 Section 97 of The Man Who Laughs, by Victor Hugo. Section 97, Part II, Book VIII, Chapter VII, Storms of Men Are Worse Than Storms of Oceans. The doors were closed again, the usher of the black rod re-entered, the Lord's commissioners left the bench of state, took their places at the top of the Duke's benches, by right of their commission, and the Lord Chancellor addressed the house. By Lords, the house having deliberated for several days on the bill which proposes to augment by £100,000 sterling the annual provision for His Royal Highness the Prince, Her Majesty's consort, and the debate having been exhausted and closed, the house will proceed to vote. The votes will be taken, according to custom, beginning with the puny baron. Each Lord, on His name being called, will rise and answer content, or non-content, and will be at liberty to explain the motives of His vote, if He thinks fit to do so. Clerk, take the vote. The clerk of the house, standing up, opened a large folio, and spread it open on a gilded desk. This book was the list of the peerage. The puny of the House of Lords at that time was John Hervey, created Baron Ed Peer in 1703, from whom is descended the Marquis of Bristol. The clerk called, My Lord John Baron Hervey, an old man in a fair wig rose, and said, content, then he sat down. The clerk registered his vote. The clerk continued. My Lord Francis Seymour Baron Conway of Kilotog. Content murmured, half-rising, an elegant young man, with a face like a page, who little thought that he was to be ancestor to the Marquises of Hertford. My Lord John Levison Baron Gower continued the clerk. This Baron, from whom were to spring the dukes of Sutherland, rose, and, as he receded himself, said, content. The clerk went on. My Lord Hineage Finch Baron Guernsey, the ancestor of the earls of Ailisford, neither older nor less elegant than the ancestor of the Marquises of Hertford, justified his device. Apperto vivere voto, by the proud tone in which he exclaimed, content. As he was resuming his seat, the clerk called the fifth Baron. My Lord John Baron Granville, rising and resuming his seat quickly, content, exclaimed Lord Granville, of Potheridge, whose peerage was to become extinct in 1709. The clerk passed to the sixth. My Lord Charles Montague, Baron Halifax. Content said Lord Halifax, the bearer of a title, which had become extinct in the Saville family, and was destined to become extinct again in that of Montague. Montague is distinct from Montague and Montacute. And Lord Halifax added, Pritch George has an allowance as Her Majesty's consort. He has another as Prince of Denmark, another as Duke of Cumberland, another as Lord High Admiral of England, and Ireland, but he has not one as Commander-in-Chief. This is an injustice and a wrong, which must be set right in the interest of the English people. Then Lord Halifax passed a eulogium on the Christian religion, abused potpourri, and voted the subsidy. Lord Halifax sat down, and the clerk resumed. My Lord Christopher Baron Barnard, Lord Barnard, from whom were to descend the dukes of Cleveland, rose to answer to his name. He took some time in receding himself, for he wore a lace band which was worth showing. For all that Lord Barnard was a worthy gentleman and a brave officer. While Lord Barnard was resuming his seat, the clerk, who read by routine, hesitated for an instant. He readjusted his spectacles, and leaned over the register with renewed attention. Then lifting up his head he said, My Lord Firmaine Clancharly, Baron Clancharly and Hunkerville. Gwyn Plaine arose. Non-content, said he. Every face was turned towards him. Gwyn Plaine remained standing. The branches of candles, placed on each side of the throne, lighted up his features, and marked them against the darkness of the August chambers, in the relief with which a mask might show against a background of smoke. Gwyn Plaine had made that effort over himself, which, it may be remembered, was possible to him in extremity. By a concentration of will, equal to that which would be needed to cower a tiger, he had succeeded in obliterating for a moment the fatal grin upon his face. For an instant he no longer laughed. This effort could not last long. Gwyn against that which is our law, or our fatality, must be short-lived. At times the waters of the sea resist the power of gravitation, swell into a waterspout, and become a mountain, but only on the condition of falling back again. Such a struggle was Gwyn Plaine's. For an instant, which he felt to be a solemn one, by a prodigious intensity of will, but for not much longer than a flash of lightning lasts, he had thrown over his brow the dark veil of his soul. He held in suspense his incurable laugh. From that face upon which it had been carved he had withdrawn the joy. Now it was nothing but terrible. "'Who is this man?' exclaimed all. That forest of hair, those dark hollows under the brows, the deep gaze of eyes which they could not see. That head, on the wild outlines of which light and darkness mingled weirdly, were a wonder indeed. It was beyond all understanding. Much as they had heard of him, the sight of Gwyn Plaine was a terror. Even those who expected much found their expectations surpassed. It was as though on the mountain reserved for the gods. During the banquet, on a serene evening, the whole of the all-powerful body being gathered together, the face of Prometheus, mangled by the vultures beak, should have suddenly appeared before them, like a blood-colored moon on the horizon. Prometheus, looking on caucuses, with a vision, old and young, open-mouthed with surprise, fixed their eyes upon Gwyn Plaine. An old man, respected by the whole house, who had seen many men and many things, and who was intended for a duke-dumb, Thomas Earl of Wharton rose in terror. "'What does all this mean?' he cried. "'Who has brought this man into the house? Let him be put out!' And addressing Gwyn Plaine haughtily, "'Who are you? Whence do you come?' Gwyn Plaine answered, out of the depths. And folding his arms, he looked at the lords. "'Who am I? I am wretchedness, my lords. I have a word to say to you.' A shudder ran through the house. Then all was silence. Gwyn Plaine continued, "'My lords, you are highly placed. It is well. You must believe that God has his reasons that it should be so. You have power, opulence, pleasure, the sun ever shining in your zenith, authority unbounded, enjoyment without a sting, and a total forgetfulness of others. So be it. But there is something below you, above you it may be. My lords, I bring you news, news of the existence of mankind. These are like children. A strange occurrence is as a jack in the box to them. It frightens them, but they like it. It is as if a spring were touched, and a devil jumps up. Mirabeau, who was also deformed, was a case in point in France. Gwyn Plaine felt within himself at that moment a strange elevation. In addressing a body of men, one's foot seems to rest on them, to rest as it were, on a pinnacle of souls, on human hearts. It quiver under one's heel. Gwyn Plaine was no longer the man who had been, only the night before, almost mean. The fumes of the sudden elevation which had disturbed him had cleared off and become transparent, and in the state in which Gwyn Plaine had been seduced by a vanity he now saw but a duty. That which had at first lessened, now elevated him. He was illuminated by one of those great flashes which emanate from duty. All round Gwyn Plaine arose cries of, Here, here! Meanwhile, rigid and superhuman, he succeeded in maintaining on his features that severe and sad contraction under which the laugh was fretting like a wild horse struggling to escape. He resumed, I am he who cometh out of the depths. My lords, you are great and rich. There lies your danger. You profit by the night, but beware. The dawn is all-powerful. You cannot prevail over it. It is coming. Nay, it is come. Within it is the dayspring of irresistible light, and who shall hinder that sling from hurling the sun into the sky? The sun I speak of is right. You are privilege. Tremble. The real master of the house is about to knock at the door. What is the father of privilege? What is his son? Abuse. Neither chance nor abuse are abiding. For both a dark morrow is at hand. I am come to warn you. I am come to impeach your happiness. It is fashioned out of the misery of your neighbor. You have everything, and that everything is composed of the nothing of others. My lords, I am an advocate without hope, pleading a cause that is lost, but that cause God will gain on appeal. As for me, I am but a voice. Mankind is a mouth of which I am the cry. You shall hear me. I am about to open before you, peers of England, the great assize of the people, of that sovereign who is the subject, of that criminal who is the judge. I am weighed down under the load of all that I have to say. Where am I to begin? I know not. I have gathered together, in the vast diffusion of suffering, my innumerable and scattered pleas. What am I to do with them now? They overwhelm me, and I must cast them to you in a confused mass. Did I foresee this? No. You are astonished, so am I. Yesterday I was a mount-a-bank. Today I am a pier. Deep play. Of whom? Of the unknown. Let us all tremble. My lords, all the blue sky is for you, of this immense universe you see but the sunshine. Believe me, it has its shadows. Amongst you I am called Lord Firmaine Clan Charley, but my true name is one of poverty, Gwyn Plaine. I am a wretched thing carved out of the stuff of which the great are made. For such was the pleasure of a king. That is my history. Many amongst you knew my father. I knew him not. His connection with you was his feudal descent. His outlawry is the bond between him and me. What God willed was well. I was cast into the abyss. For what end? To search its depths. I am a diver, and I have brought back the pearl. Truth. I speak because I know. You shall hear me, my lords. I have seen. I have felt. Suffering is not a mere word. Ye happy ones. Poverty I grew up in. Winter has frozen me. Here I have tasted. Contempt I have suffered. Pistolence I have undergone. Shame I have drunk of. And I will vomit all these up before you. And this ejection of all misery shall sully your feet and flame about them. I hesitated before I allowed myself to be brought to the place where I now stand because I have duties to others elsewhere and my heart is not here. What passed within me has nothing to do with you. When the man whom you call Usher of the Black Rod came to seek me by order of the woman whom you call the Queen, the idea struck me for a moment that I would refuse to come. But it seemed to me that the hidden hand of God pressed me to the spot, and I obeyed. I felt that I must come amongst you. Why? Because of my rags of yesterday. It is to raise my voice among those who have eaten their fill that God mixed me up with the famished. O have pity of this fateful world to which you believe yourselves to