 CHAPTER III. A burden makes a rough road rougher. It was little more than four hours since the hooker had sailed from the creek of Portland, leaving the boy on the shore. During the long hours since he had been deserted and had been journeying onward, he had met but three persons of that human society into which he was, per chance, about to enter. A man, the man on the hill, a woman, the woman in the snow, and the little girl whom he was carrying in his arms. He was exhausted by fatigue and hunger, yet advanced more resolutely than ever, with less strength and an added burden. He was now almost naked. The few rags which remained to him, hardened by the frost, were sharp as glass and cut his skin. He became colder, but the infant was warmer. That which he lost was not thrown away, but was gained by her. He found out that the poor infant enjoyed the comfort which was to her the renewal of life. He continued to advance. From time to time, still holding her securely, he bent down, and taking a handful of snow he rubbed his feet with it, to prevent there being frostbitten. And at other times his throat, feeling as if it were on fire, he put a little snow in his mouth and sucked it. As for a moment, assuaged his thirst, but changed it into a fever, a relief which was an aggravation. The storm had become shapeless from its violence, deluges of snow are possible, this was one. The paroxysms scourged the shore at the same time that it uptore the depths of ocean. This was perhaps the moment when the distracted hooker was going to pieces in the battle of the breakers. He traveled under this north wind, still toward the east, over wide surfaces of snow. He knew not how the hours had passed, for a long time he had ceased to see the smoke. Such indications are soon effaced in the night, besides it was past the hour when fires are put out. Or he had perhaps made a mistake, and it was possible that neither town nor village existed in the direction in which he was traveling. He yet persevered. Two or three times the little infant cried. Then he adopted in his gate a rocking movement, and the child was soothed and silenced. She ended by falling into a sound sleep. Shivering himself he felt her warm. He frequently tightened the folds of the jacket around the babe's neck, so that the frost should not get in through any opening, and that no melted snow should drop between the garment and the child. The plain was unequal. In the declivities into which it sloped the snow, driven by the wind into the dips of the ground, was so deep, in comparison with a child so small, that it almost engulfed him, and he had to struggle through it half-buried. He walked on, working away the snow with his knees. When cleared the ravine, he reached the highlands swept by the winds where the snow lay thin. Then he found the surface a sheet of ice. The little girl's lukewarm breath, playing on his face, warmed it for a moment, then lingered and frozen his hair, stiffening it into icicles. He felt the approach of another danger. He could not afford to fall. He knew that if he did so he should never rise again. He was overcome by fatigue and the weight of the darkness. Wood, as with the dead woman, had held him to the ground, and the ice glued him alive to the earth. He had tripped upon the slopes of precipices, and had recovered himself. He had stumbled into holes, and he had got out again. Once forward the slightest fall would be death. A false step opened for him a tomb. He must not slip. He had not strength to rise even to his knees. Now everything was slippery. Everywhere there was rhyme and frozen snow. The little creature whom he carried made his progress fearfully difficult. She was not only a burden, which his weariness and exhaustion made excessive, but was also an embarrassment. She occupied both his arms, and to him who walks over ice both arms are a natural and necessary balancing power. He was obliged to do without this balance. He did without it and advanced, bending under his burden, not knowing what would become of him. This little infant was the drop causing the cup of distress to overflow. He advanced, reeling at every step, as if on a springboard, and accomplishing without spectators miracles of equilibrium. Let us repeat that he was, perhaps, followed on this path of pain by eyes unsleeping in the distances of the shadows. The eyes of the mother and the eyes of God. He staggered, slipped, recovered himself, took care of the infant, and, gathering the jacket about her, he covered up her head, staggered again, advanced, slipped, then drew himself up. The cowardly wind drove against him. Apparently he made much more way than was necessary. He was, to all appearance, on the plains where Ben Cleave's farm was afterwards established, between what are now called spring gardens and the parsonage house. Homesteads and cottages occupy the place of wastelands. Sometimes, less than a century separates a step from a city. Suddenly, a lull having occurred in the icy blast which was blinding him, he perceived, at a short distance in front of him, a cluster of gables and of chimneys shown in relief by the snow. The reverse of a silhouette, a city painted in white on a black horizon, something like what we call nowadays a negative proof. Roofs, dwellings, shelter. He had arrived somewhere at last. He felt the ineffable encouragement of hope. The watch of a ship which has wandered from her course feels some such emotion when he cries, Land Ho! He hurried his steps. At length, then, he was near mankind. He would soon be amidst living creatures that was no longer anything to fear. There glowed within him that sudden warmth, security, that out of which he was emerging or was over. Thenceforward, there would no longer be night, nor winter, nor tempest. It seemed to him that he had left all evil chances behind him. The infant was no longer a burden, he almost ran. His eyes were fixed on the roofs. There was life there. He never took his eyes off them. A dead man might gaze thus on what might appear through the half-opened lid of his sepulcher. There were the chimneys of which he had seen the smoke. No smoke arose from them now. He was not long before he reached the houses. He came to the outskirts of a town, an open street. At that period, bars to streets were falling into disuse. The street began by two houses. In those two houses neither candle nor lamp was to be seen, nor in the whole street, nor in the whole town, so far as I could reach. The house to the right was a roof rather than a house. Nothing could be more mean. The walls were of mud, the roof was of straw, and there was more thatch than wall. A large nettle springing from the bottom of the wall reached the roof. The hovel had but one door, which was like that of a dog kennel, and a window, which was but a hole. All was shut up at the side, and an inhabited pigsty told that the house was also inhabited. The house on the left was large, high, built entirely of a stone with a slated roof. It was also closed. It was the rich man's home, opposite to that of a pauper. The boy did not hesitate. He approached the great mansion. The double-folding door of massive oak studded with large nails was of the kind that leads one to expect, that behind it there is a stout armory of bolts and locks. An iron knocker was attached to it. He raised the knocker with some difficulty, for his benumbed hands were stumps rather than hands. He knocked once. No answer. He struck again, and two knocks. No movement was heard in the house. He knocked a third time. There was no sound. He saw that they were all asleep, and did not care to get up. Then he turned to the hovel. He picked up a pebble from the snow and knocked against the low door. There was no answer. He raised himself on tiptoe, and knocked with his pebble against the pain too softly to break the glass, but loud enough to be heard. No voice was heard. No step moved. No candle was lighted. He saw that there, as well, they did not care to awake. The house of stone and the thatched hovel were equally deaf to the wretched. The boy decided on pushing on further, and penetrating the straight of houses which stretched away in front of him, so dark that it seemed more like a gulf between two cliffs than an entrance to a town. Section 32 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 Lonnie Decker The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo Part 1 Book III Chapter IV Another Form of Desert It was Weymouth which he had just entered. Weymouth then was not the respectable and fine Weymouth of today. Weymouth did not present, like the present one, an irreproachable rectangular quay with an inn and a statue in honor of George III. This resulted from the fact that George III had not yet been born. For the same reason they had not yet designed on the slope of the Green Hill toward the east, fashioned flat on the soil by cutting away the turf and leaving the bear chalk to the view, the white horse, an acre long, bearing the king upon his back and always turning in honor of George III, his tail to the city. These honors, however, were deserved. George III, having lost in his old age the intellect he had never possessed in his youth, was not responsible for the calamities of his reign. He was an innocent. Why not erect statues to him? Weymouth, 180 years ago, was about as symmetrical as the game of Spillicons and Confusion. In legends it is said that Asteroth traveled over the world carrying on her back a wallet which contained everything, even good women in their houses. A pell-mell of sheds thrown from her devil's bag would give an idea of that irregular Weymouth. The good women in the sheds included the music hall remains as a specimen of those buildings. A confusion of wooden dens carved and eaten by worms, which carve it another fashion, shapeless overhanging buildings, some with pillars, leaning one against the other for support against the sea wind, and leaving between them awkward spaces of narrow and winding channels, lanes and passages, often flooded by the equinautical tides, a heap of old grandmother-houses crowded round the Grandfather Church. Such was Weymouth, a sort of old Norman village thrown up on the coast of England. The traveller who entered the tavern now replaced by the hotel, instead of paying royally his twenty-five francs for a fried soul and a bottle of wine, had to suffer the humiliation of eating a penny worth of soup made of fish, which soup, by the by, was very good, wretched fare. The deserted child, carrying the foundling, passed through the first street, then the second, then the third. He raised his eyes, seeking in the higher stories and in the roofs a lighted window pane, but all were closed and dark. At intervals he knocked at the doors, no one answered. Nothing makes the heart so like a stone as being warm between sheets. The noise and the shaking had it length awakened the infant. He knew this because