“So, you insult misery! Silence, Peers of England! Judges, listen to my

pleading! Oh, I conjure you, have pity. Pity for whom? Pity for

yourselves. Who is in danger? Yourselves! Do you not see that you are in

a balance, and that there is in one scale your power, and in the other

your responsibility? It is God who is weighing you. Oh, do not laugh.

Think. The trembling of your consciences is the oscillation of the

balance in which God is weighing your actions. You are not wicked; you

are like other men, neither better nor worse. You believe yourselves to

be gods; but be ill to-morrow, and see your divinity shivering in fever!

We are worth one as much as the other. I address myself to honest men;

there are such here. I address myself to lofty intellects; there are

such here. I address myself to generous souls; there are such here. You

are fathers, sons, and brothers; therefore you are often touched. He

amongst you who has this morning watched the awaking of his little child

is a good man. Hearts are all alike. Humanity is nothing but a heart.

Between those who oppress and those who are oppressed there is but a

difference of place. Your feet tread on the heads of men. The fault is

not yours; it is that of the social Babel. The building is faulty, and

out of the perpendicular. One floor bears down the other. Listen, and I

will tell you what to do. Oh! as you are powerful, be brotherly; as you

are great, be tender. If you only knew what I have seen! Alas, what

gloom is there beneath! The people are in a dungeon. How many are

condemned who are innocent! No daylight, no air, no virtue! They are

without hope, and yet--there is the danger--they expect something.

Realize all this misery. There are beings who live in death. There are

little girls who at twelve begin by prostitution, and who end in old age

at twenty. As to the severities of the criminal code, they are fearful.

I speak somewhat at random, and do not pick my words. I say everything

that comes into my head. No later than yesterday I who stand here saw a

man lying in chains, naked, with stones piled on his chest, expire in

torture. Do you know of these things? No. If you knew what goes on, you

would not dare to be happy. Who of you have been to Newcastle-upon-Tyne?

There, in the mines, are men who chew coals to fill their stomachs and

deceive hunger. Look here! in Lancashire, Ribblechester has sunk, by

poverty, from a town to a village. I do not see that Prince George of

Denmark requires a hundred thousand pounds extra. I should prefer

receiving a poor sick man into the hospital, without compelling him to

pay his funeral expenses in advance. In Carnarvon, and at Strathmore, as

well as at Strathbickan, the exhaustion of the poor is horrible. At

Stratford they cannot drain the marsh for want of money. The

manufactories are shut up all over Lancashire. There is forced idleness

everywhere. Do you know that the herring fishers at Harlech eat grass

when the fishery fails? Do you know that at Burton-Lazars there are

still lepers confined, on whom they fire if they leave their tan houses!

At Ailesbury, a town of which one of you is lord, destitution is

chronic. At Penkridge, in Coventry, where you have just endowed a

cathedral and enriched a bishop, there are no beds in the cabins, and

they dig holes in the earth in which to put the little children to lie,

so that instead of beginning life in the cradle, they begin it in the

grave. I have seen these things! My lords, do you know who pays the

taxes you vote? The dying! Alas! you deceive yourselves. You are going

the wrong road. You augment the poverty of the poor to increase the

riches of the rich. You should do the reverse. What! take from the

worker to give to the idle, take from the tattered to give to the

well-clad; take from the beggar to give to the prince! Oh yes! I have

old republican blood in my veins. I have a horror of these things. How I

execrate kings! And how shameless are the women! I have been told a sad

story. How I hate Charles II.! A woman whom my father loved gave herself

to that king whilst my father was dying in exile. The prostitute!

Charles II., James II.! After a scamp, a scoundrel. What is there in a

king? A man, feeble and contemptible, subject to wants and infirmities.

Of what good is a king? You cultivate that parasite royalty; you make a

serpent of that worm, a dragon of that insect. O pity the poor! You

increase the weight of the taxes for the profit of the throne. Look to

the laws which you decree. Take heed of the suffering swarms which you

crush. Cast your eyes down. Look at what is at your feet. O ye great,

there are the little. Have pity! yes, have pity on yourselves; for the

people is in its agony, and when the lower part of the trunk dies, the

higher parts die too. Death spares no limb. When night comes no one can

keep his corner of daylight. Are you selfish? then save others. The

destruction of the vessel cannot be a matter of indifference to any

passenger. There can be no wreck for some that is not wreck for all. O

believe it, the abyss yawns for all!”

The laughter increased, and became irresistible. For that matter, such

extravagance as there was in his words was sufficient to amuse any

assembly. To be comic without and tragic within, what suffering can be

more humiliating? what pain deeper? Gwynplaine felt it. His words were

an appeal in one direction, his face in the other. What a terrible

position was his!

Suddenly his voice rang out in strident bursts.

“How gay these men are! Be it so. Here is irony face to face with agony;

a sneer mocking the death-rattle. They are all-powerful. Perhaps so; be

it so. We shall see. Behold! I am one of them; but I am also one of you,

O ye poor! A king sold me. A poor man sheltered me. Who mutilated me? A

prince. Who healed and nourished me? A pauper. I am Lord Clancharlie;

but I am still Gwynplaine. I take my place amongst the great; but I

belong to the mean. I am amongst those who rejoice; but I am with those

who suffer. Oh, this system of society is false! Some day will come that

which is true. Then there will be no more lords, and there shall be free

and living men. There will be no more masters; there will be fathers.

Such is the future. No more prostration; no more baseness; no more

ignorance; no more human beasts of burden; no more courtiers; no more

toadies; no more kings; but Light! In the meantime, see me here. I have

a right, and I will use it. Is it a right? No, if I use it for myself;

yes, if I use it for all. I will speak to you, my lords, being one of

you. O my brothers below, I will tell them of your nakedness. I will

rise up with a bundle of the people’s rags in my hand. I will shake off

over the masters the misery of the slaves; and these favoured and

arrogant ones shall no longer be able to escape the remembrance of the

wretched, nor the princes the itch of the poor; and so much the worse,

if it be the bite of vermin; and so much the better, if it awake the

lions from their slumber.”

Here Gwynplaine turned towards the kneeling under-clerks, who were

writing on the fourth woolsack.

“Who are those fellows kneeling down?--What are you doing? Get up; you

are men.”

These words, suddenly addressed to inferiors whom a lord ought not even

to perceive, increased the merriment to the utmost.

They had cried, “Bravo!” Now they shouted, “Hurrah!” From clapping their

hands they proceeded to stamping their feet. One might have been back in

the Green Box, only that there the laughter applauded Gwynplaine; here

it exterminated him. The effort of ridicule is to kill. Men’s laughter

sometimes exerts all its power to murder.

The laughter proceeded to action. Sneering words rained down upon him.

Humour is the folly of assemblies. Their ingenious and foolish ridicule

shuns facts instead of studying them, and condemns questions instead of

solving them. Any extraordinary occurrence is a point of interrogation;

to laugh at it is like laughing at an enigma. But the Sphynx, which

never laughs, is behind it.

Contradictory shouts arose,--

“Enough! enough!” “Encore! encore!”

William Farmer, Baron Leimpster, flung at Gwynplaine the insult cast by

Ryc Quiney at Shakespeare,--

“Histrio, mima!”

Lord Vaughan, a sententious man, twenty-ninth on the barons’ bench,

exclaimed,--

“We must be back in the days when animals had the gift of speech. In the

midst of human tongues the jaw of a beast has spoken.”

“Listen to Balaam’s ass,” added Lord Yarmouth.

Lord Yarmouth presented that appearance of sagacity produced by a round

nose and a crooked mouth.

“The rebel Linnæus is chastised in his tomb. The son is the punishment

of the father,” said John Hough, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, whose

prebendary Gwynplaine’s attack had glanced.

“He lies!” said Lord Cholmondeley, the legislator so well read up in the

law. “That which he calls torture is only the _peine forte et dure_, and

a very good thing, too. Torture is not practised in England.”

Thomas Wentworth, Baron Raby, addressed the Chancellor.

“My Lord Chancellor, adjourn the House.”

“No, no. Let him go on. He is amusing. Hurrah! hip! hip! hip!”

Thus shouted the young lords, their fun amounting to fury. Four of them

especially were in the full exasperation of hilarity and hate. These

were Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester; Thomas Tufton, Earl of Thanet;

Viscount Hatton; and the Duke of Montagu.

“To your tricks, Gwynplaine!” cried Rochester.

“Put him out, put him out!” shouted Thanet.

Viscount Hatton drew from his pocket a penny, which he flung to

Gwynplaine.

And John Campbell, Earl of Greenwich; Savage, Earl Rivers; Thompson,

Baron Haversham; Warrington, Escrick Rolleston, Rockingham, Carteret,

Langdale, Barcester, Maynard, Hunsdon, Cäernarvon, Cavendish,

Burlington, Robert Darcy, Earl of Holderness, Other Windsor, Earl of

Plymouth, applauded.

There was a tumult as of pandemonium or of pantheon, in which the words

of Gwynplaine were lost.

Amidst it all, there was heard but one word of Gwynplaine’s: “Beware!”

Ralph, Duke of Montagu, recently down from Oxford, and still a beardless

youth, descended from the bench of dukes, where he sat the nineteenth in

order, and placed himself in front of Gwynplaine, with his arms folded.

In a sword there is a spot which cuts sharpest, and in a voice an accent

which insults most keenly. Montagu spoke with that accent, and sneering

with his face close to that of Gwynplaine, shouted,--“What are you

talking about?”

“I am prophesying,” said Gwynplaine.

The laughter exploded anew; and below this laughter, anger growled its

continued bass. One of the minors, Lionel Cranfield Sackville, Earl of

Dorset and Middlesex, stood upon his seat, not smiling, but grave as

became a future legislator, and, without saying a word, looked at

Gwynplaine with his fresh twelve-year old face, and shrugged his

shoulders. Whereat the Bishop of St. Asaph’s whispered in the ear of the

Bishop of St. David’s, who was sitting beside him, as he pointed to

Gwynplaine, “There is the fool;” then pointing to the child, “there is

the sage.”

A chaos of complaint rose from amidst the confusion of exclamations:--

“Gorgon’s face!”--“What does it all mean?”--“An insult to the

House!”--“The fellow ought to be put out!”--“What a madman!”--“Shame!

shame!”--“Adjourn the House!”--“No; let him finish his speech!”--“Talk

away, you buffoon!”

Lord Lewis of Duras, with his arms akimbo, shouted,--

“Ah! it does one good to laugh. My spleen is cured. I propose a vote of

thanks in these terms: ‘The House of Lords returns thanks to the Green

Box.’”

Gwynplaine, it may be remembered, had dreamt of a different welcome.

A man who, climbing up a steep and crumbling acclivity of sand above a

giddy precipice, has felt it giving way under his hands, his nails, his

elbows, his knees, his feet; who--losing instead of gaining on his

treacherous way, a prey to every terror of the danger, slipping back

instead of ascending, increasing the certainty of his fall by his very

efforts to gain the summit, and losing ground in every struggle for

safety--has felt the abyss approaching nearer and nearer, until the

certainty of his coming fall into the yawning jaws open to receive him,

has frozen the marrow of his bones;--that man has experienced the

sensations of Gwynplaine.

He felt the ground he had ascended crumbling under him, and his audience

was the precipice.

There is always some one to say the word which sums all up.

Lord Scarsdale translated the impression of the assembly in one

exclamation,--

“What is the monster doing here?”

Gwynplaine stood up, dismayed and indignant, in a sort of final

convulsion. He looked at them all fixedly.

“What am I doing here? I have come to be a terror to you! I am a

monster, do you say? No! I am the people! I am an exception? No! I am

the rule; you are the exception! You are the chimera; I am the reality!

I am the frightful man who laughs! Who laughs at what? At you, at

himself, at everything! What is his laugh? Your crime and his torment!

That crime he flings at your head! That punishment he spits in your

face! I laugh, and that means I weep!”

He paused. There was less noise. The laughter continued, but it was more

subdued. He may have fancied that he had regained a certain amount of

attention. He breathed again, and resumed,--

“This laugh which is on my face a king placed there. This laugh

expresses the desolation of mankind. This laugh means hate, enforced

silence, rage, despair. This laugh is the production of torture. This

laugh is a forced laugh. If Satan were marked with this laugh, it would

convict God. But the Eternal is not like them that perish. Being

absolute, he is just; and God hates the acts of kings. Oh! you take me

for an exception; but I am a symbol. Oh, all-powerful men, fools that

you are! open your eyes. I am the incarnation of All. I represent

humanity, such as its masters have made it. Mankind is mutilated. That

which has been done to me has been done to it. In it have been deformed

right, justice, truth, reason, intelligence, as eyes, nostrils, and ears

have been deformed in me; its heart has been made a sink of passion and

pain, like mine, and, like mine, its features have been hidden in a mask

of joy. Where God had placed his finger, the king set his sign-manual.

Monstrous superposition! Bishops, peers, and princes, the people is a

sea of suffering, smiling on the surface. My lords, I tell you that the

people are as I am. To-day you oppress them; to-day you hoot at me. But

the future is the ominous thaw, in which that which was as stone shall

become wave. The appearance of solidity melts into liquid. A crack in

the ice, and all is over. There will come an hour when convulsion shall

break down your oppression; when an angry roar will reply to your jeers.