belong. You know nothing. Placed so high you are out of it, but I will tell you what it is. I have had experience enough. I come from beneath the pressure of your feet. I can tell you your weight. O you who are masters, do you know what you are? Do you see what you are doing? No. Oh, it is dreadful. One night, one night of storm, a little deserted child, an orphan alone in the immeasurable creation, I made my entrance into that darkness which you call society. The first thing that I saw was the law under the form of a gibbet. The second was riches, your riches, under the form of a woman dead of cold and hunger. The third, the future, under the form of a child left to die. The fourth, goodness, truth, and justice, under the figure of a vagabond whose sole friend and companion was a wolf. Just then, Gwynn Plain, stricken by a sudden emotion, felt the sobs rising in his throat, causing him most unfortunately to burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. The contingent was immediate, a cloud had hung over the assembly, it might have broken into terror, it broke into delight. Mad merriment seized the whole house, nothing pleases the great chambers of sovereign man so much as buffoonery, it is their revenge upon their graver moments. The laughter of kings is like the laughter of the gods, there is always a cruel point in it, the lords set to play. Sneers gave sting to their laughter. They clapped their hands around the speaker and insulted him. A volley of merry exclamations assailed him, like bright but wounding hailstones. Bravo, Gwynn Plain, bravo, laughing man, bravo, snout of the green box, mask of Terenzo Field, you are going to give us a performance. That's right, talk away, there's a funny fellow. How the beast does laugh, to be sure. Good day, Pantaloon. How'd you do, my Lord Clown? Go on with your speech, that fellow, a peer of England. Go on, no, no, yes, yes." The Lord Chancellor was much disturbed. A deaf peer, James Butler, Duke of Ormond, placing his hand to his ear like an ear trumpet, asked Charles Bowclerk, Duke of St. Albans, how has he voted? Uncontent. By Heavens, said Ormond, I can understand it with such a face as his. Do you think that you can ever recapture a crowd once it has escaped your grasp, and all assemblies are crowds alike? No, eloquence is a bit, and if the bit breaks the audience runs away and rushes on till it has thrown the orator. Here is naturally disliked the speaker, which is a fact not as clearly understood as it ought to be. Instinctively he pulls the reins, but that is a useless expedient. However, all orators try it, as Gwyn Plain did. He looked for a moment at those men who were laughing at him. Then he cried, So, you insult misery! Silence! Peers of England. Judges, listen to my pleading. O, I conjure you, have pity! Pity for whom? Pity for yourselves. Who is in danger? Yourselves. Do you not see that you are in a balance, and that there is in one scale your power, and in the other your responsibility? It is God who is weighing you. O, do not laugh. Think! The trembling of your consciences is the oscillation of the balance in which God is weighing your actions. You are not wicked. You are like other men, neither better nor worse. You believe yourselves to be gods, but be ill tomorrow, and see your divinity shivering in fever. We are worth one as much as the other. I address myself to honest men, there are such here. I address myself to lofty intellects, there are such here. I address myself to generous souls, there are such here. You are fathers, sons, and brothers, therefore you are often touched. He amongst you who has this morning watched the awakening of his little child is a good man. Hearts are all alike. Humanity is nothing but a heart. Between those who oppress and those who are oppressed there is but a difference of place. Your feet tread on the heads of men. The fault is not yours, it is that of the social babble. The building is faulty, and out of the perpendicular. One floor bears down the other. Listen, and I will tell you what to do. O, as you are powerful, be brotherly. As you are great, be tender. If you only knew what I have seen, alas, what gloom is there beneath? The people are in a dungeon. How many are condemned who are innocent? No daylight, no air, no virtue. They are without hope, and yet there is the danger. They expect something. Realize all this misery. There are beings who live in death. There are little girls who at twelve begin by prostitution and who end in old age at twenty. After the seventies of the criminal code they are fearful. I speak somewhat at random and do not pick my words. I say everything that comes into my head. No later than yesterday I, who stand here, saw a man lying in chains, naked, with stones piled on his chest, expire in torture. Do you know of these things? No. If you knew what goes on you would not dare to be happy. Who of you have been to Newcastle upon Tyne? There, in the mines, are men who chew coals to fill their stomachs and deceive hunger. Look here, in Lancashire. Rubblechester has sunk, by poverty. From a town to a village, I do not see that Prince George of Denmark requires a hundred thousand pounds extra. I should prefer receiving a poor sick man into the hospital without compelling him to pay his funeral expenses in advance. In Carnivane and at Stratmore, as well as at Stratbecken, the exhaustion of the poor is horrible. At Stratford they cannot drain the marsh for want of money. The manufactories are shut up all over Lancashire. There is forced idleness everywhere. Do you know that the herring-fishers at Harlech eat grass when the fishery fails? Do you know that at Burton Lazar's there are still lepers confined, on whom they fire if they leave their tan houses? At Alesbury, a town of which one of you is Lord, this institution is chronic. At Pencrige, in Coventry, where you have just in doubt a cathedral and enriched a bishop, there are no beds in the cabins, and they dig holes in the earth in which to put the little children to lie so that instead of beginning life in the cradle they begin it in the grave. I have seen these things. My lords, do you know who pays the taxes you vote? The dying. Alas, you deceive yourselves. You are going the wrong road. You augment the poverty of the poor to increase the riches of the rich. You should do the reverse. What? Take from the worker to give to the idle? Take from the tattered to give to the well-clad? Take from the beggar to give to the prince? Oh, yes. I have old Republican blood in my veins. I have a horror of these things. How I execrate kings, and how shameless are the women. I have been told a sad story. How I hate Charles II. A woman whom my father loved gave herself to that king, whilst my father was dying in exile. The prostitute. Charles II, James II, after a scamp, a scoundrel. What is there in a king, a man, feeble and contemptible, subject to wants and infirmities? Of what good is a king? You cultivate that parasite royalty. You make a serpent of that worm, a dragon of that insect. Oh, pity the poor. You increase the weight of the taxes for the profit of the throne. Look to the laws which you decree. Take heed of the suffering swarms which you crush. Cast your eyes down. Look at what is at your feet. Oh ye great, there are the little. Have pity. Yes, have pity on yourselves, for the people is in its agony. And when the lower part of the trunk dies, the higher parts die too. Death spares no limb. When night comes no one can keep his corner of daylight. Are you selfish? Then save others. The destruction of the vessel cannot be a matter of indifference to any passenger. There can be no wreck for some that is not wreck for all. Oh, believe it, the abyss yawns for all. The laughter increased and became irresistible. For that matter, such extravagance as there was in his words was sufficient to amuse any assembly. To be comic, without, and tragic within, what suffering can be more humiliating? What pain deeper? When plain felt it, his words were an appeal in one direction, his face in the other. What a terrible position was his. Suddenly his voice rang out in strident bursts. How gay these men are! Be it so! Here is irony, face to face with agony. A sneer mocking the death-rattle. They are all powerful. Perhaps so. Be it so. We shall see. Behold, I am one of them. I am also one of you. O ye poor! A king sold me. A poor man sheltered me. Who mutilated me? A prince. Who healed and nourished me? A pauper. I am Lord Clan Charlie, but I am still Gwyn Plain. I take my place amongst the great, but I belong to the mean. I am amongst those who rejoice, but I am with those who suffer. O this system of society is false. Some day will come that which is true, then there will be no more lords, and there shall be free and living men. There will be no more masters. There will be fathers. Such is the future. No more prostrations. No more baseness. No more ignorance. No more human beasts of burden. No more courtiers. No more toadies. No more kings. But light. In the meantime, see me here. I have a right, and I will use it. Is it a right? No. If I use it for myself? Yes. If I use it for all. I will speak to you, my lords, being one of you. O my brothers below, I will tell them of your nakedness. I will rise up with a bundle of the people's rags in my hand. I will shake off over the masters of the misery of the slaves, and these favored and arrogant ones shall no longer be able to escape the remembrance of the wretched. Nor the princes, the itch of the poor, and so much the worse, if it be the bite of vermin, and so much the better, if it awake the lions from their slumber. There Gwyn Plain turned towards the kneeling under-clerks, who were riding on the fourth wool sack. Who are those fellows kneeling down? What are you doing? Get up! You are men! These words, suddenly addressed to inferiors whom a lord ought not even to perceive, increased the merriment to the utmost. They had cried, Bravo! Now they shouted, Hurrah! From clapping their hands they proceeded to stamping their feet. One might have been back in the green box, only that there the laughter applauded Gwyn Plain. Here it exterminated him. The effort of ridicule is to kill. Men's laughter sometimes exerts all its power to murder. The laughter proceeded to action. Sneering words rained down upon him. Humor is the folly of assemblies. Their ingenious and foolish ridicule shuns facts instead of studying them and condemns questions instead of solving them. Any extraordinary occurrence is a point of interrogation. To laugh at it is like laughing at an enigma, but the sphinx, which never laughs, is behind it. Contradictory shouts arose. Enough! Enough! Encore! Encore! William Farmer, Baron Leimster, flung Gwyn Plain, the insult cast by Rye. Quinney at Shakespeare. Histrio mima! Lord Vaughn, a sententious man, 29th on the barren's bench, exclaimed, We must be back in the days when animals have the gift of speech. In the midst of human tongues the