 Section 001 of The Man Who Laughs All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Man Who Laughs by Victor Lugo Preliminary Chapter, Ursus Part 1 Ursus and Homo were fast friends. Ursus was a man, Homo a wolf. Their dispositions tallied. It was the man who had christened the wolf. Probably he had also chosen his own name. Having found Ursus the fit for himself, he had found Homo fit for the beast. Man and wolf turned their partnership to account at fares, at village fits, at the corners of streets where passers-by throng, and out of the need which people seemed to feel everywhere to listen to idle gossip and to buy quack medicine. The wolf, gentle and courteously subordinate, diverted the crowd. It is a pleasant thing to behold the tameness of animals. Our greatest delight is to see all the varieties of domestication parade before us. This it is which collects so many folks on the road of royal processions. Ursus and Homo went about from cross-road to cross-road, from the high street of Aberystwyth to the high street of Jedbara, from countryside to countryside, from shire to shire, from town to town. One market exhausted, they went to another. Ursus lived in a small van upon wheels, which Homo was civilized enough to draw by day and guard by night. On bad roads, up hills, and where there were too many ruts, or there was too much mud, the man buckled the trace round his neck and pulled fraternally side by side with the wolf. They had thus grown old together. They encamped a tap-hazard on a common, in the glade of a wood, on the waste-patch of grass where roads intersect, at the outskirts of villages, at the gates of towns, in marketplaces, in public walks, on the borders of parks, before the entrances of churches. When the cart drew up on a fair grain, when the gossips ran up open-mouth and the curious made a circle round the pair, Ursus harangued and Homo approved. Homo, with a bowl in his mouth, politely made a collection among the audience. They gained their livelihood. The wolf was lettered, likewise the man. The wolf had been trained by the man, however had trained himself and assisted to diverse wolfish acts which swelled the receipts. Above all things do not degenerate into a man, his friend would say to him. Never did the wolf bite. The man did, now and then, at least to bite was the intent of Ursus. He was a misentrope, and to italicize his misanthropy he had made himself a juggler. But to live also, for the stomach has to be consulted. Moreover, this juggler misanthrope, whether to add to the complexity of his being or to perfect it, was a doctor. To be a doctor is little, Ursus was a ventriloquist. You heard him speak without his moving his lips. He counterfeited so as to deceive you, any one's accent or pronunciation. He imitated voices so exactly that you believed you heard the people themselves. All alone he simulated the murmur of a crowd, and this gave him a right to the title of Ingaustrimithos which he took. He reproduced all sorts of cries of birds as of the thrush, the wren, the pipet-lock, otherwise called the great cheaper, and the ring-ocell, all travelers like himself. So that at times when the fancy struck him he made you aware either of a public thoroughfare filled with the uproar of men or of a meadow, loud with the voices of beasts. At one time stormy as a multitude, at another fresh and serene as the dawn. Such gifts, although rare, exists. In the last century a man called Tuzel, who imitated the mingled utterances of men and animals and who counterfeited all the cries of beasts, was attached to the person of before, to serve as a menagerie. Ursus was sagacious, contradictory, odd, and inclined to the singular expositions which we term fables. He had the appearance of believing in them, but this impudence was part of his humor. He read people's hands, opened books at random and reconclusions, told fortunes, taught that it is perilous to meet a black mayor, still more perilous as you start for a journey to hear yourself accosted by one who knows not whether you are going, and he called himself a dealer in superstitions. He used to say, One difference between me and the Archbishop of Canterbury. I avow what I am. Hence it was that the Archbishop, justly indignant, had him one day before him. But Ursus cleverly disarmed his grace by reciting a sermon he had composed upon Christmas Day, which the Archbishop learned by heart, and delivered from the pulpit as his own. In consideration thereof the Archbishop pardoned Ursus. As a doctor, Ursus wrought cures by some means or other. He made use of aromatics. He was versed in symbols. He had made the most of the immense powder, which lies in a heap of neglected plants, such as the hazel, the catkin, the white alder, the white briarney, the milletry, the traveller's joy, the buckthorn. He treated dices with sundew. At opportune moments he would use the leaves of the spurge, which plucked at the bottom are a purgative and plucked at the top in amitic. He cured sore throat by means of the vegetable excrucients called juicier. He knew the rush which cures the ox, and the mint which cures the horse. He was well acquainted with the beauties and virtues of the herb mandragora, which, as everyone knows, is of both sexes. He had many recipes. He cured burns with the salamander-wall, of which according to Pliny Nero had a napkin. Ursus possessed a retort and a flask. He affected transmutations. He sold panaceas. It was said of him that he had once been for a short time in Bedrum. They had done him the honour to take him for a madman, but had set him free on discovering that he was only a poet. This story was probably not true. We have all to submit to some legend about us. The fact is, Ursus was a bit of a savant, a man of taste, and an old Latin poet. He was learned in two forms. He hypocrisised and he penderised. He could have vied in bombast with repas and vida. He could have composed Jesuit tragedies in a style not less triumphant than that of Father Beroux. It followed from his familiarity with the venerable rhythms and meters of the ancients that he had peculiar figures of speech and a whole family of classical metaphors. He would say of a mother followed by her two daughters, there is a dackel of a father preceded by his two sons, there is an anapost, and of a little child walking between his grandmother and grandfather, there is an amphomessé. So much knowledge could only end in starvation. The school of Cererno says, eat little and often. Ursus ate little and seldom, thus obeying one half the precip and disobeying the other. But this was the fault of the public, who did not always flock to him, and who did not often buy. Ursus was want to say, the expectation of a sentence is a relief. The wolf is comforted by its howl, the sheep by its wall, the forest by its finch, woman by her love, and the philosopher by his epiphanema. Ursus set a pinch composed comedies, which in recital he oboe acted. This helped us sell the drugs. Among other works he had composed an heroic pastoral in the honour of Sir Hugh Middleton, who in 1608 brought a river to London. The river was lying peacefully in Hertfordshire, twenty miles from London. The night came and took possession of it. He brought a brigade of six hundred men, armed with shovels and pickaxes, set to breaking up the ground, scooping it out in one place, raising it in another, now thirty feet high, now twenty feet deep, made wooden aqueducts high in air, and at different points constructed eight hundred bridges of stone, bricks and timber. One fine morning the river entered London, which was short of water. Ursus transformed all these vulgar details into a fine eclog between the Thames and the new river, in which the former invited the latter to come to him, and offered her his bed, saying, I am too old to please women, but I am rich enough to pay them. An ingenious and grand conceit to indicate how Sir Hugh Middleton had completed the work at his own expense. Ursus was great in Cyrillicui, of a disposition at once unsociable and talkative, desiring to see no one, yet wishing to converse with some one, he got out of the difficulty by talking to himself. Anyone who has lived a solitary life knows how deeply seated monologue is in one's nature. Speech imprisoned threats to find a vent. The harangue space is an outlet. To speak aloud when alone is, as it were, to have a dialogue with the divinity which is within. It was, as is well known, a custom of Socrates. He declined to himself. Luther did the same. Ursus took after those great men. He had the hermaphrodite faculty of being his own audience. He questioned himself, answered himself, praised himself, blamed himself. You heard him in the street Cyrillicuising in his van. The passers-by, who have their own way of appreciating clever people, used to say, he is an idiot. As we have just observed, he abused himself at times, but there were times also when he rendered himself justice. One day, in one of those elocutions addressed to himself, he was heard to cry out, I have steadied vegetation in all its mysteries, in the stalk, in the bud, in the sepal, in the stamen, in the carpal, in the ovule, in the spore, in the theca, and in the apothequium. I have thoroughly sifted chromatics, osmosy, and chymacy. That is to say the formation of collars, of smell, and of taste. There was something fatuous doubtless in the certificate which Ursus gave to Ursus, but let those who have not thoroughly sifted chromatics, osmosy, and chymacy cast the first stone at him. Fortunately Ursus had never gone into the low countries. There they would certainly have weighed him to ascertain whether he was of the normal weight, above or below which a man is a sorcerer. In Holland this weight was sagely fixed by law. Nothing was simpler or more ingenious. It was a clear test. They put you in a scale, and the evidence was conclusive if you broke the equilibrium. Too heavy you were hanged. Too light you were burned. To this day the scales in which sorcerers were weighed may be seen at Udwater, but they are now used for weighing cheeses. How religion has degenerated. Ursus would certainly have had a crow to pluck with these scales. In his travels he kept away from Holland, and he did well. Indeed we believe that he used never to leave the United Kingdom. However this may have been, he was very poor and morose, and having made the acquaintance of Omar in a word, a taste for a wandering life had come over him. He had taken the wolf into partnership, and with him had gone forth on the highways, living in the open air the great life of chance. He had a great deal of industry and of reserve, and