r\
•
In a tone of mingled pleasure and contempt she said,
"Why, it is Gwynplaine!"
THE
LAUGHING
MAN
1 Nelson and Sons
PQ
1050937
CONTENTS.
Preliminary Chapter. — Ursus ..... 7
Another Preliminary Chapter. — The Cornprachicos . 27
PART I.
BOOK THE FIRST. — NIGHT NOT so BLACK AS MAN.
I. Portland Bill 43
II. Left Alone ........ 49
III. Alone ......... 52
IV. Questions ........ 58
V. The Tree of Human Invention . . . -59
VI. Struggle between Death and Night . . .64
VII. The North Point of Portland . . . .70
BOOK THE SECOND. — THE HOOKER AT SEA.
I. Superhuman Laws . . . . . -75
II. Our First Rough Sketches Filled in . .78
III. Troubled Men on the Troubled Sea . . .82
IV. A Cloud Different from the Others enters on the
Scene . . . . . - . .86
V. Hardquanonne ....... 96
VI. They Think that Help is at Wand . . .98
ii CONTENTS.
VII. Superhuman Horrors . ,99
VIII. Nix et Nox .... .102
IX. The Charge Confided to a Raging Sea . . ioc
X. The Colossal Savage, the Storm . „ ,107
XI. The Caskets no
XII. Face to Face with the Rock . . . 113
XIII. Face to Face with Night. . . .116
XIV. Ortach 117
XV. Portentosum Mare . . . . . .119
XVI. The Problem Suddenly Works in Silence . 124
XVII. The Last Resource 126
XVIII. The Highest Resource ... .130
BOOK THE THIRD. — THE CHILD IN THE SHADOW.
II. The Effect of Snow
III. A Burden Makes a Rough Road Rougher
IV. Another Form of Desert ....
V. Misanthropy Plays Its Pranks .
VI. The Awaking
*;>"
. 142
. 146
. 150
- 154
. 168
PART II.
BOOK THE FIRST. — THE EVERLASTING PRESENCE OF
THE PAST. MAN REFLECTS MAN.
I. Lord Clancharlie . . . . . .175
II. Lord David Dirry-Moir . . . . .186
III. The Duchess Josiana ..... 191
IV. The Leader of Fashion . . . . .199
V. Queen Anne 205
VI. Barkilphedro .211
VII. Barkilphedro Gnaws His Way. . . .217
VIII. Inferi ........ 222
IX. Hate is as Strong as Love .... 233
CONTENTS. ill
X. The Flame which would be Seen if Man were
Transparent . . . . . . .230
XI. Barkilphedro in Ambuscade . . . .236
XII. Scotland, Ireland, and England .... 240
BOOK THE SECOND. — GWYNPLAINE AND DEA.
PI. Wherein we see the Face of Him of whom we
have hitherto seen only the Acts . . . 429
II. Dea 253
III. " Oculos non Habet, et Videt " . . . .256
IV. Well-matched Lovers . . . . . -257
V. The Blue Sky through the Black Cloud . . 260
VI. Ursus as Tutor, and Ursus as Guardian . . 263
, VII. Blindness Gives Lessons in Clairvoyance . . 267
I VIII. Not only Happiness, but Prosperity . . . 270
IX. Absurdities which Folks without Taste call
Poetry 275
X. An Outsider's View of Men and Things . .280
XI. Gwynplaine Thinks Justice, and Ursus Talks
Truth 285
^ XII. Ursus the Poet Drags on Ursus the Philosopher . 292
BOOK THE THIRD. — THE BEGINNING OF THE FISSURE.
I. The Tadcaster Inn . . . . . .295
II. Open-Air Eloquence ...... 298
III. Where the Passer-by Reappears . . . 302
IV. Contraries Fraternize in Hate .... 307
V. The Wapentake 312
VI. The Mouse Examined by the Cats . . .315
VII. Why Should a Gold Piece Lower Itself by Mixing
with a Heap of Pennies ? . . . .323
VIII. Symptoms of Poisoning 328
IX, Abyssus Abyssum Vocat 333
CONTENTS.
BOOK THE FOURTH. — THE CELL OF TORTURE.
I. The Temptation of St. Gwynplaine . • 341
II. From Gay to Grave . . • 347
III. Lex, Rex. Fex .
IV. Trsns Spies the Police ... - 35°"
arful Place • 360
V I . The Kind of Magistracy under the Wigs of Former
Days -362
VII. Shuddering 365
VIII. Lamentation 3^7
BOOK THE FIFTH. — THE SEA AND FATE ARE MOVED BY
THE SAME BREATH.
I. The Durability of Fragile Things . . .380
II. The Waif Knows Its Own Course . . .389
III. An Awakening 399
IV. Fascination. ....... 402
V. We Think We Remember; We Forget . 407
BOOK THE SIXTH. — URSUS UNDER DIFFERENT ASPECTS.
I. What the Misanthrope said . . . .415
II. What He did 418
III. Complications 429
IV. Mrenibus Surdis Campana Muta . . .432
V. State Policy Deals with Little Matters as Well as
with Great 437
BOOK THE SEVENTH. — THE TITANESS.
I. The Awakening 447
II. The Resemblance of a Palace to a Wood . . 449
HI. Eve 453
IV. Satan 45g
V. They Recognize, but do not Know, Each Other 468
CONTENTS. v
BOOK THE EIGHTH. — THE CAPITOL AND THINGS AROUND IT.
I. Analysis of Majestic Matters . . . .471
II. Impartiality ....... 482
III. The Old Hall 490
IV. The Old Chamber 495
V. Aristocratic Gossip ...... 499
VI. The High and the Low 506
VII. Storms of Men are Worse than Storms of Oceans 510
VIII. He would be a Good Brother, were he not a Good
Son. ........ 526
BOOK THE NINTH. — IN RUINS.
I. It is through Excess of Greatness that Man
reaches Excess of Misery . . . . 532
II. The Dregs .... ... 535
CONCLUSION. — THE NIGHT AND THE SEA.
I. A Watch-dog may be a Guardian Angel . -552
II. Barkilphedro, having aimed at the Eagle, brings
down the Dove . . . . . . 556
III. Paradise Regained Below . . . . .562
IV. Nay ; on High ! 568
THE LAUGHING MAN.
A ROMANCE OF ENGLISH HISTORY.
PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.
URSUS.
I.
URSUS and Homo were fast friends. Ursus was a man,
Homo a wolf. Their dispositions tallied. It was
the man who had christened the wolf : probably he had also
chosen his own name. Having found Ursus fit for himself,
he had found Homo fit for the beast. Man and wolf turned
their partnership to account at fairs, at village fetes, at the
corners of streets where passers-by throng, and out of the
need which people seem to feel everywhere to listen to idle
gossip and to buy quack medicine. The wolf, gentle and
courteously subordinate, diverted the crowd. It is a pleasant
thing to behold the tameness of animals. Our greatest
delight is to see all the varieties of domestication parade
before us. This it is which collects so many folks on the
road of royal processions.
Ursus and Homo went about from cross-road to cross-road,
from the High Street of Aberystwith to the High Street of
Jedburgh, from country-side to country-side, from shire to
shire, from town to town. One market exhausted, they went
on to another. Ursus lived in a small van upon wheels,
which Homo was civilized enough to draw by day and guard
by night. On bad roads, up hills, and where there were too
many ruts, or there was too much mud, the man buckled the
8 THE LAUGHING MAN.
trace round his neck and pulled fraternally, side by side wita
..id thus grown old together. They en-
camped at haphazard on a common, in the glade of a wood,
patch of grass where roads intersect, at the
, at the gates of towns, in market-places,
in public the borders of parks, before the entrances
n the cart drew up on a fair green, when
rossips ran up open-mouthed and the curious made a
ie pair, Ursus harangued and Homo approved.
:o, with a bowl in his mouth, politely made a collection
:ig the audience. They gained their livelihood. The
was lettered, likewise the man. The wolf had been
.ed by the man, or had trained himself unassisted, to
'Ifish arts, which swelled the receipts. " Above all
:s, do not degenerate into a man," his friend would say
to him.
did the wolf bite: the man did now and then. At
• . to bite was the intent of Ursus. He was a misanthrope,
and to italicize his misanthropy he had made himself a
juggler. To live, also ; for the stomach has to be consulted.
over, this juggler-misanthrope, whether to add to the
complexity of his being or to perfect it, was a doctor. To be
a do le : Ursus was a ventriloquist. You heard him
speak without his moving his lips. He counterfeited, so as
to deceive you, any one's accent or pronunciation. He imi-
tated voices so exactly that you believed you heard the
people themselves. All alone he simulated the murmur of a
-•id this gave him a right to the title of Engastri-
-vhich he took. He reproduced all sorts of cries of
>, as of the thrush, the wren, the pipit lark, otherwise
• •• gray cheeper, and the ring ousel, all travellers like
so that at times when the fancy struck him, he
i aware either of a public thoroughfare filled with
iproar of men, or of a meadow loud with the voices of
•s — at one time stormy as a multitude, at another fresh
and serene as the dawn. Such gifts, although rare, exist.
In the last century a man called Touzel, who imitated the
mingled utterances of men and animals, and who counter-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 9
feited all the cries of beasts, was attached to the person of
Buffon — to serve as a menagerie.
Ursus was sagacious, contradictory, odd, and inclined to
the singular expositions which we term fables. He had the
appearance of believing in them, and this impudence was a
part of his humour. He read people's hands, opened books
at random and drew conclusions, told fortunes, taught that
it is perilous to meet a black mare, still more perilous, as you
start for a journey, to hear yourself accosted by one who
knows not whither you are going; and he called himself a
dealer in superstitions. He used to say: " There is one
difference between me and the Archbishop of Canterbury:
I avow what I am." Hence it was that the archbishop,
justly indignant, had him one day before him; but Ursus
cleverly disarmed his grace by reciting a sermon he had
composed upon Christmas Day, which the delighted arch-
bishop learnt by heart, and delivered from the pulpit as his
own. In consideration thereof the archbishop pardoned
Ursus.
As a doctor, Ursus wrought cures by some means or other.
He made use of aromatics; he was versed in simples; he
made the most of the immense power which lies in a heap of
neglected plants, such as the hazel, the catkin, the white
alder, the white bryony, the mealy-tree, the traveller's joy,
the buckthorn. He treated phthisis with the sundew; at
opportune moments he would use the leaves of the spurge,
which plucked at the bottom are a purgative and plucked at
the top, an emetic. He cured sore throat by means of the
vegetable excrescence called Jew's ear. He knew the rush
which cures the ox and the mint which cures the horse. He
was well acquainted with the beauties and virtues of the herb
mandragora, which, as every one knows, is of both sexes. He
had many recipes. He cured burns with the salamander
wool, of which, according to Pliny, Nero had a napkin.
Ursus possessed a retort and a flask; he effected transmuta-
tions; he sold panaceas. It was said of him that he had
once been for a short time in Bedlam; they had done him
the honour to take him for a madman, but had set him tree
xo THE LAUGHING MAN.
that he was only a poet. This story was prob-
ably not true; we have all to submit to some such legend
about us.
The fact is, Ursus was a bit of a savant, a man of taste, and
an old Latin poet. He was learned in two forms; he
i and he Pindarized. He could have vied in
bombast with Rapin and Vida. He could have composed
it tragedies in a style not less triumphant than that of
or Bouhours. It followed from his familiarity with the
rable rhythms and metres of the ancients, that he had
peculiar figures of speech, and a whole family of classical
metaphors. He would say of a mother followed by her two
daughters, There is a dactyl ; ot a father preceded by his two
sons, There is an anapast ; and of a little child walking
between its grandmother and grandfather, There is an
j imacer. So much knowledge could only end in starva-
tion. The school of Salerno says, " Eat little and often."
;s ate little and seldom, thus obeying one half the
precept and disobeying the other; but this was the fault of
the public, who did not always flock to him, and who did not
often buy.
Ursus was wont to say: " The expectoration of a sentence
is a relief. The wolf is comforted by its howl, the sheep by
ool, the forest by its finch, woman by her love, and the
philosopher by his epiphonema." Ursus at a pinch com-
posed comedies, which, in recital, he all but acted; this
< d to sell the drugs. Among other works, he had com-
posed an heroic pastoral in honour of Sir Hugh Middleton,
•08 brought a river to London. The river was lying
peacefully in Hertfordshire, twenty miles from London: the
! it came and took possession of it. He brought a brigade
••: hundred men, armed with shovels and pickaxes; set to
.king up the ground, scooping it out in one place, raising
it in another — now thirty feet high, now twenty feet deep;
•• wooden aqueducts high in air; and at different points
constructed eight hundred bridges of stone, bricks, and
timber. One fine morning the river entered London, which
e*
THE LAUGHING MAN. xi
details into a fine Eclogue between the Thames and the New
River, in which the former invited the latter to come to him,
and offered her his bed, saying, " I am too old to please
women, but I am rich enough to pay them " — an ingenious
and gallant conceit to indicate how Sir Hugh Middleton had
completed the work at his own expense.
Ursus was great in soliloquy. Of a disposition at once un-
sociable and talkative, desiring to see no one, yet wishing to
converse with some one, he got out of the difficulty by talking
to himself. Any one who has lived a solitary life knows how
deeply seated monologue is in one's nature. Speech im-
prisoned frets to find a vent. To harangue space is an outlet.
To speak out aloud when alone is as it were to have a dialogue
with the divinity which is within. It was, as is well known,
a custom of Socrates; he declaimed to himself. Luther did
the same. Ursus took after those great men. He had the
hermaphrodite faculty of being his own audience. He ques-
tioned himself, answered himself, praised himself, blamed
himself. You heard him in the street soliloquizing in his van.
The passers-by, who have their own way of appreciating
clever people, used to say: He is an idiot. As we have just
observed, he abused himself at times; but there were times
also when he rendered himself justice. One day, in one of
these allocutions addressed to himself, he was heard to cry
out, " I have studied vegetation in all its mysteries — in the
stalk, in the bud, in the sepal, in the stamen, in the carpel, in
the ovule, in the spore, in the theca, and in the apothecium.
I have thoroughly sifted chromatics, osmosy, and chymosy —
that is to say, the formation of colours, of smell, and of taste."
There was something fatuous, doubtless, in this certificate
which Ursus gave to Ursus; but let those who have not
thoroughly sifted chromatics, osmosy, and chymosy cast the
first stone at him.
Fortunately Ursus had never gone into the Low Countries;
there they would certainly have weighed him, to ascertain
whether he was of the normal weight, above or below which
a man is a sorcerer. In Holland this weight was sagely fixed
by law. Nothing was simpler or more ingenious. It was a
THE LAUGHING MAN.
,'iit you in a scale, and the evidence was.
iusivc if you broke the equilibrium. Too heavy, you'
hanged; too light, you were burned. To this day the
scales in which sorcerers were weighed may be seen at Oude-
r. but they are now used for weighing cheeses; how
ion has degenerated ! Ursus would certainly have had
> pluck with those scales. In his travels he kept
>in Holland, and he did well. Indeed, we believe
that he used never to leave the United Kingdom.
However this may have been, he was very poor and morose,
and having made the acquaintance of Homo in a wood, a
taste for a wandering life had come over him. He had taken
the wolf into partnership, and with him had gone forth on the
highways, living in the open air the great life of chance. He
had a great deal of industry and of reserve, and great skill in
.-thing connected with healing operations, restoring the
to health, and in working wonders peculiar to himself.
He was considered a clever mountebank and a good doctor.
As may be imagined, he passed for a wizard as well — not
much indeed; only a little, for it was unwholesome in those
to be considered a friend of the devil. To tell the truth,
.s, by his passion for pharmacy and his love of plants, laid
himself open to suspicion, seeing that he often went to gather
herbs in rough thickets where grew Lucifer's salads, and
where, as has been proved by the Counsellor De 1' Ancre, there
is a risk of meeting in the evening mist a man who comes out
!0 earth, " blind of the right eye, barefooted, without a
cloak, and a sword by his side." But for the matter of that,
:s, although eccentric in manner and disposition, was too
good a fellow to invoke or disperse hail, to make faces appear,
to kill a man with the torment of excessive dancing, to sug-
gest dreams fair or foul and full of terror, and to cause the
birth of cocks with four wings. He had no such mischievous
:ks. He was incapable of certain abominations, such as,
instance, speaking German, Hebrew, or Greek, without
,ving learned them, which is a sign of unpardonable wicked-
jss, or of a natural infirmity proceeding from a morbid
humour. If Ursus spoke Latin, it was because he knew it.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 13
He would never have allowed himself to speak Syriac, which
he did not know. Besides, it is asserted that Syriac is the
language spoken in the midnight meetings at which uncanny
people worship the devil. In medicine he justly preferred
Galen to Cardan ; Cardan, although a learned man, being but
an earthworm to Galen.
