 Section 63 of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo Once, however, he thought it his duty to derogate from this prudence, for prudence's sake, thinking that it might be well to make Gwyn Plain uneasy. It is true that this idea arose from a circumstance much graver in the opinion of Ursus than the cabals of the fair or of the church. Gwyn Plain, as he picked up a farthing which had fallen when counting the receipts, had in the presence of the innkeeper drawn a contrast between the farthing representing the misery of the people and the die representing under the figure of Anne the parasitical magnificence of the throne, an ill-sounding speech. This observation was repeated by Master Nicholas and had such a run that it reached to Ursus through Phoebe and Venus. It put Ursus into a fever, seditious words, les majesties. He took Gwyn Plain severely to task, watch over your abominable jaws, there is a rule for the great to do nothing and a rule for the small to say nothing. The poor man has but one friend, silence. He should only pronounce one syllable, yes, to confess and to consent as all the right he has, yes to the judge, yes to the king, great people if it pleases them to do so beat us. I have received blows from them, it is their prerogative and they lose nothing of their greatness by breaking our bones. The ossifrage is a species of eagle, let us venerate the scepter which is the first of staves. Respect is prudence and mediocrity is safety. To insult the king is to put oneself in the same danger as a girl rashly paring the nails of a lion. They tell me that you have been prattling about the farthing which is the same thing as the liard and that you have found fault with the august medallion for which they sell us at market the eighth part of assault herring, take care, let us be serious, consider the existence of pains and penalties, suck in these legislative truths, you are in a country in which the man who cuts down a tree three years old is quietly taken off to the gallows. As to swearers their feet are put into the stocks, the drunkard is shut up in a barrel with a bottom out so that he can walk with a hole in the top through which his head is passed and with two in the bung for his hands so that he cannot lie down. He who strikes another one in Westminster Hall is imprisoned for life and has his goods confiscated. Whoever strikes anyone in the king's palace has his hands struck off. A fill upon the nose chances to bleed and behold you are maimed for life. He who is convicted of heresy in the bishop's court is burnt alive. It was for no great matter that Cuthbert Simpson was quartered on a turnstile. Three years since, in 1702, which is not long ago you see, they placed in the pillory a scoundrel called Daniel Defoe who had had the audacity to print the names of the members of Parliament who had spoken on the previous evening. He who commits high treason is disemboweled alive and they tear out his heart and buffet his cheeks with it. Impress on yourself notions of right and justice. Never allow yourself to speak a word and at the first cause of anxiety run for it, such is the bravery which I counsel and which I practice, and the way of temerity imitate the birds, and the way of talking imitate the fishes. England has one admirable point in her favour that her legislation is very mild. His admonition over Ursus remained uneasy for some time. Gwyn Plain not at all. The intrepidity of youth arises from want of experience. However, it seemed that Gwyn Plain had good reason for his easy mind, for the weeks flowed on peacefully and no bad consequences seemed to have resulted from his observations about the Queen. Ursus, we know, lacked apathy, and like a row-back on the watch kept a look out in every direction. One day, a short time after his sermon to Gwyn Plain, as he was looking out from the window in the wall which commanded the field, he became suddenly pale. Gwyn Plain! What? Look! Where? In the field! Well, do you see that passerby, the man in black, yes, who has a kind of mace in his hand? Yes! Well? Well, Gwyn Plain, that man is a weapon-take. What is a weapon-take? He is the bailiff of the hundred. What is the bailiff of the hundred? He is the proposito sondredi. And what is the proposito sondredi? He is a terrible officer. What has he got in his hand? The iron weapon. What is the iron weapon? A thing made of iron. What does he do with that? First of all, he swears upon it. It is for that reason that he is called the weapon-take. And then? And then he touches you with it. With what? With the iron weapon. The weapon-take touches you with the iron weapon? Yes! What does that mean? That means follow me. Must you follow? Yes! With a? How should I know? But he tells you where he is going to take you. No! How's that? He says nothing and you say nothing. But he touches you with the iron weapon. All is over then. You must go. But where? After him. But where? Wherever he likes, Gwyn Plain. And if you resist, you are hanged. Ursus looked out of the window again and, drawing a long breath, said, Thank God he has passed. He was not coming here. Ursus was perhaps unreasonably alarmed about the indiscreet remark and the consequences likely to result from the unconsidered words of Gwyn Plain. Professor Nicholas, who had heard them, had no interest in compromising the poor inhabitants of the green box. He was amassing at the same time as the laughing man, a nice little fortune. Chaos vanquished had succeeded in two ways. While it made art triumph on the stage, it made drunkenness prosper in the tavern. End of Section 63. Recording by John Trevethick. Section 64 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. The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. Part 2, Book III, Chapter 6. The Mouse Examined by the Cats. Ursus was soon afterwards startled by another alarming circumstance. This time it was he himself who was concerned. He was summoned to bishopskate before a commission composed of three disagreeable countenances. They belonged to three doctors called overseers. One was a doctor of theology, delegated by the Dean of Westminster. Another a doctor of medicine, delegated by the College of Surgeons. The third a doctor in history and civil law, delegated by Gresham College. These three experts, in Omne Ray Skibele, had the censorship of everything said in public throughout the bounds of the 130 parishes of London, the 73 of Middlesex, and by extension, the five of Southwick. Such theological jurisdictions still subsist in England and do good service. In December 1868 by sentence of the Court of Arches, confirmed by the decision of the Privy Council, the Reverend McConaughey was censured, besides being condemned in costs, for having placed lighted candles on a table. The liturgy allows no jokes. Ursus then, one fine day, received from the delegated doctors in order to appear before them, which was luckily given into his own hands, and which he was therefore unable to keep secret. Without saying a word, he obeyed the citation, shuddering at the thought that he might be considered culpable to the extent of having the appearance of being suspected of a certain amount of rashness. He who had so recommended silence to others, had here a rough lesson. G'rule sanate ipsum. The three doctors, delegated and appointed overseers, sat at Bishop's Gate at the end of a room on the ground floor, in three armchairs covered with black leather, with three busts of Minus, Aeacus, and Radamanthus in the wall above their heads, a table before them, and at their feet a form for the accused. Ursus, introduced by a tip-staff of placid but severe expression, entered, perceived the doctors, and immediately in his own mind gave to each of them the name of the judge of the infernal regions represented by the bust placed above his head. Minus, the president, the representative of theology, made him assigned to sit down on the form. Ursus made a proper bow, that is to say, bowed to the ground, and knowing that bears are charmed by honey and doctors by Latin, he said, keeping his body still bent respectfully, Très facuant capitulum. Then with head inclined for modesty to psalms, he sat down on the form. Each of the three doctors had before him a bundle of papers of which he was turning the leaves. Minus began, You speak in public? Yes, replied Ursus. By what right? I am a philosopher. That gives no right. I am also a mountain-bank, said Ursus. That is a different thing. Ursus breathed again but with humility. Minus resumed, As a mountain-bank, you may speak. As a philosopher, you must keep silence. I will try, said Ursus, and he thought to himself, I may speak, but I must be silent. How complicated! He was much alarmed. The same overseer continued, You say things which do not sound right. You insult religion. You deny the most evident truths. You propagate revolting errors. For instance, you have said that the fact of virginity excludes the possibility of maternity. Ursus lifted his eyes meekly. I did not say that. I said that the fact of maternity excludes the possibility of virginity. Minus was thoughtful and mumbled, True, that is the contrary. It was really the same thing. But Ursus had parried the first blow. Minus, meditating on the answer just given by Ursus, sank into the depths of his own imbecility and kept silent. The overseer of history, or as Ursus called him, Radamanthus, covered the retreat of Minus by this interpolation, Accused, your audacity and your errors are of two sorts. You have denied that the battle of Parcellia would have been lost because Brutus and Cassius had met a negro. I said, murmured Ursus, that there was something in the fact that Caesar was the better captain. The man of history passed without transition to mythology. You have excused the infamous acts of Actaeon. I think, said Ursus insinuatingly, that a man is not dishonored by having seen a naked woman. Then you are wrong, said the judge severely, Radamanthus returned to history, a propose of the accidents which happened to the cavalry of Mithridates. You have contested the virtues of herbs and plants. You have denied that a herb like the Secura Ducca could make the shoes of horses fall off. Pardon me, replied Ursus. I said that the power existed only in the herb Sphera Cavallo. I never denied the virtue of any herb. And he added in a low voice, nor of any woman. Why this extraneous addition to his answer, Ursus proved to himself that anxious as he was, he was not disheartened. Ursus was a compound of terror and presence of mind. To continue, resumed Radamanthus, you have declared that it was folly in Scipio, when he wished to open the gates of Carthage, to use as a key the herb Aethiopus, because the herb Aethiopus has not the property of breaking locks. I merely said that he would have done better to have used the herb Lunaria. That is a matter of opinion, murmured Radamanthus touched in his turn, and the man of history was silent. The theologian, Minus, having returned to consciousness, questioned Ursus anew, he had had time to consult his notes. You have classed orperment amongst the products of arsenic, and you have said that it is a poison, the Bible denies this. The Bible denies, but arsenic affirms it, sighed Ursus. The man whom Ursus