jaw of a beast has spoken. Listen to Balam's ass, added Lord Yarmouth. Lord Yarmouth presented that appearance of sagacity, produced by a round nose and a crooked mouth. The rubble lineus is chastised in his tomb. The son is the punishment of the father, said John Hugh, Bishop of Litchfield, and Coventry, whose pre-Bendery Gwyn Plain's attack has glanced. He lies, said Lord Cal Mondily, the legislator so well read up in the law. That which he calls torture is only the pen fort et dur, and a very good thing, too. Torture is not practised in England. This Wentworth, barren rabbi, addressed the Chancellor. My Lord Chancellor, adjourn the house. No, no, let him go on. He is amusing. Hurrah! Hip, hip, hip! Thus shadowed the young lords, their fun amounting to fury. Four of them, especially, were in the full exasperation of hilarity and hate. These were Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, Thomas Tufton, Earl of Thanet, Viscount Hatton, and the Duke of Montague. To your tricks, Gwyn Plain, cried Rochester. Put him out! Put him out! shouted Thanet. Viscount Hatton drew from his pocket a penny which he flung to Gwyn Plain, and John Campbell, Earl of Greenwich, Savage, Earl Rivers, Thompson, Baron Haversham, Warrington, Eskric Rolston, Rockingham, Carterette, Langdale, Barchester, Maynard, Hudsonston, Carnarvon, Cavendish, Burlington, Robert Darcy, Earl of Holderness, other Windsor, Earl of Plymouth, applauded. There was a tumult as of pandemonium or of pantheon in which the words of Gwyn Plain were lost. Amidst it all, there was heard but one word of Gwyn Plain's beware. Ralph, Duke of Montague, recently down from Oxford, and still a beardless youth, descended from the bench of Dukes where he sat the nineteenth in order and placed himself in front of Gwyn Plain, with his arms folded. In his sword there was a spot which cuts sharpest, and in a voice an accent which insults most keenly. Montague spoke with that accent, and, sneering with his face close to that of Gwyn Plain, shouted, What are you talking about? I am prophesying, said Gwyn Plain. The laughter exploded anew, and below this laughter anger growled its continued base. One of the miners, Lionel Cranfield Sackville, Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, stood upon his seat, not smiling, but grave as became a future legislator, and without saying a word, looked at Gwyn Plain with his fresh twelve-year-old face and shrugged his shoulders, where at the Bishop of St. Asif's, whispered in the ear of the Bishop of St. David's, who was sitting beside him, as he pointed to Gwyn Plain, There is the fool, then pointing to the child, there is the sage. A chaos of complaint rose from amidst the confusion of exclamation. Gorgon's face, what does it all mean? An insult to the house. The fellow ought to be put out. What a madman! Shame, shame! Adjourn the house. No, let him finish his speech. Talk away, you buffoon! Lord Lewis of Durras, with his arms akimbo, shouted, Ah! It does one good to laugh. My spleen is cured. I propose a vote of thanks in these terms. The house of Lord's returns thanks to the green box. Gwyn Plain, it may be remembered, had dreamt of a different welcome. A man who, climbing up a steep and crumbling eclivity of sand above a giddy precipice, has felt a giving way under his hands. His nails, his elbows, his knees, his feet, who, losing instead of gaining on his treacherous way, are prey to every terror of the danger slipping back instead of ascending, increasing the certainty of his fall by his very efforts to gain the summit, and losing ground in every struggle for safety, has felt the abyss approaching nearer and nearer until the certainty of his coming fall into the yawning jaws open to receive him has frozen the marrow of his bones. That man has experienced the sensations of Gwyn Plain. He felt the ground he had ascended crumbling under him, and his audience was the precipice. There was always someone to say the word which sums all up. Lord's Cardsdale translated the impression of the assembly in one exclamation. What is the monster doing here? Gwyn Plain stood up, dismayed and indignant, in a sort of final convulsion. He looked at them all fixedly. What am I doing here? I have come to be a terror to you. I am a monster, do you say? No. I am the people. I am an exception? No. I am the rule. You are the exception. You are the chimera. I am the reality. I am the frightful man who laughs. Who laughs at what? At you. At himself. At everything. What is his laugh? Your crime and its torment. That crime he flings at your head. That punishment he spits in your face. I laugh, and that means I weep. He paused. There was less noise. The laughter continued, but it was more subdued. He may have fancied that he had regained a certain amount of attention. He breathed again and resumed. This laugh, which is on my face, a king place there. This laugh expresses the desolation of mankind. This laugh means hate, enforced silence, rage, despair. This laugh is a production of torture. This laugh is a forced laugh. If Satan were marked with this laugh, it would convict God, but the Eternal is not like them that perish. Being absolute, he is just, and God hates the acts of kings. Oh, you take me for an exception, but I am a symbol. Oh, all-powerful men, fools that you are, open your eyes. I am the incarnation of all. I represent humanity, such as its masters have made it. It is mutilated. That which has been done to me has been done to it. In it have been deformed right, justice, truth, reason, intelligence, as eyes, nostrils, and ears have been deformed in me. Its heart has been made a sink of passion and pain, like mine, and like mine its features have been hidden in a mask of joy. Where God had placed his finger, the king set his sign manual. Monstrous superposition, bishops, peers, and princes, the people is a sea of suffering smiling on the surface. My lords, I tell you that the people are as I am. Today you oppress them, today you hoot at me, but the future is the ominous thaw in which that which was as stone shall become wave. The appearance of solidity melts into liquid, a crack in the ice, and all is over. There will come an hour when convulsion shall break down your oppression, when an angry roar will reply to your jeers, Nay, that hour did come, thou wert of it. O my father, that hour of God did come, and was called the Republic. It was destroyed, but it will return. Meanwhile remember that the line of kings armed with the sword was broken by Cromwell, armed with the axe. Tremble incorruptible solutions are at hand. The talons which were cut are growing again. The tongues which were torn out are floating away. They are turning to tongues of fire, and scattered by the breath of darkness are shouting through infinity. Those who hunger are showing their idle teeth. False heavens built over real hells are tottering. The people are suffering. They are suffering, and that which is on high totters, and that which is below yawns. Darkness demands its change to light. The damned discuss the elect. Behold, it is the coming of the people, the ascent of mankind, the beginning of the end, the red dawn of the catastrophe. Yes, all these things are in this laugh of mine, and which you laugh today. London is one perpetual fet. Be it so, from one end to the other, England rings with acclamation. Well, but listen, all that you see is I. You have your fets, they are my laugh. You have your public rejoicings, they are my laugh. You have your weddings, consecrations, and coronations, they are my laugh. The births of your princes are my laugh. But above you is a thunderbolt. It is my laugh. How could they stand such nonsense? The laughter burst out afresh, and now it was overwhelming. Of all the lava which that crater, the human mouth ejects, the most corrosive is joy. To inflict evil gaily is a contagion which no crowd can resist. All executions do not take place on the scaffold, and men, from the moment they are in a body, whether in mobs or in senates, have always a ready executioner amongst them, called sarcasm. There is no torture to be compared to that of the wretched condemned to execution by ridicule. This was Gwyn Plain's fate. He was stoned with their jokes, and riddled by the scoffs shot at him. He stood there a mark for all. They sprang up, they cried, encore, they shook with laughter, they stamped their feet, they pulled each other's bands. The majesty of the place, the purple of the robes, the chaste ermine, the dignity of the wigs, had no effect. The lords laughed, the bishops laughed, the judges laughed, the old men's benches derided, the children's benches were in convulsions. The Archbishop of Canterbury nudged the Archbishop of York. Henry Compton, Bishop of London, brother of Lord Northampton, held his sides. The Lord Chancellor bent down his head, probably to conceal his inclination to laugh, and at the bar the statue of respect, the usher of the black rod, was laughing also. Gwyn Plain became pallid, had folded his arms, and surrounded by all those faces, young and old, and which had burst forth this grand Homeric jubilee, and that whirlwind of clapping hands, of stamping feet, and of huraz, and that mad buffoonery, of which he was the center, and that splendid overflow of hilarity in the midst of that unmeasured gaiety, he felt that the sepulcher was within him. All was over. He could no longer master the face which betrayed nor the audience which insulted him. That eternal and fatal law by which the grotesque is linked with the sublime, by which the laugh re-echoes the groan, parody rides behind despair, and seeming as opposed to being, had never found more terrible expression. Never had a light more sinister illumined the depths of human darkness. Gwyn Plain was assisting at the final destruction of his destiny by a burst of laughter. The irremediable was in this. Having fallen, we can raise ourselves up, but being pulverized never. And the insult of their sovereign mockery had reduced him to dust. From thenceforth nothing was possible. Everything is in accordance with the scene. That which was triumph in the green box was disgrace, and catastrophe in the house of lords. What was applause there was insult here. He felt something like the reverse side of his mask. On one side of that mask he had the sympathy of the people who welcomed Gwyn Plain. On the other the contempt of the great, rejecting Lord Vermein Clan Charlie. On one side attraction, on the other repulsion, both leading him towards the shadows. He felt himself, as it were, struck from behind. Fate strikes treacherous blows. Everything will be explained hereafter, but in the mean time destiny is a snare, and man sinks into its pitfalls. He had expected to rise and was welcomed by laughter. Such apotheoses have lugubrious terminations. There was a dreary expression, to be sobered, tragical wisdom born of drunkenness. In the midst of that tempest of gaiety, co-mingled with ferocity, Gwyn Plain fell into