great skill in everything connected with healing operations, restoring the sick to health, and in working wonders peculiar to himself. He was considered a clever mount-a-bank and a good doctor. As may be imagined he passed for a wizard as well. Not much indeed, only a little, for it was unwholesome in those days to be considered a friend of the devil. To tell the truth, Ursus, by his passion for pharmacy and his love of plants, laid himself open to suspicion, seeing that he often would gather herbs in rough thickets that were grusper salads, and where, as has been proved by the counsellor de l'encre, there is a risk of meeting in the evening a mist, a man who comes out of the earth, blind to the right eye, barefooted, without a cloak, and a sword by his side. But for the matter of that, Ursus, although eccentric and amander in disposition, was too good a fellow to invoke or disperse tale, to make faces appear, to kill a man with the torment of excessive dancing, to suggest dreams fair or foul and full of terror, and to cause the birth of cocks with four wings. He had no such mischievous tricks. He was incapable of certain abominations, such as, for instance, speaking German Hebrew or Greek without having learned them, which is a sign of unpardonable wickedness, or of a natural infirmity proceeding from a morbid humour. If Ursus spoke Latin, it was because he knew it. He would never have allowed himself to speak Syriac, which he did not know. Besides, it is asserted that Syriac is a language spoken in the midnight meetings at which uncanny people worship the devil. In medicine, he justly preferred Galen to Carden. Carden, although a learned man, being but an earthworm to Galen. To sum up, Ursus was not one of those persons who live in fear of the police. His van was long enough and wide enough to allow of his lying down in it on a box containing his not very sumptuous apparel. He owned a lantern, several wigs, and some utensils suspended from nails, among which were musical instruments. He possessed, besides, a bear-skin with which he covered himself on his days of grand performance. He called this putting on full dress. He used to say, I have two skins. This is the real one pointing to the bear-skin. The little house on wheels belonged to himself and to the wolf. Besides his house, his retort, and his wolf, he had a fruit and a viarancello on which he played pritally. He concocted his own rexers. His wits yielded him enough to sup on some times. In the top of his van was a hole through which passed the pipe of a cast-iron stove, so close to his box as to scorch the wood of it. The stove had two compartments. In one of them Ursus cooked his chemicals, and in the other his potatoes. At night the wolf slept under the van, amicably secured by a chain. Almost hair was black, that of Ursus gray. Ursus was fifty, and less indeed he was sixty. He accepted his destiny to such an extent that as we have just seen he ate potatoes, the trash on which at that time they fed pigs and convicts. He ate them indignant but resigned. He was not tall, he was long. He was bent and melancholy. The bowed frame of an old man is the settlement in the architecture of life. Nature had formed him for sadness. He found it difficult to smile, and he had never been able to weep, so that he was deprived of the consolation of tears as well as the palliative of joy. An old man is a thinking ruin, and such a ruin was Ursus. He had the requestity of a charlatan, the learnedness of a prophet, the rascability of a charged mind. Such was Ursus. In his youth he had been a philosopher and a possible Lord. This was one hundred eighty years ago when men were more like wolves than they are now. Not so very much, though. Preliminary chapter, part two. All more was no ordinary wolf. From his appetite for medlars and potatoes he might have been taken for a prairie wolf, from his dark hide for a lackey on, and from his how prolonged into a bark for a dog of chili. But no one has yet observed the eyeball of a dog of chili sufficiently to enable us to determine whether he be not a fox. And Omo was a real wolf. He was five feet long, which is a fine length for a wolf, even in Lithuania. He was very strong. He looked at you as scant, which was not his fault. He had a soft tongue, with which he occasionally licked Ursus. He had a narrow brush of short bristles on his backbone, and he was lean with the wholesome leanness of a forest life. Before he knew Ursus and had a carriage to draw he thought nothing of doing his fifty miles a night. Ursus, meeting him in a thicket near a stream of running water, had conceived a high opinion of him from seeing the skill and sagacity with which he fished out crayfish, and welcomed him as an honest and genuine Kupara wolf of the kind called Crab Eater. As a beast of burden, Ursus preferred Omo to a donkey. He would have felt repugnance to having his hut drawn by an ass. He thought too highly of the ass for that. Moreover he had observed that the ass of a four-legged thinker little understood by men has a habit of cocking his ears uneasily when philosophers talk nonsense. In life the ass is a third person between our thoughts and ourselves, and acts as a restraint. As a friend Ursus preferred Omo to a dog, considering that the love of a wolf is more rare. Hence it was that Omo sufficed for Ursus. Omo was for Ursus more than a companion. He was an analogue. Ursus used to pat the wolf's empty rib saying, I have found the second volume of myself. Again he said, when I am dead anyone wishing to know me need only steady Omo. I shall leave a true copy behind me. The English roar, not very lenient to beasts of the forest, might have picked a quarrel with the wolf and have put him to trouble for his assurance in going freely about the towns. But Omo took advantage of the immunity granted by a statute of Edward IV to servants. Every servant in attendance on his master is free to come and go. Besides, a certain relaxation of the law had resulted with regard to wolves in consequence of its being the fashion of the ladies of the court under the later stewards to have, instead of dogs, little wolves caught on thieves about the size of cats which were brought from Asia at great cost. Ursus had communicated to Omo a portion of his talents such as to stand upright, to restrain his rage into salkiness to growl instead of howling, etc. And on his part the wolf had taught the man why he knew to do without a roof, without bread and fire to prefer hunger in the woods to slavery in a palace. The van, hut, and vehicle in one which to reverse so many different roads which without, however, leaving Great Britain had four wheels with shafts for the wolf and a splinter-bar for the man. The splinter-bar came into use when the roads were bad. The van was strong although it was built of light boards like a dove-cott. In front there was a glass door with a little balcony used for orations which had something of the character of the platform tempered by an air of the pulpit. At the back there was a door with a practicable panel. By lowering the three steps which turned on a hinge below the door access was gained to the hut which at night was securely fastened with a bolt and lock. Rain and snow had fallen plentifully on it. It had been painted. But of what color it was difficult to say change of season being to vans what changes of rain are to courtiers. In front outside was a board, the kind of frontispiece on which the following description might once have been deciphered. It was in black letters on a white ground but by degrees the characters had become confused and blurred. By friction gold loses every year a fourteenth hundred part of its bulk. This is what we called the wear. Hence it follows that on fourteen hundred millions of gold in circulation throughout the world one million is lost annually. This million dissolves into dust, flies away, floats about, is reduced to atoms, charges, drugs, weighs-down consciences, amalgamates with the souls of the rich whom it renders proud and with those of the poor whom it renders brutish. The inscription, rubbed and blotted by the rain and by the kindness of nature, was fortunately illegible. For it is possible that its philosophy concerning the inhalation of gold at the same time both enabbatical and lucid might not have been to the taste of the sheriffs, the provost marshals, and other big-wigs of the law. English legislation did not trifle in those days. It did not take much to make a man a felon. The magistrates were ferocious by tradition and cruelty was a matter of routine. The judges of Assays increased and multiplied. Jeffries had become a breed. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Man Laughs by Victor Hugo Preliminary Chapter, Ursus Part 3 and 4 Part 3 In the interior of the van there were two other inscriptions. Above the box on a white-washed plank, a hand had written in ink as follows. The only things necessary to know. The baron, Pir of England, wears a cap with six pearls. The cornet begins with a rag of eye-count. The eye-count wears a cornet, of which the pearls are without number. The earl, a cornet with the pearls upon points. Mingle with strawberry leaves placed low between. The marquee, one with pearls and leaves on the same level. The duke, one with strawberry leaves alone, no pearls. The royal duke, a circlip of crosses and flirty leaves. The prince of Wales, crowned like that of the king, but unclosed. The duke is a most high and most puissant prince. The marquee and earl, most noble and puissant lord. The eye-count, noble and puissant lord. The baron, a trusty lord. The duke is his grace, the other pears, their lordships. Most honorable is higher than right honorable. Lords who are pears are lords in their own right. The lords who are not pears are lords by courtesy. There are no real lords, excepting such as our pears. The house of lords is a chamber and a court, concilium at Curia, legislature and court of justice. The commons, who are the people, when ordered to the bar of the lords, humbly present themselves bare-headed before the pears, remain covered. The commons send up their bills by forty members, who present the bill with three low bows. The lords send their bills to the commons by a mere clerk. In case of disagreement, the two houses conferring the paint the chamber. The pears sit and are covered, the commons standing and bare-headed. Pears go to Parliament and their coaches in file. The commons do not. Some pears go to Westminster in open, four-weld chariots. The use of these and of coaches emblazoned with coats of arms and cornets is allowed only to pears and forms a portion