he felt her suck his cheek. She did not cry, believing him, her mother. He was about to turn and wander long, perhaps, in the intersections of the Scambridge lanes, where there were then more cultivated plots than dwellings, more thorn hedges than houses, but fortunately he struck into a passage which exists to this day near Trinity schools. This passage led him to a water brink, where there was a roughly built quay with a parapet, and to the right he made out a bridge. It was the bridge over the way, connecting Weymouth with Melcomregis, the none of the arches of which the backwater joins the harbor. Weymouth, a hamlet, was then the suburb of Melcomregis, a city and port. Now Melcomregis is a parish of Weymouth. The village had absorbed this city. It was the bridge which did the work. The bridges are strange vehicles of suction which inhale the population, and sometimes swell one river bank at the expense of its opposite neighbor. The boy went to the bridge, which at that period was a covered timber structure. He crossed it. Thanks to its roofing there was snow-snow on the planks. His bare feet had a moment's comfort as they crossed them. When passed over the bridge he was in Melcomregis. There were fewer wooden houses than stone ones here. He was no longer in the village, he was in the city. The bridge opened on a rather fine street called St. Thomas's Street. He entered it. Here and there were high carved gables and shop fronts. He set to knocking at the doors again. He had no strength left to call or shout. Melcomregis, as at Weymouth, no one was stirring. The doors were all carefully double-locked. The windows were covered by their shutters, as the eyes by their lids. Every precaution had been taken to avoid being roused by disagreeable surprises. The little wanderer was suffering the indefinable depression made by a sleeping town. Its silence, as of a paralyzed ants nest, made the head swim. All its lethargies mingle their nightmares, its slumbers are a crowd, and from its human bodies lying prone there arises a vapor of dreams. Sleep has gloomy associates beyond this life. The decomposed thoughts of the sleepers float above them in a mist which is both of death and of life, and combine with the possible, which has also, perhaps, the power of thought as it floats in space. Its arise entanglements, dreams, those clouds, interpose their folds and their transparencies over that star, the mind. Above those closed eyelids where visions has taken place the sight, a sepulchral disintegration of outlines and appearances dilates itself into impalpability. Mysterious diffused existences amalgamate themselves with life on that border of death which sleep is. Those larvae and souls mingle in the air. Even he who sleeps not feels a medium press upon him full of sinister life. The sounding chimera in which he suspects a reality impedes him. The waking man, wending his way amidst the sleep, phantoms of others unconsciously push his back passing shadows has or imagines that he has a vague fear of adverse contact with the invisible and feels at every moment the obscure pressure of a hostile encounter which immediately dissolves. There is something of the effect of a forest in the nocturnal diffusion of dreams. This is what is called being afraid without reason. What a man feels a child feels still more. The uneasiness of nocturnal fear, increased by the spectral houses, increased the weight of the sad burden under which he was struggling. He encountered Conakar Lane and perceived at the end of that passage the back water which he took for the ocean he no longer knew in what direction the sea lay. He retraced his steps, struck to the left by Maiden Street, and returned as far as St. Albans Row. There by chance and without selection he knocked violently at any house that he happened to pass. His blows on which he was expending his last energies were jerky and without aim, now ceasing altogether for a time, now renewed as if in irritation. It was the violence of his fever striking against the doors. One voice answered, that of time. Three o'clock told slowly behind him from the old belfry of St. Nicholas. Then all sank into silence again. That no inhabitants should have opened a lattice may appear surprising, nevertheless that silence is in a great measure to be explained. We must remember that in January 1790 there were just over a somewhat severe outbreak of the plague in London, and that the fear of receding sick vagabonds caused a diminution of hospitality everywhere. People would not even open their windows for fear of inhaling the poison. The child felt the coldness of men more terribly than the coldness of night. The coldness of men is intentional. He felt a tightening on his sinking heart, which he had not known on the open plains. Now he had entered in the midst of life and remained alone. This was the summit of misery. In the pitiless desert he had understood. The unrelenting town was too much to bear. The hour, the strokes of which he had just counted, had been another blow. Nothing is so freezing in certain situations as the voice of the hour. It is a declaration of indifference. It is eternity saying, what does it matter to me? He stopped, and it is not certain that in that miserable minute he did not ask himself whether it would not be easier to lie down there and die. However, the little infant leaned her head against his shoulder and fell asleep again. This blind confidence set him onward again. He whom all supports were failing felt that he was himself a basis of support. Irresistible summons of duty. Neither such ideas nor such a situation belonged to his age. It is probable that he did not understand them. It was a matter of instinct. He did what he chanced to do. He set out again in the direction of Johnstone Row. But now he no longer walked. He dragged himself along. He left St. Mary's street to the left, made zig-zags through lanes, and at the end of a winding passage found himself in a rather wide open space. It was a piece of wasteland not built upon. It was probably the spot where Chesterfield Place now stands. The houses ended there. He perceived the sea to the right and scarcely anything more of the town to his left. What was to become of him? Here was the country again. To the east great inclined plains of snow marked out the wide slopes of Radipal. Should he continue this journey? Should he advance and re-enter the solitudes? Should he return and re-enter the streets? What was he to do between those two silences, the mute plain and the deaf city? Which of the two refusals should he choose? There is the anchor of mercy. There is also the look of piteousness. It was that look which the poor little despairing wanderer threw around him. All at once he heard a menace. Misanthropy plays its pranks. A strange and alarming grinding of teeth reached him through the darkness. It was enough to drive one back. He advanced. To those to whom silence has become dreadful a howl is comforting. That fierce growl reassured him. That threat was a promise. There was there a being alive and awake, though it might be a wild beast. He advanced in the direction whence came the snarl. He turned the corner of a wall and, behind in the vast sepulchral light, made by the reflection of snow and sea, he saw a thing placed as if for shelter. It was a cart, unless it was a hovel. It had wheels, it was a carriage. It had a roof, it was a dwelling. From the roof arose a funnel and out of the funnel smoke. This smoke was red and seemed to imply a good fire in the interior. Behind, projecting hinges, indicated a door, and in the center of this door a square opening showed a light inside the caravan. He approached. Whatever had growled perceived his approach and became furious. It was no longer a growl which he had to meet, it was a roar. He heard a sharp sound, as of a chain violently pulled to its full length and suddenly under the door between the hind wheels two rows of sharp white teeth appeared. At the same time as the mouth between the wheels, a head was put through the window. "'Peace there,' said the head. The mouth was silent. The head began again. "'Is anyone there?' the child answered. "'Yes.' "'Who?' "'I.' "'You? Who are you? Whence do you come?' "'I am weary,' said the child. "'What o'clock is it?' "'I am cold.' "'What are you doing there?' "'I am hungry,' the head replied. "'Everyone cannot be as happy as a lord. Go away!' The head was withdrawn and the window closed. The child bowed his forehead, drew the sleeping infant closer in his arms, and collected his strength to resume his journey. He had taken a few steps and was hurrying away. However, at the same time that the window closed the door had opened. A step had been let down. The voice which had spoken to the child cried out angrily from the inside of the van. "'Well, why do you not enter?' The child turned back. "'Come in,' resumed the voice. "'Who has sent me a fellow like this? Who is hungry and cold, and who does not come in?' The child at once repulsed and invited, remained motionless. The voice continued, "'You are told to come in, you young rascal!' He made up his mind and placed one foot on the lowest step. There was a great growl under the van. He drew back. The gaping jaws appeared. "'Peace!' cried the voice of a man. The jaws retreated. The growling ceased. "'Come up!' continued the man. The child with difficulty climbed up the three steps. He was impeded by the infant, so benumbed, rolled up and enveloped in the jacket that nothing could be distinguished of her, and she was but a little shapeless mass. He passed over the three steps, and having reached the threshold, stopped. No candle was burning in the caravan, probably from the economy of want. The hut was lighted only by a red tinge, arising from the opening at the top of the stove, in which sparkled a peat-fire. On the stove were smoking a poringer and a saucepan, containing to all appearance something to eat. The savory odor was perceptible. The hut was furnished with a chest, a stool, and an unlighted lantern which hung from the ceiling. Besides, to the partition were attached some boards on brackets and some hooks from which hung a variety of things. On the boards and nails were rows of glasses, coppers, an alembic, a vessel rather like those used for graining wax, which are called granulators, and a confusion of strange objects of which the child understood nothing, and which were utensils for cooking and chemistry. The caravan was oblong in shape, the stove being in front. It was not even a little room, it was scarcely a big box. There was more light outside from the snow than inside from the stove. Everything in the caravan was indistinct and misty. Nevertheless, a reflection of the fire on the ceiling enabled the spectator to read in large letters Ursus, philosopher. The child, in fact, was entering the house of Homo and Ursus, the one he had just heard growling, the