Nay, that hour did come! Thou wert of it, O my father! That hour of God

did come, and was called the Republic! It was destroyed, but it will

return. Meanwhile, remember that the line of kings armed with the sword

was broken by Cromwell, armed with the axe. Tremble! Incorruptible

solutions are at hand: the talons which were cut are growing again; the

tongues which were torn out are floating away, they are turning to

tongues of fire, and, scattered by the breath of darkness, are shouting

through infinity; those who hunger are showing their idle teeth; false

heavens, built over real hells, are tottering. The people are

suffering--they are suffering; and that which is on high totters, and

that which is below yawns. Darkness demands its change to light; the

damned discuss the elect. Behold! it is the coming of the people, the

ascent of mankind, the beginning of the end, the red dawn of the

catastrophe! Yes, all these things are in this laugh of mine, at which

you laugh to-day! London is one perpetual fête. Be it so. From one end

to the other, England rings with acclamation. Well! but listen. All that

you see is I. You have your fêtes--they are my laugh; you have your

public rejoicings--they are my laugh; you have your weddings,

consecrations, and coronations--they are my laugh. The births of your

princes are my laugh. But above you is the thunderbolt--it is my laugh.”

How could they stand such nonsense? The laughter burst out afresh; and

now it was overwhelming. Of all the lava which that crater, the human

mouth, ejects, the most corrosive is joy. To inflict evil gaily is a

contagion which no crowd can resist. All executions do not take place on

the scaffold; and men, from the moment they are in a body, whether in

mobs or in senates, have always a ready executioner amongst them, called

sarcasm. There is no torture to be compared to that of the wretch

condemned to execution by ridicule. This was Gwynplaine’s fate. He was

stoned with their jokes, and riddled by the scoffs shot at him. He stood

there a mark for all. They sprang up; they cried, “Encore;” they shook

with laughter; they stamped their feet; they pulled each other’s bands.

The majesty of the place, the purple of the robes, the chaste ermine,

the dignity of the wigs, had no effect. The lords laughed, the bishops

laughed, the judges laughed, the old men’s benches derided, the

children’s benches were in convulsions. The Archbishop of Canterbury

nudged the Archbishop of York; Henry Compton, Bishop of London, brother

of Lord Northampton, held his sides; the Lord Chancellor bent down his

head, probably to conceal his inclination to laugh; and, at the bar,

that statue of respect, the Usher of the Black Rod, was laughing also.

Gwynplaine, become pallid, had folded his arms; and, surrounded by all

those faces, young and old, in which had burst forth this grand Homeric

jubilee; in that whirlwind of clapping hands, of stamping feet, and of

hurrahs; in that mad buffoonery, of which he was the centre; in that

splendid overflow of hilarity; in the midst of that unmeasured gaiety,

he felt that the sepulchre was within him. All was over. He could no

longer master the face which betrayed nor the audience which insulted

him.

That eternal and fatal law by which the grotesque is linked with the

sublime--by which the laugh re-echoes the groan, parody rides behind

despair, and seeming is opposed to being--had never found more terrible

expression. Never had a light more sinister illumined the depths of

human darkness.

Gwynplaine was assisting at the final destruction of his destiny by a

burst of laughter. The irremediable was in this. Having fallen, we can

raise ourselves up; but, being pulverized, never. And the insult of

their sovereign mockery had reduced him to dust. From thenceforth

nothing was possible. Everything is in accordance with the scene. That

which was triumph in the Green Box was disgrace and catastrophe in the

House of Lords. What was applause there, was insult here. He felt

something like the reverse side of his mask. On one side of that mask he

had the sympathy of the people, who welcomed Gwynplaine; on the other,

the contempt of the great, rejecting Lord Fermain Clancharlie. On one

side, attraction; on the other, repulsion; both leading him towards the

shadows. He felt himself, as it were, struck from behind. Fate strikes

treacherous blows. Everything will be explained hereafter, but, in the

meantime, destiny is a snare, and man sinks into its pitfalls. He had

expected to rise, and was welcomed by laughter. Such apotheoses have

lugubrious terminations. There is a dreary expression--to be sobered;

tragical wisdom born of drunkenness! In the midst of that tempest of

gaiety commingled with ferocity, Gwynplaine fell into a reverie.

An assembly in mad merriment drifts as chance directs, and loses its

compass when it gives itself to laughter. None knew whither they were

tending, or what they were doing. The House was obliged to rise,

adjourned by the Lord Chancellor, “owing to extraordinary

circumstances,” to the next day. The peers broke up. They bowed to the

royal throne and departed. Echoes of prolonged laughter were heard

losing themselves in the corridors.

Assemblies, besides their official doors, have--under tapestry, under

projections, and under arches--all sorts of hidden doors, by which the

members escape like water through the cracks in a vase. In a short time

the chamber was deserted. This takes place quickly and almost

imperceptibly, and those places, so lately full of voices, are suddenly

given back to silence.

Reverie carries one far; and one comes by long dreaming to reach, as it

were, another planet.

Gwynplaine suddenly awoke from such a dream. He was alone. The chamber

was empty. He had not even observed that the House had been adjourned.

All the peers had departed, even his sponsors. There only remained here

and there some of the lower officers of the House, waiting for his

lordship to depart before they put the covers on and extinguished the

lights.

Mechanically he placed his hat on his head, and, leaving his place,

directed his steps to the great door opening into the gallery. As he was

passing through the opening in the bar, a doorkeeper relieved him of his

peer’s robes. This he scarcely felt. In another instant he was in the

gallery.

The officials who remained observed with astonishment that the peer had

gone out without bowing to the throne!

CHAPTER VIII.

HE WOULD BE A GOOD BROTHER, WERE HE NOT A GOOD SON.

There was no one in the gallery.

Gwynplaine crossed the circular space, from whence they had removed the

arm-chair and the tables, and where there now remained no trace of his

investiture. Candelabra and lustres, placed at certain intervals, marked

the way out. Thanks to this string of light, he retraced without

difficulty, through the suite of saloons and galleries, the way which he

had followed on his arrival with the King-at-Arms and the Usher of the

Black Rod. He saw no one, except here and there some old lord with tardy

steps, plodding along heavily in front of him.

Suddenly, in the silence of those great deserted rooms, bursts of

indistinct exclamations reached him, a sort of nocturnal clatter unusual

in such a place. He directed his steps to the place whence this noise

proceeded, and found himself in a spacious hall, dimly lighted, which

was one of the exits from the House of Lords. He saw a great glass door

open, a flight of steps, footmen and links, a square outside, and a few

coaches waiting at the bottom of the steps.

This was the spot from which the noise which he had heard had proceeded.

Within the door, and under the hall lamp, was a noisy group in a storm

of gestures and of voices.

Gwynplaine approached in the gloom.

They were quarrelling. On one side there were ten or twelve young lords,

who wanted to go out; on the other, a man, with his hat on, like

themselves, upright and with a haughty brow, who barred their passage.

Who was this man? Tom-Jim-Jack.

Some of these lords were still in their robes, others had thrown them

off, and were in their usual attire. Tom-Jim-Jack wore a hat with

plumes--not white, like the peers; but green tipped with orange. He was

embroidered and laced from head to foot, had flowing bows of ribbon and

lace round his wrists and neck, and was feverishly fingering with his

left hand the hilt of the sword which hung from his waistbelt, and on

the billets and scabbard of which were embroidered an admiral’s anchors.

It was he who was speaking and addressing the young lords; and

Gwynplaine overheard the following:--

“I have told you you are cowards. You wish me to withdraw my words. Be

it so. You are not cowards; you are idiots. You all combined against one

man. That was not cowardice. All right. Then it was stupidity. He spoke

to you, and you did not understand him. Here, the old are hard of

hearing, the young devoid of intelligence. I am one of your own order to

quite sufficient extent to tell you the truth. This new-comer is

strange, and he has uttered a heap of nonsense, I admit; but amidst all

that nonsense there were some things which were true. His speech was

confused, undigested, ill-delivered. Be it so. He repeated, ‘You know,

you know,’ too often; but a man who was but yesterday a clown at a fair

cannot be expected to speak like Aristotle or like Doctor Gilbert

Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury. The vermin, the lions, the address to the

under-clerks--all that was in bad taste. Zounds! who says it wasn’t? It

was a senseless and fragmentary and topsy-turvy harangue; but here and

there came out facts which were true. It is no small thing to speak even

as he did, seeing it is not his trade. I should like to see you do it.

Yes, you! What he said about the lepers at Burton Lazars is an

undeniable fact. Besides, he is not the first man who has talked

nonsense. In fine, my lords, I do not like to see many set upon one.

Such is my humour; and I ask your lordships’ permission to take offence.

You have displeased me; I am angry. I am grateful to God for having

drawn up from the depth of his low existence this peer of England, and

for having given back his inheritance to the heir; and, without heeding

whether it will or will not affect my own affairs, I consider it a

beautiful sight to see an insect transformed into an eagle, and

Gwynplaine into Lord Clancharlie. My lords, I forbid you holding any

opinion but mine. I regret that Lord Lewis Duras should not be here. I

should like to insult him. My lords, it is Fermain Clancharlie who has

been the peer, and you who have been the mountebanks. As to his laugh,

it is not his fault. You have laughed at that laugh; men should not

laugh at misfortune. If you think that people cannot laugh at you as

well, you are very much mistaken. You are ugly. You are badly dressed.

My Lord Haversham, I saw your mistress the other day; she is hideous--a

duchess, but a monkey. Gentlemen who laugh, I repeat that I should like

to hear you try to say four words running! Many men jabber; very few

speak. You imagine you know something, because you have kept idle terms

at Oxford or Cambridge, and because, before being peers of England on

the benches of Westminster, you have been asses on the benches at

Gonville and Caius. Here I am; and I choose to stare you in the face.

You have just been impudent to this new peer. A monster, certainly; but

a monster given up to beasts. I had rather be that man than you. I was

present at the sitting, in my place as a possible heir to a peerage. I

heard all. I have not the right to speak; but I have the right to be a

gentleman. Your jeering airs annoyed me. When I am angry I would go up

to Mount Pendlehill, and pick the cloudberry which brings the

thunderbolt down on the gatherer. That is the reason why I have waited

for you at the door. We must have a few words, for we have arrangements

to make. Did it strike you that you failed a little in respect towards

myself? My lords, I entertain a firm determination to kill a few of you.

All you who are here--Thomas Tufton, Earl of Thanet; Savage, Earl

Rivers; Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland; Laurence Hyde, Earl of

Rochester; you Barons, Gray of Rolleston, Cary Hunsdon, Escrick,

Rockingham, little Carteret; Robert Darcy, Earl of Holderness; William,

Viscount Hutton; and Ralph, Duke of Montagu; and any who choose--I,

David Dirry-Moir, an officer of the fleet, summon, call, and command you

to provide yourselves, in all haste, with seconds and umpires, and I

will meet you face to face and hand to hand, to-night, at once,

to-morrow, by day or night, by sunlight or by candlelight, where, when,

or how you please, so long as there is two sword-lengths’ space; and you

will do well to look to the flints of your pistols and the edges of your

rapiers, for it is my firm intention to cause vacancies in your

peerages.--Ogle Cavendish, take your measures, and think of your motto,

_Cavendo tutus_.--Marmaduke Langdale, you will do well, like your

ancestor, Grindold, to order a coffin to be brought with you.--George

Booth, Earl of Warrington, you will never again see the County Palatine

of Chester, or your labyrinth like that of Crete, or the high towers of

Dunham Massy!--As to Lord Vaughan, he is young enough to talk

impertinently, and too old to answer for it. I shall demand satisfaction

for his words of his nephew Richard Vaughan, Member of Parliament for

the Borough of Merioneth.--As for you, John Campbell, Earl of Greenwich,

I will kill you as Achon killed Matas; but with a fair cut, and not from

behind, it being my custom to present my heart and not my back to the

point of the sword.--I have spoken my mind, my lords. And so use

witchcraft if you like. Consult the fortune-tellers. Grease your skins

with ointments and drugs to make them invulnerable; hang round your

necks charms of the devil or the Virgin. I will fight you blest or

curst, and I will not have you searched to see if you are wearing any

wizard’s tokens. On foot or on horseback, on the highroad if you wish

it, in Piccadilly, or at Charing Cross; and they shall take up the

pavement for our meeting, as they unpaved the court of the Louvre for

the duel between Guise and Bassompierre. All of you! Do you hear? I mean

to fight you all.--Dorme, Earl of Caernarvon, I will make you swallow my

sword up to the hilt, as Marolles did to Lisle Mariveaux, and then we

shall see, my lord, whether you will laugh or not.--You, Burlington, who

look like a girl of seventeen--you shall choose between the lawn of your

house in Middlesex, and your beautiful garden at Londesborough in

Yorkshire, to be buried in.--I beg to inform your lordships that it does

not suit me to allow your insolence in my presence. I will chastise you,

my lords. I take it ill that you should have ridiculed Lord Fermain

Clancharlie. He is worth more than you. As Clancharlie, he has nobility,

which you have; as Gwynplaine, he has intellect, which you have not. I

make his cause my cause, insult to him insult to me, and your ridicule

my wrath. We shall see who will come out of this affair alive, because I

challenge you to the death. Do you understand? With any arm, in any

fashion, and you shall choose the death that pleases you best; and since

you are clowns as well as gentlemen, I proportion my defiance to your

qualities, and I give you your choice of any way in which a man can be

killed, from the sword of the prince to the fist of the blackguard.”

To this furious onslaught of words the whole group of young noblemen

answered by a smile. “Agreed,” they said.