of their dignity. Barons have the same rank as bishops. To be a baron-pure of England, it is necessary to be in possession of a tenure from the king, per baronium integrum, by full barony. The full barony consists of thirteen knights' fees and one third-part, each knight's fee being of the value of twenty pounds sterling, which makes in all four hundred marks. The head of a barony, Caput Baroniay, is a castle disposed by inheritance, as England herself, that is to say, descending to daughters if there be no sons, and in that case going to the eldest daughter, Kylery's Philebus Alliunde Satisfectis. Barons have the degree of lord, in Saxon, Lafaud, Dominus in High Latin, Lordus in Low Latin. The eldest and younger sons of Viscounts and Barons are the first esquires in the kingdom. The eldest sons of Pears take precedence of Knights of the Garter. The younger sons do not. The eldest son of a Viscount comes after all Barons and precedes all Baronets. Every daughter of a Pears and Lady, other English girls, are plain mistress. All judges rank below Pears. The surgeon wears a lambskin tippet. The judge, one of Patchwork, diminued to Vario, made up of a variety of little white furs, always accepting Irmin. Irmin is the surgeon for Pears and the king. A lord never takes an oath. Either to the crown or the law. His word suffices. He says, upon my honor. By a law of Edward VI, Pears had a privilege of committing manslaughter. A peer who kills a man without premeditation is not prosecuted. The persons of Pears are inviolable. A peer cannot be held in endurance, save in the tower of London. A writ de supplicavet cannot be granted against a peer. A peer sent for by the king has the right to kill one or two deer in a royal park. A peer holds in his castle a baron's court of justice. It is unworthy of a peer to walk the street in a cloak full by two footmen. He should only show himself attended by a great train of gentlemen of his household. A peer can be immersed only by his peers and never to any greater amount than five pounds, excepting in the case of a duke who can immersed ten. A peer may retain six aliens born, any other Englishman but four. A peer can unwind custom-free and url eight tons. A peer is alone exempt from presenting himself before the sheriff of the circuit. A peer cannot be assessed toward a militia. When it pleases a peer, he raises a regiment and gives it to the king. Thus have done their graces to dukes of Ethel, Hamilton and Northumberland. A peer can hold only of a peer. In a civil cause, he can demand adjournment of the case if there be not at least one night on the jury. A peer nominates song chaplains. A baron appoints three chaplains, a viacount four, an url and a marquee five, a duke six. A peer cannot be put to the rack even for high treason. A peer cannot be branded on the hand. A peer is a clerk, though he knows not how to read. In law he knows. A duke has a right to a canopy or cloth of state in all places where the king is not present. A viacount may have one in his house. A baron has a cover of assay, which may be held on his cup while he drinks. A baroness has the right to have a train borne by a man in the presence of a viacountess. Eighty-six tables with five hundred dishes are served every day in the royal palace at each meal. If a plebeian strike a lord, his hand is cut off. A lord is very nearly a king. The king is very nearly a god. The earth is a lordship. The English address guard as my lord. Opposite this writing was written a second one, in the same fashion which round us. Satisfaction which must suffice those who have nothing. Henry Averkirche, Earl of Grantham, who sits in the house of lords of Jersey and the Earl of Greenwich, has a hundred thousand a year. To his lordship belongs the palace of Grantham Terrace, built of marble and famous for what is called the labyrinth of passages. A curiosity which contains the scarlet corridor in Marble of Sarenkoen, the brown corridor in Lumachele of Estrucan, the white corridor in Marble of Lani, the black corridor in Marble of Alabenda, the grey corridor in Marble of Sarema, the yellow corridor in Marble of Hes, the green corridor in Marble of the Tyrol, the red corridor, half cherished but of Marble of Bohemia, half Lumachele of Cordova, the blue corridor in Turkin of Genoa, the violet in Granite of Catalonia, the morning-yewed corridor, vain black and white in slate of Merviedro, the pink corridor in Cipollin of the Alps, the pearl corridor in Lumachele of Lanneta, and the corridor of all colours called the Courtyour's corridor in Motley. Richard Lother, Viscount Larnesdale, owns Lother in Westmoreland, which has a magnificent approach and a flight of entrance steps which seems to invite the ingress of kings. Richard Earl of Scarborough, Viscount and Baron Lemley of Lambly Castle, Viscount Lumley of Waterford in Ireland, and Lord Ludinand and Vice Admiral of the Country of Northumberland, and of Durham, both city and county, owns the double castle ward of Old and New Sandbeck, where you admire a superb railing in the form of a semicircle surrounding the basin of a matchless fountain. He has, besides, his castle of Lumley. Robert Darcy, Earl of Holderness, has his domain of Holderness with baronial towers and large gardens laid out in French fashion, where he drives in his coaching six, preceded by two outriders, as he becomes a peer of England. Charles Bowclerk, Duke of St. Albans, Earl of Berford, Baron Heedington, Grand Falconer of England, has an abode at Windsor, and an eagle even by the side of the kings. Charles Bodwell Robartus, Baron Robartus of Truro, Viscount Bodman and Earl of Radnor, own Swimpole in Cambridgeshire, which is as three palaces in one, having three vocades, one bode and two triangular. Their approach is, by an avenue of trees, four deep. Most noble and most peasant Lord Philip, Baron Herbert of Cardiff, Earl of Montgomery and of Pembroke, Ross of Kendall, Pa, Fitzhugh, Marmion, St. Quentin and Herbert of Shirland, warden of the steneries in the counties of Cornwall and Devon, hereditary visitor of Jesus College, possesses the wonderful gardens at Wilton, where there are two sheaf-like fountains, one under those of His most Christian majesty, King Louis XIV at Versailles. Charles Somerset, Duke of Somerset, owns Somerset House on the Thames, which is equal to the villa from Philly at Rome. On the chimney-piece are seen two porcelain vases of the dynasty of the Jeans, which are worth half a million in French money. In Yorkshire, Arthur Lordingham, Viscount Irving, has Temple Newson, which is entered under triumphal arc and which has large wide roofs resembling Moorish terraces. Robert, Lord Ferris of Charterly, Bortier and Lombayne, has Stanton Harald in Leicestershire, of which the park is geometrically planned in the shape of a temple without a cave, and in front of the piece of water is the great church with a square belfry, which belongs to his lordship. In the country of Northampton, Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, member of his Majesty's Privy Council, possesses Allthorpe, at the entrance of which is a railing with four columns surmounted by groups in marble. Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, has, in Surrey, New Park, rendered magnificent by its sculptured pinnacles, its circular lawn beltered by trees, and its woodland, at the extremity of which is a little mountain, artistically rounded and surmounted by a large oak, which can be seen from afar. Philip Stanhope, Earl of Jesterfield, possesses Preppy Hall in Derbyshire with a splendid clock tower, falconries, warrens, very fine sheets of water, long, square and oval, one of which is shaped like a mirror and has two jets which throw the water to a great height. Charles Cornwallis, Baron Cornwallis of I, owns Broom Hall, a palace of the 14th century. The most noble Argonome Cable, by Count Maiden, Earl of Essex, has Cachebury in Hertfordshire, a seat which has the shape of a capital H and which rejoices sportsmen with its abundance of game. Charles, Lord Osuston, owns Stanley in Middlesex, approached by Italian gardens. James Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, has seven leagues from London, Hatfield House, with its four lawly pavilions, its bell free in the centre and its grand courtyard of black and white slabs like that of Saint Germain. This palace, which has a frontage 272 feet in length, was built in the reign of James I by the Lord High Treasurer of England, the great grandfather of the present Earl. To be seen there is the bed of one of the Countesses of Salisbury. It is of inestimable value and made entirely of Brazilian wood, which is a panacea against the bites of serpents and which is called Milombres. That is to say, a thousand men. On this bed is inscribed ONI SUICI MAL I PENSE Edward Rich, Earl of Warwick and Holland, is owner of Warwick Castle, where whole oaks are burned in the five places. In the parish of seven oaks, Charles Sacwell, Baron Buckhurst, Baron Cranfield, Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, is owner of Nile, which is as large as a town and is composed of three palaces standing parallel one behind the other, like ranks of infantry. There are six covered flights of steps on the principal frontage and a gate under a keep with four towers. Famous Thin, Baron Thin of Warminster and Viscount Weymouth, possesses longleads in which there are as many chimneys, cupolas, pinnacles, pepperboxes, pavilions and turrets as a chamber-board in France, which belongs to the king. Henry Howard, Earl of Suffolk, owns twelve leagues from London, the Palace of Ordeley and in Essex, which in grandeur and dignity scarcely yields the palm to the escortial of the king of Spain. In Bedfusher, Resthouse and Park, which is a whole district, enclosed by ditches, walls, woodlands, rivers and hills, belongs to Henry Marquis of Kent. Hampton Court, in Hertfordshire, with its strong and battled keep and its gardens bounded by a piece of water which divides them from the forest, belongs to Thomas, Lord Conningsby. Grimm's Thor, in Lincolnshire, with its long forkade intersected by turrets in pale, its par, its fishponds, its pheasantries, its sheepfolds, its lawns, its grounds planted with rows of trees, its groves, its walks, its shrubberies, its flowerbeds and borders, formed in square and loasing shape and resembling great carpets. Its rays' courses and the majestic sweep for carriages to turn in at the entrance of their house belongs to Robert, Earl Lindsay, hereditary lord of the forest of Walton. Up Park in Sussex, a square house with two symmetrical belford pavilions on each side of the