called Aeacus, and who was the envy of medicine, had not yet spoken, but now looking down on Ursus, with proudly half-closed eyes, he said, The answer is not without some show of reason. Ursus thanked him with his most cringing smile. Minus frowned frightfully, I resume, said Minus. You have said that it is false that the basilisk is the king of serpents under the name of Cockatrice. Very reverend Sir, said Ursus, so little did I desire to insult the basilisk that I have given out as certain that it has a man's head. Be it so, replied Minus severely, but you added that Poerius had seen one with the head of a falcon. Can you prove it? Not easily, said Ursus, here he had lost a little ground. Minus, seizing the advantage, pushed it. You have said that a converted Jew has not a nice smell. Yes, but I added that a Christian who becomes a Jew has a nasty one. Minus lost his eyes over the accusing documents. You have affirmed and propagated things which are impossible. You have said that Allian has seen an elephant write sentences. Nay, very reverend gentlemen, I simply said that Opian had heard a hippopotamus discuss a philosophical problem. You have declared that it is not true that a dish made of beech wood will become covered of itself with all the viands that one can desire. I said that if it has this virtue it must be that you received it from the devil. But I received it. No, most reverend sir, I, nobody, everybody. Aside Ursus thought I don't know what I'm saying. But as outward confusion, though extreme, was not distinctly visible, Ursus struggled with it. All this, Minus began again, implies a certain belief in the devil. Ursus held his own. Very reverend sir, I am not an unbeliever with regard to the devil. Belief in the devil is the reverse side of faith in God. The one proves the other. He who does not believe a little in the devil does not believe much in God. He who believes in the sun must believe in the shadow. The devil is the night of God. What is night? The proof of day. Ursus here extemporized a fathomless combination of philosophy and religion. Minus remained pensive and relapsed into silence. Ursus breathed afresh. A sharp onslaught now took place. Aeacus, the medical delicate who had disdainfully protected Ursus against the theologian, now turned suddenly from auxiliary into assailant. He placed his closed fist on his bundle of papers which was large and heavy. Ursus received this apostrophe full in the breast. It is proved that crystal is sublimated ice and that the diamond is sublimated crystal. It is a word that ice becomes crystal in a thousand years and crystal diamond in a thousand ages. You have denied this. When he replied Ursus with sadness, I only said that in a thousand years ice had time to melt and that a thousand ages were difficult to count. The examination went on. Questions and answers clashed like swords. You have denied that plants can talk. Not at all. Do so they must grow under a gibbet. Do you own that the Madragora cries? No, but it sings. You have denied that the fourth finger of the left hand has a cordial virtue. I only said that to sneeze to the left was a bad sign. You have spoken rashly and disrespectfully of the phoenix. Learned judge, I merely said that when he wrote that the brain of the phoenix was a delicate morsel but that it produced a headache, Plutarch was a little out of his reckoning in as much as the phoenix never existed. At a testable speech, the cinemorca which makes its nest with sticks of cinnamon, the rindicus that parasatus use in the manufacture of his poisons, the manu codiasus which is the bird of paradise, and the cementa which has a threefold beak have been mistaken for the phoenix, but the phoenix has existed. I do not deny it. You are a stupid ass. I desire to be thought no better. You have confessed that the elder tree cures the Quincy, but you added that it was not because it has in its root a fairy excretence. I said it was because Judas hung himself on an elder tree. A plausible opinion growled the theologian glad to strike his little blow at Aeacus. Once repulsed soon turns to anger, Aeacus was enraged, wandering mountain bank, you wander as much in mind as with your feet. Your tendencies are out of the way and suspicious. You approach the bounds of sorcery. You have dealings with unknown animals. You speak to the populace of things that exist but for you alone, and the nature of which is unknown such as the hemeris. The hemeris is a viper which was seen by Tremelius. This repartee produced a certain disorder in the irritated science of Dr. Aeacus. Ursus added, The existence of the hemeris is quite as true as that of the odoriferous hyena and of the civet described by Castellus. Aeacus got out of the difficulty by charging home. Here are your own words and very diabolical words they are, listen. With his eyes on his notes, Aeacus read, Two plants, the thalassigal and the aglaphotis, Illuminous in the evening, flowers by day, stars by night, And looking steadily at Ursus, what have you to say to that? Ursus answered, Every plant is a lamp, its perfume is its light. Aeacus turned over other pages. You have denied that the vesicles of the Otto are equivalent to Castorium. I merely said that perhaps it may be necessary to receive the teaching of Aetius on this point with some reserve. Aeacus became furious. You practice medicine. I practice medicine, sighed Ursus timidly. On living things! Rather than on dead ones, said Ursus. Ursus defended himself stoutly but dully, an admirable mixture in which meekness predominated. He spoke with such gentleness that Dr. Aeacus felt that he must insult him. What are you murmuring there? Said he rudely. Ursus was amazed and restricted himself to saying, Murmurings are for the young and moans for the aged, alas, I moan. Aeacus replied, Be assured of this. If you attend a sick person and he dies, you will be punished by death. Ursus hesitated a question, and if he gets well? In that case, said the doctor, softening his voice, you will be punished by death. There is little difference, said Ursus. The doctor replied, If death ensues, we punish gross ignorance. If recovery, we punish presumption. The gibbit in either case. I was ignorant of the circumstances, murmured Ursus. I thank you for teaching me. And does not know all the beauties of the law. Take care of yourself, religiously, said Ursus. We know what you are about. As for me, thought Ursus, that is more than I always know myself. We could send you to prison. I see that perfectly, gentlemen. You cannot deny your infractions nor your encroachments. My philosophy asks pardon. It audacity has been attributed to you. That is quite a mistake. It is said that you have cured the sick. I am the victim of calamity. The three pairs of eyebrows which were so horribly fixed on Ursus contracted. The three wise faces drew near to each other and whispered. Ursus had the vision of a vague fool's cap sketched out above those three empowered heads. The low and requisite whispering of the trio was of some minute's duration, during which time Ursus felt all the ice and all the scorch of agony. At length, Minus, who was president, turned to him and said angrily, Go away! Ursus felt something like Jonas when he was leaving the belly of the whale. Minus continued, You are discharged! Ursus said to himself, They won't catch me at this again. Goodbye, medicine! When he added in his innermost heart, From henceforth I will carefully allow them to die. Bent double, he bowed everywhere, To the doctors, to the buffs, the tables, the walls, And retiring backwards through the door disappeared almost as a shadow melting into air. He left the hall slowly like an innocent man and rushed from the street rapidly like a guilty one. The officers of justice are so singular and obscure in their ways that even when acquitted one flies from them. As he flared he mumbled, I am well out of it, I am the savant untamed, they the savant civilised. Doctors cavill at the learned, false science is the excrement of the true and is employed to the destruction of philosophers. Philosophers as they produce sophists produce their own scourge. Of the dung of the thrashes born the mistletoe with which is made bird lime with which the thrush is captured, turd of seabee malum cacat. We do not represent Ursus as a refined man. He was imprudent enough to use words which expressed his thoughts. He had no more taste than vault hair. When Ursus returned to the green box he told Martha Nicholas that he had been delayed by following a pretty woman and let not a word escape him concerning his adventure. In the evening when he said in a low voice to Homo, See here, I have vanquished the three heads of Serbius. End of section 64. Recording by John Trivithic. Section 65 of The Man Who Lasts 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. The Man Who Lasts by Victor Hugo. Part 2 Book III Chapter 7. Why should a gold-piece lower itself by mixing with a heap of pennies? An event happened. The tadcaster in became more and more a furnace of joy and laughter. Never was there more resonant gaiety. The landlord and his boy were becoming sufficient to draw the ale stout and porter. In the evening in the lower room of its windows all aglow there was not a vacant table. They sang, they shouted. The great old hearth vaulted like an oven with its iron bars piled with coals shone out brightly. It was like a house of fire and noise. In the yard, that is to say in the theatre, the crowd was greater still. Crowds as great as a suburb of Southwick could supply so throng the performances of chaos vanquished that directly the curtain was raised, that is to say the platform of the green box was lowered, every place was filled. The windows were alive with spectators, the balcony was crammed, not a single paving-stone in the paved yard was to be seen. It seemed paved with faces. Only the compartment for the nobility remained empty. There was thus a space in the centre of the balcony, a black hole called a metaphorical slaying an oven. No one there, crowds everywhere except in that one spot. One evening it was occupied. It was on a Saturday, a day on which the English make all haste to amuse themselves before the on-way of Sunday, the hall was full. We say hall, Shakespeare for a long time had to use the yard of an in for a theatre, and he called it hall. Just as the curtain rose on the prologue of chaos vanquished, with Ursules, Homo and Gwyn Plaine on the stage, Ursules from Havett cast a look at the audience and felt a sensation. The compartment for the nobility was occupied. A lady was sitting alone in the middle of the box on the U-trecht velvet armchair. She was alone and she filled the box. Certain beings seemed to give out light. This lady, like Dia, had a light in herself but a light of a different character. Dia was pale, this lady was pink. Dia was the twilight, this lady, Aurora. Dia was beautiful, this lady was superb. Dia was innocent, candor, fairness, alabaster. This woman was of the purple, and one felt that she did not fear the blush. Through a radiation overflowed the box. She sat in the midst of it, immovable in the spreading majesty of an idol. Amidst the sordid crowd, she shone out grandly, as with the radiance of a carbuncle, she inundated