a reverie. An assembly in mad merriment drifts as chance directs, and loses its compass when it gives itself to laughter. Gwyn knew whether they were tending nor what they were doing. The house was obliged to rise, adjourned by the Lord Chancellor, owing to extraordinary circumstances to the next day. The peers broke up. They bowed to the royal throne and departed. Echoes of prolonged laughter were heard losing themselves in the corridors. Assemblies, besides their official doors, have, under tapestry, under projections and under arches all sorts of hidden doors by which the members escape like water through the cracks in a vase. In a short time the chamber was deserted. This takes place quickly and almost imperceptibly, and those places, so lately full of voices, are suddenly given back to silence. Reverie carries one far, and one comes by long dreaming to reach, as it were, another planet. Gwyn Plain suddenly awoke from such a dream. He was alone. The chamber was empty. He had not even observed that the house had been adjourned. All the peers had departed, even his sponsors. There only remained here and there some of the lower officers of the house waiting for his lordship to depart before they put the covers on and extinguished the lights. Mechanically he places hat on his head, and leaving his place directed his steps to the great door opening into the gallery. As he was passing through the opening in the bar, a doorkeeper relieved him of his peers' robes. This he scarcely felt, and another instant he was in the gallery. The officials who remained observed with astonishment that the peer had gone out without bowing to the throne. Section 098 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 Bill Mosley. The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo. Part 2 Book VIII. Chapter VIII. He would be a good brother, were he not a good son. There was no one in the gallery, when Blaine crossed the circular space from which they had removed the armchair and the tables, and there now remained no trace of his investiture. Candelabra and lusters, placed at certain intervals, marked the way out. Thanks to this string of light he retraced without difficulty through the suite of saloons and galleries, the way which he had followed on his arrival with the king at arms, and the usher of the black rod. He saw no one except here and there some old lord with tardy steps, plodding along heavily in front of him. Suddenly, in the silence of those great deserted rooms, bursts of indistinct exclamations reached him, a sort of nocturnal clatter unusual in such a place. He directed his steps to the place whence the noise proceeded, and found himself in a spacious hall, dimly lighted, which was one of the exits from the House of Lords. He saw a great glass door open, a flight of steps, footmen and links, a square outside and a few coaches waiting at the bottom of the steps. This was the spot from which the noise which he had heard had proceeded. Within the door and under the hall lamp was a noisy group in a storm of gestures and of voices. When plain approached in the gloom, they were quarreling. On one side there were ten or twelve young lords who wanted to go out on the other a man with his hat on, like themselves upright and with a haughty brow who barred their passage. Who was this man? Tom Jim Jack Some of these lords were still in their robes, others had thrown them off, and were in their usual attire. Tom Jim Jack wore a hat with plumes, not white like the piers, but green, tipped with orange. He was embroidered and laced from head to foot, had flowing bows of ribbon and lace around his wrists and neck, and was feverishly fingering with his left hand the hilt of the sword which hung from his waist belt, and on the billets and the scabbard of which were embroidered on Admiral's anchors. It was he who was speaking and addressing the young lords, and when plain overheard the following, I have told you you are cowards, you wish me to withdraw my words, be it so, you are not cowards, you are idiots, you all combined against one man. That was not cowardice. All right, then it was stupidity. He spoke to you and you did not understand him, hear the old or hard of hearing, the young devoid of intelligence. I am one of your own order, to quite sufficient extent to tell you the truth. This newcomer is strange, and he has uttered a heap of nonsense, I admit, but amidst all that nonsense there were some things which were true. His speech was confused, undigested, ill-delivered, be it so. He repeated, you know, you know, too often, but a man who was, but yesterday a clown at a fair cannot be expected to speak like Aristotle or like Dr. Gilbert Burnett, Bishop of Salisbury. The vermin, the lions, the address to the underclerks, all that was in bad taste. Zounds, who says it wasn't? It was a senseless and fragmentary and topsy-turvy harangue, but here and there came out facts which were true. It is no small thing to speak, even as he did, seeing it is not his trade. I should like to see you do it. Yes, you. What he said about the lepers at Burton Lazar's is an undeniable fact. Besides, he is not the first man who has talked nonsense. In fine, my lords, I do not like to see many set upon one, such is my humor, and I ask your lordship's permission to take offense. You have displeased me. I am angry. I am grateful to God for having drawn up from the depths of his low existence this peer of England, and for having given back his inheritance to the heir, and without heeding whether it will or will not affect my own affairs, I consider it a beautiful sight to see an insect transformed into an eagle, and a windplane into Lord Clan Charlie. My lords, I forbid you holding any opinion but mine. I regret that Lord Louis du Ross could not be here. I should like to insult him. My lords, it is fair main Clan Charlie who has been the peer, and you who have been the Mount of Banks. As to his laugh, it was not his fault. You have laughed at that laugh. A man should not laugh at misfortune. If you think that people cannot laugh at you as well, you are very much mistaken. You are ugly. You are badly dressed. My lord Haversham, I saw your mistress the other day. She is hideous, a duchess, but a monkey. Gentlemen who laugh, I repeat that I should like to hear you try to say four words running. Amen, Jabber. Very few speak. You imagine you know something because you have kept idle terms at Oxford or Cambridge, and because before being peers of England on the benches of Westminster, you have been asses on the benches at Gondville and Chious. Here I am, and I choose to stare you in the face. You have just been impudent to this new peer, a monster certainly, but a monster given up to beasts. I had rather be that man than you. I was present at the sitting in my place as a possible heir to a peerage. I heard all. I have not the right to speak, but I have the right to be a gentleman. Your jeering heirs annoyed me. When I am angry, I would go up to Mount Pendle Hill and pick the Cloudberry which brings the Thunderbolt down on the Gatherer. That is the reason why I have waited for you at the door. We must have a few words, for we have arrangements to make. Did I strike you that you failed a little in respect towards myself? My lords, I entertain a firm determination to kill a few of you. All you who are here, Thomas Tufton, Earl of Thanet, Savage Earl Rivers, Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland, Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, Eubarrens, Gray of Rulliston, Kerry Hunsdon, Eskric, Rockingham, Little Catterette, Robert Darcy, Earl of Holderness, William Vikeout Hunton, and Ralph Ducumontagu, and any who choose, I, David Durimois, an officer of the fleet, summon, call, and command you to provide yourselves in all haste with seconds at umpires, and I will meet you face to face and hand to hand tonight at once, tomorrow, by day or night, by sunlight or by candlelight, where, when, or how you please, so long as there is two sword-length space, and you will do well to look to the flints of your pistols and the edges of your rapiers, for it is my firm intention to cause vacancies in your peerages. Hogle Cavendish, take your measures and think of your motto, Cavendotutus. Mamadook Langdale, you will do well, like your ancestor Grindold, to order a coffin to be brought with you. George Booth, Earl of Warrington, you will never again see the county Palatine of Chester, or your labyrinth like that of Crete, or the high towers of Dunham Massie. As to Lord Vaughn, he is young enough to talk impertently and too old to answer for it. I shall demand satisfaction for his words of his nephew Richard Vaughn, Member of Parliament for the Borough of Merioneth. As for you, John Campbell, Earl of Greenwich, I will kill you as Achaun killed Matus, but with a fair cut, and not from behind, it being my custom to present my heart and not my back to the point of a sword. I have spoken my mind, my lords, and so use witchcraft if you like. Consult the fortune-tellers. Grease your skins with ointments and drugs to make them invulnerable. Hang round your next charms of the devil or the virgin. I will fight you blessed or cursed, and I will not have you searched to see if you are wearing any wizard's tokens. On foot, or on horseback, on the high road, if you wish it, in Piccadilly, or at Charing Cross, and they shall take up the pavement for our meeting as they unpave the court of the Louvre for the duel between Guise and Bassompierre. All of you, do you hear? I mean to fight you all. Dormais, Earl of Carnavalne, I will make you swallow my sword up to the hilt, as Marilès did to Laiso Meriveau, and then we shall see, my lord, whether you will laugh or not. You, Burlington, who look like a girl of 17, you shall choose between the lawn of your house at Middlesex and your beautiful garden at London's borough at Yorkshire to be buried in. I beg to inform your lordships that it does not suit me to allow your insolence in my presence. I will chastise you, my lords. I take it ill that you should have ridiculed Lord Firmain, Clan Charlie. He is worth more than you. As Clan Charlie he has nobility, which you have, as Gwynn Plain, he has intellect, which you have not. I make his cause my cause. Insult to him, insult to me, and your ridicule my wrath. We shall see who will come out of this affair alive because I challenge you to the death. Do you understand? With any arm in any fashion, you shall choose the death that pleases you best. And since you are clowns, as well as gentlemen, I proportion my defiance to your qualities, and I give you your choice of any way in which a man can be killed, from the sword of the Prince to the fist of the Blaggard. To this, furious, onslaught of words, the whole group of young noblemen, answered by a smile. Agreed, they said. I choose pistols, said Burlington. I, said Eskric, the ancient combat of the Lists with the Mace and the Dagger. I, said Holderness, the