To sum up, Ursus was not one of those persons who live in
fear of the police. His van was long enough and wide enough
to allow of his lying down in it on a box containing his not
very sumptuous apparel. He owned a lantern, several wigs,
and some utensils suspended from nails, among which were
musical instruments. He possessed, besides, a bearskin with
which he covered himself on his days of grand performance.
He called this putting on full dress. He used to say, " I
have two skins; this is the real one," pointing to the
bearskin.
The little house on wheels belonged to himself and to the
wolf. Besides his house, his retort, and his wolf, he had a
flute and a violoncello on which he played prettily. He con-
cocted his own elixirs. His wits yielded him enough to sup
on sometimes. In the top of his van was a hole, through
which passed the pipe of a cast-iron stove; so close to his
box as to scorch the wood of it. The stove had two com-
partments ; in one of them Ursus cooked his chemicals, and
in the other his potatoes. At night the wolf slept under the
van, amicably secured by a chain. Homo's hair was black,
that of Ursus, gray; Ursus was fifty, unless, indeed, he was
sixty. He accepted his destiny, to such an extent that, as we
have just seen, he ate potatoes, the trash on which at that
time they fed pigs and convicts. He ate them indignant, but
resigned. He was not tall — he was long. He was bent and
melancholy. The bowed frame of an old man is the settle-
ment in the architecture of life. Nature had formed him for
sadness. He found it difficult to smile, and he had never
been able to weep, so that he was deprived of the consolation
of tears as well as of the palliative of joy. An old man is a
thinking ruin; and such a ruin was Ursus. He had the
loquacity of a charlatan, the leanness of a prophet, the
,4 r; LAUGHING MAN.
i charged mine: such was Ursus. In his youth
he had been a philosopher in the house of a lord.
is 1 80 years ago, when men were more like wolves
1 hey are now.
so very much though.
II.
•o was no ordinary wolf. From his appetite for medlars
and potatoes he might have been taken for a prairie wolf;
from his dark hide, for a lycaon; and from his howl prolonged
into a bark, for a dog of Chili. But no one has as yet observed
the eyeball of a dog of Chili sufficiently to enable us to deter-
mine whether he be not a fox, and Homo was a real wolf. He
five feet long, which is a fine length for a wolf, even in
Lithuania; he was very strong; he looked at you askance,
which was not his fault; he had a soft tongue, with which he
occasionally licked Ursus; he had a narrow brush of short
• :es on his backbone, and he was lean with the wholesome
leanness of a forest life. Before he knew Ursus and had a
carriage to draw, he thought nothing of doing his fifty miles a
night. Ursus meeting him in a thicket near a stream of
running water, had conceived a high opinion of him from
seeing the skill and sagacity with which he fished out cray-
and welcomed him as an honest and genuine Koupara
wolf of the kind called crab-eater.
a beast of burden, Ursus preferred Homo to a donkey.
. ould have felt repugnance to having his hut drawn by an
ass ; he thought too highly of the ass lor that. Moreover he
•bserved that the ass, a four-legged thinker little under-
stood by men, has a habit of cocking his ears uneasily when
philosophers talk nonsense. In life the ass is a third person
between our thoughts and ourselves, and acts as a restraint.
As a friend, Ursus preferred Homo to a dog, considering that
the love of a wolf is more rare.
Hence it was that Homo suflSced for Ursus. Homo was
for Ursus more than a companion, he was an analogue.
Ursus used to pat the wolf's empty ribs, saying: " I have
THE LAUGHING MAN. 15
found the second volume of myself ! " Again he said,
" When I am dead, any one wishing to know me need
jonly study Homo. I shall leave a true copy behind
|me."
The English law, not very lenient to beasts of the forest,
imight have picked a quarrel with the wolf, and have put him
to trouble for his assurance in going freely about the towns:
but Homo took advantage of the immunity granted by a
statute of Edward IV. to servants: "Every servant in
attendance on his master is free to come and go." Besides,
a certain relaxation of the law had resulted with regard to
wolves, in consequence of its being the fashion of the ladies
of the Court, under the later Stuarts, to have, instead of dogs,
little wolves, called adives, about the size of cats, which were
brought from Asia at great cost.
Ursus had communicated to Homo a portion of his talents :
such as to stand upright, to restrain his rage into sulkiness, to
growl instead of howling, etc. ; and on his part, the wolf had
taught the man what he knew — to do without a roof, without
bread and fire, to prefer hunger in the woods to slavery in a
palace.
The van, hut, and vehicle in one, which traversed so many
different roads, without, however, leaving Great Britain, had
four wheels, with shafts for the wolf and a splinter-bar for the
man. The splinter-bar came into use when the roads were
bad. The van was strong, although it was built of light
boards like a dove-cot. In front there was a glass door with
a little balcony used for orations, which had something of the
character of the platform tempered by an air of the pulpit.
At the back there was a door with a practicable panel. By
lowering the three steps which turned on a hinge below the
door, access was gained to the hut, which at night was
securely fastened with bolt and lock. Rain and snow had
fallen plentifully on it; it had been painted, but of what
colour it was difficult to say, change of season being to vans
what changes of reign are to courtiers. In front, outside, was
a board, a kind of frontispiece, on which the following
inscription might once have been deciphered ; it was in black
THE LAUGHING MAN.
n on a white ground, but by degrees the characters had
become confused and blurred: —
" By friction gold loses every year a fourteen hundredth
of its bulk. This is what is called the Wear. Hence it
• \vs that on fourteen hundred millions of gold in circula-
throughout the world, one million is lost annually. This
on dissolves into dust, flies away, floats about, is reduced
to atoms, charges, drugs, weighs down consciences, amalga-
mates with the souls of the rich whom it renders proud, and
with those of the poor whom it renders brutish."
The inscription, rubbed and blotted by the rain and by the
kindness of nature, was fortunately illegible, for it is possible
that its philosophy concerning the inhalation of gold, at the
time both enigmatical and lucid, might not have been
to the taste of the sheriffs, the provost-marshals, and other
vigs of the law. English legislation did not trifle in those
. It did not take much to make a man a felon. The
magistrates were ferocious by tradition, and cruelty was a
matter of routine. The judges of assize increased and
multiplied. Jeffreys had become a breed.
III.
.e interior of the van there were two other inscriptions.
Above the box, on a whitewashed plank, a hand had written
in ink as follows: —
" THE ONLY THINGS NECESSARY TO KNOW.
" The Baron, peer of England, wears a cap with six pearls.
The coronet begins with the rank of Viscount. The Viscount
wears a coronet of which the pearls are without number. The
Earl a coronet with the pearls upon points, mingled with
strawberry leaves placed low between. The Marquis, one
i pearls and leaves on the same level. The Duke, one
with strawberry leaves alone — no pearls. The Royal Duke,
'-let of crosses and fleurs de lys. The Prince of Wales,
crown like that of the King, but unclosed.
" The Duke is a most high and most puissant prince, the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 17
Marquis and Earl most noble and puissant lord, the Viscount
noble and puissant lord, the Baron a trusty lord. The Duke
is his Grace; the other Peers their Lordships. Most honour-
able is higher than right honourable.
" Lords who are peers are lords in their own right. Lords
who are not peers are lords by courtesy: — there are no real
lords, excepting such as are peers.
" The House of Lords is a chamber and a court, Concilium
et Curia, legislature and court of justice. The Commons,
who are the people, when ordered to the bar of the Lords,
humbly present themselves bareheaded before the peers, who
remain covered. The Commons send up their bills by forty
members, who present the bill with three low bows. The
Lords send their bills to the Commons by a mere clerk. In
case of disagreement, the two Houses confer in the Painted
Chamber, the Peers seated and covered, the Commons
standing and bareheaded.
" Peers go to parliament in their coaches in file; the
Commons do not. Some peers go to Westminster in open
four-wheeled chariots. The use of these and of coaches
emblazoned with coats of arms and coronets is allowed only
to peers, and forms a portion of their dignity.
" Barons have the same rank as bishops. To be a baron
peer of England, it is necessary to be in possession of a tenure
from the king per Baroniam integram, by full barony. The
full barony consists of thirteen knights' fees and one third
part, each knight's fee being of the value of £20 sterling,
which makes in all 400 marks. The head of a barony (Caput
baronia) is a castle disposed by inheritance, as England her-
self, that is to say, descending to daughters if there be no
sons, and in that case going to the eldest daughter, cateris
filiabus aliunde satis factis. *
" Barons have the degree of lord: in Saxon, la ford ;
dominus in high Latin ; Lordus in low Latin. The eldest and
younger sons of viscounts and barons are the first esquires in
the kingdom. The eldest sons of peers take precedence of
* As much as to say, the other daughters are provided for as best
may be. (Note by Ursus on the margin of the wall.)
1 8 THE LAUGHING MAN.
hts of the garter. The younger sons do not. The eldest
son of a viscount comes after all barons, and precedes all
baronets. Every daughter of a peer is a Lady. Other
English girls are plain Mistress.
" All judges rank below peers. The Serjeant wears a
lambskin tippet; the judge one of patchwork, de minuto
. made up of a variety of little white furs, always
; iting ermine. Ermine is reserved for peers and the king.
" A lord never takes an oath, either to the crown or the
His word suffices; he says, Upon my honour.
" By a law of Edward the Sixth, peers have the privilege
of committing manslaughter. A peer who kills a man
without premeditation is not prosecuted.
" The persons of peers are inviolable.
" A peer cannot be held in durance, save in the Tower of
London.
" A writ of supplicavit cannot be granted against a peer.
" A peer sent for by the king has the right to kill one or
leer in the royal park.
" A peer holds in his castle a baron's court of justice.
"It is unworthy of a peer to walk the street in a cloak,
followed by two footmen. He should only show himself
attended by a great train of gentlemen of his household.
11 A peer can be amerced only by his peers, and never to
greater amount than five pounds, excepting in the case
of a duke, who can be amerced ten.
' A peer may retain six aliens born, any other Englishman
but four.
" A peer can have wine custom-free; an earl eight tuns.
" A peer is alone exempt from presenting himself before
the sheriff of the circuit.
•T cannot be assessed towards the militia.
n it pleases a peer he raises a regiment and gives it
to the king; thus have done their graces the Dukes of Athol,
Hamilton, and Northumberland.
4 A peer can hold only of a peer.
" In a civil cause he can demand the adjournment of the
case, if there be not at least one knight on the jury.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 19
" A peer nominates his own chaplains. A baron appoints
three chaplains; a viscount four; an earl and a marquis
fivej a duke six.
" A peer cannot be put to the rack, even for high treason.
A peer cannot be branded on the hand. A peer is a clerk,
though he knows not how to read. In law he knows.
" A duke has a right to a canopy, <x cloth of state, in all
places where the king is not present; a viscount may have
one in his house ; a baron has a cover of assay, which may be
held under his cup while he drinks. A baroness has the right
to have her train borne by a man in the presence of a
viscountess.
" Eighty-six tables, with five hundred dishes, are served
every day in the royal palace at each meal.
" If a plebeian strike a lord, his hand is cut off.
" A lord is very nearly a king.
" The king is very nearly a god.
" The earth is a lordship.
" The English address God as my lord I "
Opposite this writing was written a second one, in the same
fashion, which ran thus: —
" SATISFACTION WHICH MUST SUFFICE THOSE WHO HAVE
NOTHING.
" Henry Auverquerque, Earl of Grantham, who sits in the
House of Lords between the Earl of Jersey and the Earl of
Greenwich, has a hundred thousand a year. To his lordship
belongs the palace of Grantham Terrace, built all of marble
and famous for what is called the labyrinth of passages — a
curiosity which contains the scarlet corridor in marble of
Sarancolin, the brown corridor in lumachel of Astracan, the
white corridor in marble of Lani, the black corridor in marble
of Alabanda, the gray corridor in marble of Staremma, the
yellow corridor in marble of Hesse, the green corridor in
marble of the Tyrol, the red corridor, half cherry-spotted
marble of Bohemia, half lumachel of Cordova, the blue
corridor in turquin of Genoa, the violet in granite of Cata-
20 THE LAUGHING MAN,
Ionia, the mourning-hued corridor veined black and white in
• >f Murviedro, the pink corridor in cipolin of the Alps,
••arl corridor in lumachel of Nonetta, and the corridor
of all colours, called the courtiers' corridor, in motley.
" Richard Lowther, Viscount Lonsdale, owns Lowther in
; norland, which has a magnificent approach, and a
flight of entrance steps which seem to invite the ingress of
kings.
" Richard, Earl of Scarborough, Viscount and Baron
Lumley of Lumley Castle, Viscount Lumley of Waterford in
Ireland, and Lord Lieutenant and Vice- Admiral of the county
•rthumberland and of Durham, both city and county,
owns the double castleward of old and new Sandbeck, where
you admire a superb railing, in the form of a semicircle, sur-
rounding the basin of a matchless fountain. He has, besides,
his castle of Lumley.
" Robert Darcy, Earl of Holderness, has his domain of
Holdcrness, with baronial towers, and large gardens laid out
in French fashion, where he drives in his coach-and-six,
preceded by two outriders, as becomes a peer of England.
" Charles Beauclerc, Duke of St. Albans, Earl of Burford,
Baron Hedington, Grand Falconer of England, has an abode
at Windsor, regal even by the side of the king's.
" Charles Bodville Robartes, Baron Robartes of Truro,
Viscount Bodmin and Earl of Radnor, owns Wimpole in
Cambridgeshire, which is as three palaces in one, having
three facades, one bowed and two triangular. The approach
is by an avenue of trees four deep. !
" The most noble and most puissant Lord Philip, Baron
Herbert of Cardiff, Earl of Montgomery and of Pembroke,
Ross of Kendall, Parr, Fitzhugh, Marmion, St. Quentin, and
Herbert of Shurland, Warden of the Stannaries in the
counties of Cornwall and Devon, hereditary visitor of Jesus
College, possesses the wonderful gardens at Wilton, where
there are two sheaf-like fountains, finer than those of his
Christian Majesty King Louis XIV. at Versailles.
Charles Somerset, Duke of Somerset, owns Somerset
douse on the Thames, which is equal to the Villa, Pamphili
THE LAUGHING MAN. 21
at Rome. On the chimney-piece are seen two porcelain
vases of the dynasty of the Yuens, which are worth half a
million in French money.
" In Yorkshire, Arthur, Lord Ingram, Viscount Irwin, has
Temple Newsam, which is entered under a triumphal arch
and which has large wide roofs resembling Moorish terraces.
" Robert, Lord Ferrers of Chartly, Bourchier, and
Louvaine,has Staunton Harold in Leicestershire, of which the
park is geometrically planned in the shape of a temple with
a f a9ade, and in front of the piece of water is the great church
with the square belfry, which belongs to his lordship.
" In the county of Northampton, Charles Spencer, Earl of
Sunderland, member of his Majesty's Privy Council, pos-
sesses Althorp, at the entrance of which is a railing with
four columns surmounted by groups in marble.
" Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, has, in Surrey, New
Park, rendered magnificent by its sculptured pinnacles, its
circular lawn belted by trees, and its woodland, at the
extremity of which is a little mountain, artistically rounded,
and surmounted by a large oak, which can be seen from afar.
" Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, possesses Bretby
Hall in Derbyshire, with a splendid clock tower, falconries,
warrens, and very fine sheets of water, long, square, and oval,
one of which is shaped like a mirror, and has two jets, which
throw the water to a great height.
" Charles Cornwallis, Baron Cornwallis of Eye, owns
Brdome Hall, a palace of the fourteenth century.
" The most noble Algernon Capel, Viscount Maiden, Earl
of Essex, has Cashiobury in Hertfordshire, a seat which has
the shape of a capital H, and which rejoices sportsmen with
its abundance of game.
" Charles, Lord Ossulston, owns Darnley in Middlesex,
approached by Italian gardens.
" James Cecil, Earl of Salisbury 3 has, seven leagues from
London, Hatfield House, with its four lordly pavilions, its
belfry in the centre, and its grand courtyard of black and
white slabs, like that of St. Germain. This palace, which has
a frontage 272 feet in length, was built in the reign of James I.
THE LAUGHING MAN.
he Lord High Treasurer of England, the great-grand-
: 1 1 carl. To be seen there is the bed of one
of the Countesses of Salisbury: it is of inestimable value and
made entirely of Brazilian wood, which is a panacea against
ites of serpents, and which is called milhombres — that is
to say, a thousand men. On this bed is inscribed, Honi soit
qui mal y pense.
dward Rich, Earl of Warwick and Holland, is owner of
vick Castle, where whole oaks are burnt in the fire-
places.
in the parish of Sevenoaks, Charles Sackville, Baron
Buckhurst, Baron Cranfield, Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, is
owner of Knowle, which is as large as a town and is composed
of three palaces standing parallel one behind the other, like
ranks of infantry. There are six covered flights of steps on
th« principal frontage, and a gate under a keep with four
towers.