“I choose pistols,” said Burlington.

“I,” said Escrick, “the ancient combat of the lists, with the mace and

the dagger.”

“I,” said Holderness, “the duel with two knives, long and short,

stripped to the waist, and breast to breast.”

“Lord David,” said the Earl of Thanet, “you are a Scot. I choose the

claymore.”

“I the sword,” said Rockingham.

“I,” said Duke Ralph, “prefer the fists; ’tis noblest.”

Gwynplaine came out from the shadow. He directed his steps towards him

whom he had hitherto called Tom-Jim-Jack, but in whom now, however, he

began to perceive something more. “I thank you,” said he, “but this is

my business.”

Every head turned towards him.

Gwynplaine advanced. He felt himself impelled towards the man whom he

heard called Lord David--his defender, and perhaps something nearer.

Lord David drew back.

“Oh!” said he. “It is you, is it? This is well-timed. I have a word for

you as well. Just now you spoke of a woman who, after having loved Lord

Linnæus Clancharlie, loved Charles II.”

“It is true.”

“Sir, you insulted my mother.”

“Your mother!” cried Gwynplaine. “In that case, as I guessed, we are--”

“Brothers,” answered Lord David, and he struck Gwynplaine. “We are

brothers,” said he; “so we can fight. One can only fight one’s equal;

who is one’s equal if not one’s brother? I will send you my seconds;

to-morrow we will cut each other’s throats.”

BOOK THE NINTH.

_IN RUINS._

CHAPTER I.

IT IS THROUGH EXCESS OF GREATNESS THAT MAN REACHES EXCESS OF MISERY.

As midnight tolled from St. Paul’s, a man who had just crossed London

Bridge struck into the lanes of Southwark. There were no lamps lighted,

it being at that time the custom in London, as in Paris, to extinguish

the public lamps at eleven o’clock--that is, to put them out just as

they became necessary. The streets were dark and deserted. When the

lamps are out men stay in. He whom we speak of advanced with hurried

strides. He was strangely dressed for walking at such an hour. He wore a

coat of embroidered silk, a sword by his side, a hat with white plumes,

and no cloak. The watchmen, as they saw him pass, said, “It is a lord

walking for a wager,” and they moved out of his way with the respect due

to a lord and to a better.

The man was Gwynplaine. He was making his escape. Where was he? He did

not know. We have said that the soul has its cyclones--fearful

whirlwinds, in which heaven, the sea, day, night, life, death, are all

mingled in unintelligible horror. It can no longer breathe Truth; it is

crushed by things in which it does not believe. Nothingness becomes

hurricane. The firmament pales. Infinity is empty. The mind of the

sufferer wanders away. He feels himself dying. He craves for a star.

What did Gwynplaine feel? a thirst--a thirst to see Dea.

He felt but that. To reach the Green Box again, and the Tadcaster Inn,

with its sounds and light--full of the cordial laughter of the people;

to find Ursus and Homo, to see Dea again, to re-enter life. Disillusion,

like a bow, shoots its arrow, man, towards the True. Gwynplaine hastened

on. He approached Tarrinzeau Field. He walked no longer now; he ran. His

eyes pierced the darkness before him. His glance preceded him, eagerly

seeking the harbour on the horizon. What a moment for him when he should

see the lighted windows of Tadcaster Inn!

He reached the bowling-green. He turned the corner of the wall, and saw

before him, at the other end of the field, some distance off, the

inn--the only house, it may be remembered, in the field where the fair

was held.

He looked. There was no light; nothing but a black mass.

He shuddered. Then he said to himself that it was late; that the tavern

was shut up; that it was very natural; that every one was asleep; that

he had only to awaken Nicless or Govicum; that he must go up to the inn

and knock at the door. He did so, running no longer now, but rushing.

He reached the inn, breathless. It is when, storm-beaten and struggling

in the invisible convulsions of the soul until he knows not whether he

is in life or in death, that all the delicacy of a man’s affection for

his loved ones, being yet unimpaired, proves a heart true. When all else

is swallowed up, tenderness still floats unshattered. Not to awaken Dea

too suddenly was Gwynplaine’s first thought. He approached the inn with

as little noise as possible. He recognized the nook, the old dog kennel,

where Govicum used to sleep. In it, contiguous to the lower room, was a

window opening on to the field. Gwynplaine tapped softly at the pane. It

would be enough to awaken Govicum, he thought.

There was no sound in Govicum’s room.

“At his age,” said Gwynplaine, “a boy sleeps soundly.”

With the back of his hand he knocked against the window gently. Nothing

stirred.

He knocked louder twice. Still nothing stirred. Then, feeling somewhat

uneasy, he went to the door of the inn and knocked. No one answered. He

reflected, and began to feel a cold shudder come over him.

“Master Nicless is old, children sleep soundly, and old men heavily.

Courage! louder!”

He had tapped, he had knocked, he had kicked the door; now he flung

himself against it.

This recalled to him a distant memory of Weymouth, when, a little child,

he had carried Dea, an infant, in his arms.

He battered the door again violently, like a lord, which, alas! he was.

The house remained silent. He felt that he was losing his head. He no

longer thought of caution. He shouted,--

“Nicless! Govicum!”

At the same time he looked up at the windows, to see if any candle was

lighted. But the inn was blank. Not a voice, not a sound, not a glimmer

of light. He went to the gate and knocked at it, kicked against it, and

shook it, crying out wildly,--

“Ursus! Homo!”

The wolf did not bark.

A cold sweat stood in drops upon his brow. He cast his eyes around. The

night was dark; but there were stars enough to render the fair-green

visible. He saw--a melancholy sight to him--that everything on it had

vanished.

There was not a single caravan. The circus was gone. Not a tent, not a

booth, not a cart, remained. The strollers, with their thousand noisy

cries, who had swarmed there, had given place to a black and sullen

void.

All were gone.

The madness of anxiety took possession of him. What did this mean? What

had happened? Was no one left? Could it be that life had crumbled away

behind him? What had happened to them all? Good heavens! Then he rushed

like a tempest against the house. He struck the small door, the gate,

the windows, the window-shutters, the walls, with fists and feet,

furious with terror and agony of mind.

He called Nicless, Govicum, Fibi, Vinos, Ursus, Homo. He tried every

shout and every sound against this wall. At times he waited and

listened; but the house remained mute and dead. Then, exasperated, he

began again with blows, shouts, and repeated knockings, re-echoed all

around. It might have been thunder trying to awake the grave.

There is a certain stage of fright in which a man becomes terrible. He

who fears everything fears nothing. He would strike the Sphynx. He

defies the Unknown.

Gwynplaine renewed the noise in every possible form--stopping, resuming,

unwearying in the shouts and appeals by which he assailed the tragic

silence. He called a thousand times on the names of those who should

have been there. He shrieked out every name except that of Dea--a

precaution of which he could not have explained the reason himself, but

which instinct inspired even in his distraction.

Having exhausted calls and cries, nothing was left but to break in.

“I must enter the house,” he said to himself; “but how?”

He broke a pane of glass in Govicum’s room by thrusting his hand through

it, tearing the flesh; he drew the bolt of the sash and opened the

window. Perceiving that his sword was in the way, he tore it off

angrily, scabbard, blade, and belt, and flung it on the pavement. Then

he raised himself by the inequalities in the wall, and though the window

was narrow, he was able to pass through it. He entered the inn.

Govicum’s bed, dimly visible in its nook, was there; but Govicum was not

in it. If Govicum was not in his bed, it was evident that Nicless could

not be in his.

The whole house was dark. He felt in that shadowy interior the

mysterious immobility of emptiness, and that vague fear which

signifies--“There is no one here.”

Gwynplaine, convulsed with anxiety, crossed the lower room, knocking

against the tables, upsetting the earthenware, throwing down the

benches, sweeping against the jugs, and, striding over the furniture,

reached the door leading into the court, and broke it open with one blow

from his knee, which sprung the lock. The door turned on its hinges. He

looked into the court. The Green Box was no longer there.

CHAPTER II.

THE DREGS.

Gwynplaine left the house, and began to explore Tarrinzeau Field in

every direction. He went to every place where, the day before, the tents

and caravans had stood. He knocked at the stalls, though he knew well

that they were uninhabited. He struck everything that looked like a

door or a window. Not a voice arose from the darkness. Something like

death had been there.

The ant-hill had been razed. Some measures of police had apparently been

carried out. There had been what, in our days, would be called a

_razzia_. Tarrinzeau Field was worse than a desert; it had been scoured,

and every corner of it scratched up, as it were, by pitiless claws. The

pocket of the unfortunate fair-green had been turned inside out, and

completely emptied.

Gwynplaine, after having searched every yard of ground, left the green,

struck into the crooked streets abutting on the site called East Point,

and directed his steps towards the Thames. He had threaded his way

through a network of lanes, bounded only by walls and hedges, when he

felt the fresh breeze from the water, heard the dull lapping of the

river, and suddenly saw a parapet in front of him. It was the parapet of

the Effroc stone.

This parapet bounded a block of the quay, which was very short and very

narrow. Under it the high wall, the Effroc stone, buried itself

perpendicularly in the dark water below.

Gwynplaine stopped at the parapet, and, leaning his elbows on it, laid

his head in his hands and set to thinking, with the water beneath him.

Did he look at the water? No. At what then? At the shadow; not the

shadow without, but within him. In the melancholy night-bound landscape,

which he scarcely marked, in the outer depths, which his eyes did not

pierce, were the blurred sketches of masts and spars. Below the Effroc

stone there was nothing on the river; but the quay sloped insensibly

downwards till, some distance off, it met a pier, at which several

vessels were lying, some of which had just arrived, others which were on

the point of departure. These vessels communicated with the shore by

little jetties, constructed for the purpose, some of stone, some of

wood, or by movable gangways. All of them, whether moored to the jetties

or at anchor, were wrapped in silence. There was neither voice nor

movement on board, it being a good habit of sailors to sleep when they

can, and awake only when wanted. If any of them were to sail during the

night at high tide, the crews were not yet awake. The hulls, like large

black bubbles, and the rigging, like threads mingled with ladders, were

barely visible. All was livid and confused. Here and there a red cresset

pierced the haze.

Gwynplaine saw nothing of all this. What he was musing on was destiny.

He was in a dream--a vision--giddy in presence of an inexorable reality.

He fancied that he heard behind him something like an earthquake. It was

the laughter of the Lords.

From that laughter he had just emerged. He had come out of it, having

received a blow, and from whom?

From his own brother!

Flying from the laughter, carrying with him the blow, seeking refuge, a

wounded bird, in his nest, rushing from hate and seeking love, what had

he found?

Darkness.

No one.

Everything gone.

He compared that darkness to the dream he had indulged in.

What a crumbling away!

Gwynplaine had just reached that sinister bound--the void. The Green Box

gone was his universe vanished.

His soul had been closed up.

He reflected.

What could have happened? Where were they? They had evidently been

carried away. Destiny had given him, Gwynplaine, a blow, which was

greatness; its reaction had struck them another, which was annihilation.

It was clear that he would never see them again. Precautions had been

taken against that. They had scoured the fair-green, beginning by

Nicless and Govicum, so that he should gain no clue through them.

Inexorable dispersion! That fearful social system, at the same time that

it had pulverized him in the House of Lords, had crushed them in their

little cabin. They were lost; Dea was lost--lost to him for ever. Powers

of heaven! where was she? And he had not been there to defend her!

To have to make guesses as to the absent whom we love is to put oneself

to the torture. He inflicted this torture on himself. At every thought

that he fathomed, at every supposition which he made, he felt within him

a moan of agony.

Through a succession of bitter reflections he remembered a man who was

evidently fatal to him, and who had called himself Barkilphedro. That

man had inscribed on his brain a dark sentence which reappeared now; he

had written it in such terrible ink that every letter had turned to

fire; and Gwynplaine saw flaming at the bottom of his thought the

enigmatical words, the meaning of which was at length solved: “Destiny

never opens one door without closing another.”

All was over. The final shadows had gathered about him. In every man’s

fate there may be an end of the world for himself alone. It is called

despair. The soul is full of falling stars.

This, then, was what he had come to.

A vapour had passed. He had been mingled with it. It had lain heavily on

his eyes; it had disordered his brain. He had been outwardly blinded,

intoxicated within. This had lasted the time of a passing vapour. Then

everything melted away, the vapour and his life. Awaking from the dream,

he found himself alone.

All vanished, all gone, all lost--night--nothingness. Such was his

horizon.

He was alone.

Alone has a synonym, which is Dead. Despair is an accountant. It sets

itself to find its total; it adds up everything, even to the farthings.

It reproaches Heaven with its thunderbolts and its pinpricks. It seeks

to find what it has to expect from fate. It argues, weighs, and

calculates, outwardly cool, while the burning lava is still flowing on

within.

Gwynplaine examined himself, and examined his fate.

The backward glance of thought; terrible recapitulation!

When at the top of a mountain, we look down the precipice; when at the

bottom, we look up at heaven. And we say, “I was there.”

Gwynplaine was at the very bottom of misfortune. How sudden, too, had

been his fall!

Such is the hideous swiftness of misfortune, although it is so heavy

that we might fancy it slow. But no! It would likewise appear that snow,

from its coldness, ought to be the paralysis of winter, and, from its

whiteness, the immobility of the winding-sheet. Yet this is contradicted

by the avalanche.