duel with two knives, long and short, stripped to the waist and breast to breast. Lord David, said the Earl of Thadea, you're a Scot. I choose the Claymore. I, the sword, said Rockingham. I, said Duke Rowell, prefer the fists to his noblists. When Plane came out from the Shadow, he directed his steps towards him, who he had hitherto called Tom Jim Jack, but in whom now, however, he began to perceive something more. I thank you, said he. But this is my business. Every head turned towards him. When Plane advanced, he felt himself impelled towards the man whom he heard called Lord David, his defender, and perhaps something nearer. Lord David drew back. Oh, said he. It is you, is it? This is well timed. I have a word for you as well. Just now you spoke of a woman, who, after having loved Lord Linnaeus Clan Charlie, loved Charles II. It is true. Sir, you insulted my mother. Your mother, cried when Plane. In that case, as I guessed, we are. Brothers, answered Lord David, and he struck when Plane. We are brothers, said he, so we can fight. One can only fight one's equal. Who is one's equal if not one's brother? I will send you my seconds. Tomorrow we will cut each other's throats. End of section 98, he would be a good brother, or he not a good son. Recording by Bill Mosley, Bernardo, Texas, USA. The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo Part II Book IX, Chapter I It is through excess of greatness that man reaches excess of misery. As midnight told from St Paul's, a man who had just crossed London Bridge struck into the lanes of Southwick. There were no lamps lighted, yet being at that time the custom in London, as in Paris, to extinguish the public lamps at eleven o'clock, that is, to put them out just as they became necessary. The streets were dark and deserted. When the lamps are out, men stay in. He whom we speak of advanced with hurried strides. He was strangely dressed for walking at such an hour. He wore a coat of embroidered silk, a sword by his side, a hat with white plumes, and no cloak. The watchman, as they saw him pass, said, It is a Lord walking for a wager, and they moved out of his way with the respect due to a Lord and to a better. The man was Gwyn Plain. He was making his escape. Where was he? He did not know. We have said that the soul has its cyclones, fearful whirlwinds, in which heaven, the sea, day, night, life, death are all mingled in unintelligible horror. It can no longer breathe truth. It is crushed by things in which it does not believe. Nothingness becomes hurricane. The firmament pales. Infinity is empty. The mind of the sufferer wanders away. He feels himself dying. He craves for a star. What did Gwyn Plain feel? A thirst. A thirst to see dare. He felt but that, to reach the green box again and the tad-caster in, with its sounds and light, full of the cordial laughter of the people, to find Ursus and Homo, to see dare again, to re-enter life. Disillusion, like a bow, shoots its arrow man towards the true. Gwyn Plain hastened on. He approached Tarenzo Field. He walked no longer now. He ran. His eyes pierced the darkness before him. His glance preceded him, eagerly seeking the harbour on the horizon. What a moment for him, when he should see the lighted windows of tad-caster in. He reached the bowling-green. He turned the corner of the wall, and saw before him, at the other end of the field, some distance off, the in, the only house it may be remembered, in the field where the fair was held. He looked. There was no light, nothing but a black mass. He shuddered. Then he said to himself that it was late, that the tavern was shut up, that it was very natural, that everyone was asleep, that he had only to awaken Nicholas or Govacom, that he must go up to the in and knock at the door. He did so, running no longer now, but rushing. He reached the in breathless. It is when, storm-beaten and struggling in the invisible confulsions of the soul, until he knows not whether he is in life or in death, that all the delicacy of a man's affection for his loved ones, being yet unimpaired, proves a heart true. When all else has swallowed up, tenderness still floats unshattered. Not to awaken dear to suddenly was Gwynplaine's first thought. He approached the in with as little noise as possible. He recognized the nook, the old dog kennel where Govacom used to sleep. In it, contiguous to the lower room, was a window opening onto the field. Gwynplaine tapped softly at the pane. It would be enough to awaken Govacom, he thought. There was no sound in Govacom's room. At his age, said Gwynplaine, a boy sleeps soundly. With the back of his hand he knocked against the window gently. Nothing stirred. He knocked louder twice. Still nothing stirred. Then, feeling somewhat uneasy, he went to the door of the inn and knocked. No one answered. He reflected and began to feel a cold shudder come over him. Master Nicholas is old. Children sleep soundly and old men heavily. Courage! Louder! He had tapped. He had knocked. He had kicked the door. Now he flung himself against it. This recalled to him a distant memory of Weymouth, when a little child he had carried Dea, an infant, in his arms. He battered the door again violently like a lord, which alas he was. The house remained silent. He felt that he was losing his head. He no longer thought of caution. He shouted, Nicholas, Govacom! At the same time he looked up at the windows to see if any candle was lighted. But the inn was blank. Not a voice, not a sound, not a glimmer of light. He went to the gate and knocked at it, kicked against it, and shook it, crying out wildly, Ursus! Homo! The wolf did not bark. A cold sweat stood in drops upon his brow. He cast his eyes around. The night was dark, but there were stars enough to render the fair-green visible. He saw, a melancholy sight to him, that everything on it had vanished. There was not a single caravan. The circus was gone. Not a tent, not a booth, not a car remained. The strollers with their thousand noisy cries, who had swarmed there, had given place to a black and sullen void. All were gone. The madness of anxiety took possession of him. What did this mean? What had happened? Was no one left? Could it be that life had crumbled away behind him? What had happened to them all? Good heavens! Then he rushed like a tempest against the house. He struck the small door, the gate, the windows, the window shutters, the walls with fists and feet, furious with terror and agony of mind. He called Nicholas, Govacom, Phoebe, Venus, Ursus, Homo. He tried every shout and every sound against this wall. At times he waited and listened. But the house remained mute and dead. Then exasperated he began again with blows, shouts, and repeated knockings, re-echoed all around. It might have been thunder trying to awake the grave. There is a certain stage of fright in which a man becomes terrible. He who fears everything fears nothing. He would strike the sphinx. He defies the unknown. Gwyn Plaine renewed the noise in every possible form, stopping, resuming, unwarying in the shouts and appeals by which he assailed the tragic silence. He called a thousand times on the names of those who should have been there. He shrieked out every name except that of Dea, a precaution of which he could not have explained the reason himself, but which instinct inspired even in his distraction. Having exhausted calls and cries, nothing was left but to break in. I must enter the house, he said to himself. But how? He broke a pane of glass in Govacom's room by thrusting his hand through it, tearing the flesh. He drew the bolt of the sesh and opened the window. Perceiving that his sword was in the way he tore it off angrily, scabbard, blade, and belt, and flung it on the pavement. Then he raised himself by the inequalities in the wall, and though the window was narrow, he was able to pass through it. He entered the inn. Govacom's bed, dimly visible in its nook, was there, but Govacom was not in it. If Govacom was not in his bed, it was evident that Nicholas could not be in his. The whole house was dark. He felt, in that shadowy interior, the mysterious immobility of emptiness, and that vague fear which signifies, there is no one here. Winplain convulsed with anxiety, crossed the lower room, knocking against the tables, upsetting the earthenware, throwing down the benches, sweeping against the jugs, and striding over the furniture, reached the door, leading into the court, and broke it open with one blow from his knee, which sprung the lock. The door turned on its hinges. He looked into the court. The green box was no longer there. End of Section 99. Recording by John Trevidig Section 100 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 II Book IX Chapter II The Dregs Winplain left the house and began to explore Terenzo Field in every direction. He went to every place where the day before the tents and caravans had stood. He knocked at the stalls, though he knew well that they were uninhabited. He struck everything that looked like a door or a window, not a voice arose from the darkness. Something like death had been there. The anthill had been raised. Some measures of police had apparently been carried out. There had been what in our days would be called a razia. Terenzo Field was worse than a desert. It had been scarred, and every corner of it scratched up as it were by pitiless claws. The pocket of the unfortunate fairgreen had been turned inside out and completely emptied. Winplain, after having searched every yard of ground, left the green, struck into the crooked streets abutting on the site called East Point, and directed his steps towards the Thames. He had threaded his way through a network of lanes bounded only by walls and hedges when he felt the fresh breeze from the water, heard the dull lapping of the river, and suddenly saw a parapet in front of him. It was the parapet of the Ephruch Stone. This parapet bounded a block of the key, which was very short and very narrow. Under at the high wall, the Ephruch Stone buried itself perpendicularly in the dark water below. Winplain stopped at the parapet, and leaning his elbows on it, laid his head in his hands and set to thinking, with the water beneath him. Did he look at the water? No. At what then? At the shadow. Not the shadow without, but within him. In the melancholy nightbound landscape, which he scarcely marked, in the outer depths, which his eyes did not pierce, were the blurred sketches of masts and spars. Below the Ephruch Stone there was nothing on the river, but the key sloped insensibly downwards till some distance off had met a pier at which several vessels were lying, some of which had just arrived, others which were on the point of departure. These vessels communicated with the shore by little jetties, constructed for the purpose, some of stone, some of wood, or by movable gangways. All of them, whether moored to the jetties or at anchor, were wrapped in silence. There was neither voice nor movement on board, it being