" Thomas Thynne, Baron Thynne of Warminster, and
>unt Weymouth, possesses Longleat, in which there are
as many chimneys, cupolas, pinnacles, pepper-boxes
pavilions, and turrets as at Chambord, in France, which
belongs to the king.
" Henry Howard, Earl of Suffolk, owns, twelve leagues
from London, the palace of Audley End in Essex, which in
grandeur and dignity scarcely yields the palm to the Escorial
of the King of Spain.
"In Bedfordshire, Wrest House and Park, which is a
!-j district, enclosed by ditches, walls, woodlands, rivers,
and hills, belongs to Henry, Marquis of Kent.
" Hampton Court, in Herefordshire, with its strong
embattled keep, and its gardens bounded by a piece of water
which divides them from the forest, belongs to Thomas, Lord
Coningsby.
" Grimsthorp, in Lincolnshire, with its long facade inter-
sected by turrets in pale, its park, its fish-ponds, its pheasant.
ries, its sheepfolds, its lawns, its grounds planted with rows
of trees, its groves, its walks, its shrubberies, its flower-beds
and borders, formed in square and lozenge-shape, and
THE LAUGHING MAN. 23
resembling great carpets; its racecourses, and the majestic
sweep for carriages to turn in at the entrance of the house —
belongs to Robert, Earl Lindsey, hereditary lord of the forest
of Waltham.
" Up Park, in Sussex, a square house, with two symmetri-
cal belfried pavilions on each side of the great courtyard,
belongs to the Right Honourable Forde, Baron Grey of
Werke, Viscount Glendale and Earl of Tankerville.
" Newnham Paddox, in Warwickshire, which has two
quadrangular fish-ponds and a gabled archway with a large
window of four panes, belongs to the Earl of Denbigh, who is
also Count von Rheinfelden, in Germany.
" Wytham Abbey, in Berkshire, with its French garden in
which there are four curiously trimmed arbours, and its great
embattled towers, supported by two bastions, belongs to
Montague, Earl of Abingdon, who also owns Rycote, of which
he is Baron, and the principal door of which bears the device
Virtus ariete fortior.
" William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, has six dwelling-
places, of which Chatsworth (two storied, and of the finest
order of Grecian architecture) is one.
" The Viscount of Kinalmeaky, who is Earl of Cork, in
Ireland, is owner of Burlington House, Piccadilly, with its
extensive gardens, reaching to the fields outside London ; he
is also owner of Chiswick, where there are nine magnificent
lodges; he also owns Londesborough, which is a new house
by the side of an old palace.
" The Duke of Beaufort owns Chelsea, which contains two
Gothic buildings, and a Florentine one; he has also Bad-
minton, in Gloucestershire, a residence from which a number
of avenues branch out like rays from a star. The most noble
and puissant Prince Henry, Duke of Beaufort, is also Marquis
and Earl of Worcester, Earl of Glamorgan, Viscount Gros-
mont, and Baron Herbert of Chepstow, Ragland, and Gower,
Baron Beaufort of Caldecott Castle, and Baron de Bottetourt.
" John Holies, Duke of Newcastle, and Marquis of Clare,
owns Bolsover, with its majestic square keeps; his also is
in Nottinghamshire, where a round pyramid,
THE LAUGHING MAN.
made to imitate the Tower of Babel, stands in the centre of
a basin of water.
A'illiam, Earl of Craven, Viscount Uffington, and Baron
i Hamstead Marshall, owns Combe Abbey in
>hire, where is to be seen the finest water- jet in
md ; and in Berkshire two baronies, Hamstead Marshall,
,e facade of which are five Gothic lanterns sunk in the
and Ashdown Park, which is a country seat situate at
the point of intersection of cross-roads in a forest.
innseus, Lord Clancharlie, Baron Clancharlie and
Hunkervillc, Marquis of Corleone in Sicily, derives his title
from the castle of Clancharlie, built in 912 by Edward the
Elder, as a defence against the Danes. Besides Hunkerville
House, in London, which is a palace, he has Corleone Lodge
at Windsor, which is another, and eight castlewards, one at
Burton-on-Trent, with a royalty on the carriage of plaster of
Paris; then Grumdaith Humble, Moricambe, Trewardraith,
Hell-Kesters (where there is a miraculous well), Phillinmore,
with its turf bogs, Reculver, near the ancient city Vagniac,
Vinecaunton, on the Moel-eulle Mountain; besides nineteen
boroughs and villages with reeves, and the whole of Penneth
chase, all of which bring his lordship ^40,000 a year.
" The 172 peers enjoying their dignities under James II.
possess among them altogether a revenue of ^1,272,000
ing a year, which is the eleventh part of the revenue of
England."
In the margin, opposite the last name (that of Linnaeus,
Lord Clancharlie), there was a note in the handwriting of
s: Rebel ; in exile ; houses, lands, and chattels seques-
trated. It is well.
IV.
URSUS admired Homo. One admires one's like. It is a law.
To be always raging inwardly and grumbling outwardly
was the normal condition of Ursus. He was the malcontent
of creation. By nature he was a man ever in opposition. He
took the world unkindly; he gave his satisfecit to no one and
THE LAUGHING MAN. 25
to nothing. The bee did not atone, by its honey-making, for
its sting ; a full-blown rose did not absolve the sun for yellow
fever and black vomit. It is probable that in secret Ursus
criticized Providence a good deal. " Evidently," he would
say, " the devil works by a spring, and the wrong that God
does is having let go the trigger." He approved of none but
princes, and he had his own peculiar way of expressing his
approbation. One day, when James II. made a gift to the
Virgin in a Catholic chapel in Ireland of a massive gold lamp,
Ursus, passing that way with Homo, who was more indiffer-
ent to such things, broke out in admiration before the crowd,
and exclaimed, " It is certain that the blessed Virgin wants
a lamp much more than these barefooted children there
require shoes."
Such proofs of his loyalty, and such evidences of his respect
for established powers, probably contributed in no small
degree to make the magistrates tolerate his vagabond life and
his low alliance with a wolf. Sometimes of an evening,
through the weakness of friendship, he allowed Homo to
stretch his limbs and wander at liberty about the caravan.
The wolf was incapable of an abuse of confidence, and be-
haved in society, that is to say among men, with the discretion
of a poodle. All the same, if bad-tempered officials had to
be dealt with, difficulties might have arisen; so Ursus kept
the honest wolf chained up as much as possible.
From a political point of view, his writing about gold, not
very intelligible in itself, and now become undecipherable,
was but a smear, and gave no handle to the enemy. Even
after the time of James II., and under the " respectable "
reign of William and Mary, his caravan might have been seen
peacefully going its rounds of the little English country towns.
He travelled freely from one end of Great Britain to the
other, selling his philtres and phials, and sustaining, with the
assistance of his wolf, his quack mummeries; and he passed
with ease through the meshes of the nets which the police at
that period had spread all over England in order to sift
wandering gangs, and especially to stop the progress of the
Comprachicos.
26 THE LAUGHING MAN.
This was right enough. Ursus belonged to no gang. Ursus
•:i Ursus, a tete-h-tete, into which the wolf gently
thrust his nose. If Ursus could have had his way, he would
been a Caribbee ; that being impossible, he preferred to
lone. The solitary man is a modified savage, accepted
;\ilization. He who wanders most is most alone; hence
his continual change of place. To remain anywhere long
suffocated liim with the sense of being tamed. He passed his
n passing on his way. The sight of towns increased his
taste for brambles, thickets, thorns, and holes in the rock.
His home was the forest. He did not feel himself much out
of his element in the murmur of crowded streets, which is like
-,'h to the bluster of trees. The crowd to some extent
•ies our taste for the desert. What he disliked in his van
its having a door and windows, and thus resembling a
e. He would have realized his ideal, had he been able
it a cave on four wheels and travel in a den.
did not smile, as we have already said, but he used to
laugh; sometimes, indeed frequently, a bitter laugh. There
nsent in a smile, while a laugh is often a refusal.
His great business was to hate the human race. He was
implacable in that hate. Having made it clear that human
-. a dreadful thing; having observed the superposition of
. kings on the people, war on kings, the plague on war,
famine on the plague, folly on everything; having proved a
certain measure of chastisement in the mere fact of existence;
ng recognized that death is a deliverance — when they
brought him a sick man he cured him; he had cordials and
beverages to prolong the lives of the old. He put lame
>les on their legs again, and hurled this sarcasm at them,
ou are on your paws once more; may you walk long
in this valley of tears ! " When he saw a poor man dying of
hunger, he gave him all the pence he had about him, growling
out, " Live on, you wretch ! eat I last a long time ! It is not
I who would shorten your penal servitude." After which,
he would rub his hands and say, " I do men all the harm
I can."
Through the little window at the back, passers-by could
THE LAUGHING MAN. 27
read on the ceiling of the van these words, written within, but
visible from without, inscribed with charcoal, in big letters, —
URSUS, PHILOSOPHER.
ANOTHER PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.
THE COMPRACHICOS.
I.
WHO now knows the word Comprachicos, and who knows its
meaning ?
The Comprachicos, or Comprapequenos, were a hideous
and nondescript association of wanderers, famous in the
i/th century, forgotten in the i8th, unheard of in the i9th.
The Comprachicos are like the " succession powder," an
ancient social characteristic detail. They are part of old
human ugliness. To the great eye of history, which sees
everything collectively, the Comprachicos belong to the
colossal fact of slavery. Joseph sold by his brethren is a
chapter in their story. The Comprachicos have left their
traces in the penal laws of Spain and England. You find
here and there in the dark confusion of English laws the
impress of this horrible truth, like the foot-print of a savage
in a forest.
Comprachicos, the same as Comprapequenos, is a compound
Spanish word signifying Child-buyers.
The Comprachicos traded in children. They bought and
sold them. They did not steal them. The kidnapping of
children is another branch of industry. And what did they
make of these children ?
Monsters.
Why monsters?
To laugh at.
The populace must needs laugh, and kings too. The
mountebank is wanted in the streets, the jester at the
Louvre. The one is called a Clown, the other a Fool.
28 THE LAUGHING MAN.
The efforts of man to procure himself pleasure are at times
worthy of the attention of the philosopher.
.t are we sketching in these few preliminary pages ? A
tor in the most terrible of books ; a book which might be
entitled — The farming of the unhappy by the happy.
II.
^ILD destined to be a plaything for men — such a thing has
• cd ; such a thing exists even now. In simple and savage
times such a thing constituted an especial trade. The i/th
century, called the great century, was of those times. It
was a century very Byzantine in tone. It combined corrupt
simplicity with delicate ferocity — a curious variety of civiliza-
tion. A tiger with a simper. Madame de Sevigne minces on
the subject of the fagot and the wheel. That century traded
>d deal in children. Flattering historians have concealed
the sore, but have divulged the remedy, Vincent de Paul.
In order that a human toy should succeed, he must betaken
. The dwarf must be fashioned when young. We play
with childhood. But a 'well-formed child is not very
amusing; a hunchback is better fun.
Hence grew an art. There were trainers who took a man
and made him an abortion; they took a face and made a
muzzle; they stunted growth; they kneaded the features.
The artificial production of teratological cases had its rules.
is quite a science — what one can imagine as the antithesis
of orthopedy. Where God had put a look, their art put a
squint; where God had made harmony, they made discord;
where God had made the perfect picture, they re-established
ketch ; and, in the eyes of connoisseurs, it was the sketch
which was perfect. They debased animals as well; they
invented piebald horses. Turenne rode a piebald horse. In
pur own days do they not dye dogs blue and green ? Nature
is our canvas. Man has always wished to add something to
God's work. Man retouches creation, sometimes for better,
sometimes for worse. The Court buffoon was nothing but
an attempt to lead back man to the monkey. It was a
THE LAUGHING MAN. 29
progress the wrong way. A masterpiece in retrogression. At
the same time they tried to make a man of the monkey.
Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland and Countess of South-
ampton, had a marmoset for a page. Frances Sutton,
Baroness Dudley, eighth peeress in the bench of barons, had
tea served by a baboon clad in cold brocade, which her lady-
ship called My Black. Catherine Sedley, Countess of Dor-
chester, used to go and take her seat in Parliament in a coach
with armorial bearings, behind which stood, their muzzles
stuck up in the air, three Cape monkeys in grand livery. A
Duchess of Medina-Celi, whose toilet Cardinal Pole wit-
nessed, had her stockings put on by an orang-outang.
These monkeys raised in the scale were a counterpoise to men
brutalized and bestialized. This promiscuousness of man
and beast, desired by the great, was especially prominent in
the case of the dwarf and the dog. The dwarf never quitted
the dog, which was always bigger than himself. The dog
was the pair of the dwarf; it was as if they were coupled with
a collar. This juxtaposition is authenticated by a mass of
domestic records — notably by the portrait of Jeffrey
Hudson, dwarf of Henrietta of France, daughter of Henri IV.,
and wife of Charles I.
To degrade man tends to deform him. The suppression of
his state was completed by disfigurement. Certain vivi-
sectors of that period succeeded marvellously well in effacing
from the human face the divine effigy. Doctor Conquest,
member of the Amen Street College, and judicial visitor of
the chemists' shops of London, wrote a book in Latin on this
pseudo-surgery, the processes of which he describes. If we
are to believe Justus of Carrickfergus, the inventor of this
branch of surgery was a monk named Avonmore — an Irish
word signifying Great River.
The dwarf of the Elector Palatine, Perkeo, whose effigy —
or ghost — springs from a magical box in the cave of Heidel-
berg, was a remarkable specimen of this science, very varied
in its applications. It fashioned beings the law of whose
existence was hideously simple : it permitted them to suffer,
and commanded them to amuse.
30 THE LAUGHING MAN.
III.
manufacture of monsters was practised on a large scale,
and comprised various branches.
The Sultan required them, so did the Pope; the one to
guard his women, the other to say his prayers. These were
of a peculiar land, incapable of reproduction. Scarcely
human beings, they were useful to voluptuousness and to
. >n. The seraglio and the Sistine Chapel utilized the
same species of monsters; fierce in the former case, mild in
the latter.
They knew how to produce things in those days which are
not produced now; they had talents which we lack, and it is
not without reason that some good folk cry out that the
decline has come. We no longer know how to sculpture
living human flesh; this is consequent on the loss of the art
of torture. Men were once virtuosi in that respect, but are
so no longer; the art has become so simplified that it will
soon disappear altogether. In cutting the limbs of living
men, in opening their bellies and in dragging out their
entrails, phenomena were grasped on the moment and dis-
coveries made. We are obliged to renounce these experi-
ments now, and are thus deprived of the progress which
surgery made by aid of the executioner.
The vivisection of former days was not limited to the manu-
facture of phenomena for the market-place, of buffoons for
the palace (a species of augmentative of the courtier), and
eunuchs for sultans and popes. It abounded in varieties.
One of its triumphs was the manufacture of cocks for the
king of England.
vas the custom, in the palace of the kings of England, to
have a sort of watchman, who crowed like a cock. This
watcher, awake while all others slept, ranged the palace, and
raised from hour to hour the cry of the farmyard, repeating
It as often as was necessary, and thus supplying a clock.
This man, promoted to be cock, had in childhood undergone
the operation of the pharynx, which was part of the art
THE LAUGHING MAN. 31
described by Dr. Conquest. Under Charles II. the salivation
inseparable to the operation having disgusted the Duchess of
Portsmouth, the appointment was indeed preserved, so that
the splendour of the crown should not be tarnished, but they
got an unmutilated man to represent the cock. A retired of-
ficer was generally selected for this honourable employment.
Under James II. the functionary was named William
Sampson, Cock, and received for his crow ^9, 2S. 6d. annually.
The memoirs of Catherine II. inform us that at St. Peters-
burg, scarcely a hundred years since, whenever the czar or
czarina was displeased with a Russian prince, he was forced
to squat down in the great antechamber of the palace, and to
remain in that posture a certain number of days, mewing like
a cat, or clucking like a sitting hen, and pecking his food from
the floor.
These fashions have passed away; but not so much,
perhaps, as one might imagine. Nowadays, courtiers
slightly modify their intonation in clucking to please their
masters. More than one picks up from the ground — we will
not say from the mud — what he eats.
It is very fortunate that kings cannot err. Hence their
contradictions never perplex us. In approving always, one
is sure to be always right — which is pleasant. Louis XIV.
would not have liked to see at Versailles either an officer
acting the cock, or a prince acting the turkey. That which
raised the royal and imperial dignity in England and Russia
would have seemed to Louis the Great incompatible with the
crown of St. Louis. We know what his displeasure was when
Madame Henriette forgot herself so far as to see a hen in a
dream — which was, indeed, a grave breach of good manners
in a lady of the court. When one is of the court, one should
not dream of the courtyard. Bossuet, it may be remem-
bered, was nearly as scandalized as Louis XIV,
IV.