The avalanche is snow become a furnace. It remains frozen, but it

devours. The avalanche had enveloped Gwynplaine. He had been torn like a

rag, uprooted like a tree, precipitated like a stone. He recalled all

the circumstances of his fall. He put himself questions, and returned

answers. Grief is an examination. There is no judge so searching as

conscience conducting its own trial.

What amount of remorse was there in his despair? This he wished to find

out, and dissected his conscience. Excruciating vivisection!

His absence had caused a catastrophe. Had this absence depended on him?

In all that had happened, had he been a free agent? No! He had felt

himself captive. What was that which had arrested and detained him--a

prison? No. A chain? No. What then? Sticky slime! He had sunk into the

slough of greatness.

To whom has it not happened to be free in appearance, yet to feel that

his wings are hampered?

There had been something like a snare spread for him. What is at first

temptation ends by captivity.

Nevertheless--and his conscience pressed him on this point--had he

merely submitted to what had been offered him? No; he had accepted it.

Violence and surprise had been used with him in a certain measure, it

was true; but he, in a certain measure, had given in. To have allowed

himself to be carried off was not his fault; but to have allowed himself

to be inebriated was his weakness. There had been a moment--a decisive

moment--when the question was proposed. This Barkilphedro had placed a

dilemma before Gwynplaine, and had given him clear power to decide his

fate by a word. Gwynplaine might have said, “No.” He had said, “Yes.”

From that “Yes,” uttered in a moment of dizziness, everything had

sprung. Gwynplaine realized this now in the bitter aftertaste of that

consent.

Nevertheless--for he debated with himself--was it then so great a wrong

to take possession of his right, of his patrimony, of his heritage, of

his house; and, as a patrician, of the rank of his ancestors; as an

orphan, of the name of his father? What had he accepted? A restitution.

Made by whom? By Providence.

Then his mind revolted. Senseless acceptance! What a bargain had he

struck! what a foolish exchange! He had trafficked with Providence at a

loss. How now! For an income of £80,000 a year; for seven or eight

titles; for ten or twelve palaces; for houses in town, and castles in

the country; for a hundred lackeys; for packs of hounds, and carriages,

and armorial bearings; to be a judge and legislator; for a coronet and

purple robes, like a king; to be a baron and a marquis; to be a peer of

England, he had given the hut of Ursus and the smile of Dea. For

shipwreck and destruction in the surging immensity of greatness, he had

bartered happiness. For the ocean he had given the pearl. O madman! O

fool! O dupe!

Yet nevertheless--and here the objection reappeared on firmer ground--in

this fever of high fortune which had seized him all had not been

unwholesome. Perhaps there would have been selfishness in renunciation;

perhaps he had done his duty in the acceptance. Suddenly transformed

into a lord, what ought he to have done? The complication of events

produces perplexity of mind. This had happened to him. Duty gave

contrary orders. Duty on all sides at once, duty multiple and

contradictory--this was the bewilderment which he had suffered. It was

this that had paralyzed him, especially when he had not refused to take

the journey from Corleone Lodge to the House of Lords. What we call

rising in life is leaving the safe for the dangerous path. Which is,

thenceforth, the straight line? Towards whom is our first duty? Is it

towards those nearest to ourselves, or is it towards mankind generally?

Do we not cease to belong to our own circumscribed circle, and become

part of the great family of all? As we ascend we feel an increased

pressure on our virtue. The higher we rise, the greater is the strain.

The increase of right is an increase of duty. We come to many

cross-ways, phantom roads perchance, and we imagine that we see the

finger of conscience pointing each one of them out to us. Which shall we

take? Change our direction, remain where we are, advance, go back? What

are we to do? That there should be cross-roads in conscience is strange

enough; but responsibility may be a labyrinth. And when a man contains

an idea, when he is the incarnation of a fact--when he is a symbolical

man, at the same time that he is a man of flesh and blood--is not the

responsibility still more oppressive? Thence the care-laden docility and

the dumb anxiety of Gwynplaine; thence his obedience when summoned to

take his seat. A pensive man is often a passive man. He had heard what

he fancied was the command of duty itself. Was not that entrance into a

place where oppression could be discussed and resisted the realization

of one of his deepest aspirations? When he had been called upon to

speak--he the fearful human scantling, he the living specimen of the

despotic whims under which, for six thousand years, mankind has groaned

in agony--had he the right to refuse? Had he the right to withdraw his

head from under the tongue of fire descending from on high to rest upon

him?

In the obscure and giddy debate of conscience, what had he said to

himself? This: “The people are a silence. I will be the mighty advocate

of that silence; I will speak for the dumb; I will speak of the little

to the great--of the weak to the powerful. This is the purpose of my

fate. God wills what He wills, and does it. It was a wonder that

Hardquanonne’s flask, in which was the metamorphosis of Gwynplaine into

Lord Clancharlie, should have floated for fifteen years on the ocean, on

the billows, in the surf, through the storms, and that all the raging of

the sea did it no harm. But I can see the reason. There are destinies

with secret springs. I have the key of mine, and know its enigma. I am

predestined; I have a mission. I will be the poor man’s lord; I will

speak for the speechless with despair; I will translate inarticulate

remonstrance; I will translate the mutterings, the groans, the murmurs,

the voices of the crowd, their ill-spoken complaints, their

unintelligible words, and those animal-like cries which ignorance and

suffering put into men’s mouths. The clamour of men is as inarticulate

as the howling of the wind. They cry out, but they are understood; so

that cries become equivalent to silence, and silence with them means

throwing down their arms. This forced disarmament calls for help. I will

be their help; I will be the Denunciation; I will be the Word of the

people. Thanks to me, they shall be understood. I will be the bleeding

mouth from which the gag has been torn. I will tell everything. This

will be great indeed.”

Yes; it is fine to speak for the dumb, but to speak to the deaf is sad.

And that was his second part in the drama.

Alas! he had failed irremediably. The elevation in which he had

believed, the high fortune, had melted away like a mirage. And what a

fall! To be drowned in a surge of laughter!

He had believed himself strong--he who, during so many years, had

floated with observant mind on the wide sea of suffering; he who had

brought back out of the great shadow so touching a cry. He had been

flung against that huge rock the frivolity of the fortunate. He believed

himself an avenger; he was but a clown. He thought that he wielded the

thunderbolt; he did but tickle. In place of emotion, he met with

mockery. He sobbed; they burst into gaiety, and under that gaiety he had

sunk fatally submerged.

And what had they laughed at? At his laugh. So that trace of a hateful

act, of which he must keep the mark for ever--mutilation carved in

everlasting gaiety; the stigmata of laughter, image of the sham

contentment of nations under their oppressors; that mask of joy produced

by torture; that abyss of grimace which he carried on his features; the

scar which signified _Jussu regis_, the attestation of a crime committed

by the king towards him, and the symbol of crime committed by royalty

towards the people;--that it was which had triumphed over him; that it

was which had overwhelmed him; so that the accusation against the

executioner turned into sentence upon the victim. What a prodigious

denial of justice! Royalty, having had satisfaction of his father, had

had satisfaction of him! The evil that had been done had served as

pretext and as motive for the evil which remained to be done. Against

whom were the lords angered? Against the torturer? No; against the

tortured. Here is the throne; there, the people. Here, James II.; there,

Gwynplaine. That confrontation, indeed, brought to light an outrage and

a crime. What was the outrage? Complaint. What was the crime? Suffering.

Let misery hide itself in silence, otherwise it becomes treason. And

those men who had dragged Gwynplaine on the hurdle of sarcasm, were they

wicked? No; but they, too, had their fatality--they were happy. They

were executioners, ignorant of the fact. They were good-humoured; they

saw no use in Gwynplaine. He opened himself to them. He tore out his

heart to show them, and they cried, “Go on with your play!” But,

sharpest sting! he had laughed himself. The frightful chain which tied

down his soul hindered his thoughts from rising to his face. His

disfigurement reached even his senses; and, while his conscience was

indignant, his face gave it the lie, and jested. Then all was over. He

was the laughing man, the caryatid of the weeping world. He was an agony

petrified in hilarity, carrying the weight of a universe of calamity,

and walled up for ever with the gaiety, the ridicule, and the amusement

of others; of all the oppressed, of whom he was the incarnation, he

partook the hateful fate, to be a desolation not believed in; they

jeered at his distress; to them he was but an extraordinary buffoon

lifted out of some frightful condensation of misery, escaped from his

prison, changed to a deity, risen from the dregs of the people to the

foot of the throne, mingling with the stars, and who, having once amused

the damned, now amused the elect. All that was in him of generosity, of

enthusiasm, of eloquence, of heart, of soul, of fury, of anger, of love,

of inexpressible grief, ended in--a burst of laughter! And he proved, as

he had told the lords, that this was not the exception; but that it was

the normal, ordinary, universal, unlimited, sovereign fact, so

amalgamated with the routine of life that they took no account of it.

The hungry pauper laughs, the beggar laughs, the felon laughs, the

prostitute laughs, the orphan laughs to gain his bread; the slave

laughs, the soldier laughs, the people laugh. Society is so constituted

that every perdition, every indigence, every catastrophe, every fever,

every ulcer, every agony, is resolved on the surface of the abyss into

one frightful grin of joy. Now he was that universal grin, and that grin

was himself. The law of heaven, the unknown power which governs, had

willed that a spectre visible and palpable, a spectre of flesh and bone,

should be the synopsis of the monstrous parody which we call the world;

and he was that spectre, immutable fate!

He had cried, “Pity for those who suffer.” In vain! He had striven to

awake pity; he had awakened horror. Such is the law of apparitions.

But while he was a spectre, he was also a man; here was the heartrending

complication. A spectre without, a man within. A man more than any

other, perhaps, since his double fate was the synopsis of all humanity.

And he felt that humanity was at once present in him and absent from

him. There was in his existence something insurmountable. What was he? A

disinherited heir? No; for he was a lord. Was he a lord? No; for he was

a rebel. He was the light-bearer; a terrible spoil-sport. He was not

Satan, certainly; but he was Lucifer. His entrance, with his torch in

his hand, was sinister.

Sinister for whom? for the sinister. Terrible to whom? to the terrible.

Therefore they rejected him. Enter their order? be accepted by them?

Never. The obstacle which he carried in his face was frightful; but the

obstacle which he carried in his ideas was still more insurmountable.

His speech was to them more deformed than his face. He had no possible

thought in common with the world of the great and powerful, in which he

had by a freak of fate been born, and from which another freak of fate

had driven him out. There was between men and his face a mask, and

between society and his mind a wall. In mixing, from infancy, a

wandering mountebank, with that vast and tough substance which is called

the crowd, in saturating himself with the attraction of the multitude,

and impregnating himself with the great soul of mankind, he had lost, in

the common sense of the whole of mankind, the particular sense of the

reigning classes. On their heights he was impossible. He had reached

them wet with water from the well of Truth; the odour of the abyss was

on him. He was repugnant to those princes perfumed with lies. To those

who live on fiction, truth is disgusting; and he who thirsts for

flattery vomits the real, when he has happened to drink it by mistake.

That which Gwynplaine brought was not fit for their table. For what was

it? Reason, wisdom, justice; and they rejected them with disgust.

There were bishops there. He brought God into their presence. Who was

this intruder?

The two poles repel each other. They can never amalgamate, for

transition is wanting. Hence the result--a cry of anger--when they were

brought together in terrible juxtaposition: all misery concentrated in a

man, face to face with all pride concentrated in a caste.

To accuse is useless. To state is sufficient. Gwynplaine, meditating on

the limits of his destiny, proved the total uselessness of his effort.

He proved the deafness of high places. The privileged have no hearing on

the side next the disinherited. Is it their fault? Alas! no. It is their

law. Forgive them! To be moved would be to abdicate. Of lords and

princes expect nothing. He who is satisfied is inexorable. For those

that have their fill the hungry do not exist. The happy ignore and

isolate themselves. On the threshold of their paradise, as on the

threshold of hell, must be written, “Leave all hope behind.”

Gwynplaine had met with the reception of a spectre entering the dwelling

of the gods.

Here all that was within him rose in rebellion. No, he was no spectre;

he was a man. He told them, he shouted to them, that he was Man.

He was not a phantom. He was palpitating flesh. He had a brain, and he

thought; he had a heart, and he loved; he had a soul, and he hoped.

Indeed, to have hoped overmuch was his whole crime.

Alas! he had exaggerated hope into believing in that thing at once so

brilliant and so dark which is called Society. He who was without had

re-entered it. It had at once, and at first sight, made him its three

offers, and given him its three gifts--marriage, family, and caste.

Marriage? He had seen prostitution on the threshold. Family? His brother

had struck him, and was awaiting him the next day, sword in hand. Caste?

It had burst into laughter in his face, at him the patrician, at him the

wretch. It had rejected, almost before it had admitted him. So that his

first three steps into the dense shadow of society had opened three

gulfs beneath him.

And it was by a treacherous transfiguration that his disaster had begun;

and catastrophe had approached him with the aspect of apotheosis!

Ascend had signified Descend!

His fate was the reverse of Job’s. It was through prosperity that

adversity had reached him.

O tragical enigma of life! Behold what pitfalls! A child, he had

wrestled against the night, and had been stronger than it; a man, he had

wrestled against destiny, and had overcome it. Out of disfigurement he

had created success; and out of misery, happiness. Of his exile he had

made an asylum. A vagabond, he had wrestled against space; and, like the

birds of the air, he had found his crumb of bread. Wild and solitary, he

had wrestled against the crowd, and had made it his friend. An athlete,

he had wrestled against that lion, the people; and he had tamed it.