a good habit of sailors to sleep when they can, and awake only when wanted. If any of them were to sail during the night at high tide, the crews were not yet awake. The hulls like large black bubbles and the rigging like threads mingled with ladders were barely visible. All was vivid and confused. Here and there a red crescent pierced the haze. Gwyn Plain saw nothing of all this. What he was musing on was destiny. He was in a dream, a vision, giddy in presence of an inexorable reality. He fancied that he heard behind him something like an earthquake. It was the laughter of the lords. From that laughter he had just emerged, he had come out of it having received a blow, and from whom? From his own brother. Flying from the laughter, carrying within the blow seeking refuge a wounded bird in his nest rushing from hate and seeking love, what had he found? Darkness. No one. Everything gone. He compared that darkness to the dream he had indulged in. What a crumbling away! Gwyn Plain had just reached that sinister bound, the void. The green box gone was his universe vanished. His soul had been closed up. He reflected. What could have happened? Where were they? They had evidently been carried away. Destiny had given him Gwyn Plain a blow which was greatness. Its reaction had struck them another which was annihilation. It was clear that he would never see them again. Precautions had been taken against that. They had scoured the fair green beginning by Nicholas and Govacom so that he should gain no clue through them. Inexorable dispersion. That fearful social system at the same time that it had pulverized him in the House of Lords had crushed them in their little cabin. They were lost. Deo was lost, lost to him forever. Powers of heaven, where was she? And he had not been there to defend her. To have to make guesses as to the absent whom we love is to put oneself to the torture. He inflicted this torture on himself at every thought that he fathomed at every supposition which he made, he felt within him a moan of agony. Through a succession of bitter reflections he remembered a man who was evidently fatal to him, and who had called himself Barcl Fadro. That man had inscribed on his brain a dark sentence which reappeared now. He had written it in such terrible ink that every letter had turned to fire, and Gwyn Plain saw flaming at the bottom of his thought the enigmatic words the meaning of which was at length solved. Destiny never opens one door without closing another. All was over. The final shadows had gathered about him. In every man's fate there may be an end of the world for himself alone. It is called despair. The soul is full of falling stars. This, then, was what he had come to. A vapor had passed. He had been mingled with it. It had lain heavily on his eyes. It had disordered his brain. He had been outwardly blinded, intoxicated within. This had lasted the time of a passing vapor. Then everything melted away, the vapor and his life. Awaking from the dream he found himself alone. All vanished, all gone, all lost, night, nothingness. Such was his horizon. He was alone. Alone has a synonym which is dead. Despair is an accountant. It sets itself to find its total. It adds up everything even to the farthings. It reproaches heaven with its thunderbolts and its pinpricks. It seeks to find what it has to expect from fate. It argues, weighs, and calculates outwardly cool while the burning lava is still flowing on within. Gwyn Plain examined himself and examined his fate. The backward glance of thought. Terrible recapitulation. When at the top of a mountain we look down the precipice, when at the bottom we look up at heaven, and we say, I was there. Gwyn Plain was at the very bottom of misfortune, how sudden too had been his fall. Such is the hideous swiftness of misfortune, although it is so heavy that we might fancy it slow. But no, it would likewise appear that snow from its coldness ought to be the paralysis of winter, and from its whiteness the immobility of the winding sheet. Yet this is contradicted by the avalanche. The avalanche is snow become a furnace. It remains frozen, but it devours. The avalanche had enveloped Gwyn Plain. He had been torn like a rag, uprooted like a tree, precipitated like a stone. He recalled all the circumstances of his fall. He put himself questions and returned answers. Grief is an examination. There is no judge so searching as conscience conducting its own trial. What amount of remorse was there in his despair? This he wished to find out, and dissected his conscience, excruciating vithersection. His absence had caused a catastrophe. Had this absence depended on him? And all that had happened, had he been a free agent? No. He had felt himself captive. What was that which had arrested and detained him? A prison? No. A chain? No. What, then? Sticky slime. He had sunk into the slow of greatness. To whom has it not happened to be free in appearance yet to feel that his wings are hampered? There had been something like a snare spread for him. What is at first temptation ends by captivity? Nevertheless, and as conscience pressed him on this point, had he merely submitted to what had been offered him? No. He had accepted it. Violence and surprise had been used with him in a certain measure it was true, but he, in a certain measure, had given in. To have allowed himself to be carried off was not his fault, but to have allowed himself to be inebriated was his weakness. There had been a moment, a decisive moment, when the question was proposed. This sparkle-fadro had placed a dilemma before Gwyn Plain and had given him clear power to decide his fate by a word. Gwyn Plain might have said no. He had said yes. From that yes uttered in a moment of dizziness everything had sprung. Gwyn Plain realized this now in the bitter aftertaste of that consent. Nevertheless, for he debated with himself, was it then so greater wrong to take possession of his right, of his patrimony, of his heritage, of his house, and as a patrician of the rank of his ancestors, as an orphan of the name of his father, what had he accepted? A restitution, made by whom? By Providence. Then his mind revolted, senseless acceptance. What a bargain had he struck! What a foolish exchange! He had trafficked with Providence at a loss! How now, for an income of eighty thousand pound a year, for seven or eight titles, for ten or twelve palaces, for houses and town and castles in the country, for a hundred lackeys, for packs of hounds and carriages and armorial bearings, to be a judge and legislator, for a coronet and purple robes like a king, to be a baron and a marquis, to be a peer of England, he had given the hut of Ursus and the smile of Daia. For shipwreck and destruction in the surging immensity of greatness, he had bartered happiness. For the ocean he had given the pearl. O madman! O fool! O dupe! Yet nevertheless, and here the objection reappeared on firmer ground, in this fever of high fortune which had seized him all had not been unwholesome. Perhaps there would have been selfishness and renunciation. Perhaps he had done his duty in the acceptance. Suddenly transformed into a lord, what ought he to have done? The complication of events produces perplexity of mind. This had happened to him. Duty gave contrary orders. Duty on all sides at once. Duty multiple and contradictory. This was the bewilderment which he had suffered. It was this that had paralyzed him, especially when he had not refused to take the journey from Corleone Lodge to the House of Lords. What we call rising in life is leaving the safe for the dangerous path, which is thenceforth the straight line. Towards whom is our first duty? Is it towards those nearest to ourselves or is it towards mankind generally? Do we not cease to belong to our own circumscribed circle and become part of the great family of all? As we ascend we feel an increased pressure on our virtue. The higher we rise the greater is the strain. The increase of right is an increase of duty. We come to many crossways, phantom roads per chance, and we imagine that we see the finger of conscience pointing each one of them out to us. Which shall we take? Change our direction? Remain where we are? Advance? Go back? What are we to do? That there should be crossroads and conscience is strange enough, but responsibility may be a labyrinth. And when a man contains an idea, when he is the incarnation of a fact, when he is a symbolical man, at the same time he is a man of flesh and blood, is not the responsibility still more oppressive? Thence the care laden docility and the dumb anxiety of Gwynn Plain thence his obedience when summoned to take his seat. A pensive man is often a passive man. He had heard what he fancied was the command of duty itself, was not that entrance into a place where oppression could be discussed and resisted the realization of one of his deepest aspirations? When he had been called upon to speak, he the fearful human scantling, he the living specimen of the despotic whims under which for six thousand years mankind has grown in agony. Had he the right to refuse? Had he the right to withdraw his head from under the tongue of fire descending from on high to rest upon him? In the obscure and giddy debate of conscience, what had he said to himself? This. The people are a silence. I will be the mighty advocate of that silence. I will speak for the dumb. I will speak of the little to the great, of the weak to the powerful. This is the purpose of my fate. God wills what he wills and does it. It was a wonder that Hadquanone's flask, in which was the metamorphosis of Gwynn Plain into Lord Clancharly, should have floated for fifteen years on the ocean, on the billows, nisurf through the storms, and that all the raging of the sea did it no harm. But I can see the reason. There are destinies with secret springs. I have the key of mine and know its enigma. I am predestined. I have a mission. I will be the poor man's lord. I will speak for the speechless with despair. I will translate inarticulate remonstrance. I will translate the mutterings, the groans, the murmurs, the voices of the crowd, their ill-spoken complaints, their unintelligible words, and those animal-like cries which ignorance and suffering put into men's mouths. The clamour of men is as inarticulate as the howling of the wind. They cry out, but they are understood. So that cries become equivalent to silence, and silence with them means throwing down their arms. This forced disarmament calls for help. I will be their help. I will be the denunciation. I will be the word of the people. Thanks to me, they shall be understood. I will be the bleeding mouth from which the gag has been torn. I will tell everything. This will be great indeed. Yes, it is fine to speak for the dumb, but to speak to the deaf is sad, and that was the second part in the drama. Alas, he had failed irremediably. The elevation in which he had believed the high fortune had melted away like a mirage, and what