great courtyard, belongs to the right honourable Ford, Baron Grey of Work, by Count Glendale and Earl of Tenkewell. Nunem Paddox, in Warwickshire, which has two quadrangular fishponds and a gabled archway with a large window of four paints, belongs to the Earl of Denby, who's also Count von Rheinfelden, in Germany, with him Abbey, in Berkshire, with his French garden in which there are four curiously marbours and its great and battle towers supported by two bastions, belongs to Montag, Earl of Evingdon, who also owns Rheicot, of which she is Baron and the principal door of which pairs the device Verges Ariete Fortior. William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, has six dwelling places, of which Chatsworth, with two storied and of the finest order of Grecian architecture, is one. The by-count of Kynalmekie, who is Earl of Cork in Ireland, is owner of Burlington House Piccadilly, with its extensive gardens reaching to the fields outside London. He is also owner of Chiswick, where there are nine magnificent lodges. He also owns Laundersborough, which is a new house by the side of an old palace. The Duke of Beaufort owns Chelsea, which contains two gothic buildings and a Florentine one. He also has badminton in Gloucestershire, a residence from which a number of avenues branch out like rays from a star. The most noble and Poisson Prince Henry, Duke of Beaufort, is also Marquis and Earl of Worcester, Earl of Glamorgan, Wycount Grossman, and Baron Herbert of Chepstow, Baron Beaufort of Caldecott Castle and Baron de Bottetourt. John Holis, Duke of Newcastle, and Marquis of Clare, owns Bolsovere, with its majestic square keeps. He's also is Horton, in Nuttinghamshire, where a round pyramid made to imitate the Tower of Babel stands in the centre of a base in a water. William, Earl of Craven, Wycount ofington, and Baron Craven of Hamstead Marshall, owns Comby Abbey in Warwickshire, where is to be seen the finest water jet in England, and in Berkshire two baronies, Hamstead Marshall, on the vocada which, of five gothic lanterns, sunk in the wall, and Ashdown Park, which is a county seat situated at a point of intersection Lineus, Lord Clancharly, Baron Clancharly and Hunkerville, Marquis of Corleone in Sicily, derives his title from the castle of Clancharly, built in 912 by Edward the Elder, as a defence against the Danes. Besides Hunkerville House in London, which is a palace, he has Corleone Lodge at Windsor, which is another, and eight castle wards, one at Burton on Trent, with a royalty on the carriage of plaster of Paris, then Grande Thamble, Morricam, Treewood Wraith, Hell Curtis, where there is a miraculous well, fill in more with its turf bogs, recolour near the ancient city Bagniac, Winecombe, on the Moller Mountain. Besides 19 boroughs and villages with reefs, Penneth Chase, all of which brings his lordship 40,000 pounds a year. The 172 Peers enjoying their dignities under James II, possess among them altogether a revenue of 1,272,000 pounds sterling a year, which is the 11th part of the Revenue of England. In the margin opposite the last name of Linnaeus, Lord Clancharly, there was a note in the handwriting of Ursus. Rebel in exile. Houses, lands, and chattels sequestrated. It is well. Part 4 Ursus admired homo. One admires one's like it is a law. To be always raging inwardly and grumbling outwardly was the normal condition of Ursus. He was the male content of creation. By nature he was a man every in opposition. He took the world unkindly. He gave his satisfied to no one and to nothing. The bee did not atone by its honey making, for its sting. A full-blown rose did not absolve the sun for yellow fever and black vomit. It is probable that in secret Ursus criticized Providence a good deal. Evidently he would say, the devil works by spring and the wrong that God does is having let go the trigger. He approved of none but princes and he had his own peculiar way of expressing his approbation. One day when James II made a gift to the Virgin in a Catholic chapel in Ireland of a massive gold lamp Ursus, passing that way with Homo, who was more indifferent to such things, broke out in admiration before the crowd and exclaimed, it is certain that a blessed virgin wants a lamp much more than these barefooted children there require shoes. Such proves of his loyalty and such evidences of his respect for established powers probably contributed in no small degree to make the magistrates tolerate his vagabond life and his low alliance with a wolf. Sometimes of an evening through the weakness of friendship he allowed Homo to stretch his limbs and wander at liberty about the caravan. The wolf was incapable of an abuse of confidence and behaved in society that is to say among men with the discretion of a poodle. All the same if bad tempered officials had to be dealt with difficulties might have arisen so Ursus kept the honest wolf chained up as much as possible. From a political point of view his writing about gold not very intelligible in itself and now become undecidable was but a smear and gave no handle to the enemy. Even after the time of James II and under the respectable reign of William and Mary his caravan might have been seen peacefully going its rounds of the little English country towns. He traveled freely from one end of Great Britain to the other selling his filters and vials and sustaining with the assistance of his wolf his quack mummies. And he passed with ease through the meshes of the nets which the police at that period had spread all over England in order to sift wandering gangs and especially to stop the progress of the Comprachikos. This was right enough Ursus belonged to no gang. Ursus lived with Ursus a tet a tet into which the wolf gently thrust his nose. If Ursus could have had his way he would have been a carry bee that being impossible he preferred to be alone. The solitary man is a modified savage accepted by civilization he who wanders most is most alone hence his continual change of place to remain anywhere long suffocated him with a sense of being tamed he passed his life in passing on his way the sight of towns increased his taste for brambles, thickets thorns and holes in a rock his home was a forest he did not feel himself much out of his element in the murmur of crowded streets which is like enough to the bluster of trees the crowd to some extent satisfies our taste for the desert what he disliked in his van was its having a door and windows and thus resembling a house he would have realized his ideal had it been able to put a cave on four wheels and travel in a den he did not smile as we've already said but he used to laugh sometimes indeed frequently a bit to laugh there is consent in a smile while a laugh is often a refusal his great business was to hate the human race he was implacable in that hate having made it clear that human life is a dreadful thing having observed the superposition of evils kings on the people war on kings the plague on war famine on the plague folly on everything having proved a certain measure of chastisement in the mere fact of existence having recognized that death is a deliverance when they brought him a sick man he cured him he had cordials and beverages to prolong the lives of the old he put lame cripples on their legs again and hurled his sake as I met them there you are on your path once more may you walk long in this valley of tears when he saw a poor man dying of hunger he gave him all the pens he had about him growling out live on you wretch eat last a long time it is not I who would shorten your penal servitude after which he would rub his hands and say I do men all the harm I can through the little window at the back passers-by could read on the ceiling of the van these words written within but visible from without inscribed with charcoal in big letters urses philosopher and of section 2 section 3 of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Burk The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo another preliminary chapter the Compracicos part 1 who now knows the word Compracicos and who knows its meaning the Compracicos or Comprapicanios a hideous and nondescript association of wanderers famous in the 17th century forgotten in the 18th unheard of in the 19th the Compracicos are like their succession powder an ancient social characteristic detail they are part of old human ugliness to the great eye of history which sees everything collectively the Compracicos belong to the colossal fact of slavery Joseph sold by his brethren is a chapter in their story the Compracicos have left their traces in the Pina laws of Spain and England you find here and there in the dark confusion of English laws the impress of this horrible truth like the footprint of a savage in a forest Compracicos the same as Comprapicanios is a compound Spanish word signifying child buyers the Compracicos traded in children they bought and sold them they did not steal them the kidnapping of children is another branch of industry and what did they make of these children monsters why monsters to laugh at the populace must needs laugh and kings too the mountain bank is wanted in the streets the gesture at the Louvre the one is called a clown the other a fool the efforts of man to procure himself pleasure are at times worthy of the attention of the philosopher what are we sketching in these few preliminary pages a chapter in the most terrible of books a book which might be entitled the farming of the unhappy by the happy part 2 a child destined to be a plaything for men such a thing has existed such a thing exists even now in simple and savage times such a thing constituted an especial trade the 17th century called the great century was of those times it was a century very Byzantine in tone it combined corrupt simplicity with delicate ferocity a curious variety of civilisation a tiger with a simper Madame de Sevinier minces on the subject of the fog art and the wheel that century traded a good deal in children flattering historians have concealed the sore but have divulged the remedy Vincent de Paul in order that a human toy should succeed he must be taken early the dwarf must be fashioned when young we play with childhood but a well-formed child is not very amusing a hunchback is better fun hence grew an art there were trainers who took a man and made him an abortion they took a face and made a muscle they stunted growth artificial production of territorial cases had its rules it was quite a science what one can imagine as the antithesis of orthopathy where God had put a look there art put a squint where God had made harmony they made discord where God had made the