THE commerce in children in the i/th century, as we have
explained, was connected with a trade. The Comprachicos
THE LAUGHING MAN.
^ed in the commerce, and carried on the trade. They
bought children, worked a little on the raw material, and re-
sold them afterwards.
The venders were of all kinds: from the wretched father,
; ug rid of his family, to the master, utilizing his stud oi|
slaves. The sale of men was a simple matter. In our own
time we have had fighting to maintain this right. Re-j
member that it is less than a century ago since the Elector of j
Hesse sold his subjects to the King of England, who required
men to be killed in America. Kings went to the Elector of
Hesse as we go to the butcher to buy meat. The Elector
had food for powder in stock, and hung up his subjects in his
shop. Come buy; it is for sale. In England, under Jeffreys,
after the tragical episode of Monmouth, there were many
lords and gentlemen beheaded and quartered. Those who
were executed left wives and daughters, widows and orphans,
whom James II. gave to the queen, his wife. The queen sold
these ladies to William Penn. Very likely the king had so
much per cent, on the transaction. The extraordinary thing
is, not that James II. should have sold the women, but that
William Penn should have bought them. Penn's purchase
is excused, or explained, by the fact that having a desert to
sow with men, he needed women as farming implements.
Her Gracious Majesty made a good business out of these
ladies. The young sold dear. We may imagine, with the
uneasy feeling which a complicated scandal arouses, that
probably some old duchesses were thrown in cheap.
The Comprachicos were also called the Cheylas, a Hindu
word, which conveys the image of harrying a nest.
For a long time the Comprachicos only partially concealed
themselves. There is sometimes in the social order a favour-
^hadow thrown over iniquitous trades, in which they
thrive. In our own day we have seen an association of the
kind in Spain, under the direction of the ruffian Ramon Selles,
last from 1834 to 1866, and hold three provinces under terror
for thirty years— Valencia, Alicante, and Murcia.
Under the Stuarts, the Comprachicos were by no means in
bad odour at court. On occasions they were used for
THE LAUGHING MAN. 33
reasons of state. For James II. they were almost an instru-
mentum regni. It was a time when families, which were
refractory or in the way, were dismembered ; when a descent
was cut short; when heirs were suddenly suppressed. At
times one branch was defrauded to the profit of another.
The Comprachicos had a genius for disfiguration which recom-
mended them to state policy. To disfigure is better than to
kill. There was, indeed, the Iron Mask, but that was a
mighty measure. Europe could not be peopled with iron
masks, while deformed tumblers ran about the streets with-
out creating any surprise. Besides, the iron mask is re-
movable j not so the mask of flesh. You are masked for
ever by your own flesh — what can be more ingenious ? The
Comprachicos worked on man as the Chinese work on trees.
They had their secrets, as we have said; they had tricks
which are now lost arts. A sort of fantastic stunted thing
left their hands; it was ridiculous and wonderful. They
would touch up a little being with such skill that its father
could not have known it. Et que meconnaitrait Vail m£me de
son plre, as Racine says in bad French. Sometimes they left
the spine straight and remade the face. They unmarked a
child as one might unmark a pocket-handkerchief. Prod-
ucts, destined for tumblers, had their joints dislocated in a
masterly manner — you would have said they had been boned.
Thus gymnasts were made.
Not only did the Comprachicos take away his face from
the child, they also took away his memory. At least they
took away all they could of it; the child had no consciousness
of the mutilation to which he had been subjected. This
frightful surgery left its traces on his countenance, but not on
his mind. The most he could recall was that one day he had
been seized by men, that next he had fallen asleep, and then
that he had been cured. Cured of what? He did not know.
Of burnings by sulphur and incisions by the iron he remem-
bered nothing. The Comprachicos deadened the little
patient by means of a stupefying powder which was thought
to be magical, and suppressed all pain. This powder has
been known from time immemorial in China, and is still
2
V.
good reason
THE LAUGHING MAN. 35
him the mark of God ; they put on him the mark of the king.
Jacob Astley, knight and baronet, lord of Melton Constable,
in the county of Norfolk, had in his family a child who had
been sold, and upon whose forehead the dealer had imprinted
a fleur-de-lis with a hot iron. In certain cases in which i t was
held desirable to register for some reason the royal origin of
the new position made for the child, they used such means.
England has always done us the honour to utilize, for her
personal service, the fleur-de-lis.
The Comprachicos, allowing for the shade which divides a
trade from a fanaticism, were analogous to the Stranglers of
India. They lived among themselves in gangs, and to
facilitate their progress, affected somewhat of the merry-
andrew. They encamped here and there, but they were
grave and religious, bearing no affinity to other nomads, and
incapable of theft. The people for a long time wrongly con-
founded them with the Moors of Spain and the Moors of
China. The Moors of Spain were coiners, the Moors of China
were thieves. There was nothing of the sort about the Com-
prachicos ; they were honest folk. Whatever you may think
of them, they were sometimes sincerely scrupulous. They
pushed open a door, entered, bargained for a child, paid, and
departed. All was done with propriety.
They were of all countries. Under the name of Com-
prachicos fraternized English, French, Castilians, Germans,
Italians. A unity of idea, a unity of superstition, the pur-
suit of the same calling, make such fusions. In this fraternity
of vagabonds, those of the Mediterranean seaboard repre-
sented the East, those of the Atlantic seaboard the West.
Many Basques conversed with many Irishmen. The Basque
and the Irishman understand each other — they speak the old
Punic jargon; add to this the intimate relations of Catholic
Ireland with Catholic Spain — relations such that they termi-
nated by bringing to the gallows in London one almost King
of Ireland, the Celtic Lord de Brany; from which resulted
the conquest of the county of Leitrim.
The Comprachicos were rather a fellowship than a tribe;
rather a residuum than a fellowship. It was all the riffraff
36 THE LAUGHING MAN.
of the universe, having for their trade a crime. It was a sort
iin people, all composed of rags. To recruit a man
was to sew on a tatter.
To wander was the Comprachicos' law of existence — to
appear and disappear. What is barely tolerated cannot take
root. Even in the kingdoms where their business supplied
the courts, and, on occasions, served as an auxiliary to the
they were now and then suddenly ill-treated.
:s made use of their art, and sent the artists to the
These inconsistencies belong to the ebb and flow
of royal caprice. " For such is our pleasure."
rolling stone and a roving trade gather no moss. The
Comprachicos were poor. They might have said what the
lean and ragged witch observed, when she saw them setting
:o the stake, " Le jeu n'en vaut pas la chandelle." It is
ible, nay probable (their chiefs remaining unknown),
that the wholesale contractors in the trade were rich. After
the lapse of two centuries, it would be difficult to throw any
light on this point.
It was, as we have said, a fellowship. It had its laws, its
oaths, its formulae — it had almost its cabala. Any one now-
s wishing to know all about the Comprachicos need
only go into Biscaya or Galicia; there were many Basques
ng them, and it is in those mountains that one hears their
>ry. To this day the Comprachicos are spoken of at
"zun, at Urbistondo, at Leso, at Astigarraga. Aguardate
. que voy a llamar al Comprachicos — Take care, child, or
11 call the Comprachicos— is the cry with which mothers
frighten their children in that country.
The Comprachicos, like the Zigeuner and the Gipsies, had
ppointed places for periodical meetings. From time to time
icir leaders conferred together. In the seventeenth century
ley had four principal points of rendezvous : one in Spain-
pass of Pancorbo; one in Germany— the glade called
Wicked Woman, near Diekirsch, where there are two
matic bas-reliefs, representing a woman with a head and
n without one; one in France— the hill where was the
sssal statue of Massue-la-Promesse in the old sacred wood
THE LAUGHING MAN. 37
of Borvo Tomona, near Bourbonne les Bains ; one in England
; — behind the garden wall of William Challoner, Squire of
Gisborough in Cleveland, Yorkshire, behind the square tower
i and the great wing which is entered by an arched door.
VI.
I THE laws against vagabonds have always been very rigorous
I in England. England, in her Gothic legislation, seemed to be
inspired with this principle, Homo errans fera errante pefor.
j One of the special statutes classifies the man without a home
as " more dangerous than the asp, dragon, lynx, or basilisk "
\ (atrocior aspide, dracone, lynce, et basilica). For a long time
/ England troubled herself as much concerning the gipsies, of
whom she wished to be rid as about the wolves of which she
had been cleared. In that the Englishman differed from the
Irishman, who prayed to the saints for the health of the wolf,
I and called him " my godfather."
English law, nevertheless, in the same way as (we have just
seen) it tolerated the wolf, tamed, domesticated, and become
in some sort a dog, tolerated the regular vagabond, become in
some sort a sub j ect. It did not trouble itself about either the
mountebank or the travelling barber, or the quack doctor, or
the peddler, or the open-air scholar, as long as they had a
•crade to live by. Further than this, and with these excep-
tions, the description of freedom which exists in the wanderer
terrified the law. A tramp was a possible public enemy.
That modern thing, the lounger, was then unknown; that
e.ncient thing, the vagrant, was alone understood. A sus-
picious appearance, that indescribable something which all
understand and none can define, was sufficient reason that
society should take a man by the collar. " Where do you
live? How do you get your living? " And if he could not
answer, harsh penalties awaited him. Iron and fire were in
the code: the law practised the cauterization of vagrancy.
Hence, throughout English territory, a veritable " loi des
suspects " was applicable to vagrants (who, it must be owned,
readily became malefactors), and particularly to gipsies,
38 THE LAUGHING MAN.
whose expulsion has erroneously been compared to the
ilsion of the Jews and the Moors from Spain, and the
Protestants from France. As for us, we do not confound a
battue with a persecution.
The Comprachicos, we insist, had nothing in common with
gipsies. The gipsies were a nation; the Comprachicos
• a compound of all nations — the lees of a horrible vessel,
full of filthy waters. The Comprachicos had not, like the
gipsies, an idiom ot their ownj their jargon was a promiscu-
ous collection of idioms* all languages were mixed together
ieir language; they spoke a medley. Like the gipsies,
they had come to be a people winding through the peoples;
but their common tie was association, not race. At all epochs
in history one finds in the vast liquid mass which constitutes
humanity some of these streams of venomous men exuding
>n around them. The gipsies were a tribe; the Com-
prachicos a freemasonry — a masonry having not a noble aim,
but a hideous handicraft. Finally, their religions differ —
the gipsies were Pagans, the Comprachicos were Christians,
and more than that, good Christians, as became an associa-
tion which, although a mixture of all nations, owed its birth
to Spain, a devout land.
They were more than Christians, they were Catholics; they!
more than Catholics, they were Romans, and so touchw
in their faith, and so pure, that they refused to associate withji
the Hungarian nomads of the comitate of Pesth, commanded!
and led by an old man, having for sceptre a wand with ai
silver ball, surmounted by the double-headed Austrian eagle!
is true that these Hungarians were schismatics, to thcfe
extent of celebrating the Assumption on the 29th August;,
which is an abomination.
In England, so long as the Stuarts reigned, the confedera-
the Comprachicos was (for motives of which we have
idy given you a glimpse) to a certain extent protected.
ies II., a devout man, who persecuted the Jews and
•mpled out the gipsies, was a good prince to the Com-
ncos We have seen why. The Comprachicos were
the human wares in which he was dealer. They
1
THE LAUGHING MAN. 39
excelled in disappearances. Disappearances are occasionally
necessary for the good of the state. An inconvenient heir
of tender age whom they took and handled lost his shape.
This facilitated confiscation; the tranfer of titles to favour-
ites was simplified. The Comprachicos were, moreover, very
discreet and very taciturn. They bound themselves to
silence, and kept their word, which is necessary in affairs of
state. There was scarcely an example of their having
betrayed the secrets of the king. This was, it is true, for
their interest ; and if the king had lost confidence in them,
they would have been in great danger. They were thus of use
in a political point of view. Moreover these artists furnished
singers for the Holy Father. The Comprachicos were useful
for the Miserere of Allegri. They were particularly devoted
to Mary. All this pleased the papistry of the Stuarts.
James II. could not be hostile to holy men who pushed their
devotion to the Virgin to the extent of manufacturing
eunuchs. In 1688 there was a change of dynasty in England.
Orange supplanted Stuart. William III. replaced James II.
James II. went away to die in exile, miracles were per-
formed on his tomb, and his relics cured the Bishop of Autun
of fistula — a w/orthy recompense of the Christian virtues of
the prince.
William, having neither the same ideas nor the same
practices as James, was severe to the Comprachicos. He did
his best to crush out the vermin.
A statute of the early part of William and Mary's reign hit
the association of child-buyers hard. It was as the blow of
a club to the Comprachicos, who were from that time
pulverized. By the terms of this statute those of the fellow-
ship taken and duly convicted were to be branded with a red-
hot iron, imprinting R. on the shoulder, signifying rogue; on
the left hand T, signifying thief; and on the right hand M,
signifying man-slayer. The chiefs, "supposed to be rich,
although beggars in appearance," were to be punished in the
collistrigium — that is, the pillory — and branded on the fore-
head with a P, besides having their goods confiscated, and the
trees in their woods rooted up. Those who did not inform
40 THE LAUGHING MAN.
against the Comprachicos were to be punished by confiscation
and imprisonment for life, as for the crime of misprision. As
men found among these men, they were to suffei
xking-stool— this is a tumbrel, the name of which i
composed of the French word coquine, and the German stuhl
-h law being endowed with a strange longevity, thi
punishment still exists in English legislation for quarrelsom
women. The cucking-stool is suspended over a river or
pond, the woman seated on it. The chair is allowed to dro;
into the water, and then pulled out. This dipping of th
woman is repeated three times, " to cool her anger," say
the commentator. Chamber layne.
PART I.
BOOK THE FIRST.
NIGHT NOT SO BLACK AS MAN.
CHAPTER I.
PORTLAND BILL.
AN obstinate north wind blew without ceasing over the main-
land of Europe, and yet more roughly over England, during
all the month of December, 1689, and all the month of
January, 1690. Hence the disastrous cold weather, which
caused that winter to be noted as " memorable to the poor,"
on the margin of the old Bible in the Presbyterian chapel of
the Nonjurors in London. Thanks to the lasting qualities
of the old monarchical parchment employed in official
registers, long lists of poor persons, found dead of famine and
cold, are still legible in many local repositories, particularly
in the archives of the Liberty of the Clink, in the borough of
Southwark, of Pie Powder Court (which signifies Dusty Feet
Court), and in those of Whitechapel Court, held in the village
of Stepney by the bailiff of the Lord of the Manor. The
Thames was frozen over — a thing which does not happen once
in a century, as the ice forms on it with difficulty owing to the
action of the sea. Coaches rolled over the frozen river, and
a fair was held with booths, bear-baiting, and bull-baiting.
An ox was roasted whole on the ice. This thick ice lasted two
months. The hard year 1690 surpassed in severity even the
famous winters at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
so minutely observed by Dr. Gideon Delane — the same who
THE LAUGHING MAN.
was, in his quality of apothecary to King James, honoured by
the city of London with a bust and a pedestal
One evening, towards the close of one of the most bitter
days of the month of January, 1690, something unusual was
going on in one of the numerous inhospitable bights of the
bay of Portland, which caused the sea-gulls and wild geese
to scream and circle round its mouth, not daring to re-enter.
In this creek, the most dangerous of all which line the bay
during the continuance of certain winds, and consequently
the most lonely— convenient, by reason of its very danger,
for ships in hiding— a little vessel, almost touching the cliff,
so deep was the water, was moored to a point of rock. We
are wrong in saying, The night falls; we should say the night
rises, for it is from the earth that obscurity comes. It was
. ly night at the bottom of the cliff ; it was still day at top.
£ny one approaching the vessel's moorings would have rec-
ognized a Biscayan hooker.
The sun, concealed all day by the mist, had just set.
There was beginning to be felt that deep and sombrous melan-
choly which might be called anxiety for the absent sun.
i no wind from the sea, the water of the creek was calm.
This was, especially in winter, a lucky exception. Almost
all the Portland creeks have sand-bars; and in heavy
weather the sea becomes very rough, and, to pass in safety.,
much skill and practice are necessary. These little ports
(ports more in appearance than fact') are of small advantage.
They are hazardous to enter, fearful to leave. On this
lins, for a wonder, there was no danger.