it with so much light that she drowned it in a shadow, and all the mean faces in it underwent eclipse. Her splendor blotted out all else. Every eye was turned towards her. Tom Jim Jack was in the crowd. He was lost like the rest in the nimbus of this dazzling creature. The lady at first absorbed the whole attention of the public, who had crowded to the performance, thus somewhat diminishing the opening effects of chaos vanquished. Whatever might be the air of dreamland about her, for those who were near, she was a woman, per chance too much a woman. She was tall and amply formed, and showed as much as possible of her magnificent person. She wore heavy earrings of pearls, with which were mixed those whimsical jewels called keys of England. Her upper dress was of Indian muslin, embroidered all over with gold, a great luxury, because those muslin dresses then cost six hundred crowns. A large diamond brooch closed her chemets, the which she wore so as to display her shoulders and bosom in the immorist fashion of the time. The chemetette was made of that borne of which Anavostria had sheets so fine that they could be passed through a ring. She wore what seemed like a cuirass of rubies. Some uncut but polished, and precious stones were sewn all over the body of her dress. Then her eyebrows were blackened with Indian ink, and her arms, elbows, shoulders, chin and nostrils were the top of her eyelids, the lobes of her ears, the palms of her hands, the tips of her fingers were tinted with a glowing and provoking touch of colour. Above all she wore an expression of implacable determination to be beautiful. This reached the point of ferocity. She was like a panther with the power of turning cat at will and caressing. One of her eyes was blue, the other black. Green plain as well as Ursus contemplated her. The green box somewhat resembled a fantasmagoria in its representations. Chaos vanquished was rather a dream than a piece. It generally produced on the audience the effect of a vision. Now this effect was reflected on the actors. The house took the performers by surprise and they were thunderstruck in their turn. It was a rebound of fascination. The woman watched them and they watched her. At the distance at which they were placed and in that luminous mist which is the half-light of a theatre, details were lost and it was like a hallucination. Of course it was a woman, but was it not a shimmerer as well? The penetration of her light into their obscurity stupefied them. It was like the appearance of an unknown planet. It came from a world of a happy. Her irradiation amplified her figure. The lady was covered with nocturnal glitterings like a milky way, her precious stones were stars, the diamond brooch was perhaps a pliad, the splendid beauty of her bosom seemed supernatural. They felt, as they looked upon the star-like creature, the momentary but thrilling approach of the regions of Felicity. It was out of the heights of a paradise that she leaned towards their mean-looking green box and revealed to the gaze of its wretched audience her expression of an exhorable serenity. As she satisfied her unbounded curiosity, she fed at the same time the curiosity of the public. It was the zenith permitting the abyss to look at it. Osus, Gwynplaine, Venus, Phoebe, the crowd, everyone had succumbed to her dazzling beauty except Daia, ignorant in her darkness. An apparition was indeed before them, but none of the ideas usually evoked by the word were realized in the lady's appearance. There was nothing about her diaphanous, nothing undecided, nothing floating, no mist. She was an apparition rose-colored and fresh and full of health. Yet under the optical condition in which Osus and Gwynplaine were placed, she looked like a vision. There are fleshy phantoms called vampires. Such a queen as she, though a spirit to the crowd, consumes twelve hundred thousand a year to keep her health. Behind the lady in the shadow her page was to be perceived, El Muzal, a little child-like man, fair and pretty, with a serious face. A very young and very grave servant was the fashion at that period. This page was dressed from top-to-toe and scarlet velvet, and had on his skull-cap, which was embroidered with gold, a bunch of curled feathers. This was the sign of a high class of service and indicated attendance on a very great lady. The lackey is part of the lord, and it was impossible not to remark in the shadow of his mistress the train-bearing page. Very often takes notes unconsciously, and without Gwynplaine suspecting it, the round cheeks the serious mean the embroidered and plumed cap of the lady's page left some trace on his mind. The page, however, did nothing to call attention to himself. To do so was to be wanting in respect. He held himself aloof and passive at the back of the box, retiring as far as the closed door permitted. Notwithstanding the presence of her train-bearer, the lady was not the less alone in the compartment since a valet counts for nothing. However powerful a diversion had been produced by this person, who produced the effect of a personage, the denouement of chaos vanquished was more powerful still. The impression which it made was, as usual, irresistible. Perhaps even there occurred in the hall on account of the radiant spectator, for sometimes the spectator is part of the spectacle, an increase of electricity. The contagion of Gwynplaine's laugh was more triumphant than ever. The whole audience fell into an indescribable epilepsy of hilarity through which could be distinguished the sonorous and magisterial ha-ha of Tom Jim Jack. Only the unknown lady looked at the performance with the immobility of a statue, and with her eyes like those of a phantom she laughed not, a specter but sun-born. The performance over, the platform drawn up and the family reassembled in the green box, Ursus opened and emptied on the supper table the bag of receipts. From a heap of pennies there slid suddenly forth a Spanish-gold onza, hers, tri-dursus. The onza, amidst the pence covered with vertigris, was a type of the lady amidst the crowd. She has paid an onza for her seat, cried Ursus with enthusiasm. Just then the hotelkeeper entered the green box and, passing his arm out of the window at the back of it, opened the loophole in the wall of which we have already spoken, which gave her view over the field and which was level with the window. Then he made a silent sign to Ursus to look out. A carriage, swarming with plumed footmen carrying torches and magnificently appointed, was driving off at a fast trot. Ursus took the piece of gold between his forefinger and thumb respectfully, and showing it to Master Nicholas said, She is a goddess. Then his eyes falling on the carriage which was about to turn the corner of the field, and on the imperial, of which the footmen's torches lighted up a gold corret with eight strawberry leaves, he exclaimed, She is more. She is a duchess. The carriage disappeared, the rumbling of its wheels died away in the distance. Ursus remained some moments in an ecstasy holding the gold piece between his finger and thumb as in a monstrance, elevating it as the priest elevates the host. Then he placed it on the table and, as he contemplated it, began to talk of Madam. The innkeeper replied, She was a duchess. Yes, they knew her title, but her name, of that they were ignorant. Master Nicholas had been close to the carriage and seen the coat of arms and the footmen covered with lace. The coachman had a wig on which might have belonged to a Lord Chancellor. The carriage was of that rare design called in Spain coche tumbone, a splendid build with a top like a tomb which makes a magnificent support for a coronet. The page was a man in miniature so small that he could sit on the step of the carriage outside the door. The duty of those pretty creatures was to bear the trains of their mistresses. They also bore their messages. And did you remark the plumed cap of the page? How grand it was! You pay a fine if you wear those plumes without the right of doing so. Master Nicholas had seen the lady too, quite close, a kind of queen. Such wealth gives beauty. The skinner's whiter, the eye more proud, the gate more noble, and grace more insolent. Nothing can equal the elegant impertinence of hands which never work. Master Nicholas told the story of all the magnificence of the white skin with the blue veins, the neck, the shoulders, the arms, the touch of paint everywhere, the pearl earrings, the headdress powdered with gold, the profusion of stones, the rubies, the diamonds. Less brilliant than her eyes, murmurousness. Gwyn Plain said nothing. Day I listened. And do you know, said the tavernkeeper, the most wonderful thing of all? What said Ursus? I saw her get into her carriage. What then? She did not get in alone. Nonsense. Someone got in with her. Who? Guess. The king said Ursus. In the first place, said Master Nicholas, there is no king at present. We are not living under a cane. Guess who got into the carriage with the duchess? Jupiter, said Ursus. The hotelkeeper replied, Tom Jim Jack. Gwyn Plain, who had not said a word, broke silence. Tom Jim Jack, he cried. There was a pause of astonishment during which the low voice of dear was heard to say, cannot this woman be prevented coming. End of section 65, recording by John Trebythic. Section 66 of The Man Who Loves 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 Maxim Babich from Desna Gorsk. The Man Who Loves by Victor Hugo. Part 2, Book the Third, The Beginning of the Fisher. Chapter 8, Symptoms of Poisoning. The apparition did not return. It did not reappear in the theater, but it reappeared to the memory of Gwyn Plain. Gwyn Plain was, to a certain degree, troubled. It seemed to him that for the first time in his life he had seen a woman. He made that first stumble, a strange dream. We should beware of the nature of the ravers that fasten on us. Ravery has in it the mystery and subtlety of an odor. It is to thought what perfume is to the tube rose. It is at times the exudation of a venomous idea, and it penetrates like a vapor. You may poison yourself with the ravers, as with flowers. An intoxicating suicide, exquisite and malignant. The suicide of the soul is evil thought. In it is the poison. Ravery attracts cajoles, lures, entwines, and then makes you its accomplice. It makes you bear your half in the tricories which it plays on conscience. It charms, then it corrupts you. We may serve Ravery as of play. One begins by being a dupe, and ends by being a cheat. Green Plain dreamed. He had never before seen a woman. He had seen the shadow in the women of the populace, and he had seen the soul, India. He had just seen the reality. A warm and living skin, under which one felt the circulation of passionate blood. An outline with the precision of marble, and the undulation of the wave. A high and impassive mean, mingling refusal with attraction, and summing itself up in its own glory. Hair of the color of the reflection from a furnace. A gallantry of adornment producing in herself and in others a tremor of voluptuousness. The half revealed nudity, betraying a disdainful desire to be coveted at a distance by the crowd. An ineradicable coquetry. The charm of impenetrability. Temptation seasoned by the glimpse