a fall to be drowned in a surge of laughter. He had believed himself strong. He who during so many years had floated with observant mind on the wide sea of suffering. He who had brought back out of the great shadow so touching a cry. He had been flung against that huge rock the frivolity of the fortunate. He believed himself an Avenger. He was but a clown. He thought that he wielded the thunderbolt. He did but tickle. In place of emotion, he met with mockery. He sobbed. They burst into gaiety, and under that gaiety he had sunk, fatally submerged. And what did they laugh at? At his laugh. So that trace of a hateful act of which he must keep the mark forever, mutilation carved an everlasting gaiety, the stigmata of laughter, image of the sham contentment of nations under their oppressors, that mask of joy produced by torture, that abyss of grimace which he carried on his features, the scar which signified Yusuregus, the attestation of a crime committed by the king towards him, and the symbol of crime committed by royalty towards the people. That was which had triumphed over him, that it was which had overwhelmed him, so that the accusation against the executioner turned into sentence upon the victim. What a prodigious denial of justice, royalty having had satisfaction of his father had had satisfaction of him. The evil that had been done had served as pretext and as motive for the evil which remained to be done. Against whom were the lords angered? Against the torturer? No, against the tortured. Here is the throne, there the people. Here, James the Second, there Gwynn Plain. That confrontation indeed brought to light an outrage and a crime. What was the outrage? Complaint. What was the crime? Suffering. Let misery hide itself in silence, otherwise it becomes treason, and those men who had dragged Gwynn Plain on the hurdle of sarcasm with a wicked? No, but they too had their fatality. They were happy. They were executioners ignorant of the fact. They were good-humoured. They saw no use in Gwynn Plain. He opened himself to them. He tore out his heart to show them, and they cried, Go on with your play. But sharpest sting he had laughed himself. The frightful chain which tied down his soul hindered his thoughts from rising to his face. His disfigurement reached even his senses, and while his conscience was indignant, his face gave it the lie and gestured. Then all was over. He was the laughing man, the caretted of the weeping world. He was an agony petrified in hilarity, carrying the weight of a universe of calamity, and walled up forever with the gaiety, the ridicule, and the amusement of others. Of all the oppressed, of whom he was the incarnation, he partook the hateful fate to be a desolation not believed in. They jeered at his distress. To them he was but an extraordinary buffoon, lifted out of some frightful condensation of misery, escaped from his prison, changed to a deity, risen from the dregs of the people to the foot of the throne, mingling with the stars, and who, having once amused the damned, now amused the elect. All that was in him of generosity, of enthusiasm, of eloquence, of heart, of soul, of fury, of anger, of love, of inexpressible grief, ended in a burst of laughter. And he proved, as he had told the lords, that this was not the exception, but that it was the normal, ordinary, universal, unlimited, sovereign fact, so amalgamated with the routine of life that they took no account of it. The hungry pauper laughs, the beggar laughs, the felon laughs, the prostitute laughs, the orphan laughs to gain his bread. The slave laughs, the soldier laughs, the people laugh. Society is so constituted that every perdition, every indigence, every catastrophe, every fever, every ulcer, every agony is resolved on the surface of the abyss into one frightful grin of joy. Now he was that universal grin, and that grin was himself. The law of heaven, the unknown power which governs, had willed that a spectre, visible and palpable, a spectre of flesh and bone, should be the synopsis of the monstrous parody which we call the world, and he was that spectre, a mutable fate. He had cried pity for those who suffer, in vain. He had striven to awake pity, he had awakened horror, such as the law of apparitions. But while he was a spectre, he was also a man. Here was the heart-rending complication, a spectre without a man within, a man more than any other perhaps since his double fate was the synopsis of all humanity. And he felt that humanity was at once present in him, and absent from him. There was, in his existence, something insurmountable. What was he? A disinherited heir? No, for he was a lord. Was he a lord? No, for he was a rebel. He was the light-bearer, a terrible spoilsport. He was not Satan certainly, but he was Lucifer. His entrance with his torch in his hand was sinister. Sinister for whom? For the sinister. Terrible to whom? To the terrible. Therefore they rejected him. Enter their order, be accepted by them, never. The obstacle which he carried in his face was frightful, but the obstacle which he carried in his ideas was still more insurmountable. His speech was to them more to form than his face. He had no possible thought in common with the world of the great and powerful in which he had by a freak of fate being born, and from which another freak of fate had driven him out. There was between men and his face a mask, and between society and his mind a wall, in mixing from infancy a wandering mountain bank with that vast and tough substance which is called the crowd, in saturating himself with the attraction of the multitude, and impregnating himself with the great soul of mankind, he had lost in the common sense of the whole of mankind the particular sense of the reigning classes. On their heights he was impossible. He had reached them wet with water from the well of truth. The odor of the abyss was on him. He was repugnant to those princes perfumed with lies, to those who live on fiction truth is disgusting, and he who thirsts for flattery vomits the real when he has happened to drink it by mistake. That which Gwyn Plain brought was not fit for their table. For what was it? Reason, wisdom, justice, and they rejected them with disgust. There were bishops there. He brought God into their presence. Who was this intruder? The two poles were pal each other. They can never amalgamate, for transition is wanting. Hence the result a cry of anger when they were brought together in terrible juxtaposition. All misery concentrated in a man face to face with all pride concentrated in a cast. To accuse is useless. To state is sufficient. Gwyn Plain meditating on the limits of his destiny proved the total uselessness of his effort. He proved the deafness of high places. Their privilege have no hearing on the side next the disinherited. Is it their fault? Alas, no. It is their law. Forgive them. To be moved would be to abdicate. Of lords and princes expect nothing. He who is satisfied is inexorable. For those that have their fill the hungry do not exist. The happy ignore and isolate themselves. On the threshold of their paradise as on the threshold of hell must be written, leave all hope behind. Gwyn Plain had met with the reception of a spectre entering the dwelling of the gods. Here all that was within him rose in rebellion. No. He was no spectre. He was a man. He told them, he shouted to them, that he was man. He was not a phantom. He was palpitating flesh. He had a brain and he thought. He had a heart and he loved. He had a soul and he hoped. Indeed, to have hoped over much was his whole crime. Alas, he had exaggerated hope into believing in that thing at once so brilliant and so dark which is called society. He who was without had reentered it. It had at once and at first sight made him its three offers and given him its three gifts. Marriage, family and caste. Marriage? He had seen prostitution on the threshold. Family? His brother had struck him and was awaiting in the next day sword in hand. Cast? It had burst into laughter in his face, at him the patrician, at him the wretch. It had rejected almost before it had admitted him. So that his first three steps into the dense shadow of society had opened three gulfs beneath him. And it was by a treacherous transfiguration that his disaster had begun and catastrophe had approached him with the aspect of apotheosis. A send had signified descend. His fate was the reverse of Job's. It was through prosperity that adversity had reached him. Oh, tragical enigma of life! Behold what pitfalls! A child he had wrestled against the night and had been stronger than it. A man he had wrestled against destiny and had overcome it. Out of disfigurement he had created success and out of misery happiness. Of his exile he had made an asylum. A vagabond he had wrestled against space and like the birds of the air he had found his crumb of bread. Wild and solitary he had wrestled against the crowd and had made it his friend. An athlete he had wrestled against that lion the people and he had tamed it. Indigent he had wrestled against distress. He had faced the dull necessity of living and from amalgamating with misery every joy of his heart he had at length made riches out of poverty. He had believed himself a conqueror of life. Of a sudden he was attacked by fresh forces reaching him from unknown depths, this time with menaces no longer but with smiles and caresses. Love serpent like and sensual had appeared to him who was filled with angelic love. The flesh had tempted him who had lived on the ideal. He had heard words of voluptuousness like cries of rage. He had felt the clasp of a woman's arms like the convolutions of a snake. To the illumination of truth had succeeded the fascination of falsehood. For it is not the flesh that is real but the soul. The flesh is ashes. The soul is flame. For the little circle allied to him by the relationship of poverty and toil, which was his true and natural family, had been substituted the social family, his family in blood but of tainted blood. And even before he had entered it he found himself face to face with an intended fratricide. Unless he had allowed himself to be thrown back into that society of which Prandtom, whom he had not read, wrote, the son has a right to challenge his father. A fatal fortune had cried to him, Thou art not of the crowd, Thou art of the chosen, and had opened the ceiling above his head like a trap in the sky, and had shot him up through this opening, causing him to appear wild and unexpected in the midst of princes and masters. Then suddenly he saw around him instead of the people who applauded him, the lords who cursed him, mournful metamorphosis, ignominious ennobling, rude spoliation of all that had been his happiness, pillage of his life by derision, Gwyn Plain Clanchale, the lord of the Mountabank, torn out of his old lot, out of his new lot, by the beaks of those eagles. What availed it that he had commenced life by immediate victory over Obstacle? Of what