other speaking. The child, having reached the threshold, perceived near the stove a man, tall, smooth, thin and old, dressed in gray, whose head, as he stood, reached the roof. The man could not have raised himself on tiptoe. The caravan was just his size. Come in! said the man, who was Ursus. The child entered. Put down your bundle! The child placed his burden carefully on the top of the chest for fear of awakening and terrifying it. The man continued. How gently put it down! You could not be more careful was it a case of relics? Is it that you were afraid of tearing a hole in your rags, worthless vagabond, in the streets at this hour? Who are you? Answer! But no, I forbid you to answer. There! You are cold. Warm yourself as quick as you can. And he shoved him by the shoulders in front of the fire. How wet you are! You're frozen through! A nice state to come into a house. Come take off those rags, you villain! And as with one hand, and with feverish haste, he dragged off the boy's rags, which tore into shreds. With the other he took down from a nail a man's shirt, and one of those knitted jackets, which are up to this day, called kiss-me-quicks. Here are clothes! He chose out a heap of woolen rag, and chafed before the fire the limbs of the exhausted and bewildered child, who at that moment, warm and naked, felt as if he were seeing and touching heaven. The limbs having been rubbed, he next wiped the boy's feet. Come, you limb! You have nothing frostbitten. I was a fool to fancy you had something frozen, hind legs, or forepaws. You will not lose the use of them this time. Tress yourself! The child put on the shirt, and the man slipped the knitted jacket over it. Now! The man kicked the stool forward, and made the little boy sit down, again shoving him by the shoulders. Then he pointed with his finger to the poringer, which was smoking upon the stove. What the child saw in the poringer was again heaven to him, namely a potato and a bit of bacon. You are hungry. Eat! The man took from the shelf a crust of hard bread and an iron fork, and handed them to the child. The boy hesitated. Perhaps you expect me to lay the cloth, said the man, and he placed the poringer on the child's lap. Gobble that up! Hunger overcame astonishment. The child began to eat. The poor boy devoured rather than ate. The glad sound of the crunching of bread filled the hut. The man grumbled. Not so quick, you horrid glutton! Isn't he a greedy scoundrel? When such scum are hungry, they eat in a revolting fashion. You should see a lords up. In my time I have seen dukes eat. They don't eat. That's noble. They drink, however. Come, you pig! Stuff yourself! The absent of ears, which is the concomitant of a hungry stomach, caused the child to take little heed of these violent epithets, tempered as they were by charity of action, involving a contradiction resulting in his benefit. For the moment he was absorbed by two exigencies, and by two ecstasies, food and warmth. Ursus continued his imprecations, muttering to himself. I have seen King James supping improporia persona in the banqueting house. Were ought to be admired the paintings of the famous Rubens, his majesty touched nothing. This beggar here browses. Browses a word derived from brute. What put into my head to come to this waymouth seven times devoted to the infernal deities? I have sold nothing since morning. I have rang to the snow. I have played the flute to the hurricane. I have not pocketed a farthing. And now, tonight, beggars drop in horrid place. There is battle, struggle, competition between the fools in the street and myself. They try to give me nothing but farthings. I try to give them nothing but drugs. Well, today I have made nothing, not an idiot on the highway, not a penny in the till. Eat away, hell-born boy, tear and crunch. We have fallen on times when nothing can equal the cynicism of sponges. Fatten at my expense, parasite. This wretched boy is more than hungry. He is mad. It is not appetite. It is ferocity. He is carried away by rabid virus. Perhaps he has the plague. Have you the plague, you thief? Suppose he were to give it to Homo. No, never. Let the populace die. But not my wolf. But by the by I am hungry myself. I declare that this is all very disagreeable. I have worked far into the night. There are seasons in a man's life when he is hard-pressed. I was tonight by hunger. I was alone. I made a fire. I had but one potato, one crust of bread, a mouthful of bacon, and a drop of milk, and I put it to warm. I said to myself, Good, I think I am going to eat and bang! This crocodile falls upon me at the very moment. He installs himself clean between my food and myself. Behold how my larder is devastated. Eat, pike, eat, you shark. How many teeth of you in your jaws? Guzzle, wolf cub. No. I withdraw that word. I respect wolves. Swallow up my food, boa. I have worked all day and far into the night on an empty stomach. My throat is sore, my pancreas is in distress, my entrails torn, and my reward is to see another eat. It is all one, though. We will divide. We shall have the bread, the potato, and the bacon. But I will have milk. Just then a whale touching and prolonged a rose in the hut. The man listened. You cry, sycophant. Why do you cry? The boy turned toward him. It was evident that it was not he who cried. He had his mouth full. The cry continued. The man went to the chest. So it is your bundle that wails. Veil of jahosa fat. Behold of a siphorating parcel. What the devil has your bundle got to croak about. He unrolled the jacket, and infant's head appeared, the mouth open, and crying. Well, who goes there? said the man. Here is another of them. When is this to end? Who is there? Two arms, corporal. Call out the guard. Another bang? What have you brought me, thief? Don't you see it is thirsty? Come, the little one must have a drink. So now I shall not have even the milk. He took down from the things lying in disorder on the shelf a bandage of linen, a sponge, and a file muttering savagely. What an infernal place. Then he looked at the little infant. Tis a girl! One can tell by her scream, and she is drenched as well. He dragged away, as he had done from the boy, the tatters in which she was knotted up rather than dressed, and swabbed her in a rag, which, though of course linen, was clean and dry. This rough and sudden dressing made the infant angry. She mused relentlessly, said he. He bit off a long piece of sponge, tore from the roll a square piece of linen, drew from it a bit of thread, took the saucepan containing the milk from the stove, filled the file with milk, drove down the sponge halfway into its neck, covered the sponge with linen, tied this cork in with the thread, applied his cheeks to the file to be sure it was not too hot, and seized under his left arm the bewildered bundle which was still crying. Come, take your supper, creature. Let me suckle you. And he put the neck of the bottle to its mouth. The little infant drank greedily. He held the file at the necessary incline, grumbling, They are all the same, the cowards, when they have all they want, they are silent. The child then drunk so ravenously, and it seized so eagerly this breast offered by a cross-grained providence that she was taken with a fit of coughing. You are going to choke, growled urses. A fine gobbler this one, too. He drew away the sponge, which he was suckling, allowed the cough to subside, and then replaced the file to her lips, saying, Suck, you little wretch. In the meantime, the boy had laid down his fork. Seeing the infant drink had made him forget to eat. The moment before, while he ate, the expression in his face was satisfaction. Now it was gratitude. He watched the infant's renewal of life. The completion of the resurrection begun by himself filled his eyes with an ineffable brilliancy. Urses went on muttering angry words between his teeth. The little boy now and then lifted toward Urses his eyes moist with the unspeakable emotion which the poor little being felt, but was unable to express. Urses addressed him furiously. Well, will you eat? And you, said the child, trembling all over, and with tears in his eyes, you will have nothing? Will you be kind enough to eat it all up, you cub? There is not too much for you, since there was not enough for me. The child took up his fork, but did not eat. Eat! shouted Urses. What has it got to do with me? Who speaks of me? Wretched little barefooted clerk, a penniless parish, I tell you, eat it all up. You are here to eat, drink, and sleep. Eat, or I will kick you out, both of you. The boy, under this menace, began to eat again. He had not much trouble in finishing what was left in the poringer. Urses muttered, This building is badly joined. The cold comes in by the window-pane. A pain had indeed been broken in front, either by a jolt of the caravan, or by a stone thrown by some mischievous boy. Urses had placed a star of paper over the fracture, which had become unpasted. The blast entered there. He was half-seeded on the chest, the infant in his arms, and at the same time on his lap was sucking rapturously at the bottle, in the happy somnolency of cherubim before their creator, an infant at their mother's breast. She is drunk, said Urses, and he continued. After this, preach sermons on temperance. The wind tore from the pain the plaster of paper, which flew across the hut, but this was nothing to the children who were entering life anew. Whilst the little girl drank and the little boy ate, Urses grumbled. Drunkenness begins in the infant in swaddling clothes. What useful trouble Bishop Tillitston gives himself, thundering against excessive drinking. What an odious draught of wind. And then my stove is old. It allows puffs of smoke to escape enough to give you tracheasis. One has the inconvenience of cold and the inconvenience of fire. One cannot see clearly. That being over there abusers my hospitality. Well, I have not been able to distinguish the animal's face yet. Comfort is wanting here. By Jove, I am a great admirer of exquisite banquets in well-closed rooms. I have missed my vocation. I was born to be a sensualist. The greatest of Stoics was Philozenus, who wished to possess the neck of a crane, so as to be longer in tasting the pleasures of the table. Receipts today? Not. Nothing sold all day. Inhabitants, servants, and tradesmen. Here is the doctor. Here are the drugs. You are losing your time, old friend. Pack up your physic. Everyone is well down here. It's a cursed town where everyone is well. The skies alone have diarrhea. What snow! An exagerus taught that the snow was black, and he was right, cold, being blackness. Ice is night. What a hurricane! I can fancy the delight of those at sea. The hurricane is the passage of demons. It is the row of the tempest fields, galloping and rolling head over heels above our bone boxes. In the cloud this one has a tail, that one has horns, another a flame for a