perfect picture they re-established the sketch and in the eyes of connoisseurs it was the sketch which was perfect they debased animals as well they invented piebald horses Jiren rode a piebald horse in her own days do they not die dogs blue and green nature is our canvas man has always wished to add something to God's work man retouches creation sometimes for better sometimes for worse the court buffoon was nothing but an attempt to lead back man to the monkey it was a progress the wrong way a masterpiece in retrogression at the same time they tried to make a man of the monkey Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland and Countess of Southampton had a mama set for a page Francis Sutton Baroness Dudley ate purists in the bench of parents had tea served by a baboon clad in co-brocade which her ladyship called my black Catherine Sedley Countess of Dorchester used to go and take a seat in parliament in a coach with a memorial bearings behind which stood their muscles stuck up in the air three cape monkeys in grand livery a Duchess of Medina Selly whose toilet, cardinal pole witnessed had her stockings put on by an orangutan these monkeys raised in the scale were a counterpoise to men brutalized and bestialized this promiscuousness of man and beast desired by the great was especially prominent in the case of the dwarf and the dog the dwarf never quitted a dog always bigger than himself the dog was the pair of the dwarf it was as if they were coupled with a collar this juxtaposition is authenticated by a mass of domestic records notably by the portrait of Geoffrey Hudson dwarf of Henrietta of France daughter of Henri IV and wife of Charles I to the greater man tends to deform him this state was completed by this figment certain vivisectors of that period succeeded marvellously well in a facing from the human face the divine effigy Doctor Conquest member of the Armand Street College a judicial visitor of the chemist shops of London wrote a book in Latin on the pseudo surgery the processes of which she describes if we are to believe justice of Karik Furgus the inventor of this branch of surgery was a monk named Avonmore an Irish word signifying great river the dwarf of the electopalatine Perkyo whose effigy or ghost springs from a magical box in the cave of Heidelberg was a remarkable specimen of this science very varied in its applications its fashion beings the law of whose existence was hideously simple it permitted them to suffer and commanded them to amuse part three the manufacture of monsters was practised on a large scale and comprised various branches the sultan required them so did the pope the one to guard his women the other to say his prayers these were of a peculiar kind incapable of reproduction scarcely human beings they were useful to voluptuousness and to religion the Siruglio and the Sistine Chapel utilised the same species of monsters fierce in the former case mild in the latter they knew how to produce things in those days which are not produced now they had talents which we lack and it is not without reason that some good folk cry out that a decline has come we no longer know how to sculpt your living human flesh this is consequent on the loss of the art of torture men were once virtuose in that respect but also no longer the art has become so simplified that it will soon disappear altogether in cutting the limbs of living men in opening the door of living men in opening their bellies and in dragging out their entrails phenomena were grasped on the moment and discoveries made we are obliged to renounce these experiments now and are thus deprived of the progress which surgery made by aid of the executioner the vivisection of former days was not limited to the manufacture of phenomena for the marketplace of the fumes for the palace dishes of augmentative of the torture and eunuchs for sultans and popes it abounded in varieties one of its triumphs was the manufacture of cocks for the king of England it was the custom in the palace of the kings of England to have a sort of watchman who crowed like a cock this watcher, awake while all others slept ranged the palace and raced from hour to hour the cry of the farmyard repeating it as often as was necessary and thus applying a clock this man promoted the peacock had in childhood undergone the operation of the pharynx which was part of the art described by Dr. Conquest under Charles II the salivation inseparable to the operation having disgusted the duchess of horsemouth the appointment was indeed preserved so that the splendor of the crown would not be tarnished but they got an unutilated man to represent the cock a retired officer was generally selected for this honourable employment under James II the functioner was named William Samson, cock and received for his crow nine pounds, two shillings and six pence annually the memoirs of Catherine II informed us that at St. Petersburg scarcely a hundred years since whenever the Tsar of Tsarina was displeased with a Russian prince he was forced to squat down in the great anti-chamber of the palace and remain in that posture a certain number of days meowing like a cat or clocking like a sitting hen and pecking his food from the floor these fashions have passed away but not so much perhaps as one might imagine nowadays courtiers slightly modify their intonation in clocking to please their masters more than one picks up from the ground we will not say from the mud what he eats it is very fortunate that kings cannot err hence their contradictions never perplex us in approving always one is sure to be always right which is pleasant Louis XIV would not have liked to see at Versailles either an officer acting the cock or a prince acting the turkey that which raised royal and imperial dignity in England and Russia would have seemed to Louis the Great incompatible with the crown of St. Louis we know what his displeasure was when Madame Henriette forgot herself so far as to see a hen in a dream which was indeed a great breach of good manners in a lady of the court when one is of the court one should not dream of the court-judge Bossway, if may be remembered was nearly as scandalised as Louis XIV Part IV the commersing children in the 17th century as we have explained was connected with a trade the comprachicos engaged in the commerce and carried on the trade they bought children worked a little on the raw material and resold them afterwards the vendors were of all kinds from the wretched father getting rid of his family to the master utilising his stud of slaves the sale of men was a simple matter in our own time we have had fighting to maintain this right remember that it is less than a century ago since the Elector of Hesse sold his subjects to the king of England who required men to be killed in America kings went to the Elector of Hesse as we go to the butcher to buy meat the Elector had food for power in stock and hung up his subjects in the shop come by it is for sale in England under Jeffries after the tragical episode of Monmouth there were many lords and gentlemen beheaded and quartered those who were executed left wives and daughters widows and orphans whom James II gave to the queen his wife the queen sold these ladies to William Penn very likely the king had so much percent on the transaction the extraordinary thing is not that James II should have sold the women but that William Penn should have bought them Penn's purchase is excused or explained by the fact that having a desert to sell with men he needed women as farming implements her gracious majesty made a good business out of these ladies the young soldier we may imagine with the uneasy feeling which a complicated scandal arouses that probably some old duchesses were a threat probably some old duchesses were thrown in cheap the comprachicos were also called the chelas a hindu word which conveys the image of herring and nests for a long time the comprachicos only partially concealed themselves there is sometimes in the social order a favouring shadow thrown over iniquitous traders in which they thrive in our own day association of the kind in Spain under the direction of the rafion Ramon Cies last from 1834 to 1866 and hold three provinces under terra for 30 years Valencia Alicante and Mercia under the stewards the comprachicos were by no means in bad odour at court on occasions they were used for reasons of state for James II they were almost an instrumentum regni it was a time when families which were refractory or in the way were dismembered when a decent was cut short when heirs were suddenly suppressed at times one branch was defrauded to the prophet of another the comprachicos had a genius for disfiguration which recommended them to state policy to disfigure is better than to kill there was indeed the iron mask but that was a mighty measure Europe could not be people with iron masks while deformed tumblers ran about the streets without creating any surprise besides the iron mask is removable not so the mask of flesh you are masked forever by your own flesh what can be more ingenious the comprachicos were done man as the Chinese work on trees they had their secrets as we have said they had tricks which are now lost art a sort of fantastic stunted thing left their hands it was ridiculous and wonderful they would touch up a little being with such skill that it's father could not have known it ecu me conne très l'oeil mène de chanpère as Racine says in bad French sometimes they left the spine straight and remade the face they unmarked a child as one might unmark a pocket handkerchief products destined for tumblers had their joints dislocated in a marsily manner you would have said they had been bowed thus gymnasts were made not only did the comprachicos take away his face from the child they also took away his memory at least they took away all they could of it the child had no consciousness of the new relation to which he had been subjected this frightful surgery left its traces on his countenance but not on his mind the most he could recall was that one day he had been seized by men that next he had fallen asleep and then that he had been cured cured of what? cured of what? he did not know of burnings by sulfur and incisions by the iron he remembered nothing the comprachicos deadened the little patient by means of a stupefying powder which was thought to be magical and suppressed all pain this powder has been known from time immemorial in china and is still employed there in the present day the chinese have been beforehand with us in all our inventions printing, artillery aerostation, chloroform only the discovery which in Europe at once takes life