of perdition. A promise to the senses, and a menace to the mind. A double anxiety. The one desire, the other fear. He had just seen these things. He had just seen women. He had seen more and less than a woman. He had seen a female. And at the same time an Olympian. The female of a god. The mystery of sex had just been revealed to him. And where? On inaccessible heights, at an infinite distance. Oh mocking destiny. The soul that celestial essence he possessed. He held it in his hand. It was dear. Sex that terrestrial embodiment he perceived in the heights of heaven. It was that woman. A duchess. More than a goddess, Ursus had said. What a precipice even dreams dissolved before such a perpendicular height to escalate. Was he going to commit the folly of dreaming about the unknown beauty? He debated with himself. He recalled all that Ursus had said of high stations which are almost royal. The philosophers' disquisitions, which had hitherto seemed so useless, now became landmarks for his thoughts. A very thin layer of forgetfulness often lies over our memory, through which at times we catch a glimpse of all beneath it. His fancy ran on that august world, the peerage, to which the lady belonged, and which was so inexorably placed above the inferior world, the common people, of which he was one. And was he even one of the people? Was not he the mountain bank, below the lowest of the low? For the first time, since he had arrived at the age of reflection, he felt his heart vaguely contracted by a sense of his baseness, and of that which we nowadays call a basement. The paintings and the catalogues of Ursus, his lyrical inventories, his de-therambics of castles, parks, fountains and colonnades, his catalogues of riches and of power, revived in the memory of Green Plain, in the relief of reality mingled with mist. He was possessed with the image of this zenith, that a man should be a lord. It seemed chimerical. It was so, however. Incredible thing. There were lords, but were they of flesh and blood like ourselves? It seemed doubtful. He felt that he lay at the bottom of all darkness, encompassed by a wall, while he could just perceive in the far distance above his head, through the mouth of the pit, a dazzling confusion of azure, of figures, and of rays which was Olympus. In the midst of this glory, the duchess shone out resplendent. He felt for this woman a strange, inexpressible longing, combined with a conviction of the impossibility of attainment. This poignant contradiction returned to his mind again and again, notwithstanding every effort. He saw near to him, even within his reach, in close and tangible reality, the soul, and in the unattainable, in the depths of the ideal, the flesh. None of these thoughts attained to certain shape. They were as a vapor within him, changing every instant its form and floating away. But the darkness which the vapor caused was intense. He did not form even in his dreams any hope of reaching the heights where the duchess dwelt, luckily for him. The vibration of such ladders of fancy, if ever we put out food upon them, may render our brains dizzy forever. Intending to scale Olympus, we reached Bedlam. Any distinct feeling of actual desire would have terrified him. He entertained none of that nature. Besides, was he likely ever to see the Lady again? Most probably not. To fall in love with the passing light on the horizon, madness cannot reach to that pitch. To make loving eyes at a star, even, is not incomprehensible. It is seen again, it reappears, it is fixed in the sky. But can anyone be enamored of a flash of lightning? Dreams flowed and ebbed within him. The majestic and gallant idol at the back of the box had cast a light over his diffused ideas, then faded away. He thought, yet thought not of it, turned to other things, returned to it. It rocked about in his brain, nothing more. It broke his sleep for several nights. Sleeplessness is as full of dreams as sleep. It is almost impossible to express in their exact limits the abstract evolutions of the brain. The inconvenience of words is that they are more marked in form than ideas. All ideas have indistinct boundary lines. Words have not. A certain diffused phase of the soul ever escapes words. Expression has its frontiers, thought has none. The depths of our sacred souls are so vast that Green Plains dreams scarcely touch Dea. Dea reigned sacred in the center of his soul. Nothing could approach her. Still for such contradictions make up the soul of man, there was a conflict within him. Was he conscious of it? Scarcely. In his heart of hearts he felt a collision of desires. We all have our weak points. Its nature would have been clear to Ursus, but to Green Plain it was not. Two instincts, one the ideal, the other sexual, were struggling within him. Such contests occur between the angels of light and darkness on the edge of the abyss. At length the angel of darkness was overthrown. One day Green Plains suddenly thought no more of the unknown woman. The struggle between two principles, the duel between his earthly and his heavenly nature, had taken place within his soul, and at such depth that he had understood it but dimly. One thing was certain, that he had never for one moment ceased to adore Dea. He had been attacked by a violent disorder, his blood had been fevered, but it was over. Dea alone remained. Green Plains would have been much astonished had anyone told him that Dea had ever been even for a moment in danger. And in a week or two the phantom which had threatened the hearts of both their souls faded away. Within Green Plains nothing remained but the heart which was the hearth, and the love which was its fire. Besides we have just said that the Duchess did not return. Ursus thought it all very natural. The lady with the gold piece is a phenomenon. She enters, pays and vanishes. It would be too much joy were she to return. As to Dea she made no allusion to the woman who had come and passed away. She listened perhaps and was sufficiently enlightened by the size of Ursus, and none then by some significant exclamation, such as one does not get ounces of gold every day. She spoke no more of the woman. This showed deep instinct. The soul takes obscure precautions in the secrets of which it is not always admitted itself. To keep silence about anyone seems to keep them afar off. One fears that questions may call them back. We put silence between us as if we were shutting a door. So the incident fell into oblivion. Was it ever anything? Had it ever occurred? Could it be said that a shadow had floated between Green Plains and Dea? Dea did not know of it nor Green Plains either. No, nothing had occurred. The Duchess herself was blurred in the distant perspective like an illusion. It had been but a momentary dream passing over Green Plains, out of which he had awakened. When it fades away, a river, like a mist, leaves no trace behind. And when the cloud has passed on, love shines out as brightly in the heart, as the sun in the sky. End of section 66. Section 67 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. The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. Part 2 Book IV Chapter 9 Abyssus Abyssum Voket Another face disappeared. Tom Jim Jacks. Suddenly he ceased to frequent the Tedcaster Inn. Customs so situated as to be able to observe other phases of fashionable life in London might have seen that about this time the weekly cassette between two extracts from parish registers announced the departure of Lord David Durumois by order of Her Majesty to take command of his frigate in the White Squadron then cruising off the coast of Holland. Ussus, perceiving that Tom Jim Jack did not return, was troubled by his absence. He had not seen Tom Jim Jack since the day on which he had driven off in the same carriage with the Lady of the Gold Peace. It was indeed an enigma who this Tom Jim Jack could be, who carried off touchesses under his arm. What an interesting investigation! What questions too propound! What things to be said! Or Ussus said not a word. Ussus who had had experience knew the smart caused by rash curiosity. Curiosity ought always to be proportioned to the curious. By listening we risk our ear, by watching we risk our eye. Prudent people neither see nor hear. Tom Jim Jack had got into a princely carriage. The tavernkeeper had seen him. It appeared so extraordinary that the sailor should sit by the Lady that it made Ussus circumspect. The caprices of those in high life ought to be sacred to the lower orders. The reptiles called the poor had best squat in their halls when they see anything out of the way. Quiescence is a power. Shut your eyes if you have not the good luck to be blind. Stop up your ears if you have not the good fortune to be deaf. Open your eyes your tongue if you have not the perfection of being mute. The great do what they like, the little what they can. Let the unknown pass unnoticed. Do not importune mythology. Do not interrogate appearances. Have a profound respect for idols. Do not let us direct our gossiping towards the lessenings or increaseings which take place in superior regions of the motives of which we are ignorant. Such things are mostly optical delusions to us inferior creatures. Metamorphoses are the business of the gods. The transformations and the contingent disorders of great persons who float above us are clouds impossible to comprehend and perilous to study. Too much attention irritates the Olympians, engaged in their gyrations of amusement or fancy, and a thunderbolt may teach you that the bull you are too curiously examining is Jupiter. Do not lift the folds of the stone-coloured mantles of those terrible powers. Indifference is intelligence. Do not stir and you will be safe. Fain death and they will not kill you. Therein lies the wisdom of the insect. Ursus practised it. The tavern-keeper, who was puzzled as well, questioned Ursus one day. Do you observe that Tom Jim Jack never comes here now? Indeed, said Ursus, I have not remarked it. Master Nicholas made an observation in an undertone, no doubt touching the intimacy between the ducal carriage and Tom Jim Jack, a remark which, as it might have been irreverent and dangerous, Ursus took care not to hear. Still Ursus was too much of an artist not to regret Tom Jim Jack. He felt some disappointment. He told his feelings to Homo of whose discretion alone he felt certain. He whispered into the ear of the wolf, since Tom Jim Jack ceased to come, I feel a blank as a man and a chill as a poet. This pouring out of his heart to a friend relieved Ursus. His lips were sealed before Gwynn Plain, who, however, made no illusion to Tom Jim Jack. The fact was that Tom Jim Jack's presence or absence mattered not to Gwynn Plain absorbed as he was in Daya. Forgetfulness fell more and more on Gwynn Plain, as for Daya she had not even suspected the existence of a vague trouble. At the same time no more cabals or complaints against the laughing man was spoken of, hate seemed to have let go its hold. All was tranquil in and around the green box. No more opposition from strollers, merry Andrews nor priests, no more grumbling outside. Their success was unclouded, destiny allows of such sudden serenity, the brilliant happiness of Gwynn Plain and Daya was for the present