The Biscay hooker is qf an ancient model, now fallen into
disuse. This kind of hooker, which has done service even in
the navy, was stoutly built in its hull — a boat in size, a ship in
igth. It figured in the Armada. Sometimes the war-
hooker attained to a high tonnage; thus the Great Griffin,
bearing a captain's flag, and commanded by Lopez de Medina,
measured six hundred and fifty good tons, and carried forty
guns. But the merchant and contraband hookers were very
feeble specimens. Sea-folk held them at their true value,
and esteemed the model a very sorry one. The rigging of the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 45
hooker was made of hemp, sometimes with wire inside, which
was probably intended as a means, however unscientific, of
obtaining indications, in the case of magnetic tension. The
lightness of this rigging did not exclude the use of heavy
tackle, the cabrias of the Spanish galleon, and the cameli of
the Roman triremes. The helm was very long, which gives
the advantage of a long arm of leverage, but the disadvan-
tage of a small arc of effort. Two wheels in two pulleys at the
end of the rudder corrected this defect, and compensated, to
some extent, for the loss of strength. The compass was well
housed in a case perfectly square, and well balanced by its
two copper frames placed horizontally, one in the other, on
little bolts, as in Cardan's lamps. There was science and
cunning in the construction of the hooker, but it was ignorant
science and barbarous cunning. The hooker was primitive,
just like the praam and the canoe; was kindred to the
praam in stability, and to the canoe in swiftness ; and, like all
vessels born of the instinct of the pirate and fisherman, it
had remarkable sea qualities: it was equally well suited to
landlocked and to open waters. Its system of sails, com-
plicated in stays, and very peculiar, allowed of its navigating
trimly in the close bays of Asturias (which are little more
than enclosed basins, as Pasages, for instance), and also freely
out at sea. It could sail round a lake, and sail round the
world — a strange craft with two objects, good for a pond and
good for a storm. The hooker is among vessels what the
wagtail is among birds — one of the smallest and one of the
boldest. The wagtail perching on a reed scarcely bends it,
and, flying away, crosses the ocean.
These Biscay hookers, even to the poorest, were gilt and
painted. Tattooing is part of the genius of those charming
people, savages to some degree. The sublime colouring of
their mountains, variegated by snows and meadows, reveals
to them the rugged spell which ornament possesses in itself.
They are poverty-stricken and magnificent; they put coats-
of-arms on their cottages; they have huge asses, which they
bedizen with bells, and huge oxen, on which they put head-
dresses of feathers. Their coaches, which you can hear
46 THE LAUGHING MAN.
prindinc the wheels two leagues off, are illuminated carved,
and hung with nbbons. A cobbler has a bas-relief on his
door: it is only St. Crispin and an old shoe, but it is in stone.
They trim their leathern jackets with lace. They do not
mend their rags, but they embroider them. Vivacity pro
found and superb! The Basques are, like the Greeks,
children of the sun; while the Valencian drapes himself,
bare and sad, in his russet woollen rug, with a hole to pass
his head through, the natives of Galicia and Biscay have
ielight of fine linen shirts, bleached in the dew. Their
thresholds and their windows teem with faces fair and fresh,
laughing under garlands of maize; a joyous and proud
serenity shines out in their ingenious arts, in their trades, in
their customs, in the dress of their maidens, in their songs.
The mountain, that colossal ruin, is all aglow in Biscay: the
sun's rays go in and out of every break. The wild Jaizquivel
is full of idylls. Biscay is Pyrenean grace as Savoy is Alpine
grace. The dangerous bays — the neighbours of St.
Sebastian, Leso, and Fontarabia — with storms, with clouds,
spray flying over the capes, with the rages of the waves
and the winds, with terror, with uproar, mingle boat-women
crowned with roses. He who has seen the Basque country
wishes to see it again. It is the blessed land. Two harvests
a year; villages resonant and gay; a stately poverty; all
Sunday the sound of guitars, dancing, castanets, love-making;
houses clean and bright; storks in the belfries.
Let us return to Portland — that rugged mountain in the
sea.
The peninsula of Portland, looked at geometrically, pre-
sents the appearance of a bird's head, of which the bill is
turned towards the ocean, the back of the head towards
Weymouth; the isthmus is its neck.
Portland, greatly to the sacrifice of its wildness, exists now
but for trade. The coasts of Portland were discovered by
quarrymen and plasterers towards the middle of the seven-
teenth century. Since that period what is called Roman
cement has been made of the Portland stone — a useful
industry, enriching the district, and disfiguring the bay. Two
THE LAUGHING MAN. 47
hundred years ago these coasts were eaten away as a cliff;
to-day, as a quarry. The pick bites meanly, the wave
grandly; hence a diminution of beauty. To the magnifi-
cent ravages of the ocean have succeeded the measured
strokes of men. These measured strokes have worked away
the creek where the Biscay hooker was moored. To find any
vestige of the little anchorage, now destroyed, the eastern
side of the peninsula should be searched, towards the point
beyond Folly Pier and Dirdle Pier, beyond Wakeham even,
between the place called Church Hope and the place called
Southwell.
The creek, walled in on all sides by precipices higher than
its width, was minute by minute becoming more over-
shadowed by evening. The misty gloom, usual at twilight,
became thicker; it was like a growth of darkness at the
bottom of a well.. The opening of the creek seaward, a
narrow passage, traced on the almost night-black interior a
pallid rift where the waves were moving. You must have
been quite close to perceive the hooker moored to the rocks,
and, as it were, hidden by the great cloaks of shadow. A
plank thrown from on board on to a low and level projection
of the cliff, the only point on which a landing could be made,
placed the vessel in communication with the land. Dark
figures were crossing and recrossing each other on this totter-
ing gangway, and in the shadow some people were embarking.
It was less cold in the creek than out at sea, thanks to the
screen of rock rising over the north of the basin, which did
not, however, prevent the people from shivering. They were
hurrying. The effect of the twilight defined the forms as
though they had been punched out with a tool. Certain
indentations in their clothes were visible, and showed that
they belonged to the class called in England The ragged.
The twisting of the pathway could be distinguished
vaguely in the relief of the cliff. A girl who lets her stay-lace
hang down trailing over the back of an armchair, describes,
without being conscious of it, most of the paths of cliffs and
mountains. The pathway of this creek, full of knots and
angles, almost perpendicular, and better adapted for goats
4g THE LAUGHING MAN.
than men, terminated on the platform where the plank was
,1. The pathways of cliffs ordinarily imply a not very
inviting declivity; they offer themselves less as a road than
as a fall; they sink rather than incline. This one— prob-
ably some ramification of a road on the plain above— was
disagreeable to look at, so vertical was it. From underneath
you saw it gain by zigzag the higher layer of the cliff where it
passed out through deep passages on to the high plateau by a
cutting in the rock; and the passengers for whom the vessel
was waiting in the creek must have come by this path.
Excepting the movement of embarkation which was being
made in the creek, a movement visibly scared and uneasy, all
around was solitude; no step, no noise, no breath was heard.
At the other side of the roads, at the entrance of Ringstead
Bay, you could just perceive a flotilla of shark-fishing boats,
which were evidently out of their reckoning. These polar
boats had been driven from Danish into English waters by
the whims of the sea. Northerly winds play these tricks on
fishermen. They had just taken refuge in the anchorage of
Portland — a sign of bad weather expected and danger out at
sea. They were engaged in casting anchor : the chief boat,
placed in front after the old manner of Norwegian flotillas,
all her rigging standing out in black, above the white level of
the sea; and in front might be perceived the hook-iron,
loaded with all kinds of hooks and harpoons, destined for the
Greenland shark, the dogfish, and the spinous shark, as well
as the nets to pick up the sunfish.
Except a few other craft, all swept into the same corner,
the eye met nothing living on the vast horizon of Portland
— not a house, not a ship. The coast in those days was not
inhabited, and the roads, at that season, were not safe.
Whatever may have been the appearance of the weather,
the beings who were going to sail away in the Biscayan urea
pressed on the hour of departure all the same. They formed
a busy and confused group, in rapid movement on the shore.
To distinguish one from another was difficult; impossible
to tell whether they were old or young. The indistinctness
of evening intermixed and blurred them ; the mask of
THE LAUGHING MAN. 49
shadow was over their faces. They were sketches in the
night. There were eight of them, and there were seemingly
among them one or two women, hard to recognize under the
rags and tatters in which the group was attired — clothes
which were no longer man's or woman's. Rags have no sex.
A smaller shadow, flitting to and fro among the larger ones,
indicated either a dwarf or a child.
It was a child.
CHAPTER II.
LEFT ALONE.
THIS is what an observer close at hand might have noted.
All wore long cloaks, torn and patched, but covering them,
and at need concealing them up to the eyes; useful alike
against the north wind and curiosity. They moved with
ease under these cloaks. The greater number wore a hand-
kerchief rolled round the head — a sort of rudiment which
marks the commencement of the turban in Spain. M This
headdress was nothing unusual in England. At that time
the South was in fashion in the North; perhaps this was con-
nected with the fact that the North was beating the South.
It conquered and admired. After the defeat of the Armada,
Castilian was considered in the halls of Elizabeth to be elegant
court talk. To speak English in the palace of the Queen of
England was held almost an impropriety. Partially to adopt
the manners of those upon whom we impose our laws is the
habit of the conquering barbarian towards conquered civiliza-
tion. The Tartar contemplates and imitates the Chinese.
It was thus Castilian fashions penetrated into England; in
return, English interests crept into Spain.
One of the men in the group embarking appeared to be a
chief. He had sandals on his feet, and was bedizened with
gold lace tatters and a tinsel waistcoat, shining under his
cloak like the belly of a fish. Another pulled down over his
face a huge piece of felt, cut like a sombrero; this felt had no
hole for a pipe, thus indicating the wearer to be a man of
letters.
On the principle that a man's vest is a child's cloak, the
50 THE LAUGHING MAN.
child was wrapped over his rags in a sailor's jacket, which
descended to his knees.
By his height you would have guessed him to be a boy of
ten or eleven; his feet were bare.
The crew of the hooker was composed of a captain and two
sailors.
The hooker had apparently come from Spain, and was
about to return thither. She was beyond a doubt engaged
in a stealthy service from one coast to the other.
The persons embarking in her whispered among themselves.
The whispering interchanged by these creatures was of
composite sound — now a word of Spanish, then of German,
then of French, then of Gaelic, at times of Basque. It was
either a patois or a slang. They appeared to be of all nations,
and yet of the same band.
The motley group appeared to be a company of comrades,
perhaps a gang of accomplices.
The crew was probably of their brotherhood. Community
of object was visible in the embarkation.
Had there been a little more light, and if you could have
looked at them attentively, you might have perceived on
these people rosaries and scapulars half hidden under their
rags; one of the semi-women mingling in the group had a
rosary almost equal for the size of its beads to that of a
dervish, and easy to recognize for an Irish one made at
Llanymthefry, which is also called Llanandriffy.
You might also have observed, had it not been so dark, a
figure of Our Lady and Child carved and gilt on the bow of
the hooker. It was probably that of the Basque Notre
Dame, a sort of Panagia of the old Cantabri. Under this
-c, which occupied the position of a figurehead, was a
lantern, which at this moment was not lighted — an excess of
caution which implied an extreme desire of concealment.
This lantern was evidently for two purposes. When alight
it burned before the Virgin, and at the same time illumined
the sea — a beacon doing duty as a taper.
Under the bowsprit the cutwater, long, curved, and sharp,
came out in front like the horn of a crescent. At the top of
THE LAUGHING MAN. 51
the cutwater, and at the feet of the Virgin, a kneeling angel,
with folded wings, leaned her back against the stem, and
looked through a spyglass at the horizon. The angel .was
gilded like Our Lady. In the cutwater were holes and
openings to let the waves pass through, which afforded an
opportunity for gilding and arabesques.
Under the figure of the Virgin was written, in gilt capitals,
the word Matutina — the name of the vessel, not to be read
just now on account of the darkness.
Amid the confusion of departure there were thrown down
in disorder, at the foot of the cliff, the goods which the
voyagers were to take with them, and which, by means of a
plank serving as a bridge across, were being passed rapidly
from the shore to the boat. Bags of biscuit, a cask of stock
fish, a case of portable soup, three barrels — one of fresh
water, one of malt, one of tar — four or five bottles of ale, an
old portmanteau buckled up by straps, trunks, boxes, a ball
of tow for torches and signals — such was the lading. These
ragged people had valises, which seemed to indicate a roving
life. Wandering rascals are obliged to own something; at
times they would prefer to fly away like birds, but they
cannot do so without abandoning the means of earning a
livelihood. They of necessity possess boxes of tools and
instruments of labour, whatever their errant trade may be.
Those of whom we speak were dragging their baggage with
them, often an encumbrance.
It could not have been easy to bring these movables to
the bottom of the cliff. This, however, revealed the inten-
tion of a definite departure.
No time was lost; there was one continued passing to and
fro from the shore to the vessel, and from the vessel to the
shore; each one took his share of the work — one carried a
bag, another a chest. Those amidst the promiscuous com-
pany who were possibly or probably women worked like the
rest. They overloaded the child.
It was doubtful if the child's father or mother were in the
group; no sign of life was vouchsafed him. They made him
work, nothing more. He appeared not a child in a family,
THE LAUGHING MAN.
but a slave in a tribe. He waited on every one, and no one
spoke to him.
-A-ever, he made haste, and, like the others of this mys-
terious troop, he seemed to have but one thought— to em-
bark as quickly as possible. Did he know why ? probably not :
he hurried mechanically because he saw the others hurry.
The hooker was decked. The stowing of the lading in the
hold was quickly finished, and the moment to put off arrived.
The last case had been carried over the gangway, and nothing
was left to embark but the men. The two obj ects among the
group who seemed women were already on board; six, the
child among them, were still on the low platform of the cliff.
A movement of departure was made in the vesseh the captain
seized the helm, a sailor took up an axe to cut the hawser —
to cut is an evidence of haste; when there is time it is un-
knotted.
" Andamos," said, in a low voice, he who appeared chief of
the six, and who had the spangles on his tatters. The child
rushed towards the plank in order to be the first to pass. As
he placed his foot on it, two of the men hurried by, at the
risk of throwing him into the water, got in before him, and
passed on; the fourth drove him back with his fist and
followed the third; the fifth, who was the chief, bounded
into rather than entered the vessel, and, as he jumped in,
kicked back the plank, which fell into the sea, a stroke of the
hatchet cut the moorings, the helm was put up, the vessel
left the shore, and the child remained on land.
CHAPTER III.
ALONE.
child remained motionless on the rock, with his eyes
1 — no calling out, no appeal. Though this was un-
expected by him, he spoke not a word. The same silence
reigned in the vessel. No cry from the child to the men — no
farewell from the men to the child. There was on both sides
a mute acceptance of the widening distance between them.
It was like a separation of ghosts on the banks of the Styx.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 53
The child, as if nailed to the rock, which the high tide was
beginning to bathe, watched the departing bark. It seemed
as if he realized his position. What did he realize ? Darkness.
A moment later the hooker gained the neck of the crook
and entered it. Against the clear sky the masthead was
visible, rising above the split blocks between which the strait
wound as between two walls. The truck wandered to the
summit of the rocks, and appeared to run into them. Then
it was seen no more — all was over — the bark had gained
the sea.
The child watched its disappearance — he was astounded
but dreamy. His stupefaction was complicated by a sense of
the dark reality of existence. It seemed as if there were
experience in this dawning being. Did he, perchance,
already exercise judgment? Experience coming too early
constructs, sometimes, in the obscure depths of a child's mind,
some dangerous balance — we know not what — in which the
poor little soul weighs God.
Feeling himself innocent, he yielded. There was no com-
plaint— the irreproachable does not reproach.
His rough expulsion drew from him no sign ; he suffered a
sort of internal stiffening. The child did not bow under this
sudden blow of fate, which seemed to put an end to his exist-
ence ere it Had well Degun; he received the thunderstroke
standing.
It would have been evident to any one who could have seen
his astonishment unmixed with dejection, that in the group
which abandoned him there was nothing which loved him,
nothing which he loved.
Brooding, he forgot the cold. Suddenly the wave wetted
his feet — the tide was flowing ; a gust passed through his hair
— the north wind was rising. He shivered. There came
over him, from head to foot, the shudder of awakening.
He cast his eyes about him.
He was alone.
Up to this day there had never existed for him any other
men than those who were now in the hooker. Those men
had just stolen away.
54 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Let us add what seems a strange thing to state. Those
men, the only ones he knew, were unknown to him.
He could not have said who they were. His childhood had
been passed among them, without his having the conscious-
ness of being of them. He was in juxtaposition to them,
nothing more.
He had just been— forgotten— by them.
He had no money about him, no shoes to his feet, scarcely
a garment to his body, not even a piece of bread in his pocket.
It was winter— it was night. It would be necessary to walk
several leagues before a human habitation could be reached.
He did not know where he was.
He knew nothing, unless it was that those who had come
with him to the brink of the sea had gone away without him.
He felt himself put outside the pale of life.
He felt that man failed him.
He was ten years old.
The child was in a desert, between depths where he saw
the night rising and depths where he heard the waves
murmur.
He stretched his little thin arms and yawned.
Then suddenly, as one who makes up his mind, bold, and
throwing off his numbness — with the agility of a squirrel,
or perhaps of an acrobat — he turned his back on the creek,
and set himself to climb up the cliff. He escaladed the path,
left it, returned to it, quick and venturous. He was hurrying
landward, just as though he had a destination marked out;
nevertheless he was going nowhere.