and birth and becomes a prodigy and a wonder remains a crucianess in china and is preserved in a death like state china is a museum of embryos since we are in china let us remain there a moment to note up a culliarity in china from time immemorial they have possessed a certain refinement of industry and art it is the art of molding a living man they take a child two or three years old put him in a porcelain vase more or less grotesque which is made without top or bottom to allow egress for the head and feet during the day the vase is set upright and at night is laid down to allow the child to sleep thus the child thickens without growing taller filling up with his compressed flesh and distorted bones the reliefs in the vase this development in a bottle continues many years after a certain time it becomes irreparable when they consider that this is accomplished and the monster made they break the vase the child comes out and behold there is a man in the shape of a mug this is convenient when you draw off the times you are able to have it of any shape you wish part 5 James II tolerated the compressicos for the good reason that he made use of them at least it happened that he did so more than once we do not always disdain to use what we despise this low trade an excellent expedient sometimes for the higher one which is called state policy was willingly left in a miserable state but was not persecuted there was no surveillance but a certain amount of attention thus much might be useful the law closed one eye the king opened the other sometimes the king went so far as to avow his complicity these are addesities of monarchical terrorism the disfigured one was marked with a fleur-de-lis they took from him the mark of god they put on him the mark of god they put on him the mark of god they put on him the mark of the king Jacob Astley, knight and baronet lord of Melton Constable in the country of Norfolk had in his family a child well been sold and upon whose forehead the dealer had imprinted a fleur-de-lis with a hard iron in certain cases in which it was held desirable to register for some reason the royal origin of the new position made for the child they used such means England has always done us the honor to utilize for her personal service the fleur-de-lis the comprachicles allowing for the shade which divides a trade from a fanaticism were analogous to the stranglers of India they lived among themselves in gangs and to facilitate their progress affected somewhat of the Mary Andrew they encamped here and there but they were grave and religious bearing no affinity to other nomads and incapable of theft the people for a long time wrongly confounded them with the moors of Spain and the moors of China the moors of Spain were coiners the moors of China were thieves there was nothing of the sort about the comprachicles they were honest folk whatever you may think of them they were sometimes sincerely scrupulous they pushed open a door entered bargained for a child paid and deported all was done with propriety they were of all countries under the name of comprachicles fraternized English French Castilians Germans Italians a unity of idea a unity of superstition the pursuit of the same calling make such fusions in this fraternity of bagabones the Mediterranean seaboard represented the east those of the Atlantic seaboard the west many basques conversed with many Irishmen the Basque and Irishmen understand each other they speak the old Cunic jargon add to this the intimate relations of Catholic Ireland with Catholic Spain relations such that they terminated by bringing to the gallows in London one almost king of Ireland the Celtic Lord of Branny from which resulted the conquest of the county of Lathrem the comprachicles were rather a fellowship than a tribe rather a residuum than a fellowship it was all the riffraff of the universe having for the trade a crime it was a sort of harlequin people all composed of rags to recruit a man was the so on a tether to wander was the comprachicles law of existence to appear and disappear what is barely tolerated cannot take root even in the kingdoms where their business supply the courts and on occasions served as an auxiliary to the royal power they were now and then suddenly ill treated kings made use of their art and sent the artists to the gallows these inconsistencies belong to the open flow of royal capris for such is our pleasure a rolling stone and a roving trade gather no moss the comprachicles were poor they might have said what a lean and ragged witch had said when she saw them setting fire to the stake it is possible nay, probable their chiefs remaining unknown that the wholesale contractors in the trade were rich after the lapse of two centuries it would be difficult to throw any light on this point it was, as we have said, a fellowship it had its laws its oaths its formulae it had almost its cabala anyone nowadays wishing to know all about the comprachicles need only go into viscaya or galicia there were many basques among them and it is in those mountains that one hears their history to this day the comprachicles are spoken of at all your zoon at urbistondo at liso at astegaraga a guardate niño give oya ya mar al comprachicles take care child or I'll call the comprachicles is to cry with witch mothers frightened their children in that country the comprachicles like the sigoino and the gypsies had appointed places for periodical meetings from time to time their leaders conferred together in the 17th century they had four principal points of rendezvous one in spain the pass upon korbo one in germany the glade called the wicked woman near diekirsch where there are two enigmatic bas-reliefs representing a woman with a head and a man without one one in france the hill where was the colossal statue of mazila poames the sacred wood of borvatumona near babon laban one in england behind the garden wall of william cellana square of kispar and cleveland yorkshire behind the square tower and the great wing which is entered by an arched door part six the laws against vagabonds have always been very rigorous in england england in our gothic legislation seemed to be inspired with this principal homo erans fereerante pejor one of the special statues classifies the man without a home as more dangerous than the asp dragon lynx or basilisk atrosio raspide dracone linse et basilico for a long time england troubled herself concerning the gypsies of whom she wished to be rid as about the wolves of which she had been cleared in that the englishmen differed from the irishmen who prayed to the saints for the health of the wolf and called him my godfather english law nevertheless in the same way as we have just seen it tolerated the wolf tame, domesticated and becoming some sort of dog tolerated the regular vagabond becoming some sort of subject it did not trouble itself about either the mount bang or the traveling barber or the quack doctor or the peddler or the open-air scholar as long as they had a trade to live by further than this and with these exceptions the description of freedom which exists in the wanderer terrified the law a tramp was a possible public enemy that modern thing the lounger was then unknown that ancient thing the vagrant was alone understood a suspicious appearance that indescribable something which all understand and none can define was sufficient reason that society should take a man by the collar where do you live how do you get your living living and if he could not answer harsh penalties awaited him iron and fire were in the code the law practiced the coderization of vagrancy hence throughout English territory a veritable lois de suspect was applicable to vagrants who it must be owned readily became malefactors and particular to gypsies whose expulsion has erroneously been compared to the expulsion of the Jews and the moles from Spain and the Protestants from France as for us we do not confound a battu with a persecution the compracicles we insist had nothing in common with the gypsies the gypsies were a nation the compracicles were a compound of all nations the lease of a horrible vessel full of filthy waters the compracicles said not like the gypsies an idiom of their own their jargon was a promiscuous collection of idioms all languages were mixed together in their language they spoke a medley like the gypsies they had come to be a people winding through the peoples but their common tie was association at all epochs in history one finds in the vast liquid mass which constitutes humanity some of these streams of venomous men exuding poison around them the gypsies were a tribe the compracicles are free masonry a masonry having not a noble aim but a hideous handicraft finally their religions differ gypsies were pagans the compracicles were christians and more than that good christians as became an association which although a mixture of all nations owed its birth to spain a devout land they were more than christians they were catholics they were more than catholics they were romans and so touchy in their faith they were no pure but they refused to associate with the hangarian nomads of the commutative pest commanded a lead venomous man having for scepter a wand with a silver ball surmounted by the double headed austere eagle it is true that these hangarians were schismatics to the extent of celebrating the assumption on the 29th august which is an abomination in england, so long as the stewards reigned the confederation of the compracicles was for motives of which we have already given you a glimpse to a certain extent protected James II a devout man who persecuted the Jews and trampled out the gypsies was a good prince to the compracicles we have seen why the compracicles were buyers of the human wares in which he was dealer they excelled in disappearances disappearances are occasionally necessary for the good of the state an inconvenient heir of tender age whom they took and handled lost his shape this facilitated confiscation the transfer of titles to favourites was simplified the compracicles were moreover very discreet and very taciturn they bound themselves to silence and kept their word which is necessary in a passive state there was scarcely an example of there having betrayed the secrets of the king this was, it is true for their interest and if the king had lost confidence in them they would have been in great danger they were thus of use in a political point of view moreover these artists furnished singers for the holy father the compracicles were useful for the miserer of allegory they were particularly devoted to Mary all this pleased the papacy of the stewards James