tongue, another claws to its wings, another a Lord Chancellor's punch, another an academician's pate. You may observe a form in every sound. To every fresh wind, a fresh demon. The ears hear. The eyes see. The crash is a face. Sounds! There are folks at sea. That is certain. My friends, get through the storm as best you can. I have enough to do to get through life. Come now. Do I keep an end, or do I not? Why should I trade with these travelers? The universe of distress sends its spatterings even as far as my poverty. Into my cabin fall hideous drops of the far-spreading mud of mankind. I am given up to the veracity of travelers. I am prey, the prey of those dying of hunger. Winter, night, a past bored heart and unfortunate friend below and without the storm, a potato, a fire as big as my fist, parasites. The wind penetrating through every cranny, not a half-penny, and bundles which set to howling. I open them and find beggars inside. Is this fair? Besides, the laws are violated. Vagabond with your vagabond child. Mischievous pickpocket. Evil-minded abortion. So you walk the streets after curfew? If our good king only knew it, would he not have you thrown into the bottom of a ditch just to teach you better? My gentleman walks out at night with my lady and with the glass at fifteen degrees of frost bare-headed and bare-footed. Understand that such things are forbidden. There are rules and regulations, you lawless wretches. Vagabonds are punished. Honest folks who have houses are guarded and protected. Kings are the fathers of their people. I have my own house. You would have been whipped in the public street had you chance to have been met and quite right, too. There must be order in an established city. For my own part I did wrong not to denounce you to the constable, but I am such a fool. I understand what is right and do what is wrong. Oh, the ruffian! To come here in such a state! I did not see the snow upon them when they came in. It had melted and here is my whole house swamped. I have an inundation in my home. I shall have to burn an incredible amount of coals to dry up this lake. Coals at twelve farthings, the minor standard. How am I going to manage to fit three into this caravan? Now it is over. I enter the nursery. I am going to have in my house the weaning of the future Begadom of England. I shall have for employment, office and function to fashion the miscarried fortunes of that colonial prostitute. Misery. To bring to perfection future gallows, birds, and to give young thieves the forms of philosophy. The tongue of the wolf is the warning of God. And to think that if I had not been eaten up by creatures of this kind for the last thirty years, I should be rich. Homo would be fat. I should have a medicine chest full of rarities, as many surgical instruments as Dr. Lanakhra, Surgeon to King Henry VIII. Divers, animals of all kinds. Egyptian mummies and similar curiosities. I should be a member of the College of Physicians and have the right of using the library, built in 1652 by the celebrated Herve, and of studying in the lantern of that dome, whence you can see the whole of London. I could continue my observations of solar obfuscation and prove that a caliginious vapor arises from the planet. Such was the opinion of John Kepler, who was born the year before the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, and who was mathematician to the Emperor. The sun is a chimney which sometimes smokes. So does my stove. My stove is no better than the sun. Yes, I should have made my fortune. My part would have been a different one. I should not be the insignificant fellow I am. I should not degrade science in the highways, for the crowd is not worthy of the doctrine. The crowd being nothing better than a confused mixture of all sorts of ages, sexes, humors and conditions, that wise men of all periods have not hesitated to despise, and whose extravagance and passion the most moderate men in their justice detest. I am weary of existence. After all, one does not live long. The human life is soon done with. But no, it is long. At intervals, though we should not become too discouraged, though we may have the stupidity to consent to bear out being, and not profit by the magnificent opportunities to hang ourselves which cords and nails afford, nature puts on an air of taking a little care of man, not tonight, though. The rogue causes the wheat to spring up, ripens the grape, gives her song to the nightingale. From time to time, a ray of mourning or a glass of gin, and that is what we call happiness. It is a narrow border of good round, a huge winding sheet of evil. We have a destiny of which the devil has woven the stuff, and God has sown the hymn. In the meantime, you have eaten my supper, you thief. In the meantime, the infant, whom he was holding all the time in his arms, very tenderly, whilst he was vituperating, shut its eyes languidly, a sign of repletion. Ursus examined the file, and grumbled, She is drunken all up, the impudent creature! He arose, and sustaining the infant with his left arm. With his right, he raised the lid of the chest, and drew from beneath it a bare skin, the one he called, as will be remembered, his real skin. Whilst he was doing this, he heard the other child eating, and looked at him sideways. It will be something to do if, henceforth, I have to feed that growling glutton. It will be a worm gnawing at the vitals of my industry. He spread out, still with one arm, the bare skin on the chest, working his elbow and managing his movements, so as not to disturb the sleep into which the infant was just sinking. Then he laid her down on the fur, on the side next to the fire. Having done so, he placed the file on the stove and exclaimed, I'm thirsty, if you like! He looked into the pot. There were a few good mouthfuls of milk left in it. He raised it to his lips. Just as he was about to drink, his eye fell on the little girl. He replaced the pot on the stove, took the file, uncorked it, poured into it all the milk that remained, which was just sufficient to fill it, replaced the sponge and the linen rag over it, and tied it round the neck of the bottle. All the same, I'm hungry and thirsty, he observed. And he added, When one cannot eat bread, one must drink water. Behind the stove there was a jug with the spout off. He took it and handed it to the boy. Will you drink? The child drank and then went on eating. Ursus seized the pitcher again and conveyed it to his mouth. The temperature of the water which it contained had been unequally modified by the proximity of the stove. He swallowed some mouthfuls and made a grimace. Water, pretending to be pure, thou resemblest false friends, thou art warm at the top and cold at bottom. In the meantime the boy had finished this supper. The pour-anger was more than empty, it was cleaned out. He picked up and ate pensively a few crumbs caught in the folds of the knitted jacket on his lap. Ursus turned toward him. That is not all. Now, a word with you. The mouth is not made only for eating, it is made for speaking. Now that you are warmed and stuffed, you beast, take care of yourself. You are going to answer my questions. Whence do you come? The child replied. I do not know. How do you mean you do not know? I was abandoned this evening on the seashore. You little scamp, what's your name? He is so good for nothing that his relations desert him. I have no relations. Given a little to my taste and observe that I do not like those who sing to a tune of fibs, thou must have relatives since you have a sister. It is not my sister. It is not your sister? No. Who is it then? It is a baby that I found. Found? Yes. What, did you pick her up? Yes. Where, if you lie, I will exterminate you. On the breast of a woman who was dead in the snow. When? An hour ago. Where? A league from here. The arched brow of Ursus knitted and took that pointed shape which characterizes emotion on the brow of a philosopher. Dead, lucky for her. We must leave her in the snow. She is well off there. In which direction? In the direction of the sea. Did you cross the bridge? Yes. Ursus opened the window at the back and examined the view. The weather had not improved. The snow was falling thickly and mournfully. He shut the window. He went to the broken glass. He filled the hole with a rag. He heaped the stove with peat. He spread out as far as he could the bare skin on the chest. Took a large book which he had in a corner, placed it under the skin for a pillow, and laid the head of the sleeping infant on it. Then he turned to the boy. Lie down there! The boy obeyed and stretched himself at full length by the side of the infant. Ursus rolled the bare skin over the two children and tucked it under their feet. He took down from a shelf and tied round his waist a linen belt with a large pocket containing no doubt a case of instruments and bottles of restoratives. Then he took the lantern from where it hung to the ceiling and lighted it. It was a dark lantern. When lighted it still left the children in shadow. Ursus half opened the door and said, I am going out. Do not be afraid. I shall return. Go to sleep. Then, letting down the steps, he called Homo. He was answered by a loving growl. Ursus, holding the lantern in his hand, descended. The steps were replaced. The door was reclosed. The children remained alone. From without a voice, the voice of Ursus said, You boy, who have just eaten up my supper, are you already asleep? No, replied the child. Well, if she cries, give her the rest of the milk. The clinking of a chain being undone was heard, and the sound of a man's footsteps mingled with that of the pads of an animal died off in the distance. A few minutes after, both children slept profoundly. The little boy and girl, lying naked side by side, were joined through the silent hours in the seraphic promiscuousness of the shadows. Such dreams, as were possible to their age, floated from one to the other. Beneath their closed eyelids, there shone, perhaps, a starlight. If the word marriage were not inappropriate to the situation, they were husband and wife after the fashion of the angels. Such innocence in such darkness, such purity in such an embrace, such foretaste of heaven are possible only to childhood, and no immensity approaches the greatness of little children. Of all gulfs, this is the deepest. The fearful perpetuity of the dead chained beyond life. The mighty animosity of the ocean to a wreck. The whiteness of the snow over buried bodies do not equal in pathos to children's mouths meeting divinely in sleep. And the meeting of which is not even a kiss. A betrothal perchance, perchance, a catastrophe. The unknown weighs down upon their juxtaposition. It charms, it terrifies, who knows which. It stays the pulse. Innocence is higher than virtue. Innocence is wholly ignorance. They slept. They were in peace. They were warm. The nakedness of their bodies, embraced each