He hastened without an object — a fugitive before Fate.
To climb is the function of a man; to clamber is that of an
animal — he did both. As the slopes of Portland face south-
ward, there was scarcely any snow on the path; the intensity
of cold had, however, frozen that snow into dust very trouble* •
some to the walker. The child freed himself of it. His man's
jacket, which was too big for him, complicated matters, and
got in his way. Now and then on an overhanging crag or in
a declivity he came upon a little ice, which caused him to slip
down. Then, after hanging some moments over the preci-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 55
pice, he would catch hold of a dry branch or projecting stone.
Once he came on a vein of slate, which suddenly gave way
under him, letting him down with it. Crumbling slate is
treacherous. For some seconds the child slid like a tile on a
roof ; he rolled to the extreme edge of the decline ; a tuft of
grass which he clutched at the right moment saved him. He
was as mute in sight of the abyss as he had been in sight of
the men; he gathered himself up and re-ascended silently.
The slope was steep; so he had to tack in ascending. The
precipice grew in the darkness; the vertical rock had no
ending. It receded before the child in the distance of its
height. As the child ascended, so seemed the summit to
ascend. While he clambered he looked up at the dark
entablature placed like a barrier between heaven and him.
At last he reached the top.
He jumped on the level ground, or rather landed, for he
rose from the precipice.
Scarcely was he on the cliff when he began to shiver. He
felt in his face that bite of the night, the north wind. The
bitter north-wester was blowing; he tightened his rough
sailor's jacket about his chest.
It was a good coat, called in ship language a sou-'wester,
because that sort of stuff allows little of the south-westerly
rain to penetrate.
The child, having gained the tableland, stopped, placed his
feet firmly on the frozen ground, and looked about him.
Behind him was the sea; in front the land ; above, the sky
— but a sky without stars; an opaque mist masked the
zenith.
On reaching the summit of the rocky wall he found himself
turned towards the land, and looked at it attentively. It lay
before him as far as the sky-line, flat, frozen, and covered
with snow. Some tufts of heather shivered in the wind. No
- roads were visible — nothing, not even a shepherd's cot.
Here and there pale spiral vortices might be seen, which
were whirls of fine snow, snatched from the ground by the
wind and blown away. Successive undulations of ground,
become suddenly misty, rolled themselves into the horizon,
THE LAUGHING MAN.
other with foam. There is nothing so
produced by this double whiteness.
Certain lights of night are very clearly cut in their hard-
nest; the sea was like steel, the cliff like ebony From the
dght where the child was the bay of Portland appeared
almost like a geographical map, pale, in a semicircle of hills
There was something dreamlike in that nocturnal landscape
a wan disc belted by a dark crescent. The moon some-
times has a similar appearance. From cape to cape, along
the whole coast, not a single spark indicating a hearth with a
fire not a lighted window, not an inhabited house, was to b
seen. As in heaven, so on earth— no light. Not a lamp
below, not a star above. Here and there came sudden risings
in the great expanse of waters in the gulf, as the wind dis-
arranged and wrinkled the vast sheet. The hooker was stil
visible in the bay as she fled.
It was a black triangle gliding over the livid waters.^
Far away the waste of waters stirred confusedly in the
ominous clear-obscure of immensity. The Matutina was
making quick way. She seemed to grow smaller every
minute. Nothing appears so rapid as the flight of a vessel
melting into the distance of ocean.
Suddenly she lit the lantern at her prow. Probably the
darkness falling round her made those on board uneasy, and
the pilot thought it necessary to throw light on the waves.
This luminous point, a spark seen from afar, clung like a
corpse light to the high and long black form. You would
have said it was a shroud raised up and moving in the middle
of the sea, under which some one wandered with a star in
his hand.
A storm threatened in the air; the child took no account
of it, but a sailor would have trembled. It was that moment
of preliminary anxiety when it seems as though the elements
are changing into persons, and one is ?bout to witness the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 57
mysterious transfiguration of the wind into the wind-god.
The sea becomes Ocean: its power reveals itself as Will:
that which one takes for a thing is a soul. It will become
visible ; hence the terror. The soul of man fears to be thus
confronted with the soul of nature.
Chaos was about to appear. The wind rolling back the
fog, and making a stage of the clouds behind, set the scene
for that fearful drama of wave and winter which is called a
Snowstorm. Vessels putting back hove in sight. For some
minutes past the roads had no longer been deserted. Every
instant troubled barks hastening towards an anchorage ap-
peared from behind the capes ; some were doubling Portland
Bill, the others St. Alban's Head. From afar ships were
running in. It was a race for refuge. Southwards the dark-
ness thickened, and clouds, full of night, bordered on the sea.
The weight of the tempest hanging overhead made a dreary
lull on the waves. It certainly was no time to sail. Yet the
hooker had sailed.
She had made the south of the cape. She was already out
of the gulf, and in the open sea. Suddenly there came a gust
of wind. The Matutina, which was still clearly in sight,
made all sail, as if resolved to profit by the hurricane. It
was the nor'-wester, a wind sullen and angry. Its weight
was felt instantly. The hooker, caught broadside on,
staggered, but recovering held her course to sea. This indi-
cated a flight rather than a voyage, less fear of sea than of
land, and greater heed of pursuit from man than from wind.
The hooker, passing through every degree of diminution,
sank into the horizon. The little star which she carried into
shadow paled. More and more the hooker became amal-
gamated with the night, then disappeared.
This time for good and all.
At least the child seemed to understand it so: he ceased
to look at the sea. His eyes turned back upon the plains,
the wastes, the hills, towards the space where it might not be
impossible to meet something living.
Into this unknown he set out.
5g THE LAUGHING MAN.
CHAPTER IV.
QUESTIONS.
WHAT kind of band was it which had left the child behind in
its flight?
re those fugitives Comprachicos ?
We have already seen the account of the measures taken by
William III. and passed by Parliament against the male-
factors, male and female, called Comprachicos, otherwise
Comprapequenos, otherwise Cheylas.
There are laws which disperse. The law acting against
the Comprachicos determined, not only the Comprachicos,
but vagabonds of all sorts, on a general flight.
It was the devil take the hindmost. The greater number
of the Comprachicos returned to Spain — many of them, as we
have said, being Basques.
The law for the protection of children had at first this
strange result: it caused many children to be abandoned.
The immediate effect of the penal statute was to produce
a crowd of children, found or rather lost. Nothing is easier
to understand. Every wandering gang containing a child
was liable to suspicion. The mere fact of the child's presence
was in itself a denunciation.
" They are very likely Comprachicos." Such was the
first idea of the sheriff, of the bailiff, of the constable. Hence
arrest and inquiry. People simply unfortunate, reduced to
ler and to beg, were seized with a terror of being taken for
Comprachicos although they were nothing of the kind. But
the weak have grave misgivings of possible errors in justice.
Besides, these vagabond families are very easily scared. The
accusation against the Comprachicos was that they traded in
other people's children. But the promiscuousness caused
by poverty and indigence is such that at times it might
have been difficult for a father and mother to prove a child
their own.
How came you by this child ? how were they to prove that
they held it from God ? The child became a peril— they ^ot
THE LAtJGHING MAN. 59
<id of it. To fly unencumbered was easier; the parents
resolved to lose it — now in a wood, now on a strand, now
down a well.
Children were found drowned in cisterns.
Let us add that, in imitation of England, all Europe hence-
forth hunted down the Comprachicos. The impulse of
pursuit was given. There is nothing like belling the cat.
From this time forward the desire to seize them made rivalry
and emulation among the police of all countries, and the
alguazil was not less keenly watchful than the constable.
One could still read, twenty-three years ago, on a stone of
the gate of Otero, an untranslatable inscription — the words
of the code outraging propriety. In it, however, the shade
of difference which existed between the buyers and the stealers
of children is very strongly marked. Here is part of the
inscription in somewhat rough Castilian, Aqui quedan las
orejas de los Comprachicos, ylas bolsas de losrobaniftos, mientras
que se van ettos al trabafo de mar. You see the confiscation of
ears, etc., did not prevent the owners going to the galleys.
Whence followed a general rout among all vagabonds. They
started frightened; they arrived trembling. On every
shore in Europe their furtive advent was watched. Impos-
sible for such a band to embark with a child, since to dis-
embark with one was dangerous.
To lose the child was much simpler of accomplishment.
And this child, of whom we have caught a glimpse in the
shadow of the solitudes of Portland, by whom had he been
cast away?
To all appearance by Comprachicos.
CHAPTER V.
THE TREE OF HUMAN INVENTION.
K!T might be about seven o'clock in the evening. The wind
[ was now diminishing — a sign, however, of a violent recurrence
impending. The child was on the table-land at the extreme
KBouth point of Portland.
Portland is a peninsula; but the child did not know what
60 THE LAUGHING MAN.
a peninsula is, and was ignorant even of the name of Port-
land. He knew but one thing, which is, that one can walk
until one drops down. An idea is a guide ; he had no idea.
They had brought him there and left him there. They and
there — these two enigmas represented his doom. They
were humankind. There was the universe. For him in all
creation there was absolutely no other basis to rest on but
the little piece of ground where he placed his heel, ground
hard and cold to his naked feet. In the great twilight world,
open on all sides, what was there for the child ? Nothing.
He walked towards this Nothing. Around him was the
vastness of human desertion.
He crossed the first plateau diagonally, then a second,
then a third. At the extremity of each plateau the child
came upon a break in the ground. The slope was sometimes
steep, but always short; the high, bare plains of Portland
resemble great flagstones overlapping each other. The south
side seems to enter under the protruding slab, the north side
rises over the next one; these made ascents, which the child
stepped over nimbly. From time to time he stopped, and
seemed to hold counsel with himself. The night was becom-
ing very dark. His radius of sight was contracting. He
now only saw a few steps before him.
All of a sudden he stopped, listened for an instant, and
with an almost imperceptible nod of satisfaction turned
quickly and directed his steps towards an eminence of
moderate height, which he dimly perceived on his right, at
the point of the plain nearest the cliff. There was on the
eminence a shape which in the mist looked like a tree. The
child had just heard a noise in this direction, which was the
noise neither of the wind nor of the sea, nor was it the cry of
animals. He thought that some one was there, and in a few
strides he was at the foot of the hillock.
In truth, some one was there.
That which had been indistinct on the top of the eminence
was now visible. It was something like a great arm thrust
straight out of the ground; at the upper extremity of the
arm a sort of forefinger, supported from beneath by the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 61
thumb, pointed out horizontally; the arm, the thumb, and
the forefinger drew a square against the sky. At the point
of juncture of this peculiar finger and this peculiar thumb
there was a line, from which hung something black and
shapeless. The line moving in the wind sounded like a
chain. This was the noise the child had heard. Seen closely
the line was that which the noise indicated, a chain — a single
chain cable.
By that mysterious law of amalgamation which through-
out nature causes appearances to exaggerate realities, the
place, the hour, the mist, the mournful sea, the cloudy
turmoils on the distant horizon, added to the effect of this
figure, and made it seem enormous.
The mass linked to the chain presented the appearance of a
scabbard. It was swaddled like a child and long like a man.
There was a round thing at its summit, about which the end
of the chain was rolled. The scabbard was riven asunder at
the lower end, and shreds of flesh hung out between the rents
A feeble breeze stirred the chain, and that which hung to it
swayed gently. The passive mass obeyed the vague motions
of space. It was an object to inspire indescribable dread.
Horror, which disproportions everything, blurred its dimen-
sions while retaining its shape. It was a condensation of
darkness, which had a defined form. Night was above and
within the spectre; it was a prey of ghastly exaggeration.
Twilight and moonrise, stars setting behind the cliff, floating
things in space, the clouds, winds from all quarters, had
ended by penetrating into the composition of this visible
nothing. The species of log hanging in the wind partook
of the impersonality diffused far over sea and sky, and the
darkness completed this phase of the thing which had once
been a man.
It was that which is no longer.
To be naught but a remainder! Such a thing is beyond
the power of language to express. To exist no more, yet to
persist; to be in the abyss, yet out of it; to reappear above
death as if indissoluble — - there is a certain amount of
impossibility mixed with such reality. Thence comes the
62 THE LAUGHING MAN.
inexpressible. This being— was it a being? This black
witness was a remainder, and an awful remainder — a re-
mainder of what? Of nature first, and then of society.
Naught, and yet total.
The lawless inclemency of the weather held it at its will;
the deep oblivion of solitude environed it; it was given up to
unknown chances; it was without defence against the dark-
ness, which did with it what it willed. It was for ever the
patient; it submitted; the hurricane (that ghastly conflict
of winds) was upon it,
The spectre was given over to pillage. It underwent the
horrible outrage of rotting in the open air; it was an outlaw
of the tomb. There was no peace for it even in annihilation:
in the summer it fell away into dust, in the winter into mud.
Death should be veiled, the grave should have its reserve.
Here was neither veil nor reserve, but cynically avowed
putrefaction. It is effrontery in death to display its work;
it offends all the calmness of shadow when it does its task
outside its laboratory, the grave.
This dead thing had been stripped. To strip one already
stripped — relentless act! His marrow was no longer in his
bones ; his entrails were no longer in his body ; his voice no
longer in his throat. A corpse is a pocket which death turns
inside out and empties. If he ever had a Me, where was the
Me ? There still, perchance, and this was fearful to think of.
Something wandering about something in chains — can one
imagine a more mournful lineament in the darkness?
Realities exist here below which serve as issues to the
unknown, wliich seem to facilitate the egress of speculation,
and at which hypothesis snatches. Conjecture has its com-
pelle intrare. In passing by certain places and before cer-
tain objects one cannot help stopping — a prey to dreams
into the realms of which the mind enters. In the invisible
there are dark portals ajar. No one could have met this
dead man without meditating.
In the vastness of dispersion he was wearing silently away.
5 had had blood winch had been drunk, skin which had
been eaten, flesh which had been stolen. Nothing had passed
THE LAUGHING MAN. 63
him by without taking somewhat from him. December had
borrowed cold of him; midnight, horror; the iron, rust ; the
plague, miasma; the flowers, perfume. His slow disintegra-
tion was a toll paid to all — a toll of the corpse to the storm,
to the rain, to the dew, to the reptiles, to the birds. All the
dark hands of night had rifled the dead.
He was, indeed, an inexpressibly strange tenant, a tenant
of the darkness. He was on a plain and on a hill, and he was
not. He was palpable, yet vanished. He was a shadow
accruing to the night. After the disappearance of day into
the vast of silent obscurity, he became in lugubrious accord
with all around him. By his mere presence he increased the
gloom of the tempest and the calm of stars. The unutterable
which is in the desert was condensed in him. Waif of an
unknown fate, he commingled with all the wild secrets of the
night. There was in his mystery a vague reverberation of all
enigmas.
About him life seemed sinking to its lowest depths.
Certainty and confidence appeared to diminish in his
environs. The shiver of the brushwood and the grass, a
desolate melancholy, an anxiety in which a conscience
seemed to lurk, appropriated with tragic force the whole
landscape to that black figure suspended by the chain.
The presence of a spectre in the horizon is an aggravation of
solitude.
He was a Sign. Having unappeasable winds around him,
he was implacable. Perpetual shuddering made him terrible.
Fearful to say, he seemed to be a centre in space, with some-
thing immense leaning on him. Who can tell? Perhaps
that equity, half seen and set at defiance, which transcends
human justice. There was in his unburied continuance the
vengeance of men and his own vengeance. He was a testi-
mony in the twilight and the waste. He was in himself a
disquieting substance, since we tremble before the substance
which is the ruined habitation of the soul. For dead matter
to trouble us, it must once have been tenanted by spirit.
He denounced the law of earth to the law of Heaven. Placed
there by man, he there awaited God. Above him floated,
$4 THE LAUGHING MAN.
blended with all the vague distortions of the cloud and the
t\ boundless dreams of shadow.
Who could tell what sinister mysteries lurked behind this
phantom? The illimitable, circumscribed by naught, not
. nor roof, nor passer-by, was around the dead man. When
the unchangeable broods over us — when Heaven, the abyss,
the life, grave, and eternity appear patent — then it is we fee!
that all is inaccessible, all is forbidden, all is sealed. When
infinity opens to us, terrible indeed is the closing of the gate
behind.
CHAPTER VI.
STRUGGLE BETWEEN DEATH AND - LIFE.
THE child was before this thing, dumb, wondering, and with
eyes fixed.
To a man it would have been a gibbet; to the child it was
an apparition.
Where a man would have seen a corpse the child saw a
spectre.
Besides, he did not understand.
The attractions of the obscure are manifold. There was
one on the summit of that hiU. The child took a step, then
another; he ascended, wishing all the while to descend;
and approached, wishing all the while to retreat.