II could not be hostile to holy men who pushed their devotion to the virgin to the extent of manufacturing eunuchs in 1688 there was a change of dynasty in England orange supplanted stewart William III replaced James II James II went away to die in exile miracles were performed on his tomb and his relics cured the bishop of arton of vestula a worthy recompense of the christian virtues of the prince William, having needed the same ideas nor the same practices as James was severe to the compracicles he did his best to crush out the vermin a statue of the early part of William and Mary's reign hit the association of child buyers hard it was as the blow of a club to the compracicles who were from that time pulverized by the terms of this statue those of the fellowship taken and duly convicted were to be branded with a red hot iron imprinting R on the shoulder signifying rogue on the left hand T signifying thief and on the right hand M signifying manslayer the chiefs supposed to be rich although beggars in appearance were to be punished in the colistridium that is the pillory and branded on the forehead with a P besides having their goods confiscated and the trees in their woods routed up those who did not inform against the compracicles were to be punished by confiscation and imprisonment for life as for the crime of misprision as for the women found among these men they were to suffer the cocking stool this is a tumbrel the name of which is composed of the french worker cairn the cocking stool English law being endowed with a strange longevity this punishment still exists in English legislation for quarrelsome women the cocking stool is suspended over a river or a pond the woman seated on it the chair is allowed to drop into the water and then pulled out this tipping of the woman is repeated three times to cool her anger this is the commentator chameleon end of section 3 recording by burk section 004 of the man who laughs by victor ogle this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by John D. Nugent part I book I chapter I Portland Bill an obstinate north wind blew without ceasing over the mainland of Europe and yet more roughly over England during all the month of December 1689 and all the month of January 1690 hence the disastrous cold weather which caused that winter to be noted as memorable to the poor on the margin of the old bible in the presbyterian chapel of the non jurors in London thanks to the lasting qualities of the old monarchical parchment employed in official registers long lists of poor persons found dead of famine and cold are still legible in many local repositories particularly in the archives of the liberty of the clink in the borough of southwark of pi powder court which signifies dusty feet court and in those of white chapel court held in the village of steppany by the bailiff of the lord of the manor the Thames was frozen over a thing which does not happen once in a century as the ice forms on it with difficulty owing to the actions of the sea coaches rolled over the frozen river and a fair was held with booths bear baiting and bull baiting an ox was roasted whole on the ice this thick ice lasted two months the hard year 1690 surpassed in severity even the famous winters at the beginning of the 17th century so minutely observed by dr. giddy and deline the same who was in his quality of apothecary to king james honoured by the city of london with a bust and a pedestal one evening close of one of the most bitter days of the month of january 1690 something unusual was going on in one of the numerous inhospitable bites of the bay of portland which caused the seagulls and wild geese to scream and circle round its mouth not daring to re-enter in this creek the most dangerous of all which lined the bay during the continuance of certain winds finally, convenient by reason of its very danger for ships and hiding a little vessel almost touching the cliff so deep was the water was moored to the point of a rock we are wrong in saying the night falls we should say the night rises for it is from the earth that obscurity comes it was already night at the bottom of the cliff it was still day at top any one approaching the vessel's moorings would have recognized the biscuit and hooker the sun concealed all day by the mist had just set there was beginning to be felt that deep and sombre smell in collie which might be called anxiety for the absence of the sun with no wind from the sea the water of the creek was calm this was, especially in winter a lucky exception almost all the portland creeks of sandbars and in heavy weather the sea becomes very rough and to pass in safety much skill and practice are necessary these little ports ports more in appearance in fact are of small advantage they are hazardous to enter fearful to leave on this evening for a wonder there was no danger the biscuit hooker is of an ancient model now fallen into disuse this kind of hooker which has done service even in the navy was statley built in its hull a boat in size a ship in strength it figured in the armada sometimes the war hooker attained to a great tonnage thus the great griffin bearing a captain's flag and commanded by lupaz de Medina measured 650 good tons and carried 40 guns but the merchants and contraband hookers were very feeble specimens sea folk held them at their true value and esteemed the model a very sorry one the rigging of the hooker was made of hemp sometimes with wire inside which was probably intended as a means however unscientific of obtaining indications in the case of magnetic tension the lightness of this rigging did not exclude the use of heavy tackle the cabaret of the spanish galleon and the camille of the roman triumphs the helm was very long which gives the advantage of a long arm of leverage but the disadvantage of a small arc of effort two wheels in two pulleys at the end of the rudder corrected this defect and compensated to some extent for the loss of strength the compass was well housed in a case perfectly square and well balanced by its two copper frames placed horizontally one in the other on little bolts as in carden's lamps there was science and cunning in the construction of the hooker but it was ignorant science and barbarous cunning the hooker was primitive just like the pram and the canoe was kindred to the pram and stability and to the canoe in swiftness and like all vessels born of the instinct of the pirate and fisherman it had remarkable sea qualities it was equally well suited to landlocked and to open waters its system of sails complicated and stays very peculiar allowed of its navigating trimly in the close bays of asturias which are little more than enclosed basins as passages for instance and also freely out at sea it could sail around the lake and sail around the world a strange craft with two objects good for a pond and good for a storm the hooker is among vessels what the wag-tail is among birds one of the smallest and one of the boldest the wag-tail perching on a reed scarcely bends it and flying away crosses the ocean these bisque hookers even to the poorest were guilt and painted tattooing is part of the genius of those charming people savages to some degree the sublime collaring of their mountains nose and meadows reveals to them the rugged spell which ornament possesses in itself they are poverty-stricken and magnificent they put coats of arms on their cottages they have huge asses which they bit isn't with bells and huge oxen on which they put head-dresses of feathers their coaches which you can hear grinding are illuminated carved and hung with ribbons a cobbler has a bas-relief on his door it is only Saint Crispin and an old shoe but it is in stone they trim their leather and jackets with lace they do not mend their eggs but they embroider them vivacity profound and superb the basques are like the Greeks children of the sun while the Valencian drapes himself bare and sad in his russet-roan rug with a hold to pass his head through the natives of Galatia and Biscay have the delight of fine linen shirts bleached in the dew their thresholds in their windows teem with faces fair and fresh laughing under garlands of maize a joyous and proud serenity shines out in their ingenious arts in their trades in their customs in the dress of their maidens in their songs the mountain that colossal ruin is all aglow in Biscay the sun's rays go in and out of every break the wild Yatescavel is full of evils Biscay is Perinian grace Biscay is Alpine grace the dangerous bays the neighbors of St. Sebastian Lezo and Fonteribia with storms with clouds with spray flying over the capes with the rages of the waves and the winds with terror with uproar mingled boatwomen crowned with roses he who has seen the Basque country wishes to see it again it is the blessed land two harvests a year villages resonant and gay a stately poverty all Sunday the sound of guitars dancing, castanets love making houses clean and bright storks in the balfouries let us return to Portland that rugged mountain in the sea the peninsula of Portland looked at geometrically presents the appearance of a bird's head of which the bill is turned toward the ocean the back of the head towards Weymouth the Isthmus is its neck Portland, greatly to the sacrifice of its wilderness exists now but for trade the coasts of Portland were discovered by quarrymen and plasterers toward the middle of the 17th century since that period what is called Roman cement has been made of the Portland stone a useful industry enriching the district and disfiguring the bay two hundred years ago these coasts were eaten away as a cliff today as a quarry the pick bites meanly the wave grandly hints a diminution of beauty to the magnificent ravages of the ocean have succeeded the measured strokes of men these measured strokes have worked away the creek where the Biscay Hooker was moored to find any vestige of the little anchorage now destroyed the eastern side of the peninsula should be searched toward the point beyond Folly Pier and Dirtle Pier and even between the place called Church Hope and the place called Southwell the creek walled in on all sides by precipices higher than its width was minute by minute becoming more overshadowed by evening the misty gloom unusual at twilight became thicker it was like a growth of darkness at the bottom of a well the opening of the creek seaward a narrow passage traced on the almost night black interior of a pallid rift where the waves were moving you must have been quite close to perceive the hooker moored on the rocks and, as it were hidden by the great cloaks of shadow a plank thrown from on board on to a low and