that of the cascade, and as if scattering the

contents of a jewel box, flings to the wind its diamonds and its pearls

as though to divert the statues around. Long rows of windows ranged

away, separated by panoplies, in relievo, and by busts on small

pedestals. On the pinnacles, trophies and morions with plumes cut in

stone alternated with statues of heathen deities.

In the chamber where Gwynplaine was, on the side opposite the window,

was a fireplace as high as the ceiling, and on another, under a dais,

one of those old spacious feudal beds which were reached by a ladder,

and where you might sleep lying across; the joint-stool of the bed was

at its side; a row of armchairs by the walls, and a row of ordinary

chairs, in front of them, completed the furniture. The ceiling was

domed. A great wood fire in the French fashion blazed in the fireplace;

by the richness of the flames, variegated of rose colour and green, a

judge of such things would have seen that the wood was ash--a great

luxury. The room was so large that the branches of candles failed to

light it up. Here and there curtains over doors, falling and swaying,

indicated communications with other rooms. The style of the room was

altogether that of the reign of James I.--a style square and massive,

antiquated and magnificent. Like the carpet and the lining of the

chamber, the dais, the baldaquin, the bed, the stool, the curtains, the

mantelpiece, the coverings of the table, the sofas, the chairs, were all

of purple velvet.

There was no gilding, except on the ceiling. Laid on it, at equal

distance from the four angles, was a huge round shield of embossed

metal, on which sparkled, in dazzling relief, various coats of arms.

Amongst the devices, on two blazons, side by side, were to be

distinguished the cap of a baron and the coronet of a marquis. Were they

of brass or of silver-gilt? You could not tell. They seemed to be of

gold. And in the centre of this lordly ceiling, like a gloomy and

magnificent sky, the gleaming escutcheon was as the dark splendour of a

sun shining in the night.

The savage, in whom is embodied the free man, is nearly as restless in a

palace as in a prison. This magnificent chamber was depressing. So much

splendour produces fear. Who could be the inhabitant of this stately

palace? To what colossus did all this grandeur appertain? Of what lion

is this the lair? Gwynplaine, as yet but half awake, was heavy at

heart.

“Where am I?” he said.

The man who was standing before him answered,--“You are in your own

house, my lord.”

CHAPTER IV.

FASCINATION.

It takes time to rise to the surface. And Gwynplaine had been thrown

into an abyss of stupefaction.

We do not gain our footing at once in unknown depths.

There are routs of ideas, as there are routs of armies. The rally is not

immediate.

We feel as it were scattered--as though some strange evaporation of self

were taking place.

God is the arm, chance is the sling, man is the pebble. How are you to

resist, once flung?

Gwynplaine, if we may coin the expression, ricocheted from one surprise

to another. After the love letter of the duchess came the revelation in

the Southwark dungeon.

In destiny, when wonders begin, prepare yourself for blow upon blow. The

gloomy portals once open, prodigies pour in. A breach once made in the

wall, and events rush upon us pell-mell. The marvellous never comes

singly.

The marvellous is an obscurity. The shadow of this obscurity was over

Gwynplaine. What was happening to him seemed unintelligible. He saw

everything through the mist which a deep commotion leaves in the mind,

like the dust caused by a falling ruin. The shock had been from top to

bottom. Nothing was clear to him. However, light always returns by

degrees. The dust settles. Moment by moment the density of astonishment

decreases. Gwynplaine was like a man with his eyes open and fixed in a

dream, as if trying to see what may be within it. He dispersed the mist.

Then he reshaped it. He had intermittances of wandering. He underwent

that oscillation of the mind in the unforeseen which alternately pushes

us in the direction in which we understand, and then throws us back in

that which is incomprehensible. Who has not at some time felt this

pendulum in his brain?

By degrees his thoughts dilated in the darkness of the event, as the

pupil of his eye had done in the underground shadows at Southwark. The

difficulty was to succeed in putting a certain space between accumulated

sensations. Before that combustion of hazy ideas called comprehension

can take place, air must be admitted between the emotions. There air was

wanting. The event, so to speak, could not be breathed.

In entering that terrible cell at Southwark, Gwynplaine had expected the

iron collar of a felon; they had placed on his head the coronet of a

peer. How could this be? There had not been space of time enough between

what Gwynplaine had feared and what had really occurred; it had

succeeded too quickly--his terror changing into other feelings too

abruptly for comprehension. The contrasts were too tightly packed one

against the other. Gwynplaine made an effort to withdraw his mind from

the vice.

He was silent. This is the instinct of great stupefaction, which is more

on the defensive than it is thought to be. Who says nothing is prepared

for everything. A word of yours allowed to drop may be seized in some

unknown system of wheels, and your utter destruction be compassed in its

complex machinery.

The poor and weak live in terror of being crushed. The crowd ever expect

to be trodden down. Gwynplaine had long been one of the crowd.