absolutely cloudless. Little by little it had risen to a degree which admitted of no increase. There is one word which expresses the situation, apogee. Happiness like the sea has its high tide. The worst thing for the perfectly happy is that it recedes. There are two ways of being inaccessible, being too high and being too low, at least as much perhaps as the first is the second to be desired. More surely than the eagle escapes the arrow, the animal-kill escapes being crushed. This security of insignificance, if it had ever existed on earth, was enjoyed by Gwynn Plain and Daya, and never before had it been so complete. They lived on daily more and more ecstatically wrapped in each other. The heart saturates itself with love as with a divine salt that preserves it, and from this arises the incorruptible constancy of those who have loved each other from the dawn of their lives and the affection which keeps its freshness in old age. There is such a thing as the embalment of the heart. There is of daftness and cluy that Philemon and Borsus are made. The old age of which we speak, evening resembling morning, was evidently reserved for Gwynn Plain and Daya. In the meantime they were young. Ursus looked on this love as a doctor examines his case. He had what was in those days termed a hypocritical expression of face. He fixed his sagacious eyes on Daya, fragile and pale, and growled out, it is lucky that she is happy. At other times he said she is lucky for her health's sake. He shook his head and at times read attentively a portion treating of heart disease, an avicenna translated by Vosiscus Fortunatus, Louvain 1650, an old worm-eaten book of his. Daya went fatigued, suffered from perspirations and drowsiness, and took a daily siesta, as we have already seen. One day while she was lying asleep on the bear-skin Gwynn Plain was out, and Ursus bent down softly and applied his ear to Daya's heart. He seemed to listen for a few minutes, and then stood up murmuring, she must not have any shock, it would find out the weak place. The crowd continued to flock to the performance of chaos vanquished. The success of the laughing man seemed inexhaustible. Everyone rushed to see him, no longer from Southwick only, but even from other parts of London. The general public began to mingle with the usual audience, which no longer consisted of sailors and drivers only. In the opinion of Master Nicholas, who was well acquainted with crowds, there were in the crowd gentlemen and baronettes disguised as common people. Disguise is one of the pleasures of pride, and was much in fashion at that period. This mixing of the aristocratic element with the mob was a good sign, and showed that their popularity was extending to London. The fame of Gwynn Plain has decidedly penetrated into the great world. Such was the fact. Nothing was talked of but the laughing man. He was talked about even at the Mohawk Club, frequented by noblemen. In the green box they had no idea of all this. They were content to be happy. It was intoxication to dare to feel, as she did every evening, the crisp and tawny head of Gwynn Plain. In love there is nothing like habit. The whole of life is concentrated in it. The reappearance of the stars is the custom of the universe. Creation is nothing but a mistress, and the sun is a lover. Light is a dazzling cariatid supporting the world. Each day for a sublime minute the earth covered by night rests on the rising sun. Dayer, blind, felt a like return of warmth and hope within her when she placed her hand on the head of Gwynn Plain. To adore each other in the shadows, to love in the plenitude of silence, who could not become reconciled to such an eternity? One evening Gwynn Plain, feeling within him that overflow of felicity which, like the intoxication of perfumes, causes a sort of delicious faintness, was strolling, as he usually did after the performance, in the meadow some hundred paces from the green box. Long times in those high tides of feeling in our souls we feel that we would feign pour out the sensations of the overflowing heart. The night was dark but clear, the stars were shining, the whole fairground was deserted, sleep and forgetfulness reigned in the caravans which were scattered over Terenzoh field. One light alone was unextinguished. It was the lamp of the tadcaster inn, the door of which was left a jar to admit Gwynn Plain on his return. Midnight had just struck in the five parishes of Southwick with the brakes and differences of tone of their various bells. Gwynn Plain was dreaming of Daia, of whom else should he dream, but that evening, feeling singularly troubled and full of a charm which was at the same time a pang, he thought of Daia as a man thinks of a woman. He reproached himself for this. It seemed to be failing in respect to her. The husband's attack was forming dimly within him, sweet and imperious and patience. He was crossing the invisible frontier on this side of which is the virgin, on the other the wife. He questioned himself anxiously, a blush as it were overspread his mind. The Gwynn Plain of long ago had been transformed by degrees unconsciously in a mysterious growth. His old modesty was becoming misty and uneasy. We have an ear of light into which speaks the spirit and an ear of darkness into which speaks the instinct. Into the latter strange voices were making their proposals. However pure-minded may be the youth who dreams of love, a certain grossness of the flesh eventually comes between his dream and him. The unavowed desire implanted by nature enters into his conscience. Gwynn Plain felt an indescribable yearning of the flesh which abounds in all temptation, and Daia was scarcely flesh. In this fever which he knew to be unhealthy he transfigured Daia into a more material aspect and tried to exaggerate her serific form into feminine loveliness. It is thou, O woman, that we require. Love comes not to permit too much of paradise. It requires the thievered skin, the troubled life, the unbound hair, the kiss electrical and irreparable, the clasp of desire. The sidereal is embarrassing, the ethereal is heavy. Too much of the heavenly in love is like too much fuel on a fire. The flame suffers from it. Gwynn Plain fell into an exquisite nightmare, Daia to be clasped in his arms, Daia clasped in them. He heard nature in his heart crying out for a woman, like a pygmalion in a dream, modeling a galatheer out of the azure, and the depths of his soul. He worked at the chaste contour of Daia, a contour with too much of heaven, too little of Eden. For Eden is Eve, and Eve was a female, a carnal mother, a terrestrial nurse, the sacred womb of generations, the breast of unfailing milk, the rocker of the cradle of the newborn world, and wings are incompatible with the bosom of woman. Virginity is but the hope of maternity. Still in Gwynn Plain's dreams, Daia until now had been enthroned above flesh. Now, however, he made wild efforts in thought to draw her downwards by that thread, sex, which ties every girl to earth. Not one of those birds is free. Daia, like all the rest, was within this law, and Gwynn Plain, though he scarcely acknowledged it, felt a vague desire that she should submit to it. This desire possessed him in spite of himself, and with an ever-recurring relapse. He pictured Daia as woman. He came to the point of regarding her under a hitherto unheard of form, as a creature no longer of ecstasy only, but of voluptuousness, as Daia with her head resting on the pillow. He was ashamed of this visionary desecration. It was like an attempt at profanation. He resisted its assault. He turned from it, but it returned again. He felt as if he were committing a criminal assault. To him Daia was encompassed by a cloud, cleaving that cloud. He shuddered, as though he were raising her chemise. It was in April, the spine has its dreams. He rambled at random with the uncertain step caused by solitude. To have no one by is a provocation to wander. Wither flew his thoughts. He would not have dared to own it to himself. To heaven? No. To a bed. You were looking down upon him, O ye stars. Why talk of a man in love rather say a man possessed? To be possessed by the devil is the exception. To be possessed by a woman the rule. Every man has to bear this alienation of himself. What a sorceress is a pretty woman. The true name of love is captivity. Woman is made prisoner by the soul of a woman, by her flesh as well, and sometimes even more by the flesh than by the soul. The soul is the true love, the flesh, the mistress. We slandered the devil. It was not he who tempted Eve, it was Eve who tempted him. The woman began. Lucifer was passing by quietly. He perceived the woman and became Satan. The flesh is the cover of the unknown. It is provocative, which is strange by its modesty. Nothing could be more distracting. It is full of shame, the hussy. It was the terrible love of the surface which was then agitating Gwyn Blaine and holding him in its power, fearful the moment in which man covets the nakedness of woman. What dark things lurk beneath the fairness of Venus. Something within him was calling Dea aloud, Dea the maiden, Dea the other half of a man, Dea flesh and blood, Dea with uncovered bosom. That cry was almost driving away the angel. Mysterious crisis through which all love must pass and in which the ideal is in danger, therein is the predestination of creation. Moment of heavenly corruption. Gwyn Blaine's love of Dea was becoming nuptial. Virgin love is but a transition. The moment was come. Gwyn Blaine coveted the woman. He coveted a woman, precipice of which one sees but the first gentle slope. The indistinct summons of nature is inexorable. The whole of woman, what an abyss! Luckily there was no woman for Gwyn Blaine but Dea, the only one he desired, the only one who could desire him. Gwyn Blaine felt that vague and mighty shudder which is the vital claim of infinity. Besides there was the aggravation of the spring. He was breathing the nameless odours of the starry darkness. He walked forward in a wild feeling of delight. The wandering perfumes of the rising sap, the heady irradiations which float in shadow, the distant opening of nocturnal flowers, the complicity of little hidden nests, the murmurs of waters and of leaves, soft sighs rising from all things, the freshness, the warmth, and the mysterious awakening of April and May is the vast diffusion of sex murmuring in whispers their proposals of voluptuousness until the soul stammers in answer to the giddy provocation. The ideal no longer knows what it is saying. One observing Gwyn Blaine walk would have said, See, a drunken man! He almost staggered under the weight of his own heart of spring and of the night. The solitude in the balling-green was so peaceful that at times he spoke aloud, the consciousness that there is no listener induces speech. He walked with slow steps, his head bent down, his hands behind him, the left hand in the right, the fingers open. Suddenly he felt something slipped between his fingers. He turned round quickly. In his hand was a paper and in front of him a man. It was the man who, coming behind him with the stealth of a cat, had placed the paper in his fingers. The paper was a letter. The man, as he appeared pretty clearly in the starlight, was