level projection of the cliff the only point on which a landing could be made place the vessel in communication with land dark figures were crossing and recrossing each other on this tottering gangway and in the shadow some people were embarking it was less cold in the creek than out at sea thanks to the screen of rock rising over the north of the basin which did not however prevent the people from shivering they were hurrying to find the forms as though they would be punched out with a tool certain indentations in their clothes were visible and showed that they belonged to the class called in England the ragged the twisting of the pathway could be distinguished vaguely in the relief of the cliff a girl who lets her stay lace hang down trailing over the back of an armchair describes without being conscious of it most of the paths of cliffs and mountains the pathway of this creek full of knots and angles almost perpendicular and better adapted for goats than men terminated on the platform where the plank was placed the pathways of cliffs ordinarily imply a not very inviting declivity they offer themselves less as a road than as a fall they sink rather than incline this one probably some ramification of a road on the plain above was disagreeable to look at so vertical was it from underneath you saw it gained by zigzag the higher layer of the cliff where it passed out through deep passages onto the high plateau by a cutting in the rock and the passengers for whom the vessel was waiting in the creek accepting the movement of embarkation which was being made in the creek a movement visibly scared and uneasy all around with solitude no step no noise no breath was heard at the other side of the roads at the entrance of Ringstead Bay you could just proceed the flotilla of shark-fishing boats which were evidently out of the reckoning these polar boats had been driven from Danish into English waters by the whims of the sea northerly winds play these tricks on fishermen they had just taken refuge in the anchorage of Portland a sign of bad weather expected and danger out at sea they were engaged in casting anchor the chief boat placed in front after the old manner of Norwegian flotillas all her rigging standing out black above the white level of the sea and in front might be perceived in the hook iron loaded with all kinds of hooks and harpoons destined for the Greenland shark the dogfish and the spinuous shark as well as the nets to pick up the sunfish except a few other craft all swept into the same corner the eye met nothing living on the vast horizon of Portland not a house, not a ship the coast in those days was not inhabited and the roads at that season were not safe whatever may have been the appearance of the weather the beings who were going to sail away in the Beske and Urca pressed on the hour of departure all the same they formed a busy and confused group in rapid movement on the shore to distinguish one from another was difficult impossible to tell whether they were old or young the indistinctness of evening intermixed and blurred them the mask of shadow was over their faces they were sketches in the night there were eight of them and there were seemingly among them one or two women hard to recognize under the rags and tatters at which the group was attired clothes which were no longer man's or woman's rags have no sex a smaller shadow flitting to and fro among the larger ones indicated either a dwarf or a child it was a child and of section 004 book one chapter one of the man who laughs by Victor Hugo recording by N. D. Nugent Van Nuys, California section five of the man who laughs by Victor Hugo this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by David Cole the man who laughs by Victor Hugo part one book the first chapter two left alone this is what an observer close at hand might have noted all war lung cloaks torn and patched but covering them and at need concealing them up to the eyes useful alike against the north wind in curiosity they moved with ease under these cloaks the greater number or a handkerchief rolled round the head a sort of rudiment which marks the commencement of the Turban in Spain this headdress was nothing unusual in England at that time the south was in fashion in the north perhaps this was connected with the fact that the north was beating the south it conquered and admired after the defeat of the Armada Castilian was considered in the halls of Elizabeth to be elegant court talk to speak English in the Palace of the Queen of England was held almost an impropriety partially to adopt the manners of those upon whom we impose our laws is the habit of the conquering barbarian towards conquered civilization the tartar contemplates and imitates the Chinese it was thus Castilian fashions penetrated into England in return, English interests crept into Spain one of the men in the group embarking appeared to be a chief he had sandals on his feet and was redesigned with gold lace tatters and a tinsel waistcoat shining under his cloak like the belly of a fish another pulled down over his face a felt cut like a sombrero this felt had no hole for a pipe thus indicating the wearer to be a man of letters on the principle that a man's vest is a child's cloak the child was wrapped over his rags in a sailor's jacket which descended to his knees by his height you would have guessed him to be a boy of ten or eleven his feet were bare the crew of the hooker was composed of a captain and two sailors the hooker had apparently come from Spain and was about to return thither she was beyond a doubt engaged in a healthy service from one coast to the other the persons embarking in her whispered among themselves the whispering interchanged by these creatures was of composite sound now a word of Spanish then of German then of French then of Gallic at times of Basque it was either a patois or a slang they appeared to be of all nations and yet of the same band the motley group appeared to be a company of comrades perhaps a gang of accomplices the crew was probably of their brotherhood community of object was visible in the embarkation had there been a little more light and if you could have looked at them attentively you might have perceived on these people rosaries and scapulas half hidden under their rags one of the semi-women mingling in the group had a rosary almost equal for the size of its beats to that of a dervish and easy to recognize for an Irish one made a flan im tithry which is also called flan and tithry you might also have observed had it not been so dark a figure of our lady and child carved in guilt on the bow of the hooker it was probably that of the Basque Notre Dame a sort of panagia of the old cantabre under this image which occupied the position of a figurehead it was a lantern which at that moment was not lighted an excess of caution which implied an extreme desire of concealment the lantern was evidently for two purposes when a lighted burned before the virgin and at the same time illumined the sea a beacon during duty as a taper under the bowsprit the cutwater long curved and sharp came out in front like the horn of a crescent at the top of the cutwater and at the feet of the virgin an ealing angel with folded wings leaned her back against the stem and looked through a spyglass on the horizon the angels gilded like our lady in the cutwater were holes and openings to let the waves pass through which afforded an opportunity for gilding in arabesques under the figure of the virgin was written in guilt capitals the word Matotina the name of the vessel not to be read just now on account of the darkness amid the confusion of departure they were thrown down in disorder at the foot of the cliff the goods which the voyagers were to take with them and which by means of a plank serving as a bridge across were being passed rapidly from the shore to the boat bags of biscuit, a cask of stock fish a case of portable soup three barrels one of fresh water one of malt, one of tar four or five bottles of ale an old portmanteau buckled up by straps, trunks, boxes a ball of tow for torches and signals such was the lading these ragged people had valises which seemed to indicate a roving life wandering rascals or obliged to own something at times they would prefer to fly away like birds but they cannot do so without abandoning the means of earning a livelihood they are of necessity possess boxes of tools and instruments of labour whatever their errand trade may be those whom we speak were dragging their baggage with them often an encumbrance it could not have been easy to bring these movables to the bottom of the cliff this however revealed the intention of a definite departure no time was lost there was one continued passing to and fro from the shore to the vessel and from the vessel to the shore each one took his share of the work one carried a bag and another a chest those amidst the promiscuous company who were possibly or probably women worked like the rest they overloaded the child it was doubtful if the child's father or mother were in the group no sign of life was found to save him they made him work nothing more he appeared not a man but a slave in a tribe he waited on everyone and no one spoke to him however he made haste and like the others of this mysterious troop he seemed to have but one thought to embark as quickly as possible did he know why? probably not he hurried mechanically because he saw the others hurry the hooker was decked the stowing of the laden in the hold was quickly finished and the moment to put off arrived the last case had been carried over the gangway and nothing was left to embark but the men the two objects among the group who seemed women were already on board six the child among them were still on the low platform of the cliff a movement of departure was made in the vessel the captain seized the helm a sailor took up an axe to cut the hawzer to cut is an evidence of haste when there is time it is unknotted and Emos said in a low voice he who appeared chief of the six and who had the spangles on his tatters the child rushed forward towards the plank in order to be the first to pass as he placed his foot on it two of the men hurried by at the risk of throwing him into the water got in before him and passed on the fourth drove him back with his fist and followed the third the fifth who was the chief bound it into rather than enter the vessel and as he jumped in kicked back the plank which fell into the sea a stroke of the hatchet cut the moorings the helm was put up the vessel left the shore and the child remained on land End of Section 5 Recording by David Cole Medway, Massachusetts