Indigent, he had wrestled against distress, he had faced the dull

necessity of living, and from amalgamating with misery every joy of his

heart, he had at length made riches out of poverty. He had believed

himself the conqueror of life. Of a sudden he was attacked by fresh

forces, reaching him from unknown depths; this time, with menaces no

longer, but with smiles and caresses. Love, serpent-like and sensual,

had appeared to him, who was filled with angelic love. The flesh had

tempted him, who had lived on the ideal. He had heard words of

voluptuousness like cries of rage; he had felt the clasp of a woman’s

arms, like the convolutions of a snake; to the illumination of truth had

succeeded the fascination of falsehood; for it is not the flesh that is

real, but the soul. The flesh is ashes, the soul is flame. For the

little circle allied to him by the relationship of poverty and toil,

which was his true and natural family, had been substituted the social

family--his family in blood, but of tainted blood; and even before he

had entered it, he found himself face to face with an intended

fractricide. Alas! he had allowed himself to be thrown back into that

society of which Brantôme, whom he had not read, wrote: “_The son has a

right to challenge his father!_” A fatal fortune had cried to him, “Thou

art not of the crowd; thou art of the chosen!” and had opened the

ceiling above his head, like a trap in the sky, and had shot him up,

through this opening, causing him to appear, wild, and unexpected, in

the midst of princes and masters. Then suddenly he saw around him,

instead of the people who applauded him, the lords who cursed him.

Mournful metamorphosis! Ignominious ennobling! Rude spoliation of all

that had been his happiness! Pillage of his life by derision!

Gwynplaine, Clancharlie, the lord, the mountebank, torn out of his old

lot, out of his new lot, by the beaks of those eagles!

What availed it that he had commenced life by immediate victory over

obstacle? Of what good had been his early triumphs? Alas! the fall must

come, ere destiny be complete.

So, half against his will, half of it--because after he had done with

the wapentake he had to do with Barkilphedro, and he had given a certain

amount of consent to his abductions--he had left the real for the

chimerical; the true for the false; Dea for Josiana; love for pride;

liberty for power; labour proud and poor for opulence full of unknown

responsibilities; the shade in which is God for the lurid flames in

which the devils dwell; Paradise for Olympus!

He had tasted the golden fruit. He was now spitting out the ashes to

which it turned.

Lamentable result! Defeat, failure, fall into ruin, insolent expulsion

of all his hopes, frustrated by ridicule. Immeasurable disillusion! And

what was there for him in the future? If he looked forward to the

morrow, what did he see? A drawn sword, the point of which was against

his breast, and the hilt in the hand of his brother. He could see

nothing but the hideous flash of that sword. Josiana and the House of

Lords made up the background in a monstrous chiaroscuro full of tragic

shadows.

And that brother seemed so brave and chivalrous! Alas! he had hardly

seen the Tom-Jim-Jack who had defended Gwynplaine, the Lord David who

had defended Lord Clancharlie; but he had had time to receive a blow

from him and to love him.

He was crushed.

He felt it impossible to proceed further. Everything had crumbled about

him. Besides, what was the good of it? All weariness dwells in the

depths of despair.

The trial had been made. It could not be renewed.

Gwynplaine was like a gamester who has played all his trumps away, one

after the other. He had allowed himself to be drawn to a fearful

gambling-table, without thinking what he was about; for, so subtle is

the poison of illusion, he had staked Dea against Josiana, and had

gained a monster; he had staked Ursus against a family, and had gained

an insult; he had played his mountebank platform against his seat in the

Lords; for the applause which was his he had gained insult. His last

card had fallen on that fatal green cloth, the deserted bowling-green.

Gwynplaine had lost. Nothing remained but to pay. Pay up, wretched man!

The thunder-stricken lie still. Gwynplaine remained motionless. Anybody

perceiving him from afar, in the shadow, stiff, and without movement,

might have fancied that he saw an upright stone.

Hell, the serpent, and reverie are tortuous. Gwynplaine was descending

the sepulchral spirals of the deepest thought.

He reflected on that world of which he had just caught a glimpse with

the icy contemplation of a last look. Marriage, but no love; family, but

no brotherly affection; riches, but no conscience; beauty, but no

modesty; justice, but no equity; order, but no equilibrium; authority,

but no right; power, but no intelligence; splendour, but no light.

Inexorable balance-sheet! He went throughout the supreme vision in which

his mind had been plunged. He examined successively destiny, situation,

society, and himself. What was destiny? A snare. Situation? Despair.

Society? Hatred. And himself? A defeated man. In the depths of his soul

he cried. Society is the stepmother, Nature is the mother. Society is

the world of the body, Nature is the world of the soul. The one tends to

the coffin, to the deal box in the grave, to the earth-worms, and ends

there. The other tends to expanded wings, to transformation into the

morning light, to ascent into the firmament, and there revives into new

life.

By degrees a paroxysm came over him, like a sweeping surge. At the close

of events there is always a last flash, in which all stands revealed

once more.

He who judges meets the accused face to face. Gwynplaine reviewed all

that society and all that nature had done for him. How kind had nature

been to him! How she, who is the soul, had succoured him! All had been

taken from him, even his features. The soul had given him all back--all,

even his features; because there was on earth a heavenly blind girl made

expressly for him, who saw not his ugliness, and who saw his beauty.

And it was from this that he had allowed himself to be separated--from

that adorable girl, from his own adopted one, from her tenderness, from

her divine blind gaze, the only gaze on earth that saw him, that he had

strayed! Dea was his sister, because he felt between them the grand

fraternity of above--the mystery which contains the whole of heaven.

Dea, when he was a little child, was his virgin; because every child has

his virgin, and at the commencement of life a marriage of souls is

always consummated in the plenitude of innocence. Dea was his wife, for

theirs was the same nest on the highest branch of the deep-rooted tree

of Hymen. Dea was still more--she was his light, for without her all was

void, and nothingness; and for him her head was crowned with rays. What

would become of him without Dea? What could he do with all that was

himself? Nothing in him could live without her. How, then, could he have

lost sight of her for a moment? O unfortunate man! He allowed distance

to intervene between himself and his star and, by the unknown and

terrible laws of gravitation in such things, distance is immediate loss.

Where was she, the star? Dea! Dea! Dea! Dea! Alas! he had lost her

light. Take away the star, and what is the sky? A black mass. But why,

then, had all this befallen him? Oh, what happiness had been his! For

him God had remade Eden. Too close was the resemblance, alas! even to

allowing the serpent to enter; but this time it was the man who had been

tempted. He had been drawn without, and then, by a frightful snare, had

fallen into a chaos of murky laughter, which was hell. O grief! O grief!

How frightful seemed all that had fascinated him! That Josiana, fearful

creature!--half beast, half goddess! Gwynplaine was now on the reverse

side of his elevation, and he saw the other aspect of that which had

dazzled him. It was baleful. His peerage was deformed, his coronet was

hideous; his purple robe, a funeral garment; those palaces, infected;

those trophies, those statues, those armorial bearings, sinister; the

unwholesome and treacherous air poisoned those who breathed it, and

turned them mad. How brilliant the rags of the mountebank, Gwynplaine,

appeared to him now! Alas! where was the Green Box, poverty, joy, the

sweet wandering life--wandering together, like the swallows? They never

left each other then; he saw her every minute, morning, evening. At

table their knees, their elbows, touched; they drank from the same cup;

the sun shone through the pane, but it was only the sun, and Dea was

Love. At night they slept not far from each other; and the dream of Dea

came and hovered over Gwynplaine, and the dream of Gwynplaine spread

itself mysteriously above the head of Dea. When they awoke they could be

never quite sure that they had not exchanged kisses in the azure mists

of dreams. Dea was all innocence; Ursus, all wisdom. They wandered from

town to town; and they had for provision and for stimulant the frank,

loving gaiety of the people. They were angel vagabonds, with enough of

humanity to walk the earth and not enough of wings to fly away; and now

all had disappeared! Where was it gone? Was it possible that it was all

effaced? What wind from the tomb had swept over them? All was eclipsed!

All was lost! Alas! power, irresistible and deaf to appeal, which weighs

down the poor, flings its shadow over all, and is capable of anything.

What had been done to them? And he had not been there to protect them,

to fling himself in front of them, to defend them, as a lord, with his

title, his peerage, and his sword; as a mountebank, with his fists and

his nails!

And here arose a bitter reflection, perhaps the most bitter of all.

Well, no; he could not have defended them. It was he himself who had

destroyed them; it was to save him, Lord Clancharlie, from them; it was

to isolate his dignity from contact with them, that the infamous

omnipotence of society had crushed them. The best way in which he could

protect them would be to disappear, and then the cause of their

persecution would cease. He out of the way, they would be allowed to

remain in peace. Into what icy channel was his thought beginning to run!

Oh! why had he allowed himself to be separated from Dea? Was not his

first duty towards her? To serve and to defend the people? But Dea was

the people. Dea was an orphan. She was blind; she represented humanity.

Oh! what had they done to them? Cruel smart of regret! His absence had

left the field free for the catastrophe. He would have shared their

fate; either they would have been taken and carried away with him, or he

would have been swallowed up with them. And, now, what would become of

him without them? Gwynplaine without Dea! Was it possible? Without Dea

was to be without everything. It was all over now. The beloved group was

for ever buried in irreparable disappearance. All was spent. Besides,

condemned and damned as Gwynplaine was, what was the good of further

struggle? He had nothing more to expect either of men or of heaven. Dea!

Dea! Where is Dea? Lost! What? lost? He who has lost his soul can regain

it but through one outlet--death.

Gwynplaine, tragically distraught, placed his hand firmly on the

parapet, as on a solution, and looked at the river.

It was his third night without sleep. Fever had come over him. His

thoughts, which he believed to be clear, were blurred. He felt an

imperative need of sleep. He remained for a few instants leaning over

the water. Its darkness offered him a bed of boundless tranquillity in

the infinity of shadow. Sinister temptation!

He took off his coat, which he folded and placed on the parapet; then he

unbuttoned his waistcoat. As he was about to take it off, his hand

struck against something in the pocket. It was the red book which had

been given him by the librarian of the House of Lords: he drew it from

the pocket, examined it in the vague light of the night, and found a

pencil in it, with which he wrote on the first blank that he found these

two lines,--

“I depart. Let my brother David take my place, and may he be happy!”

Then he signed, “Fermain Clancharlie, peer of England.”

He took off his waistcoat and placed it upon the coat; then his hat,

which he placed upon the waistcoat. In the hat he laid the red book open

at the page on which he had written. Seeing a stone lying on the ground,

he picked it up and placed it in the hat. Having done all this, he

looked up into the deep shadow above him. Then his head sank slowly, as

if drawn by an invisible thread towards the abyss.

There was a hole in the masonry near the base of the parapet; he placed

his foot in it, so that his knee stood higher than the top, and scarcely

an effort was necessary to spring over it. He clasped his hands behind

his back and leaned over. “So be it,” said he.

And he fixed his eyes on the deep waters. Just then he felt a tongue

licking his hands.

He shuddered, and turned round.

Homo was behind him.

CONCLUSION.

_THE NIGHT AND THE SEA._

CHAPTER I.

A WATCH-DOG MAY BE A GUARDIAN ANGEL.

Gwynplaine uttered a cry.

“Is that you, wolf?”

Homo wagged his tail. His eyes sparkled in the darkness. He was looking

earnestly at Gwynplaine.

Then he began to lick his hands again. For a moment Gwynplaine was like

a drunken man, so great is the shock of Hope’s mighty return.

Homo! What an apparition! During the last forty-eight hours he had

exhausted what might be termed every variety of the thunder-bolt. But

one was left to strike him--the thunderbolt of joy. And it had just

fallen upon him. Certainty, or at least the light which leads to it,

regained; the sudden intervention of some mysterious clemency possessed,

perhaps, by destiny; life saying, “Behold me!” in the darkest recess of

the grave; the very moment in which all expectation has ceased bringing

back health and deliverance; a place of safety discovered at the most

critical instant in the midst of crumbling ruins--Homo was all this to

Gwynplaine. The wolf appeared to him in a halo of light.

Meanwhile, Homo had turned round. He advanced a few steps, and then

looked back to see if Gwynplaine was following him.

Gwynplaine was doing so. Homo wagged his tail, and went on.

The road taken by the wolf was the slope of the quay of the

Effroc-stone. This slope shelved down to the Thames; and Gwynplaine,

guided by Homo, descended it.

Homo turned his head now and then, to make sure that Gwynplaine was

behind him.

In some situations of supreme importance nothing approaches so near an

omniscient intelligence as the simple instinct of a faithful animal. An

animal is a lucid somnambulist.

There are cases in which the dog feels that he should follow his master;

others, in which he should precede him. Then the animal takes the

direction of sense. His imperturbable scent is a confused power of

vision in what is twilight to us. He feels a vague obligation to become

a guide. Does he know that there is a dangerous pass, and that he can

help his master to surmount it? Probably not. Perhaps he does. In any

case, some one knows it for him. As we have already said, it often

happens in life that some mighty help which we have held to have come

from below has, in reality, come from above. Who knows all the

mysterious forms assumed by God?

What was this animal? Providence.

Having reached the river, the wolf led down the narrow tongue of land

which bordered the Thames.

Without noise or bark he pushed forward on his silent way. Homo always

followed his instinct and did his duty, but with the pensive reserve of

an outlaw.