small, chubby-cheeked, long, sedate, and dressed in a scarlet livery, exposed from top to toe through the opening of a long grey cloak, then called a caponochet. A Spanish word contracted. In French it was capped inouet. His head was covered by a crimson cap like the skull cap of a cardinal, on which servitude was indicated by a strip of lace. On this cap was a plume of Tissay feathers. He stood motionless before Gwyn Plain like a dark outline in a dream. Gwyn Plain recognized the Duchess's page. Before Gwyn Plain could utter an exclamation of surprise, he heard the thin voice of the page, at once childlike and feminine in its tone, saying to him, At this hour to-morrow, be at the corner of London Bridge. I will be there to conduct you, wither, demanded Gwyn Plain. There you are expected. Gwyn Plain dropped his eyes on the letter which he was holding mechanically in his hand. When he looked up, the page was no longer with him. He perceived a vague form lessening rapidly in the distance. It was the little valet. He turned the corner of the street, and solitude reigned again. Gwyn Plain saw the page vanish, then looked at the letter. There are moments in our lives when what happens seems not to happen. Stupor keeps us for a moment at a distance from the fact. Gwyn Plain raised the letter to his eyes as if to read it, but soon perceived that he could not do so for two reasons, first because he had not broken the seal, and secondly because it was too dark. It was some minutes before he remembered that there was a lamp at the end. He took a few steps sideways as if he knew not wither he was going. A somnambulist to whom a phantom had given a letter might walk as he did. At last he made up his mind. He ran rather than walked towards the inn, stood in the light which broke through the half-open door, and by it again examined the closed letter. There was no design on the seal, and on the envelope was written, You Gwyn Plain. He broke the seal, tore the envelope, unfolded the letter, put it directly under the light, and read as follows. You are hideous, I am beautiful. You are a player, I am a duchess. I am the highest, you are the lowest. I desire you, I love you. CHAPTER I THE TEMPTATION OF ST. Gwyn Plain. One jet of flame hardly makes a prick in the darkness. Another sets fire to a volcano. Some sparks are gigantic. Gwyn Plain read the letter, then he read it over again. Yes, the words were there. I love you. Terrors chased each other through his mind. The first was that he believed himself to be mad. He was mad, that was certain. He had just seen what had no existence. The twilight spectres were making game of him, poor wretch. The little man and scarlet was the willow the wisp of a dream. Sometimes at night nothings, condensed into flame, come and laugh at us. Having had his laugh out, the visionary being had disappeared, and left Gwyn Plain behind him, mad. Such are the freaks of darkness. The second terror was to find out that he was in his right senses. A vision? Certainly not. How could that be? Had he not a letter in his hand? Did he not see an envelope, a seal, paper, and writing? Did he not know from whom that came? It was all clear enough. Someone took a pen and ink and wrote. Someone lighted a taper and sealed it with wax. Was not his name written on the letter to Gwyn Plain? The paper was centred, all was clear. Gwyn Plain knew the little man. The dwarf was a page, the gleam was a livery. The page had given him a rendezvous for the same hour on the morrow, at the corner of London Bridge. Was London Bridge an illusion? No, no, all was clear. There was no delirium, all was reality. Gwyn Plain was perfectly clear in his intellect. It was not a phantasmagoria suddenly dissolving above his head and fading into nothingness. It was something which had really happened to him. No Gwyn Plain was not mad, nor was he dreaming. Again he read the letter. Well, yes, but then? That then was terror-striking. There was a woman who desired him. If so, let no one ever again pronounce the word incredible. A woman desired him. A woman who had seen his face. A woman who was not blind. And who was this woman? An ugly one? No. A beauty. A gypsy? No. A duchess! What was it all about and what could it all mean? What peril in such a triumph? And how was he to help plunging into it headlong? What! that woman, the siren, the apparition, the lady in the visionary box, the light in the darkness? It was she, yes, it was she. The crackling of the fire burst out in every part of his frame. It was the strange, unknown lady, she who had previously so troubled his thoughts, and his first tumultuous feelings about this woman returned, heated by the evil fire. For getfulness is nothing but a palimpsest. An incident happens unexpectedly, and all that was effaced revives in the blanks of wondering memory. Gwyn Plain thought that he had dismissed that image from his remembrance, and he found that it was still there, and she had put her mark in his brain unconsciously guilty of a dream. Without his suspecting it the lines of the engraving had been bitten deep by reverie, and now a certain amount of evil had been done, and this train of thought, henceforth, perhaps irreparable, he took up again eagerly. What! she desired him, what! The princess descend from her throne, the idol from its shrine, the statue from its pedestal, the phantom from its cloud. What from the depths of the impossible had this shimmer become? This deity of the sky, this irradiation, the snurried, all glistening with jewels, this proud and unattainable beauty from the height of her radiant throne, was bending down to Gwyn Plain. What! had she drawn up her chariot of the dorm with its yoke of turtle doves and dragons before Gwyn Plain, and said to him, Come, what! This terrible glory of being the object of such abasement from the Imperian for Gwyn Plain. This woman, if he could give that name to a form so star-like and majestic, this woman proposed herself, gave herself, delivered herself up to him, wonder of wonders. A goddess prostituting herself for him. The arms of a courtesan opening in a cloud to clasp him to the bosom of a goddess, and that without degradation. Such majestic creatures cannot be sullied, but gods bathed themselves pure in light, and this goddess who came to him knew what she was doing. She was not ignorant of the incarnate hideousness of Gwyn Plain. She had seen the mask which was his face, and that mask had not called her to draw back. Gwyn Plain was loved notwithstanding it. There was a thing surpassing all the extravagance of dreams. He was loved in consequence of his mask. Far from repulsing the goddess, the mask attracted her. Gwyn Plain was not only loved, he was desired. He was more than accepted. He was chosen. He chosen. What! There where this woman dwelt in the regal region of irresponsible splendor, and in the power of full free will. Where there were princes, and she could take a prince, nobles, and she could take a noble. Where there were men handsome, charming, magnificent, and she could take an adonis, whom did she take? Nafron. She could choose from the midst of meteors and thunders the mighty six-winged seraphim, and she chose the lava crawling in the slime. On one side were highnesses and peers, all grandeur, all opulence, all glory. On the other a mount of bank. The mount of bank carried it. What kind of scales could there be in the heart of this woman? By what measure did she weigh her love? She took off her ducal coronet and flung it on the platform of a clown. She took from her brow the Olympian Oriola and placed it on the bristly head of a gnome. The world had turned topsy-turvy. The insects swarmed on high, the stars were scattered below, whilst the wondrous stricken Gwyn plane, overwhelmed by a falling ruin of light, and lying in the dust, was enshrined in a glory. One all-powerful revolting against beauty and splendour gave herself to the damned of night. Preferred Gwyn plane to Antinous. By curiosity she entered the shadows and descending within them, and from this abdication of goddess-ship was rising, crowned and prodigious, the royalty of the wretched. You are hideous, I love you. These words touched Gwyn plane in the ugly spot of pride. Pride is the heal in which all heroes are vulnerable. Gwyn plane was flattered in his vanity as a monster. He was loved for his deformity. He too was the exception, as much and perhaps more than the Jupiters and the Apollos. He felt superhuman, and so much a monster as to be a god. Fearful bewilderment. Now, who was this woman? What did he know about her? Everything and nothing. She was a duchess that he knew. He knew also that she was beautiful and rich, that she had liveries, lackeys, cages and footmen running with torches by the side of her coroneted carriage. He knew that she was in love with him, at least she said so. Of everything else he was ignorant. He knew her title, but not her name. He knew her thought. He knew not her life. Was she married, widow, maiden? Was she free? Of what family was she? Were there snares, traps, dangers about her? Of the gallantry existing on the idle heights of society, the caves on those summits in which savage charmers dream amidst the scattered skeletons of the loves which they have already prayed on, of the extent of tragic cynicism to which the experiments of a woman may attain who believes herself to be beyond the reach of man, of things such as these Gwyn Plain had no idea, nor had he even in his mind materials out of which to build up a conjecture information concerning such things being very scanty in the social depths in which he lived. Still he detected a shadow. He felt that a mist hung over all this brightness. Did he understand it? No. Could he guess at it? Still less. What was there behind that letter? One pair of folding doors opening before him, another closing on him, and causing him a vague anxiety. On the one side an avowal, on the other an enigma, a vowel and enigma which, like two mouths, one tempting, the other threatening, pronounced the same word, dare. Never had perfidious chance taken its measures better, nor timed more fitly the moment of temptation. Gwyn Plain, stirred by spring and by the sap rising and all things, was prompt to dream the dream of the flesh. The old man who was not to be stamped out, an over whom none of us can triumph, was awaking in that backward youth, still a boy at twenty-four. It was just then, at the most stormy moment of the crisis, that the offer was made him, and the naked bosom of the Sphinx appeared before his dazzled eyes. Youth is an inclined plain. Gwyn Plain was stooping, and something pushed him forward. What? The season and the night. Who? The woman. Were there no month of April, man would be a great deal more virtuous. The budding plants are a set of accomplices, lovers the thief, spring the receiver. Gwyn Plain was shaken. There is a kind of smoke of evil preceding sin in which the conscience cannot breathe. The obscure nausea of hell comes over virtue and temptation. The yawning abyss discharges an exhalation which warns the strong and turns the weak giddy. Gwyn Plain was suffering its mysterious attack. Dilemmas, transient and at the same time stubborn, were floating before him. Sin presenting itself obstinately