in each, amalgamated with the virginity of their souls. They were there as in the nest of the abyss. End of Section 33, Recording by Lonnie Decker. Section 34 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 Ted Garvin. The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo Part 1 Book III Chapter 6 The Awaking The beginning of day is sinister. A sad pale light penetrated the hut. It was the frozen dawn. That one light which throws into relief the mournful reality of objects which are blurred into spectral forms by the night did not awake the children. So soundly were they sleeping. The caravan was warm. Their breathings alternated like two peaceful waves. There was no longer a hurricane without. The light of dawn was slowly taken possession of the horizon. The constellations were being extinguished, like candles blown out one after the other. Only a few large stars resisted. The deep-toned song of the infinite was coming from the sea. The fire in the stove was not quite out. The twilight broke, little by little, into daylight. The boys felt less heavily than the girl. At length, a ray brighter than any others, broke through the pain, and he opened his eyes. The sleep of childhood ends in forgetfulness. He lay in a state of semi-stupor, without knowing where he was or what was near him, without making an effort to remember, gazing at the ceiling and setting himself an aimless task as he degazed dreamily at the letters of the inscription, Usus philosopher, which, being unable to read, he examined without the power of deciphering. The sound of the key turning in the lock caused him to turn his head. The door turned on its hinges. The steps were let down. Usus was returning. He ascended the steps, his extinguished lantern in his hand. At the same time, the pattering of four paws fell upon the steps. It was Homo following Usus, who had also returned to his home. The boy awoke with somewhat of a start. The wolf, having probably an appetite, gave him a morning yawn, showing two rows of very white teeth. He stopped when he had gotten halfway up the steps and placed both the four paws within the caravan, kneeling on the threshold, like a preacher with his elbows on the edge of the pulpit. He sniffed the chest from afar, not being in the habit of finding it occupied as it then was. His wolfine form, framed by the doorway, was designed in black against the light of morning. He made up his mind and entered. The boy, seeing the wolf in the caravan, got out of the bare skin and, standing up, placed himself in front of the little infant, who was sleeping more soundly than ever. Usus had just hung the lantern up on a nail in the ceiling. Silently and with mechanical deliberation, he unbuckled the belt in which was his case and replaced it on the shelf. He looked at nothing and seemed to see nothing. His eyes were glassy, something was moving him deeply in his mind. His thoughts at length found breath, as usual, in a rapid outflow of words. He exclaimed, Happy, doubtless, dead, stone dead, He bent down and put a shovel full of turf mold into the stove, and as he poked the peat he growled out. I had a deal of trouble to find her. The mischief of the unknown had buried her under two feet of snow. Had it not been for Homo, who sees this clearly with his nose, as Christopher Columbus did with his mind, I should still be there, scratching at the avalanche and playing hide and seek with death. Diogenes took his lantern and sought for a man. I took my lantern and sought for a woman. He found a sarcasm and I found mourning. How cold she was. I touched her hand. A stone. What silence in her eyes. How can anyone be such a fool as to die and leave a child behind? It will not be convenient to pack three into this box. A pretty family I have now. A boy and a girl. Whilst Ursus was speaking, Homo sighed up close to the stove. The hand of the sleeping infant was hanging down between the stove and the chest. The wolf set to licking it. He licked it so softly that he did not awake the little infant. Ursus turned round. Well done, Homo. I shall be father and you shall be uncle. Then he betook himself again to arranging the fire with philosophical care without interrupting his aside. Adoption. It is settled. Homo is willing. He drew himself up. I should like to know who is responsible for that woman's death. Is it man or? He raised his eyes but looked beyond the ceiling and his lips murmured. Is it thou? Then his brow dropped as if under a burden and he continued. The night took the trouble to kill the woman. Raising his eyes, they met those of the boy just awakened who was listening. Ursus addressed him abruptly. What are you laughing about? The boy answered. I am not laughing. Ursus felt a kind of shock, looked at him fixedly for a few minutes and said, Then you are frightful. The interior of the caravan on the previous night had been so dark that Ursus had not yet seen the boy's face. The broad daylight revealed it. He placed the palms of his hands on the two shoulders of the boy and examining his countenance more and more piercingly exclaimed, Do not laugh any more. I am not laughing, said the child. Ursus was seized with a shoulder from head to foot. You do laugh, I tell you. Then seizing the child with a grasp which would have been one of fury had it not been one of pity, he asked him roughly. Who did that to you? The child replied, I don't know what you mean. How long have you had that laugh? I have always been thus, said the child. Ursus turned toward the chest, saying in a low voice, I thought that work was out of date. He took from the top of it, very softly, so as not to awaken the infant, the book which he had placed there for a pillow. Let us see Conquest, he murmured. It was a bundle of paper and folio bound in soft parchment. He turned the pages with his thumb, stopped to a certain wine, opened the book wide on the stove and read, De denesatis, it is here. And he continued, Bucca fissa uske ed orus genesivis, De denesatis nesike, murmurred redatto, masca, eris et ridibis semper. There it is for certain. Then he replaced the book on one of the shelves, growling. It might not be wholesome to inquire too deeply into the case of the kind. We will remain on the surface, laugh away, my boy. Just then the little girl woke. Her good day was a cry. Come, nurse, give us the breast, said Ursus. The infant sat up. Ursus, taking the file from the stove, gave it to her to suck. Then the sun arose. He was level with the horizon. His red rays gleamed through the glass and struck against the face of the infant, which was turned towards him. Her eyeballs, fixed on the sun, reflected his purple orbit like two mirrors. The eyeballs were immovable. The eyelids also. See, said Ursus, she is blind. End of section 34. Section 35 of The Man Who Loves by Viktor 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 Desnogorsk. The Man Who Loves by Viktor Hugo Part 2 Book I The Everlasting Presence of the Past Man Reflects Man Chapter 1 Lord Clancherly Part 1 There was in those days an old tradition. That tradition was Lord Lynnae Clancherly. Lynnae Baron Clancherly, a contemporary of Cromwell, was one of the peers of England, viewing number being said, who accepted the Republic. The reason of his acceptance of it might indeed, for want of a better, be found in the fact that for the time being the Republic was triumphant. It was a matter of course that Lord Clancherly should adhere to the Republic, as long as the Republic had the upper hand. But after the close of the revolution and the fall of the parliamentary government, Lord Clancherly had persisted in his fidelity to it. It would have been easy for the noble patrician to re-enter the reconstituted upper house, repentance being ever well received on restorations, and Charles II being a kind prince enough to those who returned to their allegiance to him. But Lord Clancherly had failed to understand what was due to events. While the nation overwhelmed with acclamation, the king come to retake possession of England, while unanimity was recording its verdict, while the people were bowing their salutations to the monarchy, while the dynasty was rising anew amidst a glorious and triumphant recantation, at the moment when the past was becoming the future and the future becoming the past, that nobleman remained a refractory. He turned his head away from all that joy and voluntarily exiled himself. While he could have been a peer, he preferred being an outlaw. Years had thus passed away. He had grown old in his fidelity to the dead republic and was therefore crowned with the ridicule, which is the natural reward of such folly. He had retired into Switzerland and dwelt in a sort of lofty ruin, on the banks of the lake of Geneva. He had chosen his dwelling in the most rugged nuke of the lake, between Chilean, where is the dungeon of Bonivard, and Vivaie, where is Ladlou's tomb. The rugged alps, filled with twilight, winds and clouds, were around him. And he lived there, hidden in the great shadows that fall from the mountains. He was rarely met by any people He was rarely met by any passerby. The man was out of his country, almost out of his century. At that time, to those who understood and were posted in the affairs of the period, no resistance to established things was justifiable. England was happy. A restoration is as the reconciliation of husband and wife. Prince and nation return to each other. No state can be more graceful or more pleasant. Great Britain beamed with joy. To have a king at all was a good deal, but furthermore, the king was a charming one. Charles II was amiable, a man of pleasure, yet able to govern, and great, if not after the fashion of Louis XIV. He was essentially a gentleman. Charles II was admired by his subjects. He had made war in Hanover for reasons best known to himself. At least no one else knew them. He had sold Dunkirk to France, a manoeuvre of state policy. The weak peers, concerning whom Chamberlain says, the cursed republic infected with its stinking breath several of the high nobility, had had the good sense to bow to the inevitable, to conform to the times, and to resume their seats in the House of Lords. To do so, it suffice that they should take the oath of allegiance to the king. When these facts were considered, the glorious reign, the excellent king, August's princes given back by divine mercy to the people's love. When it was remembered that persons of such consideration as Monk, and later on Jeffries, had really drowned the throne, that they had been properly rewarded for their loyalty and zeal by the most splendid appointments and the most lucrative offices. That Lord Clanchorly could not be ignorant of this. And that it only depended on himself to be seated by their side, glorious in his honors. That England had, thanks to her king, risen again to the summit of prosperity. That London was all banquets and carousels. That everybody