A singular state of human uneasiness can be expressed by the words: Let

us see what will happen. Gwynplaine was in this state. You feel that you

have not gained your equilibrium when an unexpected situation surges up

under your feet. You watch for something which must produce a result.

You are vaguely attentive. We will see what happens. What? You do not

know. Whom? You watch.

The man with the paunch repeated, “You are in your own house, my lord.”

Gwynplaine felt himself. In surprises, we first look to make sure that

things exist; then we feel ourselves, to make sure that we exist

ourselves. It was certainly to him that the words were spoken; but he

himself was somebody else. He no longer had his jacket on, or his

esclavine of leather. He had a waistcoat of cloth of silver; and a satin

coat, which he touched and found to be embroidered. He felt a heavy

purse in his waistcoat pocket. A pair of velvet trunk hose covered his

clown’s tights. He wore shoes with high red heels. As they had brought

him to this palace, so had they changed his dress.

The man resumed,--

“Will your lordship deign to remember this: I am called Barkilphedro; I

am clerk to the Admiralty. It was I who opened Hardquanonne’s flask and

drew your destiny out of it. Thus, in the ‘Arabian Nights’ a fisherman

releases a giant from a bottle.”

Gwynplaine fixed his eyes on the smiling face of the speaker.

Barkilphedro continued:--

“Besides this palace, my lord, Hunkerville House, which is larger, is

yours. You own Clancharlie Castle, from which you take your title, and

which was a fortress in the time of Edward the Elder. You have nineteen

bailiwicks belonging to you, with their villages and their inhabitants.

This puts under your banner, as a landlord and a nobleman, about eighty

thousand vassals and tenants. At Clancharlie you are a judge--judge of

all, both of goods and of persons--and you hold your baron’s court. The

king has no right which you have not, except the privilege of coining

money. The king, designated by the Norman law as chief signor, has

justice, court, and coin. Coin is money. So that you, excepting in this

last, are as much a king in your lordship as he is in his kingdom. You

have the right, as a baron, to a gibbet with four pillars in England;

and, as a marquis, to a scaffold with seven posts in Sicily: that of the

mere lord having two pillars; that of a lord of the manor, three; and

that of a duke, eight. You are styled prince in the ancient charters of

Northumberland. You are related to the Viscounts Valentia in Ireland,

whose name is Power; and to the Earls of Umfraville in Scotland, whose

name is Angus. You are chief of a clan, like Campbell, Ardmannach, and

Macallummore. You have eight barons’ courts--Reculver, Baston,

Hell-Kerters, Homble, Moricambe, Grundraith, Trenwardraith, and others.

You have a right over the turf-cutting of Pillinmore, and over the

alabaster quarries near Trent. Moreover, you own all the country of

Penneth Chase; and you have a mountain with an ancient town on it. The

town is called Vinecaunton; the mountain is called Moilenlli. All which

gives you an income of forty thousand pounds a year. That is to say,

forty times the five-and-twenty thousand francs with which a Frenchman

is satisfied.”

Whilst Barkilphedro spoke, Gwynplaine, in a crescendo of stupor,

remembered the past. Memory is a gulf that a word can move to its lowest

depths. Gwynplaine knew all the words pronounced by Barkilphedro. They

were written in the last lines of the two scrolls which lined the van in

which his childhood had been passed, and, from so often letting his eyes

wander over them mechanically, he knew them by heart. On reaching, a

forsaken orphan, the travelling caravan at Weymouth, he had found the

inventory of the inheritance which awaited him; and in the morning, when

the poor little boy awoke, the first thing spelt by his careless and

unconscious eyes was his own title and its possessions. It was a strange

detail added to all his other surprises, that, during fifteen years,

rolling from highway to highway, the clown of a travelling theatre,

earning his bread day by day, picking up farthings, and living on

crumbs, he should have travelled with the inventory of his fortune

placarded over his misery.

Barkilphedro touched the casket on the table with his forefinger.

“My lord, this casket contains two thousand guineas which her gracious

Majesty the Queen has sent you for your present wants.”

Gwynplaine made a movement.

“That shall be for my Father Ursus,” he said.

“So be it, my lord,” said Barkilphedro. “Ursus, at the Tadcaster Inn.

The Serjeant of the Coif, who accompanied us hither, and is about to

return immediately, will carry them to him. Perhaps I may go to London

myself. In that case I will take charge of it.”

“I shall take them to him myself,” said Gwynplaine.

Barkilphedro’s smile disappeared, and he said,--“Impossible!”