Bold, yet trembling, he went close up to survey the spectre.
When he got close under the gibbet, he looked up and
examined it.
The spectre was tarred; here and there it shone. The
hild distinguished the face. It was coated over with pitch;
and this mask, which appeared viscous and sticky, varied its
aspect with the night shadows. The child saw the mouth,
which was a hole; the nose, which was a hole; the eyes
ich were holes. The body was wrapped, and apparently
1 up, m coarse canvas, soaked in naphtha. The canvas
mouldy and torn. A knee protruded through it. A
closed the ribs-partly corpse, partly skeleton. The
was the colour of earth; slugs, wandering over it, had
d across it vague ribbons of silver. The canvas, glued
66 THE LAUGHING MAN.
They were hanged on the seaboard, coated over with pitch,
and left swinging. Examples must be made in public, and
tarred examples last longest. The tar was mercy: by
renewing it they were spared making too many fresh ex-
amples. They placed gibbets from point to point along the
coast, as nowadays they do beacons. The hanged man did
duty as a lantern. After his fashion, he guided his com-
rades, the smugglers. The smugglers from far out at sea
perceived the gibbets. There is one, first warning; another,
second warning. It did not stop smuggling; but public
order is made up of such things. The fashion lasted in
England up to the beginning of this century. In 1822 three
men were still to be seen hanging in front of l)over Castle.
But, for that matter, the preserving process was employed
not only with smugglers. England turned robbers, incen-
diaries, and murderers to the same account. Jack Painter,
who set fire to the government storehouses at Portsmouth,
was hanged and tarred in 1776. L'Abb6 Coyer, who de-
scribes him as Jean le Peintre, saw him again in 1777. Jack
Painter was hanging above the ruin he had made, and was
re-tarred from time to time. His corpse lasted — I had
almost said lived — nearly fourteen years. It was still doing
good service in 1788; in 1790, however, they were obliged to
replace it by another. The Egyptians used to value the
mummy of the king; a plebeian mummy can also, it appears,
be of service.
The wind, having great power on the hill, had swept it of
all its snow. Herbage reappeared on it, interspersed here and
there with a few thistles; the hill was covered by that close
short grass which grows by the sea, and causes the tops of
cliffs to resemble green cloth. Under the gibbet, on the very
spot over which hung the feet of the executed criminal, was
a long and thick tuft, uncommon on such poor soil. Corpses,
crumbling there for centuries past, accounted for the beauty
of the grass. Earth feeds on man.
A dreary fascination held the child; he remained there
open-mouthed. He only dropped his head a moment when
a nettle, which felt like an insect, stung hia leg; then he
THE LAUGHING MAN. 67
looked up again — he looked above him at the face which
looked down on him. It appeared to regard him the more
steadfastly because it had no eyes. It was a comprehensive
glance, having an indescribable fixedness in which there were
both light and darkness, and which emanated from the skull
and teeth, as well as the empty arches of the brow. The
whole head of a dead man seems to have vision, and this is
awful. No eyeball, yet we feel that we are looked at. A
horror of worms.
Little by little the child himself was becoming an object of
terror. He no longer moved. Torpor was coming over him.
He did not perceive that he was losing consciousness — he
was becoming benumbed and lifeless. Winter was silently
delivering him over to night. There is something of the
traitor in winter. The child was all but a statue. The
coldness of stone was penetrating his bones; darkness, that
reptile, was crawling over him. The drowsiness resulting
from snow creeps over a man like a dim tide. The child was
being slowly invaded by a stagnation resembling that of the
corpse. He was falling asleep.
On the hand of sleep is the finger of death. The child felt
himself seized by that hand. He was on the point of fall-
ing under the gibbet. He no longer knew whether he was
standing upright.
The end always impending, no transition between to
be and not to be, the return into the crucible, the slip
possible every minute — such is the precipice which is
Creation.
Another instant, the child and the dead, life in sketch and
life in ruin, would be confounded in the same obliteration.
The spectre appeared to understand, and not to wish it.
Of a sudden it stirred. One would have said it was warn-
ing the child, It was the wind beginning to blow again.
Nothing stranger than this dead man in movement.
The corpse at the end of the chain, pushed by the invisible
gust, took an oblique attitude; rose to the left, then fell
back, reascended to the right, and fell and rose with slow
and mournful precision, A weird game of see-saw. It
68 THE LAUGHING MAN.
seemed as though one saw in the darkness the pendulum of
the clock of Eternity.
This continued for some time. The child felt himself
waking up at the sight of the dead; through his increasing
numbness he experienced a distinct sense of fear.
The chain at every oscillation made a grinding sound, with
hideous regularity. It appeared to take breath, and then to
resume. This grinding was like the cry of a grasshopper.
An approaching squall is heralded by sudden gusts of
wind. All at once the breeze increased into a gale. The
corpse emphasized its dismal oscillations. It no longer
swung, it tossed ; the chain, which had been .grinding, now
shrieked. It appeared that its shriek was heard. If it was
an appeal, it was obeyed. From the depths of the horizon
came the sound of a rushing noise.
It was the noise of wings.
An incident occurred, a stormy incident, peculiar to grave-
yards and solitudes. It was the arrival of a flight of ravens.
Black flying specks pricked the clouds, pierced through the
mist, increased in size, came near, amalgamated, thickened,
hastening towards the hill, uttering cries. It was like the
approach of a Legion. The winged vermin of the darkness
alighted on the gibbet ; the child, scared, drew back.
Swarms obey words of command: the birds crowded on
the gibbet; not one was on the corpse. They were talking
among themselves. The croaking was frightful. The howl,
the whistle and the roar, are signs of life; the croak is a
satisfied acceptance of putrefaction. In it you can fancy you
hear the tomb breaking silence. The croak is night-like in
itself.
The child was frozen even more by terror than by cold.
Then the ravens held silence. One of them perched on the
skeleton. This was a signal : they all precipitated themselves
upon it. There was a cloud of wings, then all their feathers
closed up, and the hanged man disappeared under a swarm
of black blisters struggling in the obscurity. Just then the
corpse moved. Was it the corpse? Was it the wind? It
made a frightful bound. The hurricane, which was increas-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 69
ing, came to its aid. The phantom fell into convulsions.
The squall, already blowing with full lungs, laid hold of it,
and moved it about in all directions.
It became horrible; it began to struggle. An awful
puppet, with a gibbet chain for a string. Some humorist of
night must have seized the string and been playing with the
mummy. It turned and leapt as if it would fain dislocate
itself; the birds, frightened, flew off. It was like an explo-
sion of all those unclean creatures. Then they returned,
and a struggle began.
The dead man seemed possessed with hideous vitality.
The winds raised him as though they meant to carry him
away. He seemed struggling and making efforts to escape,
but his iron collar held him back. The birds adapted them-
selves to all his movements, retreating, then striking again,
scared but desperate. On one side a strange flight was
attempted, on the other the pursuit of a chained man. The
corpse, impelled by every spasm of the wind, had shocks,
starts, fits of rage: it went, it came, it rose, it fell, driving
back the scattered swarm. The dead man was a club, the
swarms were dust. The fierce, assailing flock would not
leave their hold, and grew stubborn ; the man, as if maddened
by the cluster of beaks, redoubled his blind chastisement of
space. It was like the blows of a stone held in a sling. At
times the corpse was covered by talons and wings ; then it
was free. There were disappearances of the horde, then
sudden furious returns — a frightful torment continuing after
life was past. The birds seemed frenzied. The air-holes of
hell must surely give passage to such swarms. Thrusting of
claws, thrusting of beaks, croakings, rendings of shreds no
longer flesh, creakings of the gibbet, shudderings of the
skeleton, jingling of the chain, the voices of the storm and
tumult — what conflict more fearful ? A hobgoblin warring
with devils ! A combat with a spectre !
At times the storm redoubling its violence, the hanged man
revolved on his own pivot, turning every way at once towards
the swarm, as if he wished to run after the birds ; his teeth
seemed to try and bite them. The wind was for him, the
70 THE LAUGHING MAN.
chain against him. It was as if black deities were mixing
themselves up in the fray. The hurricane was in the battle.
As the dead man turned himself about, the flock of birds
wound round" him spirally. It was a whirl in a whirlwind.
A great roar was heard from below. It was the sea.
The child saw this nightmare. Suddenly he trembled in
all his limbs; a shiver thrilled his frame; he staggered,
tottered, nearly fell, recovered himself, pressed both hand&
to his forehead, as if he felt his forehead a support; then,
haggard, his hair streaming in the wind, descending the hill
with long strides, his eyes closed, himself almost a phantom,
he took flight, leaving behind that torment in the night.
CHAPTER VII.
THE NORTH POINT OF PORTLAND.
HE ran until he was breathless, at random, desperate, over
the plain into the snow, into space. His flight warmed
him. He needed it. Without the run and the fright he
had died.
When his breath failed him he stopped, but he dared not
look back. He fancied that the birds would pursue him,
that the dead man had undone his chain and was perhaps
hurrying behind him, and no doubt the gibbet itself was
descending the hill, running after the dead man; he feared to
see these things if he turned his head.
When he had somewhat recovered his breath he resumed
his flight.
To account for facte does not belong to childhood. He
received impressions which, were magnified by terror, but he
did not link them together in his mind, nor form any con-
clusion on them. He was going on, no matter how or where ;
he ran in agony and difiiculty as one in a dream. During
the three hours or so since he had been deserted, his onward
progress, still vague, had changed its purpose. At first it
was a search; now it was a flight. He no longer felt hunger
nor cold— he felt fear. One instinct had given place to
another. To escape was now his whole thought— to escape
THE LAUGHING MAN. 71
from what? From everything. On all sides life seemed to
enclose him like a horrible wall. If he could have fled from
all things, he would have done so. But children know
nothing of that breaking from prison which is called suicide.
He was running. He ran on for an indefinite time ; but fear
dies with lack of breath.
All at once, as if seized by a sudden accession of energy and
intelligence, he stopped. One would have said he was ashamed
of running away. He drew himself up, stamped his foot,
and, with head erect, looked round. There was no longer
hill, nor gibbet, nor nights of crows. The fog had resumed
possession of the horizon. The child pursued his-way: he
now no longer ran but walked. To say that meeting with a
corpse had made a man of him would be to limit the manifold
and confused impression which possessed him. There was
in his impression much more and much less. The gibbet, a
mighty trouble in the rudiment of comprehension, nascent in
his mind, still seemed to him an apparition ; but a trouble
overcome is strength gained, and he felt himself stronger.
Had he been of an age to probe self, he would have detected
within him a thousand other germs of meditation; but the
reflection of children is shapeless, and the utmost they feel is
the bitter aftertaste of that which, obscure to them, the man
later on calls indignation. Let us add that a child has the
faculty of quickly accepting the conclusion of a sensation;
the distant fading boundaries which amplify painful subjects
escape him. A child is protected by the limit of feebleness
against emotions which are too complex. He sees the fact,
and little else beside. The difficulty of being satisfied by
half -ideas does not exist for him. It is not until later that
experience comes, with its brief, to conduct the lawsuit of
life. Then he confronts groups of facts which have crossed
his path; the understanding, cultivated and enlarged, draws
comparisons; the memories of youth reappear under the
passions, like the traces of a palimpsest under the erasure;
these memories form the bases of logic, and that which was a
vision in the child's brain becomes a syllogism in the man's.
Experience is, however, various, and turns to good or evil
72 THE LAUGHING MAN.
according to natural disposition. With the good it ripens,
with the bad it rots.
The child had run quite a quarter of a league, and walked
another quarter, when suddenly he felt the craving of hunger.
A thought which altogether eclipsed the hideous apparition
on the hill occurred to him forcibly — that he must eat.
Happily there is in man a brute which serves to lead him back
to reality.
But what to eat, where to eat, how to eat?
He felt his pockets mechanically, well knowing that they
were empty. Then he quickened his steps, without knowing
whither he was going. He hastened towards a possible
shelter. This faith in an inn is one of the convictions
enrooted by God in man. To believe in a shelter is to
believe in God.
However, in that plain of snow there was nothing like a
roof. The child went on, and the waste continued bare as
far as eye could see. There had never been a human habita-
tion on the tableland. It was at the foot of the cliff, in holes
in the rocks, that, lacking wood to build themselves huts, had
dwelt long ago the aboriginal inhabitants, who had slings for
arms, dried cow-dung for firing, for a god the idol Heil stand-
ing in a glade at Dorchester, and .for trade the fishing of that
false gray coral which the Gauls called plin, and the Greeks
isidis plocamos.
The child found his way as best he could. Destiny is made
up of cross-roads. An option of path is dangerous. This
little being had an early choice of doubtful chances.
He continued to advance, but although the muscles of his
thighs seemed to be of steel, he began to tire. There were no
tracks in the plain; or if there were any, the snow had
obliterated them. Instinctively he inclined eastwards.
Sharp stones had wounded his heels. Had it been daylight
pink stains made by his blood might have been seen in the
footprints he left in the snow.
He recognized nothing. He was crossing the plain of Port-
l from south to north, and it is probable that the band
with which he had come, to avoid meeting any one, had
THE LAUGHING MAN. 73
crossed it from east to west; they had most likely sailed in
some fisherman's or smuggler's boat, from a point on the
coast of Uggescombe, such as St. Catherine's Cape or Swan-
cry, to Portland to find the hooker which awaited them ; and
they must have landed in one of the creeks of Weston, and
re-embarked in one of those of Easton. That direction was
intersected by the one the child was now following. It was
impossible for him to recognize the road.
On the plain of Portland there are, here and there, raised
strips of land, abruptly ended by the shore and cut perpen-
dicular to the sea. The wandering child reached one of
these culminating points and stopped on it, hoping that a
larger space might reveal further indications. He tried to
see around him. Before him, in place of a horizon, was a
vast livid opacity. He looked at this attentively, and under
the fixedness of his glance it became less indistinct. At the
base of a distant fold of land towards the east, in the depths
of that opaque lividity (a moving and wan sort of precipice,
which resembled a cliff of the night), crept and floated some
vague black rents, some dim shreds of vapour. The pale
opacity was fog, the black shreds were smoke. Where there
is smoke there are men. The child turned his steps in that
direction.
He saw some distance off a descent, and at the foot of the
descent, among shapeless conformations of rock, blurred by
the mist, what seemed to be either a sandbank or a tongue
of land, joining probably to the plains of the horizon the
tableland he had just crossed. It was evident he must pass
that way.
He had, in fact, arrived at the Isthmus of Portland, a
diluvian alluvium which is called Chess Hill.
He began to descend the side of the plateau.
The descent was difficult and rough. It was (with less of
ruggedness, however) the reverse of the ascent he had made
on leaving the creek. Every ascent is balanced by a decline.
After having clambered up he crawled down.
He leapt from one rock to another at the risk of a sprain,
at the risk of falling into the vague depths below. To save
74 THE LAUGHING MAN.
himself when he slipped on the rock or on the ice, he caught
hold of handfuls of weeds and furze, thick with thorns, and
their points ran into his fingers. At times he came on an
easier declivity, taking breath as he descended; then came
on the precipice again, and each step necessitated an ex-
pedient. In descending precipices, every movement solves
a problem. One must be skilful under pain of death. These
problems the child solved with an instinct which would have
made him the admiration of apes and mountebanks. The
descent was steep and long. Nevertheless he was coming to
the end of it.
Little by little it was drawing nearer the moment when he
should land on the Isthmus, of which from time to time he
caught a glimpse. At intervals, while he bounded or
dropped from rock to rock, he pricked up his ears, his head
erect, like a listening deer. He was hearkening to a diffused
and faint uproar, far away to the left, like the deep note of a
clarion. It was a commotion of winds, preceding that fearful
north blast which is heard rushing from the pole, like an inroad
of trumpets. At the same time the child felt now and then
on his brow, on his eyes, on his cheeks, something which was
like the palms of cold hands being placed on his face. These
were large frozen flakes, sown at first softly in space, then
eddying, and heralding a snowstorm. The child was covered
with them. The snowstorm, which for the last hour had
been on the sea, was beginning to gain the land. It was
slowly invading the plains. It was entering obliquely, by
the north-west, the tableland of Portland.
BOOK THE SECOND.
THE HOOKER AT SEA,
CHAPTER I.
SUPERHUMAN LAWS.
THE snowstorm is one of the mysteries of the ocean. It is
the most obscure of things meteorological — obscure in every
sense of the word. It is a mixture of fog and storm; and
even in our days we cannot well account for the phenomenon.
Hence many disasters.
We try to explain all things by the action'of wind and wave ;
yet in the air there is a force which is not the wind, and in the
waters a force which is not the wave. That force, both in
the air and in the water, is effluvium. Air and water are two
nearly identical liquid masses, entering into the composition
of each other by condensation and dilatation, so that to
breathe is to drink. Effluvium alone is fluid. The wind and
the wave are only impulses; effluvium is a current. The
wind is visible in clouds, the wave is visible in foam ; effluvium
is invisible. From time to time, however, it says, " I am
here." Its " I am here " is a clap of thunder.