was rich and enthusiastic. That the court was gallant, gay and magnificent. If by chance, far from these splendors, in some melancholy, indescribable half-light, like nightfall, that old man, colliding the same garb as the common people, was observed pale, absent-minded, bent towards the grave, standing on the shore of the lake, scarce hitting the storm in the winter, walking as though at random, his eye fixed, his white hair tossed by the wind of the shadow, silent, pensive, solitary. Who could forbear to smile? It was the sketch of a madman, thinking of Lord Clanchorly, of what he might have been and what he was, a smile was indulgent. Some laughed out aloud, others could not restrain their anger. It is easy to understand that men of sense were much shocked by the insolence implied by his isolation. One extenuating circumstance. Lord Clanchorly had never had any brains. Everyone agreed on that point. Part 2 It is disagreeable to see one's fellow's practice obstinacy. Imitations of regulars are not popular, and public opinion holds them in some direction. Stubborn people are like reproaches, and we have a right to laugh at them. Besides, to sum up, are these perversities, these ragged notches, virtues? Is there not in these excessive advertisements of self-abnegation and of honor a good deal of ostentation? It is all parade more than anything else. Why such exaggeration of solitude and exile? To carry nothing to extremes is the wise man's maxim. Be in opposition, if you choose, blame if you will, but decently, and crying out all the while. Long live the king! That revert you is common sense. What falls ought to fall. What succeeds ought to succeed. Providence acts advisedly. It grounds him who deserves the crown. Do you pretend to know better than Providence? When matters are settled, when one rule has replaced another, when success is the scale in which truth and falsehood are weighed, in one side the catastrophe, in the other the triumph. Then doubt is no longer possible. The honest man railies to the winning side, and although it may happen to serve his fortune and his family, he does not allow himself to be influenced by that consideration, but thinking only of the public will holds out his hand heartily to the conqueror. What would become of the state if no one consented to serve it? Would not everything come to a standstill? To keep his place is the duty of a good citizen. Learn to sacrifice your secret preferences. Appointments must be filled, and someone must necessarily sacrifice himself. To be faithful to public functions is true fidelity. The retirement of public officials would paralyze the state. What, banish yourself? How weak. As an example, what vanity? As a defiance, what audacity? What do you set yourself up to be, I wonder? Learn that we are just as good as you. If we choose, we too could be interactable and untameable, and do worse things than you. But we prefer to be sensible people, because I am a trimalcyon. You think that I could not be a cattle? What nonsense? Part 3 Never was a situation more clearly defined or more decisive than that of 1660. Never had a course of conduct been more plainly indicated to a well-ordered mind. England was out of Cromwell's grasp. Under the Republic, many irregularities had been committed. British preponderance had been created. With the aid of the Thirty Years' War, Germany had been overcome. With the aid of the Frondi, France had been humiliated. With the aid of the Duke of Braganza, the power of Spain had been lessened. Cromwell had tamed massering. In signing treaties, the Protector of England wrote his name above that of the King of France. The United Provinces had been put under a fine of 8 million. Algiers and Tunis had been attacked. Jamaica conquered. Lisbon humbled. French rivalry encouraged in Barcelona. And Mazzangelo in Naples. Portugal had been made fast to England. The seas had been swept off barberry pirates from Gibraltar to Crete. Maritime domination had been founded under two forms – victory and commerce. On the 10th of August 1653, the men of 33 victories, the old admiral who called himself the sailor's grandfather, Martin Heppards van Tromp, who had beaten the Spanish, had been destroyed by the English fleet. The Atlantic had been cleared of the Spanish Navy, the Pacific of the Dutch, the Mediterranean of the Venetian, and by the patent of navigation, England had taken possession of the seacoast of the world. By the ocean, she commanded the world. At sea, the Dutch flag humbly saluted the British flag. France, in the person of the ambassador Mancini, bent the knee to Oliver Cromwell. And Cromwell played with Calais and Dunkirk, as with two shuttle cocks, on a battle door. The continent had been taught to tremble. Peace had been dictated, war declared. The British ensign raised on every pinnacle. By itself, the protector's regiment of Ironsides weighed in the fears of Europe against an army. Cromwell used to say, I wish the Republic of England to be respected, as was respected the Republic of Rome. No longer were delusions held sacred. Speech was free, the press was free. In the public street, men said what they listed. They printed what they pleased without control or censorship. The equilibrium of thrones had been destroyed. The whole order of European monarchy, in which the stewards formed a link, had been overturned. But at last, England had emerged from this odious order of things, and had won its pardon. The indulgent Charles II had granted the declaration of breeder. He had conceded to England oblivion of the period in which the son of the Huntington Brewer placed his foot on the neck of Louis XIV. England said it's mere calpah, and breathed again. The cup of joy was, as we have just said, full. Gibits for the regicides adding to the universal delight. A restoration is a smile. But a few gibbits are not out of place, and satisfaction is due to the conscience of the public. To be good subjects was thenceforth the people's sole ambition. The spirit of lawlessness had been expelled. Royalty was reconstituted. Men had recovered from the fallies of politics. They mocked at revolution. They jeered at the republic. And as to those times when such strange words as right, liberty, progress had been in the mouth, why? They laughed at such bombast. Admirable was the return to common sense. England had been in a dream. What joy to be quit of such errors. Was ever anything so mad? Where should we be if everyone had his rights? Fancy everyone's having a hand in the government. Can you imagine a city ruled by its citizens? Why? The citizens are the team, and the team cannot be driver. To put to the vote is to throw to the winds. Would you have states driven like clouds? Disorder cannot build up order. With chaos for an architect, the edifice would be abable. And besides, what tyranny is this pretended liberty? As for me, I wish to enjoy myself, not to govern. It is a bore to have to vote. I want to dance. A prince is a providence, and takes care of us all. Truly the king is generous to take so much trouble for our sakes. Besides, he is to the manner born. He knows what it is. It's his business. Peace, war, legislation, finance, what have the people to do with such things? Of course, the people have to pay. Of course, the people have to serve. But that should suffice them. They have a place in policy. From them come to essential things, the army and the budget. To be liable to contribute, and to be liable to serve, is not that enough? What more should they want? They are the military and the financial arm. A magnificent role. The king reigns for them, and they must reward him accordingly. Taxation and the civil list are the salaries paid by the peoples and earned by the prince. The people give their blood and their money, in return for which they are led. To wish to lead themselves, what an absurd idea. They require a guide. Being ignorant, they are blind. Has not the blind man his dog? Only the people have a lion, the king, who consents to act the dog. How kind of him. But why are the people ignorant? Because it is good for them. Ignorance is the guardian of virtue. Where there is no perspective, there is no ambition. The ignorant man is in useful darkness, which suppresses sight, suppresses covetousness, when sin is since. He who reads, thinks, who thinks, reasons. But not the reason is duty and happiness as well. These truths are incontestable. Society is based on them. Thus had sound social doctrines been re-established in England. Thus had the nation been reinstated. At the same time, a correct taste in literature was reviving. Shakespeare was despised. Dryden admired. Dryden is the greatest poet of England, and of the century, said Atterbury, the translator of Acetofel. It was about the time when M. Hewitt, bishop of Avronchay, wrote to Thomeys, who had done the author of Paradise Lost the honor to refute and abuse him. How can you trouble yourself about so mean a thing as that Milton? Everything was falling into its proper place. Dryden above, Shakespeare below, Charles II on the throne, Cromwell on the gibbet. England was raising herself out of the shame and the excesses of the past. It is a great happiness for nations to be led back by monarchy to good order in the state and good taste in letters. That such benefits should be misunderstood is difficult to believe. To turn the cold shoulder to Charles II, to reward with ingratitude the magnanimity which he displayed in ascending the throne, was not such conduct abominable. Lord Linnae Glancherly had inflicted this vexation upon honest men. To sulk at his country's happiness, a lack, what aberration. We know that in 1650 Parliament had drawn up this form of declaration. I promised to remain faithful to the Republic, without King Sovereign, O Lord. Under pretext of having taken this monstrous oath, Lord Glancherly was living out of the kingdom and, in the face of the general joy, thought that he had the right to be sad. He had a moral system for that which was no more and was absurdly attached to things which had been. To excuse him was impossible. The kindest hearted abandoned him. His friends had long done him the honor to believe that he had entered the republican ranks only to observe the more closely the flaws in the republican armor and to smite it, the more surely, when the day should come for the sacred cause of the king. These lurking in ambush for the convenient hour to strike the enemy at death blow in the back are attributes to loyalty. Such a line of conduct had been expected of Lord Glancherly, so strong was the wish to judge him favorably. But, in the face of his strange persistence in republicanism, people were obliged to lower their estimate. Evidently, Lord Glancherly was confirmed in his convictions. That is to say, an idiot. The explanation, given by the indulgent, wavered between pure royal stubbornness and senile obstinacy. The severe and the