again and again to his mind was taking form. The morrow midnight, London bridge, the page, should he go? This cried the flesh. No cried the soul. Nevertheless, we must remark that strange as it may appear at first sight, he never once put himself the question, should he go, quite distinctly. Reprehensible actions are like over-strong brandies. You cannot swallow them at a draught. You put down your glass. You will see to it presently. There is a strange taste even about that first drop. One thing is certain he felt something behind him pushing him forward towards the unknown, and he trembled. He could catch a glimpse of a crumbling precipice, and he drew back stricken by the terror encircling him. He closed his eyes. He tried hard to deny to himself that the adventure had ever occurred, and to persuade himself into doubting his reason. This was evidently his best plan. The wisest thing he could do was to believe himself mad. He was a little fever. Every man, surprised by the unexpected, has at times felt the throb of such tragic pulsations. The observer ever listens with anxiety to the echoes resounding from the dull strokes of the battering ram of destiny, striking against a conscience. Alas! Squin-plain put himself questions. Where duty is clear, to put oneself questions is to suffer defeat. There are invasions which the mind may have to suffer. There are the vandals of the soul, evil thoughts coming to devastate our virtue. A thousand contrary ideas rushed into Squin-plain's brain, now following each other singly, now crowding together. Then silence reigned again, and he would lean his head on his hands in a kind of mournful attention as of one who contemplates a landscape by night. Suddenly he felt that he was no longer thinking. His reverie had reached that point of utter darkness in which all things disappear. He remembered, too, that he had not entered the inn. It might be about two o'clock in the morning. He placed the letter which the page had brought him in his side pocket, but perceiving that it was next to his heart he drew it out again, crumpled it up, and placed it in a pocket of his hose. He then directed his steps towards the inn, which he entered stealthily, and without awakening little Govacom, who while waiting up for him, had fallen asleep on the table with his arms for a pillow. He closed the door, lighted a candle at the lamp, fastened the bolt, turned the key in the lock, taking mechanically all the precautions usual to a man returning home late, ascended the staircase of the green box, slipped him to the old hovel which he used as a bedroom, looked at Ursus, who was asleep, blew out his candle, and did not go to bed. Thus an hour passed away, wary at length and fancying that bed and sleep were one. He laid his head upon the pillow without undressing, making darkness the concession of closing his eyes. But the storm of emotions which assailed him had not waned for an instant. Ursus a cruelty which knight inflicts on man, Gwyn Plain suffered greatly. For the first time in his life he was not pleased with himself. Ake of heart mingled with gratified vanity, what was he to do? Day broke at last. He heard Ursus get up, but did not raise his eyelids. No truce for him, however. The letter was ever in his mind. Every word of it came back to him in a kind of chaos. In certain violent storms within the soul, thought becomes a liquid. It is convulsed. It heaves, and something rises from it like the dull roaring of the waves. Flood and flow, sudden shocks and whirls, the hesitation of the wave before the rock. Hail and rain clouds with the light shining through their breaks. The petty flights of useless foam. Wild swell broken in an instant. Great efforts lost. Ake appearing all around, darkness and universal dispersion. As these things are of the sea, so are they of man. Gwyn Plain was a prey to such a storm. At the acme of his agony, his eyes still closed. He heard an exquisite voice saying, Are you asleep, Gwyn Plain? He opened his eyes with a start and set up. Daya was standing in the half-open doorway. Her ineffable smile was in her eyes and on her lips. She was standing there, charming in the unconscious serenity of her radiance. Then came, as it were, a sacred moment. Gwyn Plain watched her, startled, dazzled, awakened. Awakened from what? From sleep? No. From sleeplessness. It was she. It was Daya. And suddenly he felt in the depths of his being the indescribable wane of the storm and the sublime descent of good over evil. The miracle of the look from on high was accomplished. The blind girl, the sweet light-bearer, with no effort beyond her mere presence, dissipated all the darkness within him. The curtain of cloud was dispersed from the soul as if drawn by an invisible hand, and a sky of azure as though by celestial enchantment a game spread over Gwyn Plain's conscience. In a moment he became by the virtue of that angel the great and good Gwyn Plain, the innocent man. Such mysterious confrontations occurred to the soul as they do to creation. Both were silent. She who was the light, he who was the abyss. She who was divine. He who was appeased. And over Gwyn Plain's stormy heart, Daya shone with the indescribable effect of a star shining on the sea. End of section 68, recording by John Trevidic. Section 69 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. The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. Part 2 Book IV Chapter 2 From Gay to Grave How simple is a miracle. It was breakfast hour in the green box, and Daya had merely come to see why Gwyn Plain had not joined their little breakfast table. It is you, exclaimed Gwyn Plain, and he had said everything. There was no other horizon, no vision for him now, but the heavens where Daya was. His mind was appeased, appeased in such a manner as he alone can understand who has seen the smile spread swiftly over the sea when the hurricane had passed away. Over nothing does the calm come so quickly as over the whirlpool. This results from its power of absorption, and so it is with the human heart. Not always, however. Daya had but to show herself, and all the light that was in Gwyn Plain left him and went to her, and behind the dazzled Gwyn Plain there was but a flight of phantoms. What a peacemaker is adoration. A few minutes afterwards they were sitting opposite each other, ursus between them, homo at their feet. The teapot, hung over a little lamp, was on the table. Phoebe and Venus were outside waiting. They breakfasted as they subbed in the centre compartment. From the position in which the narrow table was placed, Daya's back was turned towards the aperture in the partition which was opposite the entrance door of the green box. Their knees were touching. Gwyn Plain was pouring out tea for Daya. Daya blew gracefully on her cup. Suddenly she sneezed. Just at that moment a thin smoke rose above the flame of the lamp, and something like a piece of paper fell into ashes. It was the smoke which had caused Daya to sneeze. What was that? She asked. Nothing, replied Gwyn Plain, and he smiled. He had just burnt the Duchess's letter. The conscience of the man who loves is the guardian angel of the woman whom he loves. Unburdened of the letter his relief was wondrous, and Gwyn Plain felt his integrity as the eagle feels its wings. It seemed to him as if his temptation had evaporated with the smoke, and as if the Duchess had crumbled into ashes with the paper. Taking up their cups at random, and drinking one after the other from the same one, they talked. A battle of lovers, a chattering of sparrows. Child's talk worthy of mother goose or of Homer, with two loving hearts go no further for poetry, with two kisses for dialogue go no further for music. Do you know something? No? Gwyn Plain eye-dreamt that we were animals and had wings. Wings, that means birds, murmured Gwyn Plain. Fools, it means angels, growled urses, and their talk went on. If you did not exist, Gwyn Plain, what then? It could only be because there was no God. The tea is too hot, you will burn yourself there. Blow on my cup. How beautiful you are this morning. Do you know that I have a great many things to say to you? Say them. I love you. I adore you. And urses set aside by heaven they are polite. Exquisite to lovers are their moments of silence. In them they gather as it were masses of love, which afterwards explode into sweet fragments. Do you know, in the evening when we are playing our parts, at the moment when my hand touches your forehead, oh what a noble head is yours, Gwyn Plain, at the moment when I feel your hair under my fingers, I shiver. A heavenly joy comes over me, and I say to myself, in all this world of darkness which encompasses me, in this universe of solitude, in this great obscurity of ruin in which I am, in this quaking fear of myself and of everything, I have one prop, and he is there. It is he. It is you. Oh, you love me, said Gwyn Plain. I, too, have but you on earth. You are all in all to me. Dea, what would you have me do? What do you desire? What do you want? Dea answered, I do not know. I am happy. Oh, replied Gwyn Plain, we are happy. Ursus raised his voice severely. Oh, you are happy, are you? That's a crime. I have warned you already. You are happy. Then take care you aren't seen. Take up as little room as you can. Happiness ought to stuff itself into a hole. Take yourselves still less than you are, if that can be. God measures the greatness of happiness by the littleness of the happy. The happy should conceal themselves like malefactors. Oh, only shine out like the wretched glow-rooms that you are, and you'll be trodden on, and quite right, too. What do you mean by all that love-making nonsense? I'm no duena whose business it is to watch lovers billing and cooing. I'm tired of it all, I tell you, and you may both go to the devil. And, feeling that his harsh tones were melting into tenderness, he drowned his emotion in a loud grumble. Father, said Dea, how roughly you scald. It's because I don't like to see people too happy. Here Homo re-echoed Ursus. His growl was heard from beneath the lover's feet. Ursus stooped down and placed his hand on Homo's head. That's right, you're in a bad humour, too. You growl. The bristles are all on end on your wolf's fate. You don't like all this love-making. That's because you are wise. Hold your tongue all the same. You have had your say and given your opinion. Be it so. Now be silent." The wolf growled again. Ursus looked under the table at him. Be still, Homo! Calm, don't dwell on it, you philosopher! But the wolf sat up and looked towards the door, showing his teeth. What's wrong with you now, said Ursus, and he caught hold of Homo by the skin of the neck. Heedless of the wolf's growls and wholly wrapped up in her own thoughts and in the sound of Gwynplaine's voice, which left its aftertaste within her, Dea was silent and absorbed by that kind of ecstasy peculiar to the blind, which seems at times to give them a song to listen to in their souls and to make up to them for the light which they lack by some strain of ideal music. Blindness is a cavern to which reaches the deep harmony of the eternal. While Ursus addressing Homo was looking down, Gwynplaine had raised his eyes. He was about to drink a cup of tea, but did not