Some fifty paces more, and he stopped. A wooden platform appeared on the

right. At the bottom of this platform, which was a kind of wharf on

piles, a black mass could be made out, which was a tolerably large

vessel. On the deck of the vessel, near the prow, was a glimmer, like

the last flicker of a night-light.

The wolf, having finally assured himself that Gwynplaine was there,

bounded on to the wharf. It was a long platform, floored and tarred,

supported by a network of joists, and under which flowed the river. Homo

and Gwynplaine shortly reached the brink.

The ship moored to the wharf was a Dutch vessel, of the Japanese build,

with two decks, fore and aft, and between them an open hold, reached by

an upright ladder, in which the cargo was laden. There was thus a

forecastle and an afterdeck, as in our old river boats, and a space

between them ballasted by the freight. The paper boats made by children

are of a somewhat similar shape. Under the decks were the cabins, the

doors of which opened into the hold and were lighted by glazed

portholes. In stowing the cargo a passage was left between the packages

of which it consisted. These vessels had a mast on each deck. The

foremast was called Paul, the mainmast Peter--the ship being sailed by

these two masts, as the Church was guided by her two apostles. A gangway

was thrown, like a Chinese bridge, from one deck to the other, over the

centre of the hold. In bad weather, both flaps of the gangway were

lowered, on the right and left, on hinges, thus making a roof over the

hold; so that the ship, in heavy seas, was hermetically closed. These

sloops, being of very massive construction, had a beam for a tiller, the

strength of the rudder being necessarily proportioned to the height of

the vessel. Three men, the skipper and two sailors, with a cabin-boy,

sufficed to navigate these ponderous sea-going machines. The decks, fore

and aft, were, as we have already said, without bulwarks. The great

lumbering hull of this particular vessel was painted black, and on it,

visible even in the night, stood out, in white letters, the words,

_Vograat, Rotterdam_.

About that time many events had occurred at sea, and amongst others, the

defeat of the Baron de Pointi’s eight ships off Cape Carnero, which had

driven the whole French fleet into refuge at Gibraltar; so that the

Channel was swept of every man-of-war, and merchant vessels were able to

sail backwards and forwards between London and Rotterdam, without a

convoy.

The vessel on which was to be read the word _Vograat_, and which

Gwynplaine was now close to, lay with her main-deck almost level with

the wharf. But one step to descend, and Homo in a bound, and Gwynplaine

in a stride, were on board.

The deck was clear, and no stir was perceptible. The passengers, if, as

was likely, there were any, were already on board, the vessel being

ready to sail, and the cargo stowed, as was apparent from the state of

the hold, which was full of bales and cases. But they were, doubtless,

lying asleep in the cabins below, as the passage was to take place

during the night. In such cases the passengers do not appear on deck

till they awake the following morning. As for the crew, they were

probably having their supper in the men’s cabin, whilst awaiting the

hour fixed for sailing, which was now rapidly approaching. Hence the

silence on the two decks connected by the gangway.

The wolf had almost run across the wharf; once on board, he slackened

his pace into a discreet walk. He still wagged his tail--no longer

joyfully, however, but with the sad and feeble wag of a dog troubled in

his mind. Still preceding Gwynplaine, he passed along the after-deck,

and across the gangway.

Gwynplaine, having reached the gangway, perceived a light in front of

him. It was the same that he had seen from the shore. There was a

lantern on the deck, close to the foremast, by the gleam of which was

sketched in black, on the dim background of the night, what Gwynplaine

recognized to be Ursus’s old four-wheeled van.

This poor wooden tenement, cart and hut combined, in which his childhood

had rolled along, was fastened to the bottom of the mast by thick ropes,

of which the knots were visible at the wheels. Having been so long out

of service, it had become dreadfully rickety; it leant over feebly on

one side; it had become quite paralytic from disuse; and, moreover, it

was suffering from that incurable malady--old age. Mouldy and out of

shape, it tottered in decay. The materials of which it was built were

all rotten. The iron was rusty, the leather torn, the wood-work

worm-eaten. There were lines of cracks across the window in front,

through which shone a ray from the lantern. The wheels were warped. The

lining, the floor, and the axletrees seemed worn out with fatigue.

Altogether, it presented an indescribable appearance of beggary and

prostration. The shafts, stuck up, looked like two arms raised to

heaven. The whole thing was in a state of dislocation. Beneath it was

hanging Homo’s chain.

Does it not seem that the law and the will of nature would have dictated

Gwynplaine’s headlong rush to throw himself upon life, happiness, love

regained? So they would, except in some case of deep terror such as his.

But he who comes forth, shattered in nerve and uncertain of his way,

from a series of catastrophes, each one like a fresh betrayal, is

prudent even in his joy; hesitates, lest he should bear the fatality of

which he has been the victim to those whom he loves; feels that some

evil contagion may still hang about him, and advances towards happiness

with wary steps. The gates of Paradise reopen; but before he enters he

examines his ground.

Gwynplaine, staggering under the weight of his emotion, looked around

him, while the wolf went and lay down silently by his chain.

CHAPTER II.

BARKILPHEDRO, HAVING AIMED AT THE EAGLE, BRINGS DOWN THE DOVE.

The step of the little van was down--the door ajar--there was no one

inside. The faint light which broke through the pane in front sketched

the interior of the caravan vaguely in melancholy chiaroscuro. The

inscriptions of Ursus, gloryifying the grandeur of Lords, showed

distinctly on the worn-out boards, which were both the wall without and

the wainscot within. On a nail, near the door, Gwynplaine saw his

esclavine and his cape hung up, as they hang up the clothes of a corpse

in a dead-house. Just then he had neither waistcoat nor coat on.

Behind the van something was laid out on the deck at the foot of the

mast, which was lighted by the lantern. It was a mattress, of which he

could make out one corner. On this mattress some one was probably lying,

for he could see a shadow move.

Some one was speaking. Concealed by the van, Gwynplaine listened. It was

Ursus’s voice. That voice, so harsh in its upper, so tender in its

lower, pitch; that voice, which had so often upbraided Gwynplaine, and

which had taught him so well, had lost the life and clearness of its

tone. It was vague and low, and melted into a sigh at the end of every

sentence. It bore but a confused resemblance to his natural and firm

voice of old. It was the voice of one in whom happiness is dead. A voice

may become a ghost.

He seemed to be engaged in monologue rather than in conversation. We are

already aware, however, that soliloquy was a habit with him. It was for

that reason that he passed for a madman.

Gwynplaine held his breath, so as not to lose a word of what Ursus

said, and this was what he heard.

“This is a very dangerous kind of craft, because there are no bulwarks

to it. If we were to slip, there is nothing to prevent our going

overboard. If we have bad weather, we shall have to take her below, and

that will be dreadful. An awkward step, a fright, and we shall have a

rupture of the aneurism. I have seen instances of it. O my God! what is

to become of us? Is she asleep? Yes. She is asleep. Is she in a swoon?

No. Her pulse is pretty strong. She is only asleep. Sleep is a reprieve.

It is the happy blindness. What can I do to prevent people walking about

here? Gentlemen, if there be anybody on deck, I beg of you to make no

noise. Do not come near us, if you do not mind. You know a person in

delicate health requires a little attention. She is feverish, you see.

She is very young. ’Tis a little creature who is rather feverish. I put

this mattress down here so that she may have a little air. I explain all

this so that you should be careful. She fell down exhausted on the

mattress as if she had fainted. But she is asleep. I do hope that no one

will awake her. I address myself to the ladies, if there are any

present. A young girl, it is pitiful! We are only poor mountebanks, but

I beg a little kindness, and if there is anything to pay for not making

a noise, I will pay it. I thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Is there any

one there? No? I don’t think there is. My talk is mere loss of breath.

So much the better. Gentlemen, I thank you, if you are there; and I

thank you still more if you are not. Her forehead is all in

perspiration. Come, let us take our places in the galleys again. Put on

the chain. Misery is come back. We are sinking again. A hand, the

fearful hand which we cannot see, but the weight of which we feel ever

upon us, has suddenly struck us back towards the dark point of our

destiny. Be it so. We will bear up. Only I will not have her ill. I must

seem a fool to talk aloud like this, when I am alone; but she must feel

she has some one near her when she awakes. What shall I do if somebody

awakes her suddenly! No noise, in the name of Heaven! A sudden shock

which would awake her suddenly would be of no use. It will be a pity if

anybody comes by. I believe that every one on board is asleep. Thanks be

to Providence for that mercy. Well, and Homo? Where is he, I wonder? In

all this confusion I forgot to tie him up. I do not know what I am

doing. It is more than an hour since I have seen him. I suppose he has

been to look for his supper somewhere ashore. I hope nothing has

happened to him. Homo! Homo!”

Homo struck his tail softly on the planks of the deck.

“You are there. Oh! you are there! Thank God for that. If Homo had been

lost, it would have been too much to bear. She has moved her arm.

Perhaps she is going to awake. Quiet, Homo! The tide is turning. We

shall sail directly. I think it will be a fine night. There is no wind:

the flag droops. We shall have a good passage. I do not know what moon

it is, but there is scarcely a stir in the clouds. There will be no

swell. It will be a fine night. Her cheek is pale; it is only weakness!

No, it is flushed; it is only the fever. Stay! It is rosy. She is well!

I can no longer see clearly. My poor Homo, I no longer see distinctly.

So we must begin life afresh. We must set to work again. There are only

we two left, you see. We will work for her, both of us! She is our

child, Ah! the vessel moves! We are off! Good-bye, London! Good evening!

good-night! To the devil with horrible London!”

He was right. He heard the dull sound of the unmooring as the vessel

fell away from the wharf. Abaft on the poop a man, the skipper, no

doubt, just come from below, was standing. He had slipped the hawser and

was working the tiller. Looking only to the rudder, as befitted the

combined phlegm of a Dutchman and a sailor, listening to nothing but the

wind and the water, bending against the resistance of the tiller, as he

worked it to port or starboard, he looked in the gloom of the after-deck

like a phantom bearing a beam upon its shoulder. He was alone there. So

long as they were in the river the other sailors were not required. In a

few minutes the vessel was in the centre of the current, with which she

drifted without rolling or pitching. The Thames, little disturbed by the

ebb, was calm. Carried onwards by the tide, the vessel made rapid way.

Behind her the black scenery of London was fading in the mist.

Ursus went on talking.

“Never mind, I will give her digitalis. I am afraid that delirium will

supervene. She perspires in the palms of her hands. What sin can we have

committed in the sight of God? How quickly has all this misery come upon

us! Hideous rapidity of evil! A stone falls. It has claws. It is the

hawk swooping on the lark. It is destiny. There you lie, my sweet child!

One comes to London. One says: What a fine city! What fine buildings!

Southwark is a magnificent suburb. One settles there. But now they are

horrid places. What would you have me do there? I am going to leave.

This is the 30th of April. I always distrusted the month of April. There

are but two lucky days in April, the 5th and the 27th; and four unlucky

ones--the 10th, the 20th, the 29th, and the 30th. This has been placed

beyond doubt by the calculations of Cardan. I wish this day were over.

Departure is a comfort. At dawn we shall be at Gravesend, and to-morrow

evening at Rotterdam. Zounds! I will begin life again in the van. We

will draw it, won’t we, Homo?”

A light tapping announced the wolf’s consent.

Ursus continued,--

“If one could only get out of a grief as one gets out of a city! Homo,

we must yet be happy. Alas! there must always be the one who is no more.

A shadow remains on those who survive. You know whom I mean, Homo. We

were four, and now we are but three. Life is but a long loss of those

whom we love. They leave behind them a train of sorrows. Destiny amazes

us by a prolixity of unbearable suffering; who then can wonder that the

old are garrulous? It is despair that makes the dotard, old fellow!

Homo, the wind continues favourable. We can no longer see the dome of

St. Paul’s. We shall pass Greenwich presently. That will be six good

miles over. Oh! I turn my back for ever on those odious capitals, full

of priests, of magistrates, and of people. I prefer looking at the

leaves rustling in the woods. Her forehead is still in perspiration. I

don’t like those great violet veins in her arm. There is fever in them.

Oh! all this is killing me. Sleep, my child. Yes; she sleeps.”

Here a voice spoke: an ineffable voice, which seemed from afar, and

appeared to come at once from the heights and the depths--a voice

divinely fearful, the voice of Dea.

All that Gwynplaine had hitherto felt seemed nothing. His angel spoke.

It seemed as though he heard words spoken from another world in a

heaven-like trance.

The voice said,--

“He did well to go. This world was not worthy of him. Only I must go

with him. Father! I am not ill; I heard you speak just now. I am very

well, quite well. I was asleep. Father, I am going to be happy.”

“My child,” said Ursus in a voice of anguish, “what do you mean by

that?”

The answer was,--

“Father, do not be unhappy.”

There was a pause, as if to take breath, and then these few words,

pronounced slowly, reached Gwynplaine.

“Gwynplaine is no longer here. It is now that I am blind. I knew not

what night was. Night is absence.”

The voice stopped once more, and then continued,--

“I always feared that he would fly away. I felt that he belonged to

heaven. He has taken flight suddenly. It was natural that it should end

thus. The soul flies away like a bird. But the nest of the soul is in

the height, where dwells the Great Loadstone, who draws all towards Him.

I know where to find Gwynplaine. I have no doubt about the way. Father,

it is yonder. Later on, you will rejoin us, and Homo, too.”