There is an impressive inflection of voice which, as it were, underlines

the words. Barkilphedro’s tone was thus emphasized; he paused, so as to

put a full stop after the word he had just uttered. Then he continued,

with the peculiar and respectful tone of a servant who feels that he is

master,--

“My lord, you are twenty-three miles from London, at Corleone Lodge,

your court residence, contiguous to the Royal Castle of Windsor. You are

here unknown to any one. You were brought here in a close carriage,

which was awaiting you at the gate of the jail at Southwark. The

servants who introduced you into this palace are ignorant who you are;

but they know me, and that is sufficient. You may possibly have been

brought to these apartments by means of a private key which is in my

possession. There are people in the house asleep, and it is not an hour

to awaken them. Hence we have time for an explanation, which,

nevertheless, will be short. I have been commissioned by her Majesty--”

As he spoke, Barkilphedro began to turn over the leaves of some bundles

of papers which were lying near the casket.

“My lord, here is your patent of peerage. Here is that of your Sicilian

marquisate. These are the parchments and title-deeds of your eight

baronies, with the seals of eleven kings, from Baldret, King of Kent, to

James the Sixth of Scotland, and first of England and Scotland united.

Here are your letters of precedence. Here are your rent-rolls, and

titles and descriptions of your fiefs, freeholds, dependencies, lands,

and domains. That which you see above your head in the emblazonment on

the ceiling are your two coronets: the circlet with pearls for the

baron, and the circlet with strawberry leaves for the marquis.

“Here, in the wardrobe, is your peer’s robe of red velvet, bordered with

ermine. To-day, only a few hours since, the Lord Chancellor and the

Deputy Earl Marshal of England, informed of the result of your

confrontation with the Comprachico Hardquanonne, have taken her

Majesty’s commands. Her Majesty has signed them, according to her royal

will, which is the same as the law. All formalities have been complied

with. To-morrow, and no later than to-morrow, you will take your seat in

the House of Lords, where they have for some days been deliberating on a

bill, presented by the crown, having for its object the augmentation, by

a hundred thousand pounds sterling yearly, of the annual allowance to

the Duke of Cumberland, husband of the queen. You will be able to take

part in the debate.”

Barkilphedro paused, breathed slowly, and resumed.

“However, nothing is yet settled. A man cannot be made a peer of

England without his own consent. All can be annulled and disappear,

unless you acquiesce. An event nipped in the bud ere it ripens often

occurs in state policy. My lord, up to this time silence has been

preserved on what has occurred. The House of Lords will not be informed

of the facts until to-morrow. Secrecy has been kept about the whole

matter for reasons of state, which are of such importance that the

influential persons who alone are at this moment cognizant of your

existence, and of your rights, will forget them immediately should

reasons of state command their being forgotten. That which is in

darkness may remain in darkness. It is easy to wipe you out; the more so

as you have a brother, the natural son of your father and of a woman who

afterwards, during the exile of your father, became mistress to King

Charles II., which accounts for your brother’s high position at court;

for it is to this brother, bastard though he be, that your peerage would

revert. Do you wish this? I cannot think so. Well, all depends on you.

The queen must be obeyed. You will not quit the house till to-morrow in

a royal carriage, and to go to the House of Lords. My lord, will you be

a peer of England; yes or no? The queen has designs for you. She

destines you for an alliance almost royal. Lord Fermain Clancharlie,

this is the decisive moment. Destiny never opens one door without

shutting another. After a certain step in advance, to step back is

impossible. Whoso enters into transfiguration, leaves behind him

evanescence. My lord, Gwynplaine is dead. Do you understand?”

Gwynplaine trembled from head to foot.

Then he recovered himself.

“Yes,” he said.

Barkilphedro, smiling, bowed, placed the casket under his cloak, and

left the room.

CHAPTER V.

WE THINK WE REMEMBER; WE FORGET.

Whence arise those strange, visible changes which occur in the soul of

man?

Gwynplaine had been at the same moment raised to a summit and cast into

an abyss.

His head swam with double giddiness--the giddiness of ascent and

descent. A fatal combination.

He felt himself ascend, and felt not his fall.

It is appalling to see a new horizon.

A perspective affords suggestions,--not always good ones.

He had before him the fairy glade, a snare perhaps, seen through opening

clouds, and showing the blue depths of sky; so deep, that they are

obscure.

He was on the mountain, whence he could see all the kingdoms of the

earth. A mountain all the more terrible that it is a visionary one.

Those who are on its apex are in a dream.

Palaces, castles, power, opulence, all human happiness extending as far

as eye could reach; a map of enjoyments spread out to the horizon; a

sort of radiant geography of which he was the centre. A perilous mirage!

Imagine what must have been the haze of such a vision, not led up to,

not attained to as by the gradual steps of a ladder, but reached without

transition and without previous warning.

A man going to sleep in a mole’s burrow, and awaking on the top of the

Strasbourg steeple; such was the state of Gwynplaine.

Giddiness is a dangerous kind of glare, particularly that which bears

you at once towards the day and towards the night, forming two

whirlwinds, one opposed to the other.

He saw too much, and not enough.

He saw all, and nothing.

His state was what the author of this book has somewhere expressed as

the blind man dazzled.

Gwynplaine, left by himself, began to walk with long strides. A bubbling

precedes an explosion.