just went further. They blighted the name of the renegade. Folly has its rights, but it has also its limits. A man may be a brute, but he has no right to be rebel. And, after all, what was this Lord Glancherly? A deserter. He had fled his camp, the aristocracy, for that of the enemy, the people. This faithful man was a traitor. It is true that he was a traitor to the stronger and faithful to the weaker. It is true that the camp repudiated by him was the conquering camp. And the camp adopted by him the conquered. It is true that by his treason he lost everything, his political privileges and his domestic hearth, his title and his country. He gained nothing but ridicule. He attained no benefit but exile. But what does all this prove? That he was a fool, granted. Plainly, a dupe and traitor in one. Let a man be as great a fool as he likes, so that he does not set a bad example. Fools need only be civil. And, in consideration thereof, they may aim at being the basis of monarchies. The narrowness of Glancherly's mind was incomprehensible. His eyes were still dazzled by the phantasmagoria of the revolution. He had allowed himself to be taken in by the republic. Yes. And cast out. He was an affront to his country. The attitude he assumed was downright felony. Absence was an insult. He held aloof from the public joy as from the plague. In his voluntary banishment he found some indescribable refuge from the national rejoicing. He treated loyalty as a contagion. Over the widespread gladness at the revival of the monarchy, denounced by him as a laserato, he was the black flag. What could he look thus as cancered order reconstituted, a nation exalted, and a religion restored? Over such serenity, why cast his shadow? Take Umbridge at England's contentment. Must he be the one blot in the clear blue sky? Be as a threat. Protest against a nation's will. Refuse his yes to the universal consent. It would be disgusting if it were not the part of a fool. Clan surely could not have taken into account the fact that it did not matter if one had taken the wrong turn with Cromwell, as long as one found one's way back into the right path with Monk. Take Monk's case. He commands the republican army. Charles II, having been informed of his honesty, writes to him. Monk, who combines virtue with tact, dissimulates at first, then suddenly at the head of his troops, dissolves the rebel parliament, and re-establishes the king on the throne. Monk is created Duke of Albemarle, has the honor of having saved society, becomes very rich, sheds a glory over his own time, is created Knight of the Garter, and has the prospect of being buried in Westminster Abbey. Such glory is the reward of British fidelity. Lord Clan surely could never rise to a sense of duty thus carried out. He had the infatuation and obstinacy of an exile. He contented himself with hollow phrases. He was tongue tied by pride. The words conscience and dignity are but words, after all. One must penetrate to the depths. These depths Lord Clan surely had not reached. His eye was single, and before committing an act, he wished to observe it so closely as to be able to judge it by more senses than one. Hence arose absurd disgust to the facts examined. No man can be a statesman who gives way to such overstained delicacy. Excess of conscientiousness degenerates into infirmity. Scruple is one-handed when a scepter is to be seized, and the eunuch when fortune is to be wedded. Distrust scruples, they drag you too far. Unreasonable fidelity is like a ladder leading into a cavern. One step down, another, then another, and there you are in the dark. The clever re-ascend, fools remain in it. Conscience must not be allowed to practice such austerity. If it be, it will fall until from transition to transition, it at length reaches the deep gloom of political prudery. Then one is lost. Thus it was with Lord Clan surely. Principles terminate in a precipice. He was walking, his hands behind him, along the shores of the Lake of Geneva. A fine way of getting on. In London they sometimes spoke of the exile. He was accused before the tribunal of public opinion. They pleaded for and against him. The cause having been heard, he was acquitted on the ground of stupidity. Many zealous friends of the former republic had given their adherents to the stewards. For these they deserved praise. They naturally columnated him a little. The obstinate are repulsive to the compliant. Men of sense, in favor and good places at court, weary of his disagreeable attitude, took pleasure in saying. If he has not rallied to the throne, it is because he has not been sufficiently paid, etc. He wanted the chancellorship, which the king has given to hide. One of his old friends went so far as to whisper. He told me so himself. Remote as was the solitude of the Lake Lancerly, something of this talk would reach him through the outlaws he met. Such as old regicides like Andrew Brafton, who lived at Lausanne. Lancerly confined himself to an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders, a sign of profound deterioration. On one occasion he added to the shrug these few words, murmured in a low voice. I pity those who believe such things. Part 4 Charles II, good man, despised him. The happiness of England under Charles II was more than happiness. It was enchantment. A restoration is like an old oil painting, blackened by time and re-varnished. All the past reappeared. Good old manners returned. Beautiful women reigned and governed. Evelyn notices it. We read in his journal. Luxury, profaneness, contempt of God. I saw the king on Sunday evening with his courtesans. Portsmouth, Cleveland, Mezzering, and two or three others, all nearly naked in the gaming room. We feel that there is ill nature in this description, for Evelyn was a grumbling Puritan, tainted with the republican rivers. He did not appreciate the profitable example given by kings in those grand Babylonian Gauges, which, after all, maintained luxury. He did not understand the utility of voice. Here is a maxim. Do not extorpe advice if you want to have charming women. If you do, you are like idiots who destroy the chrysalis whilst they delight in the butterfly. Charles II, as we have said, scarcely remembered that a rebel called Clanchorily existed. But James II was more heedful. Charles II governed gently. It was his way, we may add, that he did not govern the worse on that account. A sailor sometimes makes on a rope intended to baffle the wind a slack knot which he leaves to the wind to tighten, such is the stupidity of the storm and of the people. The slack knot very soon becomes a tight one. So did the government of Charles II. Under James II the throttling began. A necessary throttling of water remained of the revolution. James II had a laudable ambition to be an efficient king. The reign of Charles II was in his opinion, but a sketch of restoration. James wished for a still more complete return to order. He had, in 1660, deplored that they had confined themselves to the hanging of ten regicides. He was a more genuine reconstructor of authority. He infused vigor into serious principles. He installed true justice, which is superior to sentimental declamations and attends, above all things, to the interests of society. In his protecting severities, we recognize the father of the state. He entrusted the hand of justice to Jeffries and its sword to Kirk. That useful colonel one day hung and rehung the same man, a republican, asking him each time, will you renounce the republic? The villain, having each time said no, was dispatched. I hanged him four times, said Kirk, with satisfaction. The renewal of executions is a great sign of power in the executive authority. Lady Lyle, who, though she had sent her son to fight against Monmouth, had concealed two rebels in her house, was executed. Another rebel, having been honorable enough to declare that an abaptist female had given him shelter, was pardoned, and the woman was burned alive. Kirk, on another occasion, gave a town to understand that he knew his principles to be republican. By hanging 19 burgesses, these reprisals were certainly legitimate, for it must be remembered that under Cromwell, they cut off the noses and ears of the stone saints in the churches. James II, who had had the sense to choose Jeffries and Kirk, was a prince imbued with true religion. He practiced mortification in the ugliness of his mistresses. He listened to Lapeer Lacombeer, a preacher almost as anxious as Lapeer Chamnet, but with more fire, who had the glory of being during the first part of his life, the counselor of James II, and during the latter, the inspirer of Mary Alcock. It was, thanks to this strong religious nourishment, that later on James II was unable to bear exile with dignity and to exhibit, in his retirement at Saint Germain, the spectacle of a king rising superior to adversity, calmly touching for king's evil and conversing with Jesuits. It will be readily understood that such a king would trouble himself to a certain extent about such a rebel as Lord Lynne Clansherly. Hereditary peerages have a certain hold on the future. And it was evident that if any precautions were necessary with regard to that Lord, James II was not the man to hesitate. End of section 35 of The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo Please visit LibriVox.org The Man Who Laughs by Victor Hugo Part II Book I Chapter II Lord David de Limoire 1 Lord Lynneus Clansherly had not always been old and prescribed. He had had his phase of youth and passion. We know from Harrison and Pride that Cromwell, when young, loved women and pleasure, a taste which at times, another reading of the text Woman, betrays a seditious man, distrusts the loosely clasped girdle. Male Proikinctum Juvenim Cavite Lord Clansherly, like Cromwell, had had his wild hours and his irregularities. He was known to have had a natural child, a son. This son was born in England in the last days of the Republic, Justice's father was going into exile. Hence he had never seen his father. This bastard of Lord Clansherly had grown up as page at the Court of Childs II. He was styled Lord David de Limoire. He was a Lord by courtesy, his mother being a woman of quality. The mother, while Lord Clansherly was being coming an owl in Switzerland, made up her mind, being a beauty, to give over sulking, and was forgiven that goth, her first lover, by one undeniably polished, and at the same time a royalist, for it was the king himself. She had been but a short time the mistress of Childs II, sufficiently long, however, to have made his majesty, who was delighted to have won so pretty a woman from the Republic, bestow on the little Lord David, the son of his conquest, the office of keeper of the stick, which made that bastard officer, bordered at the king's expense, by a natural revulsion of feeling, an ardent adherent of the stewards. Lord David was for some time one of the