Homo, hearing his name pronounced, wagged his tail softly against the

deck.

“Father!” resumed the voice, “you understand that once Gwynplaine is no

longer here, all is over. Even if I would remain, I could not, because

one must breathe. We must not ask for that which is impossible. I was

with Gwynplaine. It was quite natural, I lived. Now Gwynplaine is no

more, I die. The two things are alike: either he must come or I must go.

Since he cannot come back, I am going to him. It is good to die. It is

not at all difficult. Father, that which is extinguished here shall be

rekindled elsewhere. It is a heartache to live in this world. It cannot

be that we shall always be unhappy. When we go to what you call the

stars, we shall marry, we shall never part again, and we shall love,

love, love; and that is what is God.”

“There, there, do not agitate yourself,” said Ursus.

The voice continued,--

“Well, for instance; last year. In the spring of last year we were

together, and we were happy. How different it is now! I forget what

little village we were in, but there were trees, and I heard the linnets

singing. We came to London; all was changed. This is no reproach, mind.

When one comes to a fresh place, how is one to know anything about it?

Father, do you remember that one day there was a woman in the great box;

you said: ‘It is a duchess.’ I felt sad. I think it might have been

better had we kept to the little towns. Gwynplaine has done right,

withal. Now my turn has come. Besides, you have told me yourself, that

when I was very little, my mother died, and that I was lying on the

ground with the snow falling upon me, and that he, who was also very

little then, and alone, like myself, picked me up, and that it was thus

that I came to be alive; so you cannot wonder that now I should feel it

absolutely necessary to go and search the grave to see if Gwynplaine be

in it. Because the only thing which exists in life is the heart; and

after life, the soul. You take notice of what I say, father, do you not?

What is moving? It seems as if we are in something that is moving, yet I

do not hear the sound of the wheels.”

After a pause the voice added,--

“I cannot exactly make out the difference between yesterday and to-day.

I do not complain. I do not know what has occurred, but something must

have happened.”

These words, uttered with deep and inconsolable sweetness, and with a

sigh which Gwynplaine heard, wound up thus,--

“I must go, unless he should return.”

Ursus muttered gloomily: “I do not believe in ghosts.”

He went on,--

“This is a ship. You ask why the house moves; it is because we are on

board a vessel. Be calm; you must not talk so much. Daughter, if you

have any love for me, do not agitate yourself, it will make you

feverish. I am so old, I could not bear it if you were to have an

illness. Spare me! do not be ill!”

Again the voice spoke,--

“What is the use of searching the earth, when we can only find in

heaven?”

Ursus replied, with a half attempt at authority,--

“Be calm. There are times when you have no sense at all. I order you to

rest. After all, you cannot be expected to know what it is to rupture a

blood-vessel. I should be easy if you were easy. My child, do something

for me as well. If he picked you up, I took you in. You will make me

ill. That is wrong. You must calm yourself, and go to sleep. All will

come right. I give you my word of honour, all will come right. Besides,

it is very fine weather. The night might have been made on purpose.

To-morrow we shall be at Rotterdam, which is a city in Holland, at the

mouth of the Meuse.”

“Father,” said the voice, “look here; when two beings have always been

together from infancy, their state should not be disturbed, or death

must come, and it cannot be otherwise. I love you all the same, but I

feel that I am no longer altogether with you, although I am as yet not

altogether with him.”

“Come! try to sleep,” repeated Ursus.

The voice answered,--

“I shall have sleep enough soon.”

Ursus replied, in trembling tones,--

“I tell you that we are going to Holland, to Rotterdam, which is a

city.”

“Father,” continued the voice, “I am not ill; if you are anxious about

that, you may rest easy. I have no fever. I am rather hot; it is nothing

more.”

Ursus stammered out,--

“At the mouth of the Meuse--”

“I am quite well, father; but look here! I feel that I am going to die!”

“Do nothing so foolish,” said Ursus. And he added, “Above all, God

forbid she should have a shock!”

There was a silence. Suddenly Ursus cried out,--

“What are you doing? Why are you getting up? Lie down again, I implore

of you.”

Gwynplaine shivered, and stretched out his head.

CHAPTER III.

PARADISE REGAINED BELOW.

He saw Dea. She had just raised herself up on the mattress. She had on a

long white dress, carefully closed, and showing only the delicate form

of her neck. The sleeves covered her arms; the folds, her feet. The

branch-like tracery of blue veins, hot and swollen with fever, were

visible on her hands. She was shivering and rocking, rather than

reeling, to and fro, like a reed. The lantern threw up its glancing

light on her beautiful face. Her loosened hair floated over her

shoulders. No tears fell on her cheeks. In her eyes there was fire, and

darkness. She was pale, with that paleness which is like the

transparency of a divine life in an earthly face. Her fragile and

exquisite form was, as it were, blended and interfused with the folds of

her robe. She wavered like the flicker of a flame, while, at the same

time, she was dwindling into shadow. Her eyes, opened wide, were

resplendent. She was as one just freed from the sepulchre; a soul

standing in the dawn.

Ursus, whose back only was visible to Gwynplaine, raised his arms in

terror. “O my child! O heavens! she is delirious. Delirium is what I

feared worst of all. She must have no shock, for that might kill her;

yet nothing but a shock can prevent her going mad. Dead or mad! what a

situation. O God! what can I do? My child, lie down again.”

Meanwhile, Dea spoke. Her voice was almost indistinct, as if a cloud

already interposed between her and earth.

“Father, you are wrong. I am not in the least delirious. I hear all you

say to me, distinctly. You tell me that there is a great crowd of

people, that they are waiting, and that I must play to-night. I am quite

willing. You see that I have my reason; but I do not know what to do,

since I am dead, and Gwynplaine is dead. I am coming all the same. I am

ready to play. Here I am; but Gwynplaine is no longer here.”

“Come, my child,” said Ursus, “do as I bid you. Lie down again.”

“He is no longer here, no longer here. Oh! how dark it is!”

“Dark!” muttered Ursus. “This is the first time she has ever uttered

that word!”

Gwynplaine, with as little noise as he could help making as he crept,

mounted the step of the caravan, entered it, took from the nail the cape

and the esclavine, put the esclavine round his neck, and redescended

from the van, still concealed by the projection of the cabin, the

rigging, and the mast.

Dea continued murmuring. She moved her lips, and by degrees the murmur

became a melody. In broken pauses, and with the interrupted cadences of

delirium, her voice broke into the mysterious appeal she had so often

addressed to Gwynplaine in _Chaos Vanquished_. She sang, and her voice

was low and uncertain as the murmur of the bee,--

“Noche, quita te de allí.

El alba canta....”[23]

She stopped. “No, it is not true. I am not dead. What was I saying?

Alas! I am alive. I am alive. He is dead. I am below. He is above. He is

gone. I remain. I shall hear his voice no more, nor his footstep. God,

who had given us a little Paradise on earth, has taken it away.

Gwynplaine, it is over. I shall never feel you near me again. Never! And

his voice! I shall never hear his voice again. And she sang:--

“Es menester a cielos ir--

Deja, quiero,

A tu negro

Caparazon.”

“We must go to heaven.

Take off, I entreat thee,

Thy black cloak.”

She stretched out her hand, as if she sought something in space on which

she might rest.

Gwynplaine, rising by the side of Ursus, who had suddenly become as

though petrified, knelt down before her.

“Never,” said Dea, “never shall I hear him again.”

She began, wandering, to sing again:--

“Deja, quiero,

A tu negro

Caparazon.”

Then she heard a voice--even the beloved voice--answering:--

“O ven! ama!

Eres alma,

Soy corazon.”

“O come and love

Thou art the soul,

I am the heart.”

And at the same instant Dea felt under her hand the head of Gwynplaine.

She uttered an indescribable cry.

“Gwynplaine!”

A light, as of a star, shone over her pale face, and she tottered.

Gwynplaine received her in his arms.

“Alive!” cried Ursus.

Dea repeated “Gwynplaine;” and with her head bowed against Gwynplaine’s

cheek, she whispered faintly,--

“You have come down to me again. I thank you, Gwynplaine.”

And seated on his knee, she lifted up her head. Wrapt in his embrace,

she turned her sweet face towards him, and fixed on him those eyes so

full of light and shadow, as though she could see him.

“It is you,” she said.

Gwynplaine covered her sobs with kisses. There are words which are at

once words, cries, and sobs, in which all ecstasy and all grief are

mingled and burst forth together. They have no meaning, and yet tell

all.

“Yes, it is! It is I, Gwynplaine, of whom you are the soul. Do you hear

me? I, of whom you are the child, the wife, the star, the breath of

life; I, to whom you are eternity. It is I. I am here. I hold you in my

arms. I am alive. I am yours. Oh, when I think that in a moment all

would have been over--one minute more, but for Homo! I will tell you

everything. How near is despair to joy! Dea, we live! Dea, forgive me.

Yes--yours for ever. You are right. Touch my forehead. Make sure that it

is I. If you only knew--but nothing can separate us now. I rise out of

hell, and ascend into heaven. Am I not with you? You said that I

descended. Not so; I reascend. Once more with you! For ever! I tell you

for ever! Together! We are together! Who would have believed it? We have

found each other again. All our troubles are past. Before us now there

is nothing but enchantment. We will renew our happy life, and we will

shut the door so fast that misfortune shall never enter again. I will

tell you all. You will be astonished. The vessel has sailed. No one can

prevent that now. We are on our voyage, and at liberty. We are going to

Holland. We will marry. I have no fear about gaining a livelihood. What

can hinder it? There is nothing to fear. I adore you!”

“Not so quick!” stammered Ursus.

Dea, trembling, and with the rapture of an angelic touch, passed her

hand over Gwynplaine’s profile. He overheard her say to herself, “It is

thus that gods are made.”

Then she touched his clothes.

“The esclavine,” she said, “the cape. Nothing changed; all as it was

before.”

Ursus, stupefied, delighted, smiling, drowned in tears, looked at them,

and addressed an aside to himself.

“I don’t understand it in the least. I am a stupid idiot--I, who saw him

carried to the grave! I cry and I laugh. That is all I know. I am as

great a fool as if I were in love myself. But that is just what I am. I

am in love with them both. Old fool! Too much emotion--too much emotion.

It is what I was afraid of. No; it is that I wished for. Gwynplaine, be

careful of her. Yes, let them kiss; it is no affair of mine. I am but a

spectator. What I feel is droll. I am the parasite of their happiness,

and I am nourished by it.”

Whilst Ursus was talking to himself, Gwynplaine exclaimed,--

“Dea, you are too beautiful! I don’t know where my wits were gone these

last few days. Truly, there is but you on earth. I see you again, but as

yet I can hardly believe it. In this ship! But tell me, how did it all

happen? To what a state have they reduced you! But where is the Green

Box? They have robbed you. They have driven you away. It is infamous.

Oh, I will avenge you--I will avenge you, Dea! They shall answer for it.

I am a peer of England.”

Ursus, as if stricken by a planet full in his breast, drew back, and

looked at Gwynplaine attentively.

“It is clear that he is not dead; but can he have gone mad?” and he

listened to him doubtfully.

Gwynplaine resumed.

“Be easy, Dea; I will carry my complaint to the House of Lords.”

Ursus looked at him again, and struck his forehead with the tip of his

forefinger. Then making up his mind,--

“It is all one to me,” he said. “It will be all right, all the same. Be

as mad as you like, my Gwynplaine. It is one of the rights of man. As

for me, I am happy. But how came all this about?”

The vessel continued to sail smoothly and fast. The night grew darker

and darker. The mists, which came inland from the ocean, were invading

the zenith, from which no wind blew them away. Only a few large stars

were visible, and they disappeared one after another, so that soon there

were none at all, and the whole sky was dark, infinite, and soft. The

river broadened until the banks on each side were nothing but two thin

brown lines mingling with the gloom. Out of all this shadow rose a

profound peace. Gwynplaine, half seated, held Dea in his embrace. They

spoke, they cried, they babbled, they murmured in a mad dialogue of joy!

How are we to paint thee, O joy!

“My life!”

“My heaven!”

“My love!”

“My whole happiness!”

“Gwynplaine!”

“Dea, I am drunk. Let me kiss your feet.”

“Is it you, then, for certain?”

“I have so much to say to you now that I do not know where to begin.”

“One kiss!”

“O my wife!”

“Gwynplaine, do not tell me that I am beautiful. It is you who are

handsome.”

“I have found you again. I hold you to my heart. This is true. You are

mine. I do not dream. Is it possible? Yes, it is. I recover possession

of life. If you only knew! I have met with all sorts of adventures.

Dea!”

“Gwynplaine, I love you!”

And Ursus murmured,--

“Mine is the joy of a grandfather.”

Homo, having come from under the van, was going from one to the other

discreetly, exacting no attention, licking them left and right--now

Ursus’s thick shoes, now Gwynplaine’s cape, now Dea’s dress, now the

mattress. This was his way of giving his blessing.

They had passed Chatham and the mouth of the Medway. They were

approaching the sea. The shadowy serenity of the atmosphere was such

that the passage down the Thames was being made without trouble: no

manoeuvre was needful, nor was any sailor called on deck. At the other

end of the vessel the skipper, still alone, was steering. There was

only this man aft. At the bow the lantern lighted up the happy group of

beings who, from the depths of misery, had suddenly been raised to

happiness by a meeting so unhoped for.

CHAPTER IV.

NAY; ON HIGH!