good had been his early triumphs? Alas, the fall must come ere destiny be complete. So half against his will, half of it, because after he had done with the whoppentake he had to do with Barcl Phaedro, and he had given a certain amount of consent to his abductions, he had left the real for the shemerical, the true for the false, dea for Housiana, love for pride, liberty for power, labour proud and poor for opulence full of unknown responsibilities, the shade in which is God for the lurid flames in which the devils dwell, paradise for Olympus. He had tasted the golden fruit, he was now spitting out the ashes to which it turned. Lamentable result, defeat, failure, fall into ruin, insolent expulsion of all his hopes, frustrated by ridicule, immeasurable disillusion. And what was there for him in the future? If he looked forward to the morrow, what did he see? A drawn sword, the point of which was against his breast, and the hilt in the hands of his brother. He could see nothing but the hideous flash of that sword. Housiana and the House of Lords made up the background in a monstrous chiaroscuro full of tragic shadows. And that brother seemed so brave and chivalrous. Alas, he had hardly seen that Tom Jim Jack who had defended Gwynn Plain, the Lord David who had defended Lord Clan Charlie, but he had had time to receive a blow from him and to love him. He was crushed. He felt it impossible to proceed further. Everything had crumbled about him. Besides what was the good of it, all wearing as dwells in the depth of the spare, the trial had been made. It could not be renewed. Gwynn Plain was like a gangster who has played all his trumps away, one after the other. He had allowed himself to be drawn to a fearful gambling table without thinking what he was about. For so subtle as the poison of illusion, he had staked Daia against Housiana and had gained a monster. He had staked Ursus against a family and had gained an insult. He had played as Mountabank platform against his seat in the lords. For the applause which was his he had gained insult. His last card had fallen on that fatal green cloth the deserted bowling green. Gwynn Plain had lost. Nothing remained but to pay. Pay up, wretched man. The thundestrikin lie still. Gwynn Plain remained motionless. Anybody perceiving him from afar in the shadow, stiff and without movement might have fancied that he saw an upright stone. Hell, the serpent and reverie are torturous. Gwynn Plain was descending the sepulchral spirals of the deepest thought. He reflected on that world of which he had just caught a glimpse with the icy contemplation of a last look. Marriage but no love. Family but no brotherly affection. Riches but no conscience. Beauty but no modesty. Justice but no equity. Order but no equilibrium. Authority but no right. Power but no intelligence. Splendour but no light. An exhorable balance sheet. He went throughout the supreme vision in which his mind had been plunged. He examined successively destiny, situation, society and himself. What was destiny? A snare. Situation despair. Society hatred. And himself? A defeated man. In the depths of his soul he cried. Society is the stepmother. Nature is the mother. Society is the world of the body. Nature is the world of the soul. The one tends to the coffin, to the deal box and the grave, to the earthworms and ends there. The other tends to expanded wings, to transformation into the morning light, to ascend into the firmament, and there revives into new life. By degrees a paroxysm came over him, like a sweeping surge. At the close of events there is always a last flash in which all stands revealed once more. He who judges meets the accused face to face. Gwyn Plain reviewed all that society and all that nature had done for him. How kind had nature been to him. How she who is the soul had suckered him. All had been taken from him even his features. The soul had given him all back. All even his features. Because there was on earth a heavenly blind girl made expressly for him who saw not his ugliness, and who saw his beauty. And it was from this that he had allowed himself to be separated. From that adorable girl, from his own adopted one, from her tenderness, from her divine blind gaze, the only gaze on earth that saw him, that he had strayed. Daye was his sister because he felt between them the grand fraternity of above, the mystery which contains the whole of heaven. Daye when he was a little child was his virgin, because every child has his virgin, and at the commencement of life a marriage of souls is always consummated in the plentitude of innocence. Daye was his wife, for theirs was the same nest on the highest branch of the deep-rooted tree of Hyman. Daye was still more. She was his light, for without her all was void, and nothingness. And for him her head was crowned with rays. What would become of him without Daye? What could he do with all that was himself? Nothing in him could live without her. How then could he have lost sight of her for a moment? O unfortunate man, he allowed distance to intervene between himself and his star, and by the unknown and terrible laws of gravitation and such things, distance is immediate loss. Where was she, the star? Daye, daye, daye, daye, alas he had lost her light. Take away the star and what is the sky? A black mass. But why then had all this befallen him? O what happiness had been his! For him God had remade Eden. Too close was the resemblance, alas, even to allowing the serpent to enter, but this time it was the man who had been tempted. He had been drawn without, and then by a frightful snare had fallen into a chaos of murky laughter, which was hell. O grief, O grief, how frightful seemed all that had fascinated him. That Housiana fearful creature, half-beast, half-goddess, Gwyn Plain was now on the reverse side of his elevation, and he saw the other aspect of that which had dazzled him. It was baleful. His peerage was deformed, his coronet was hideous, his purple robe a funeral garment, those palaces infected, those trophies, those statues, those armorial bearing sinister, the unwholesome and treacherous air poisoned those who breathed it and turned them mad. How brilliant the rags of the Mountabank, Gwyn Plain, appeared to him now. Alas, where was the green box, poverty, joy, the sweet wandering life, wandering together like the swallows? They never left each other then. He saw her every minute, morning, evening. At table their knees, their elbows touched, they drank from the same cup. The sun shone through the pain, but it was only the sun, and Dea was love. At night they slept not far from each other, and the dream of Dea came and hovered over Gwyn Plain, and the dream of Gwyn Plain spread itself mysteriously above the head of Dea. When they awoke, they could be never quite sure that they had not exchanged kisses in the azure mists of dreams. Dea was all innocence, urses all wisdom. They wandered from town to town, and they had for provision and for stimulant the frank loving gaiety of the people. They were angel vagabonds with enough of humanity to walk the earth, and not enough of wings to fly away. And now all had disappeared. Where was it gone? Was it possible that it was all a-faced? What wind from the tomb had swept over them? All was eclipsed, all was lost, a-less. Power irresistible and deaf to appeal, which weighs down the poor, flings its shadow over all, and is capable of anything. What had been done to them? And he had not been there to protect them, to fling himself in front of them, to defend them as a Lord with his title, his peerage, and his sword, as a mount of bank with his fists and his nails. And here arose a bitter reflection, perhaps the most bitter of all. Well, no, he could not have defended them. It was he himself who had destroyed them. It was to save him, Lord Clan Charlie, from them. It was to isolate his dignity from contact with them, that the infamous omnipotence of society had crushed them. The best way in which he could protect them would be to disappear, and then the cause of their persecution would cease. He out of the way they would be allowed to remain in peace. Into what icy channel was his thought beginning to run? Oh, why had he allowed himself to be separated from Dea, was not his first duty towards her, to serve and to defend the people? But Dea was the people. Dea was an orphan. She was blind. She represented humanity. Oh, what had they done to them? Cruel, smart of regret, his absence had left the field free for the catastrophe. He would have shared their fate. Either they would have been taken and carried away with him, or he would have been swallowed up with them. And now what would become of him without them? Gwynn Plain without Dea was it possible? Without Dea was to be without everything. It was all over now. The beloved group was forever buried in irreparable disappearance. All was spent. Besides, condemned and damned as Gwynn Plain was, what was the good of further struggle? He had nothing more to expect, either of men or of heaven. Dea, Dea, where is Dea? Lost. What, lost? He who has lost his soul can regain it, but through one outlet. Death. Gwynn Plain tragically distraught placed his hand firmly on the parapet, as on a solution, and looked at the river. It was his third night without sleep. Fever had come over him. His thoughts, which he believed to be clear, were blurred. He felt an imperative need of sleep. He remained, for a few instants, leaning over the water. Its darkness offered him a bed of boundless tranquillity in the infinity of shadow. Sinister temptation. He took off his coat, which he folded and placed on the parapet. Then he unbuttoned his waistcoat. As he was about to take it off, his hand struck against something in the pocket. It was the red book which had been given him by the librarian of the House of Lords. He drew it from the pocket, examined it in the vague light of the night, and found a pencil in it, with which he wrote on the first blank that he found these two lines. I depart. Let my brother David take my place, and may he be happy. Then he signed, Firmaine Clanchali, peer of England. He took off his waistcoat and placed it upon the coat, then his hat which he placed upon the waistcoat. In the hat he laid the red book open at the page on which he had written. Seeing a stone lying on the ground, he picked it up and placed it in the hat. Having done all this, he looked up into the deep shadow above him. Then his head sank slowly, as if drawn by an invisible thread towards the abyss. There was a hole in the masonry near the base of the parapet. He placed his foot in it, so that his knee stood higher than the top. And scarcely an effort was necessary to spring over it. He clasped his hands behind his back and leaned over. So be it, said he. And he fixed his eyes on the deep waters. Just then he felt a tongue licking his hands. He shuddered and turned round. Homo was behind him. End of section one hundred. Recording by John Travidic.