hundred and seventy wearing the great sword, while afterwards, entering the core of pensioners, he became one of the forty who bear the gilded halberd. He had, besides being one of the noble company instituted by Henry VIII as a bodyguard, the privilege of laying the dishes on the king's table. Thus it was that whilst his father was growing gray in exile, Lord David prospered under Childs II, after which he prospered under James II. The king is dead, long live the king. It is the non-deficit Ulter Orios. It was on the accession of the Duke of York that he obtained permission to call himself, Lord David de Rimoire, from an estate which his mother who had just died had let him, in that great forest of Scotland, where is found the crag, a bird which scoops out a nest with its beak in the trunk of the oak. II. James II was a king and affected to be a general. He loved to surround himself with young officers. He showed himself frequently in public on horseback in a helmet and cuirass, with a huge projecting wig hanging below the helmet and over the cuirass, a sort of equestrian statue of imbecile war. He took a fancy to the graceful mean of the young Lord David. He liked the royalist for being the son of a republican. The repudiation of a father does not damage the foundation of a court fortune. The king made Lord David gentlemen of the bed-chamber at a salary of a thousand a year. It was a fine promotion. A gentleman of the bed-chamber sleeps near the king every night on a bed which is made up for him. There are twelve gentlemen who relieve each other. Lord David, whilst he held that post, was also head of the king's granary, giving out corn for the horses and receiving a salary of two hundred and sixty pound. Under him were the five coachmen of the king, the five postillions of the king, the five grooms of the king, the twelve footmen of the king, and the four chair-bearers of the king. He had the management of the race-chorses, which the king kept at new market, and which cost his majesty six hundred pound a year. He worked his will on the king's wardrobe, from which the knights of the garter are furnished with their robes of ceremony. He was saluted to the ground by the usher of the black rod, who belongs to the king. That usher, under James II, was the knight of Dupas, Mr. Baker, who was clerk of the crown, and Mr. Brown, who was clerk of the parliament, kowtowed to Lord David. The court of England, which is magnificent, is a model of hospitality. Lord David presided as one of the twelve at banquets and receptions. He had the glory of standing behind the king on offertory days, when the king gave to the church the golden Byzantium, on collar days, when the king wears the collar of his order, on communion days, when no one takes the sacrament excepting the king and the princes. It was he who, on Holy Thursday, introduced into his majesty's presence the twelve poor men, to whom the king gives as many silver pence as the years of his age, and as many shillings as the years of his reign. The duty devolved on him, when the king was ill, to call to the assistance of his majesty the two grooms of the Elmenry, who are priests, and to prevent the approach of doctors without permission from the council of state. Besides, he was Lieutenant Colonel of the Scotch Regiment of Guards, the one which plays the Scottish March. As such, he made several campaigns, and with glory, for he was a gallant soldier. He was a brave lord, well made, handsome, generous, and majestic in look and in manner. His person was like his quality. He was tall and stature, as well as high in birth. At one time he stood a chance of being made groom of the stole, which would have given him the privilege of putting the king's shirt on his majesty, but to hold that office it is necessary to be either prince or peer. Now, to create a peer is a serious thing. It is to create a peerage, and that makes many people jealous. It is a favour, a favour which gives the king one friend and a hundred enemies without taking into account that the one friend becomes ungrateful. James II, from policy, was indisposed to create peerages, but he transferred them freely. The transfer of a peerage produces no sensation. It is simply the continuation of a name. The order is little affected by it. The goodwill of royalty had no objection to raise Lord David Durimoir to the upper house, so long as it could do so by means of a substituted peerage. Nothing would have pleased his majesty better than to transform Lord David Durimoir, lord by courtesy, into a lord by right. Three. The opportunity occurred. One day it was announced that several things had happened to the old exile Lord Clencharly, the most important of which was that he was dead. Death does just this much good to folks. It causes a little talk about them. People related what they knew, or what they thought they knew, of the last years of Lord Linnaeus. What they said was probably legend and conjecture. If these random tales were to be credited Lord Clencharly must have had his republicanism intensified towards the end of his life to the extent of marrying, strange obstinacy of the exile, Anne Bradshaw, the daughter of a regicide. They were precise about the name. She had also died, it was said, but in giving birth to a boy. If these details should prove to be correct his child would, of course, be the legitimate and rightful heir of Lord Clencharly. These reports, however, were extremely vague in form and were rumours rather than facts. Circumstances which happened in Switzerland in those days were as remote from the England of that period as those which take place in China from the England of today. Lord Clencharly must have been fifty-nine at the time of his marriage, they said, and sixty at the birth of his son, and must have died shortly after leaving his infant orphan both of father and mother. This was possible, perhaps, but improbable. They added that the child was beautiful as the day, just as we read in all the fairy tales. King James put an end to these rumours evidently without foundation, by declaring one fine morning Lord David de Rimoire's soul and positive heir in default of legitimate issue, and by his royal pleasure of Lord Linnaeus Clencharly, his natural father, the absence of all other issue and dissent being established, patents of which grant were registered in the House of Lords. By these patents the King instituted Lord David de Rimoire in the titles, rights, and prerogatives of the late Lord Linnaeus Clencharly on the sole condition that Lord David should wed when she attained a marriageable age, a girl who was at that time a mere infant a few months old, and whom the King had in her cradle created a Duchess, no one knew exactly why, or rather everyone knew why. This little infant was called the Duchess Hoseanna. The English fashion then ran on Spanish names. One of Charles II's bastards was called Carlos Earl of Plymouth. It is likely that Hoseanna was a contraction for Hosefa Ianna. Hoseanna, however, may have been a name, the feminine of Hoseas. One of Henry VIII's gentlemen was called Hoseas du Passage. It was to this little Duchess that the King granted the peerage of Clencharly. She was a peeress till there should be a peer. The peer should be her husband. The peerage was founded on a double castle ward, the barony of Clencharly and the barony of Hunkerville. Besides, the barons of Clencharly were in recompense of an ancient feat of arms, and by royal license, marquises of Collione in Sicily. Peers of England cannot bear foreign titles. There are nevertheless exceptions. Thus, Henry Arundel, baron Arundel of Warder, was as well as Lord Clifford a count of the Holy Roman Empire, of which Lord Calpa is a prince. The Duke of Hamilton is Duke of Châtelerot in France. Basil Fielding Earl of Denby is Count of Hapsburg of Leffenburg and of Heinfeld in Germany. The Duke of Marlborough was Prince of Mindelheim in Swabia, just as the Duke of Wellington was Prince of Waterloo in Belgium. The same Lord Wellington was a Spanish Duke of Sidad Rodrigo, and Portuguese Count of Vimiera. There were in England, and there are still, lands both noble and common. The lands of the Lords of Clencharly were all noble. These lands, burgs, bailawicks, fiefs, rents, freeholds, and domains adherent to the peerage of Clencharly-Hunkerville, belonged provisionally to Lady Hossiana, and the king declared that once married to Hossiana, Lord David de Rimoire should be Baron Clencharly. Besides the Clencharly inheritance Lady Hossiana had her own fortune. She possessed great wealth, much of which was derived from the gifts of Madame Sancu to the Duke of York. Madame Sancu is short for Madame. Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orleans, the Lady of Highest Rank in France after the Queen, was thus called. 4. Having prospered under Charles and James, Lord David prospered under William. His Jacobite feeling did not reach to the extent of following James into exile. While he continued to love his legitimate king, he had the good sense to serve the usurper. He was, moreover, although sometimes disposed to rebel against discipline, an excellent officer. He passed from the land to the sea-forces and distinguished himself in the white squadron. He rose in it to be what was then called Captain of a Light Frigate. Altogether he made a very fine fellow, carrying to a great extent the elegancies of vice, a bit of a poet like every one else, a good servant of the state, a good servant to the Prince, as Sidious at feasts, at garlers, at ladies' receptions, at ceremonies, and in battle, servile in a gentlemanlike way, very haughty, with eyesight dull or keen according to the object examined, inclined to integrity, obsequious or arrogant as occasion required, frank and sincere on first acquaintance with the power of assuming the mask afterwards, very observant of the smiles and frowns of the royal humour, careless before a sword's point, always ready to risk his life on a sign from his majesty with heroism and complacency, capable of any insult but of no impoliteness, a man of courtesy and etiquette, proud of kneeling at great regal ceremonies, of a gay veller, a courtier on the surface, a paladin below, quite young at forty-five. Lord David sang French songs, an elegant gayety which had delighted Charles II. He loved eloquence and fine language, he greatly admired those celebrated discourses which are called the Funeral Orations of Bosway. From his mother he had inherited almost enough to live on about ten thousand pounds a year, he managed to get on with it by running into debt. In magnificence, extravagance and novelty he was without a rival, directly he was copied he changed his fashion. On horseback he wore loose boots of cowhide which turned over with spurs. He had hats like nobody else's, unheard of lace, and bands of which he alone had the pattern. End of section 36 Recording by John Trebidic