Suddenly Dea, disengaging herself from Gwynplaine’s embrace, arose. She

pressed both her hands against her heart, as if to still its throbbings.

“What is wrong with me?” said she. “There is something the matter. Joy

is suffocating. No, it is nothing! That is lucky. Your reappearance, O

my Gwynplaine, has given me a blow--a blow of happiness. All this heaven

of joy which you have put into my heart has intoxicated me. You being

absent, I felt myself dying. The true life which was leaving me you have

brought back. I felt as if something was being torn away within me. It

is the shadows that have been torn away, and I feel life dawn in my

brain--a glowing life, a life of fever and delight. This life which you

have just given me is wonderful. It is so heavenly that it makes me

suffer somewhat. It seems as though my soul is enlarged, and can

scarcely be contained in my body. This life of seraphim, this plenitude,

flows into my brain and penetrates it. I feel like a beating of wings

within my breast. I feel strangely, but happy. Gwynplaine, you have been

my resurrection.”

She flushed, became pale, then flushed again, and fell.

“Alas!” said Ursus, “you have killed her.”

Gwynplaine stretched his arms towards Dea. Extremity of anguish coming

upon extremity of ecstasy, what a shock! He would himself have fallen,

had he not had to support her.

“Dea!” he cried, shuddering, “what is the matter?”

“Nothing,” said she--“I love you!”

She lay in his arms, lifeless, like a piece of linen; her hands were

hanging down helplessly.

Gwynplaine and Ursus placed Dea on the mattress. She said, feebly,--

“I cannot breathe lying down.”

They lifted her up.

Ursus said,--

“Fetch a pillow.”

She replied,--

“What for? I have Gwynplaine!”

She laid her head on Gwynplaine’s shoulder, who was sitting behind, and

supporting her, his eyes wild with grief.

“Oh,” said she, “how happy I am!”

Ursus took her wrist, and counted the pulsation of the artery. He did

not shake his head. He said nothing, nor expressed his thought except by

the rapid movement of his eyelids, which were opening and closing

convulsively, as if to prevent a flood of tears from bursting out.

“What is the matter?” asked Gwynplaine.

Ursus placed his ear against Dea’s left side.

Gwynplaine repeated his question eagerly, fearful of the answer.

Ursus looked at Gwynplaine, then at Dea. He was livid. He said,--

“We ought to be parallel with Canterbury. The distance from here to

Gravesend cannot be very great. We shall have fine weather all night. We

need fear no attack at sea, because the fleets are all on the coast of

Spain. We shall have a good passage.”

Dea, bent, and growing paler and paler, clutched her robe convulsively.

She heaved a sigh of inexpressible sadness, and murmured,--

“I know what this is. I am dying!”

Gwynplaine rose in terror. Ursus held Dea.

“Die! You die! No; it shall not be! You cannot die! Die now! Die at

once! It is impossible! God is not ferociously cruel--to give you and to

take you back in the same moment. No; such a thing cannot be. It would

make one doubt in Him. Then, indeed, would everything be a snare--the

earth, the sky, the cradles of infants, the human heart, love, the

stars. God would be a traitor and man a dupe. There would be nothing in

which to believe. It would be an insult to the creation. Everything

would be an abyss. You know not what you say, Dea. You shall live! I

command you to live! You must obey me! I am your husband and your

master; I forbid you to leave me! O heavens! O wretched Man! No, it

cannot be--I to remain in the world after you! Why, it is as monstrous

as that there should be no sun! Dea! Dea! recover! It is but a moment

of passing pain. One feels a shudder at times, and thinks no more about

it. It is absolutely necessary that you should get well and cease to

suffer. _You_ die! What have I done to you? The very thought of it

drives me mad. We belong to each other, and we love each other. You have

no reason for going! It would be unjust! Have I committed crimes?

Besides, you have forgiven me. Oh, you would not make me desperate--have

me become a villain, a madman, drive me to perdition? Dea, I entreat

you! I conjure you! I supplicate you! Do not die!”

And clenching his hands in his hair, agonized with fear, stifled with

tears, he threw himself at her feet.

“My Gwynplaine,” said Dea, “it is no fault of mine.”

There then rose to her lips a red froth, which Ursus wiped away with the

fold of her robe, before Gwynplaine, who was prostrate at her feet,

could see it.

Gwynplaine took her feet in his hands, and implored her in all kinds of

confused words.

“I tell you, I will not have it! _You_ die? I have no strength left to

bear it. Die? Yes; but both of us together--not otherwise. _You_ die, my

Dea? I will never consent to it! My divinity, my love! Do you understand

that I am with you? I swear that you shall live! Oh, but you cannot have

thought what would become of me after you were gone. If you had an idea

of the necessity which you are to me, you would see that it is

absolutely impossible! Dea! you see I have but you! The most

extraordinary things have happened to me. You will hardly believe that I

have just explored the whole of life in a few hours! I have found out

one thing--that there is nothing in it! You exist! if you did not, the

universe would have no meaning. Stay with me! Have pity on me! Since you

love me, live on! If I have just found you again, it is to keep you.

Wait a little longer; you cannot leave me like this, now that we have

been together but a few minutes! Do not be impatient! O Heaven, how I

suffer! You are not angry with me, are you? You know that I could not

help going when the wapentake came for me. You will breathe more easily

presently, you will see. Dea, all has been put right. We are going to be

happy. Do not drive me to despair, Dea! I have done nothing to you.”

These words were not spoken, but sobbed out. They rose from his

breast--now in a lament which might have attracted the dove, now in a

roar which might have made lions recoil.

Dea answered him in a voice growing weaker and weaker, and pausing at

nearly every word.

“Alas! it is of no use, my beloved. I see that you are doing all you

can. An hour ago I wanted to die; now I do not. Gwynplaine--my adored

Gwynplaine--how happy we have been! God placed you in my life, and He

takes me out of yours. You see, I am going. You will remember the Green

Box, won’t you, and poor blind little Dea? You will remember my song? Do

not forget the sound of my voice, and the way in which I said, ‘I love

you!’ I will come back and tell it to you again, in the night while you

are asleep. Yes, we found each other again; but it was too much joy. It

was to end at once. It is decreed that I am to go first. I love my

father, Ursus, and my brother, Homo, very dearly. You are all so good.

There is no air here. Open the window. My Gwynplaine, I did not tell

you, but I was jealous of a woman who came one day. You do not even know

of whom I speak. Is it not so? Cover my arms; I am rather cold. And Fibi

and Vinos, where are they? One comes to love everybody. One feels a

friendship for all those who have been mixed up in one’s happiness. We

have a kindly feeling towards them for having been present in our joys.

Why has it all passed away? I have not clearly understood what has

happened during the last two days. Now I am dying. Leave me in my dress.

When I put it on I foresaw that it would be my shroud. I wish to keep it

on. Gwynplaine’s kisses are upon it. Oh, what would I not have given to

have lived on! What a happy life we led in our poor caravan! How we

sang! How I listened to the applause! What joy it was never to be

separated from each other! It seemed to me that I was living in a cloud

with you; I knew one day from another, although I was blind. I knew that

it was morning, because I heard Gwynplaine; I felt that it was night,

because I dreamed of Gwynplaine. I felt that I was wrapped up in

something which was his soul. We adored each other so sweetly. It is all

fading away; and there will be no more songs. Alas that I cannot live

on! You will think of me, my beloved!”

Her voice was growing fainter. The ominous waning, which was death, was

stealing away her breath. She folded her thumbs within her fingers--a

sign that her last moments were approaching. It seemed as though the

first uncertain words of an angel just created were blended with the

last failing accents of the dying girl.

She murmured,--

“You will think of me, won’t you? It would be very sad to be dead, and

to be remembered by no one. I have been wayward at times; I beg pardon

of you all. I am sure that, if God had so willed it, we might yet have

been happy, my Gwynplaine; for we take up but very little room, and we

might have earned our bread together in another land. But God has willed

it otherwise. I cannot make out in the least why I am dying. I never

complained of being blind, so that I cannot have offended any one. I

should never have asked for anything, but always to be blind as I was,

by your side. Oh, how sad it is to have to part!”

Her words were more and more inarticulate, evaporating into each other,

as if they were being blown away. She had become almost inaudible.

“Gwynplaine,” she resumed, “you will think of me, won’t you? I shall

crave it when I am dead.”

And she added,--

“Oh, keep me with you!”

Then, after a pause, she said,--

“Come to me as soon as you can. I shall be very unhappy without you,

even in heaven. Do not leave me long alone, my sweet Gwynplaine! My

paradise was here; above there is only heaven! Oh! I cannot breathe! My

beloved! My beloved! My beloved!”

“Mercy!” cried Gwynplaine.

“Farewell!” murmured Dea.

And he pressed his mouth to her beautiful icy hands. For a moment it

seemed as if she had ceased to breathe. Then she raised herself on her

elbows, and an intense splendour flashed across her eyes, and through an

ineffable smile her voice rang out clearly.

“Light!” she cried. “I see!”

And she expired. She fell back rigid and motionless on the mattress.

“Dead!” said Ursus.

And the poor old man, as if crushed by his despair, bowed his bald head

and buried his swollen face in the folds of the gown which covered Dea’s

feet. He lay there in a swoon.

Then Gwynplaine became awful. He arose, lifted his eyes, and gazed into

the vast gloom above him. Seen by none on earth, but looked down upon,

perhaps, as he stood in the darkness, by some invisible presence, he

stretched his hands on high, and said,--

“I come!”

And he strode across the deck, towards the side of the vessel, as if

beckoned by a vision.

A few paces off was the abyss. He walked slowly, never casting down his

eyes. A smile came upon his face, such as Dea’s had just worn. He

advanced straight before him, as if watching something. In his eyes was

a light like the reflection of a soul perceived from afar off. He cried

out, “Yes!” At every step he was approaching nearer to the side of the

vessel. His gait was rigid, his arms were lifted up, his head was thrown

back, his eyeballs were fixed. His movement was ghost-like. He advanced

without haste and without hesitation, with fatal precision, as though

there were before him no yawning gulf and open grave. He murmured, “Be

easy. I follow you. I understand the sign that you are making me.” His

eyes were fixed upon a certain spot in the sky, where the shadow was

deepest. The smile was still upon his face. The sky was perfectly black;

there was no star visible in it, and yet he evidently saw one. He

crossed the deck. A few stiff and ominous steps, and he had reached the

very edge.

“I come,” said he; “Dea, behold, I come!”

One step more; there was no bulwark; the void was before him; he strode

into it. He fell. The night was thick and dull, the water deep. It

swallowed him up. He disappeared calmly and silently. None saw nor heard

him. The ship sailed on, and the river flowed.

Shortly afterwards the ship reached the sea.

When Ursus returned to consciousness, he found that Gwynplaine was no

longer with him, and he saw Homo by the edge of the deck baying in the

shadow and looking down upon the water.

THE END.

[Footnote 1: As much as to say, the other daughters are provided for as

best may be. (Note by Ursus on the margin of the wall.)]

[Footnote 2: _Una nube salida del malo lado del diablo_.]

[Footnote 3: Tiller of the mountain, who is that man?--A man.

What tongue does he speak?--All.

What things does he know?--All.

What is his country?--None and all.

Who is his God?--God.

What do you call him?--The madman.

What do you say you call him?--The wise man.

In your band, what is he?--He is what he is.

The chief?--No.

Then what is he?--The soul.]

[Footnote 4: Traitors.]

[Footnote 5: The above is a very inefficient and rather absurd

translation of the French. It turns upon the fact that in the French

language the word for darkness is plural--_ténèbres_.--TRANSLATOR.]

[Footnote 6: Transcriber’s note: The original text refers to “vitres

épaisses”, thick panes, without specific dimensions. Glass only a

millimetre thick would have been rather flimsy.]

[Footnote 7: _Gaufrier_, the iron with which a pattern is traced on

stuff.]

[Footnote 8: Art thou near me?]

[Footnote 9: Côtes, coasts, costa, ribs.]

[Footnote 10:

“Their lips were four red roses on a stem,

Which in their summer beauty kissed each other.”

_Shakespeare_.]

[Footnote 11: Regina Saba coram rege crura denudavit.--_Schicklardus in

Proemio Tarich Jersici, F_. 65.]

[Footnote 12: Book I., p. 196.]

[Footnote 13: Pray! weep! Reason is born of the word. Song creates

light.]

[Footnote 14: Night, away! the dawn sings hallali.]

[Footnote 15: Thou must go to heaven and smile, thou that weepest.]

[Footnote 16: Break the yoke; throw off, monster, thy dark clothing.]

[Footnote 17: O come and love! thou art soul, I am heart.]

[Footnote 18: The Fenian, Burke.]

[Footnote 19: The life and the limbs of subjects depend on the king.

Chamberlayne, Part 2, chap. iv., p. 76.]

[Footnote 20: This fashion of sleeping partly undrest came from Italy,

and was derived from the Romans. “_Sub clarâ nuda lacernâ_,” says

Horace.]

[Footnote 21: The author is apparently mistaken. The Chamberlains of the

Exchequer divided the wooden laths into tallies, which were given out

when disbursing coin, and checked or tallied when accounting for it. It

was in burning the old tallies in an oven that the Houses of Parliament

were destroyed by fire.--TRANSLATOR.]

[Footnote 22: Villiers called James I., “_Votre cochonnerie_.”]

[Footnote 23: “Depart, O night! sings the dawn.”]