drink it. He placed it on the table with the slow movement of a spring drawn back. His fingers remained open, his eyes fixed. He scarcely breathed. A man was standing in the doorway behind Dea. He was clad in black with a hood. He wore a wig down to his eyebrows and held in his hand an iron staff with a crown at each end. His staff was short and massive. He was like Medusa thrusting her head between two branches in paradise. Ursus, who had heard someone enter and raised his head without losing his hold of Homo, recognized the terrible personage. He shook from head to foot and whispered to Gwynplaine, It's the Whoppin' Take. Gwynplaine recollected. An exclamation of surprise was about to escape him, but he restrained it. The iron staff with the crown at each end was called the iron weapon. It was from this iron weapon upon which the city officers of justice took the oath when they entered on their duties that the old weapon takers of the English police derived their qualification. Behind the man in the wig the frightened landlord could just be perceived in the shadow. Without saying a word, a personification of the mutathemists of the old charters, the man stretched his right arm over the radiant Dea and touched Gwynplaine on the shoulder with the iron staff, at the same time pointing with his left thumb to the door of the green box behind him. These gestures, all the more imperious for their silence, meant, Follow me. Pro-signo ex yunde, sir sum traje, says the old Norman record. He who was touched by the iron weapon had no right but the right of obedience. To that mute order there was no reply. The harsh penalties of the English law threatened the refractory. Gwynplaine felt a shock under the rigid touch of the law, then he sat as though petrified. If instead of having been merely grazed on the shoulder he had been struck a violent blow on the head with the iron staff he could not have been more stunned. He knew that the police officer summoned him to follow, but why, that he could not understand? On his part Ursus, too, was thrown into the most painful agitation, but he saw through matters pretty distinctly. His thoughts ran on the jugglers and preachers, his competitors on informations laid against the green box, on that delinquent the wolf, on his own affair with the three bishops-gate commissioners, and who knows, perhaps, but that would be too fearful, Gwynplaine's unbecoming and factious speeches touching the royal authority, he trembled violently. Daya was smiling. Neither Gwynplaine nor Ursus pronounced a word. They had both the same thought, not to frighten Daya. It may have struck the wolf as well, for he ceased growling. True, Ursus did not loose him. Homo, however, was a prudent wolf when occasion required. Who was there who has not remarked a kind of intelligent anxiety in animals? May be that to the extent to which a wolf can understand mankind, he felt that he was an outlaw. Gwynplaine rose. Resistance was impracticable, as Gwynplaine knew. He remembered Ursus's words, and there was no question possible. He remained standing in front of the weapon-take. The latter raised the iron-star from Gwynplaine's shoulder, and, drawing it back, held it out straight in an attitude of command. A constable's attitude, which was well understood in those days by the whole people, and which expressed the following order. Let this man and no other follow me. The rest remain where they are. Silence! No curious followers were allowed. In all times the police have had a taste for arrests of the kind. This description of seizure was termed sequestration of the person. The weapon-take turned round in one motion like a piece of mechanism revolving on its own pivot, and, with grave and magisterial step, proceeded towards the door of the green box. Gwynplaine looked at Ursus. The latter went through a pantomime composed as follows. He shrugged his shoulders, placed both elbows close to his hips, with his hands out, and knitted his brows into chevrons, all which signifies, she must submit to the unknown. Gwynplaine looked at Thea. She was in her dream. She was still smiling. He put the ends of his fingers to his lips, and sent her an unutterable kiss. Ursus, relieved of some portion of his terror, now that the weapon-takes back was turned, seized the moment to whisper in Gwynplaine's ear, On your life do not speak until you are questioned! Gwynplaine, with the same care to make no noise as he would have taken in a sick-room, took his hat and cloak from the hook on the partition, wrapped himself up to the eyes and the cloak, and pushed his hat over his forehead. Not having been to bed, he had his working-clothes still on, and his leather esclavin around his neck. Once more he looked at Thea. Having reached the door, the weapon-take raised his staff and began to descend the steps. Then Gwynplaine set out as if the man was dragging him by an invisible chain. Ursus watched Gwynplaine leave the green box. At that moment the wolf gave a low growl. But Ursus silenced him and whispered, He is coming back. In the yard Master Nicholas was stemming with servile and imperious gestures the cries of terror raised by Venus and Phoebe, as in great distress they watched Gwynplaine led away, and the morning-coloured garb and the iron staff of the weapon-take. The two girls were like petrified factions. They were in the attitude of stalactites. Govacom stunned was looking open-mouthed out of a window. The weapon-take proceeded Gwynplaine by a few steps, never turning round or looking at him, in that icy ease which is given by the knowledge that one is the law. In deathlike silence they both crossed the yard, went through the dark tap-room, and reached the street. A few passes by had collected about the indoor, and the justice of the quorum was there at the head of a squad of police. The idlers stupefied, and without breathing a word, opened out and stood aside with English discipline at the sight of the constable's staff. The weapon-take moved off in the direction of the narrow street, then called the little strand, running by the Thames, and Gwynplaine, with the justice of the quorum's men in ranks on each side, like a double hedge, pale without emotion except that of his steps, wrapped in his cloak as in a shroud, was leaving the inn farther and farther behind him as he followed the silent man like a statue following a spectre. The man who laughs by Victor Hugo, part two of the fourth, chapter three, Lex, Rex, Fex, unexplained arrest, which would greatly astonish an Englishman nowadays, was then a very usual proceeding of the police. Recourse was had to it notwithstanding the habeas corpus act, up to George II's time, especially in such delicate cases as were provided for by Le Thres de Cauchy in France, and one of the accusations against which Walpole had to defend himself was that he had caused, or allowed, Nuhoff to be arrested in that manner. The accusation was probably without foundation for Nuhoff, King of Corsica was put in prison by his creditors. These silent captures of the person, very usual with the Holy Vahem in Germany, were admitted by German custom, which rules one half of the old English laws, and recommended in certain cases by Norman custom, which rules the other half. Justinian's chief of the palace police was called Cylentiarius Imperialis. The English magistrates who practiced the captures in question relied upon numerous Norman texts. Canes le Tron, sergentes silentes, sergentes aguerres, id estacere. They quoted Landofus Sagax, paragraph 16, facet imperator sedentium. They quoted the charter of King Philip in 1307, multos tenabemes bastonarios qui amutasentes sergentere valiat. They quoted the statutes of Henry I of England, capitulo 53, surge signo justice, tasa tornior esto hoc est ese in captione regis. They took advantage especially of the following description, held to form part of the ancient feudal franchises of England. Sus les fiscomptes sont les sergentes de l'espect. Les squales d'auvant justicièrent virtuosement à l'espect tousso qui sont malvéses compagnies, gens de fameuses d'aucuns crimes, et gens frites et verbandes. Et les d'auvant si virtuosement et discrétément appréhendèrent. Que les bonnes gens qui sont possiblement soyent gardés possiblement et que les malvétures soyent espontées. To be thus arrested was to be seized à la glaive de l'espect. Vitas consuetudo normani, manuscript part one, section one, chapter 11. The jurist consults referred besides in Tartar Ludovići Hutom pro normanis, chapter Cervientes spethè. Cervientes spethè in the gradual approach of base Latin to our idioms became Cervientes spethè. The silent arrest were the contrary of the Clamouat de Haroh, and gave warning that it was advisable to hold one's tongue until such time, as light should be thrown upon certain matters still in the dark. They signified questions reserved, and showed in the operation of the police a certain amount of raison d'état. The legal term private was applied to a rest of this description. It was thus that Edward III, according to some chroniclers, caused Mortimer to be seized in the bed of his mother Isabella of France. This again we may take leave to doubt for Mortimer sustained a siege in his town before being captured. Warwick, the kingmaker, delighted in practicing this mode of attaching people. Cromwell made use of it, especially in Connaught, and it was with this precaution of silence that Trélie Arclot, a relation of the Earl of Ormont, was arrested at Kilmaca. These captures of the body by the mere motion of justice represented rather the Mandate Comparation than the warrant of arrest. Sometimes they were but processes of inquiry, and even argued by the silence imposed upon all, a certain consideration for the person seized. For the mass of the people, little versed as they were in the estimate of such shades of difference, they had peculiar terrors. It must not be forgotten that in 1705, and even much later, England was far from being what she is today. The general features of its constitution were confused and at times very oppressive. Daniel Defoe, who had himself had a taste of the pillory, characterizes the social order of England somewhere in his writings as the iron hands of the law. There was not only the law, there was its arbitrary administration. We have but to recall steel ejected from Parliament, lock driven from his chair, Hobbes and Gibbon compelled to flight Charles Churchill, Hume and Priestley, persecuted. John Wilkes sent to the Tower. The task would be a long one were we to count over the victims of the statute against seditious libel. The Inquisition had to some extent spread its arrangements throughout Europe, and its police practice was taken as a guide. A monstrous attempt against all rights was possible in England. We have only to recall the Gazetteie Curiasse. In the midst of the 18th century, Louis the 15th had writers whose works displeased him, arrested in Piccadilly. It is true that George II laid his hands on the pretender in France, right in the middle of the hall at the opera. Those were two long arms, that of the King of France reaching London, that of the King of England, Paris. Such was the liberty of the period, end of section 70, recording by Bill Mosley, Bernardo, Texas, USA.