The snowstorm offers a problem analogous to the dry fog.
If the solution of the callina of the Spaniards and the quobar
of the Ethiopians be possible, assuredly that solution will be
achieved by attentive observation of magnetic effluvium.
Without effluvium a crowd of circumstances would remain
enigmatic. Strictly speaking, the changes in the velocity of
;6 THE LAUGHING MAN.
the wind, varying from 3 feet per second to 220 feet, would
supply a reason for the variations of the waves rising from
3 inches in a calm sea to 36 feet in a raging one. Strictly
speaking, the horizontal direction of the winds, even in a
squall, enables us to understand how it is that a wave 30 feet
high can be 1,500 feet long. But why are the waves of the
Pacific four times higher near America than near Asia; that
is to say, higher in the East than in the West? Why is the
contrary true of the Atlantic ? Why, under the Equator, are
they highest in the middle of the sea? Wherefore these
deviations in the swell of the ocean ? This is what magnetic
effluvium, combined with terrestrial rotation, and sidereal
attraction, can alone explain.
Is not this mysterious complication needed to explain an
oscillation of the wind veering, for instance, by the west from
south-east to north-east, then suddenly returning in the same
great curve from north-east to south-east, so as to make in
thirty-six hours a prodigious circuit of 560 degrees ? Such
was the preface to the snowstorm of March 17, 1867.
The storm-waves of Australia reach a height of 80 feet;
this fact is connected with the vicinity of the Pole. Storms
in those latitudes result less from disorder of the winds than
from submarine electrical discharges. In the year 1866 the
transatlantic cable was disturbed at regular intervals in its
working for two hours in the twenty-four — from noon to two
o'clock — by a sort of intermittent fever. Certain composi-
tions and decompositions of forces produce phenomena, and
impose themselves on the calculations of the seaman under
pain of shipwreck. The day that navigation, now a routine,
shall become a mathematic; the day we shall, for instance,
seek to know why it is that in our regions hot winds come
sometimes from the north, and cold winds from the south;
the day we shall understand that diminutions of tempera-
ture are proportionate to oceanic depths; the day we realize
that the globe is a vast loadstone polarized in immensity,
with two axes — an axis of rotation and an axis of effluvium —
intersecting each other at the centre of the earth, and that the
magnetic poles turn round the geographical poles; when
THE LAUGHING MAN. 77
those who risk life will choose to risk it scientifically; when
men shall navigate assured from studied uncertainty; when
the captain shall be a meteorologist; when the pilot shall be
a chemist; then will many catastrophes be avoided. The
sea is magnetic as much as aquatic: an ocean of unknown
forces floats in the ocean of the waves, or, one might say, on
the surface. Only to behold in the sea a mass of water is not
to see it at all: the sea is an ebb and flow of fluid, as much
as a flux and reflux of liquid. It is, perhaps, complicated by
attractions even more than by hurricanes; molecular ad-
hesion, manifested among other phenomena by capillary
attraction, although microscopic, takes in ocean its place in
the grandeur of immensity; and the wave of effluvium
sometimes aids, sometimes counteracts, the wave of the air
and the wave of the waters. He who is ignorant of electric
law is ignorant of hydraulic law; for the one intermixes with
the other. It is true there is no study more difficult nor more
obscure; it verges on empiricism, just as astronomy verges
on astrology; and yet without this study there is no naviga-
tion. Having said this much we will pass on.
One of the most dangerous components of the sea is the
snowstorm. The snowstorm is above all things magnetic.
The pole produces it as it produces the aurora borealis. It
is in the fog of the one as in the light of the other ; and in the
flake of snow as in the streak of flame effluvium is visible.
Storms are the nervous attacks and delirious frenzies of the
sea. The sea has its ailments. Tempests may be compared
to maladies. Some are mortal, others not; some may be
escaped, others not. The snowstorm is supposed to be
generally mortal. Jarabija, one of the pilots of Magellan,
termed it " a cloud issuing from the devil's sore side." *
The old Spanish navigators called this kind of squall la
nevada, when it came with snow ; la helada, when it came with
hail. According to them, bats fell from the sky, with the
snow.
Snowstorms are characteristic of polar latitudes; never-
theless, at times they glide — one might almost say tumble —
* Una Mube salida del malo lado del diablo.
78 THE LAUGHING MAN.
into our climates ; so much ruin is mingled with the chances
of the air.
The Matutina, as we have seen, plunged resolutely into the
great hazard of the night, a hazard increased by the impend-
ing storm. She had encountered its menace with a sort of
tragic audacity; nevertheless, it must be remembered that
she had received due warning.
CHAPTER II.
OUR FIRST ROUGH SKETCHES FILLED IN.
WHILE the hooker was in the gulf of Portland, there was but
little sea on ; the ocean, if gloomy, was almost still, and the sky
was yet clear. The wind took little effect on the vessel ; the
hooker hugged the cliff as closely as possible; it served as a
screen to her.
There were ten on board the little Biscayan felucca —
three men in crew, and seven passengers, of whom two were
women. In the light of the open sea (which broadens
twilight into day) all the figures on board were clearly visible.
Besides they were not hiding now — they were all at ease;
each one reassumed his freedom of manner, spoke in his own
note, showed his face; departure was to them a deliverance.
The motley nature of the group shone out. The women
were of no age. A wandering life produces premature old
age, and indigence is made up of wrinkles. One of them
was a Basque of the Dry-ports. The other, with the large
rosary, was an Irishwoman. They wore that air of indiffer-
ence common to the wretched. They had squatted down
close to each other when they got on board, on chests at the
foot of the mast. They talked to each other. Irish and
asque are, as we have said, kindred languages. The
Basque woman's hair was scented with onions and basil.
le skipper of the hooker was a Basque of Guipuzcoa. One
ailor was a Basque of the northern slope of the Pyrenees
rther was of the southern slope— that is to say, they were
3 same nation, although the first was French and the
ter Spanish, The Basques recognize no official country
THE LAUGHING MAN. 79
Mi madre se llama Montana, my mother is called the moun-
tain, as Zalareus, the muleteer, used to say. Of the five men
who were with the two women, one was a Frenchman of
Languedoc, one a Frenchman of Provence, one a Genoese;
one, an old man, he who wore the sombrero without a hole for
a pipe, appeared to be a German. The fifth, the chief, was a
Basque of the Landes from Biscarrosse. It was he who, just
as the child was going on board the hooker, had, with a kick
of his heel, cast the plank into the sea. This man, robust,
agile, sudden in movement, covered, as may be remembered,
with trimmings, slashings, and glistening tinsel, could not
keep in his place; he stooped down, rose up, and continually
passed to and fro from one end of the vessel to the other, as if
debating uneasily on what had been done and what was
going to happen.
This chief of the band, the captain and the two men of the
crew, all four Basques, spoke sometimes Basque, sometimes
Spanish, sometimes French — these three languages being
common on both slopes of the Pyrenees. But generally
speaking, excepting the women, all talked something like
French, which was the foundation of their slang. The
French language about this period began to be chosen by the
peoples as something intermediate between the excess of
consonants in the north and the excess of vowels in the
south. In Europe, French was the language of commerce,
and also of felony. It will be remembered that Gibby, a
London thief, understood Cartouche.
The hooker, a fine sailer, was making quick way ; still, ten
persons, besides their baggage, were a heavy cargo for one of
such light draught.
The fact of the vessel's aiding the escape of a band did not
necessarily imply that the crew were accomplices. It was
sufficient that the captain of the vessel was a Vascongado,
and that the chief of the band was another. Among that
race mutual assistance is a duty which admits of no exception.
A Basque, as we have said, is neither Spanish nor French;
he is Basque, and always and everywhere he must succour a
Basque. Such is Pyrenean fraternity.
So THE LAUGHING MAN.
All the time the hooker was in the gulf, the sky, although
threatening, did not frown enough to cause the fugitives any
uneasiness. They were flying, they were escaping, they
were brutally gay. One laughed, another sang; the laugh
was dry but free, the song was low but careless.
The Languedocian cried, " Caoucagno / " " Cocagne "
expresses the highest pitch of satisfaction in Narbonne. He
was a longshore sailor, a native of the waterside village of
Gruissan, on the southern side of the Clappe, a bargeman
rather than a mariner, but accustomed to work the reaches of
the inlet of Bages, and to draw the drag-net full of fish over
the salt sands of St. Lucie. He was of the race who wear a
red cap, make complicated signs of the cross after the Spanish
fashion, drink wine out of goat-skins, eat scraped ham, kneel
down to blaspheme, and implore their patron saint with
threats — " Great saint, grant me what I ask, or I'll throw
a stone at thy head, ou te feg un pic." He might be, at need,
a useful addition to the crew.
The Proven9al in the caboose was blowing up a turf fire
under an iron pot, and making broth. The broth was a kind
of puchero, in which fish took the place of meat, and into
which the Proven9al threw chick peas, little bits of bacon cut
in squares, and pods of red pimento — concessions made by
the eaters of bouillabaisse to the eaters of otta podrida. One
of the bags of provisions was beside him unpacked. He had
lighted over his head an iron lantern, glazed with talc, which
swung on a hook from the ceiling. By its side, OD another
hook, swung the weather-cock halcyon. There was a popular
belief in those days that a dead halcyon, hung by the beak,
always turned its breast to the quarter whence the wind was
blowing. While he made the broth, the Proven£al put the
neck of a gourd into his mouth, and now and then swallowed
a draught of aguardiente. It was one of those gourds
covered with wicker, broad and flat, with handles, which
used to be hung to the side by a strap, and which were then
called hip-gourds. Between each gulp he mumbled one of
those country songs of which the subject is nothing at all:
a hollow road, a hedge; you see in the meadow, through a
THE LAUGHING MAN. 81
gap in the bushes, the shadow of a horse and cart, elongated
in the sunset', and from time to time, above the hedge, the
end of a fork loaded with hay appears and disappears — you
want no more to make a song.
A departure, according to the bent of one's mind, is a relief
or a depression. All seemed lighter in spirits excepting the
old man of the band, the man with the hat that had no pipe.
This old man, who looked more German than anything else,
although he had one of those unfathomable faces in which
nationality is lost, was bald, and so grave that his baldness
might have been a tonsure. Every time he passed before the
Virgin on the prow, he raised his felt hat, so that you could
see the swollen and senile veins of his skull. A sort of full
gown, torn and threadbare, of brown Dorchester serge, but
half hid his closely fitting coat, tight, compact, and hooked up
to the neck like a cassock. His hands inclined to cross each
other, and had the mechanical junction of habitual prayer.
He had what might be called a wan countenance; for the
countenance is above all things a reflection, and it is an error
to believe that idea is colourless. That countenance was evi-
dently the surface of a strange inner state, the result of a
composition of contradictions, some tending to drift away in
good, others in evil, and to an observer it was the revelation of
one who was less and more than human — capable of falling
below the scale of the tiger, or of rising above that of man.
Such chaotic souls exist. There was something inscrutable
in that face. Its secret reached the abstract. You felt that
the man had known the foretaste of evil which is the calcula-
tion, and the after-taste which is the zero. In his impassi-
bility, which was perhaps only on the surface, were imprinted
two petrifactions — the petrifaction of the heart proper to the
hangman, and the petrifaction of the mind proper to the
mandarin. One might have said (for the monstrous has its
mode of being complete) that all things were possible to him,
even emotion. In every savant there is something of the
corpse, and this man was a savant. Only to see him you
caught science imprinted in the gestures of his body and in
the folds of his dress. His was a fossil face, the serious cast
82 THE LAUGHING MAN1,
of which was counteracted by that wrinkled mobility of the
polyglot which verges on grimace. But a severe man withal ;
nothing of the hypocrite, nothing of the cynic. A tragic
dreamer. He was one of those whom crime leaves pensive;
he had the brow of an incendiary tempered by the eyes of an
archbishop. His sparse gray locks turned to white over his
temples. The Christian was evident in him, complicated
with the fatalism of the Turk. Chalkstones deformed his
fingers, dissected by leanness. The stiffness of his tall frame
was grotesque. He had his sea-legs, he walked slowly about
the deck, not looking at any one, with an air decided and
sinister. His eyeballs were vaguely filled with the fixed light
of a soul studious of the darkness and afflicted by reappari-
tions of conscience.
From time to time the chief of the band, abrupt and alert,
and making sudden turns about the vessel, came to him and
whispered in his ear. The old man answered by a nod. It
might have been the lightning consulting the night.
CHAPTER III.
TROUBLED MEN ON THE TROUBLED SEA.
Two men on board the craft were absorbed in thought — the
old man, and the skipper of the hooker, who must not be
mistaken for the chief of the band. The captain was occu-
pied by the sea, the old man by the sky. The former did not
b his eyes from the waters; the latter kept watch on the
firmament. The skipper's anxiety was the state of the sea;
the old man seemed to suspect the heavens. He scanned the
tars through every break in the clouds,
[t was the time when day still lingers, but some few stars
Sin faintly to pierce the twilight. The horizon was singu-
The mist upon it varied. Haze predominated on land,
clouds at sea.
The skipper, noting the rising billows, hauled all taut
sfore he got outside Portland Bay. He would not delay so
.g until he should pass the headland. He examined the
rigging closely, and satisfied himself that the lower shrouds
THE LAUGHING MAN. 83
were well set up, and supported firmly the futtock-shi-ouds —
precautions of a man who means to carry on with a press of
sail, at all risks.
The hooker was not trimmed, being two feet by the head.
This was her weak point.
The captain passed every minute from the binnacle to the
standard compass, taking the bearings of objects on shore.
The Matutina had at first a soldier's wind which was not un-
favourable, though she could not lie within five points of
her course. The captain took the helm as often as possible,
trusting no one but himself to prevent her from dropping to
leeward, the effect of the rudder being influenced by the
steerage- way.
The difference between the true and apparent course being
relative to the way on the vessel, the hooker seemed to lie
closer to the wind than she did in reality. The breeze was
not a-beam, nor was the hooker close-hauled ; but one cannot
ascertain the true course made, except when the wind is
abaft. When you perceive long streaks of clouds meeting in
a point on the horizon, you may be sure that the wind is in
that quarter; but this evening the wind was variable; the
needle fluctuated; the captain distrusted the erratic move-
ments of the vessel. He steered carefully but resolutely,
luffed her up, watched her coming to, prevented her from
yawing, and from running into the wind's eye: noted the lee-
way, the little jerks of the helm: was observant of every roll
and pitch of the vessel, of the difference in her speed, and of
the variable gusts of wind. For fear of accidents, he was
constantly on the lookout for squalls from off the land he
was hugging, and above all he was cautious to keep her full ;
the direction of the breeze indicated by the compass being un-
certain from the small size of the instrument. The captain's
eyes, frequently lowered, remarked every change in the waves.
Once nevertheless he raised them towards the sky, and
tried to make out the three stars of Orion's belt. These stars
are called the three magi, and an old proverb of the ancient
Spanish pilots declares that, " He who sees the three magi is
not far from the Saviour."
84 THE LAUGHING MAN.
This glance of the captain's tallied with an aside growled
out, at the other end of the vessel, by the old man. " We
don't even see the pointers, nor the star Antares, red as he is.
Not one is distinct."
No care troubled the other fugitives.
Still, when the first hilarity they felt in their escape had
passed away, they could not help remembering that they were
at sea in the month of January, and that the wind was frozen.
It was impossible to establish themselves in the cabin. It
was much too narrow and too much encumbered by bales and
baggage. The baggage belonged to the passengers, the bales
to the crew, for the hooker was no pleasure boat, and was
engaged in smuggling. The passengers were obliged to settle
themselves on deck, a condition to which these wanderers
easily resigned themselves. Open-air habits make it simple
for vagabonds to arrange themselves for the night. The
open air (la belle etoile) is their friend, and the cold helps them
to sleep — sometimes to die.
This night, as we have seen, there was no belle etoile.
The Languedocian and the Genoese, while waiting for
supper, rolled themselves up near the women, at the foot of
the mast, in some tarpaulin which the sailors had thrown
them.
The old man remained at the bow motionless, and appar-
ently insensible to the cold.
The captain of the hooker, from the helm where he was
standing, uttered a sort of guttural call somewhat like the
cry of the American bird called the exclaimer; at his call the
chief of the band drew near, and the captain addressed him
thus,—
" Etcheco Jauna." These two words, which mean " tiller
of the mountain," form with the old Cantabri a solemn
preface to any subject which should command attention.
Then the captain pointed the old man out to the chief, and
ie dialogue continued in Spanish; it was not, indeed, a very
correct dialect, being that of the mountains. Here are the
questions and answers.
" Etcheco jauna, que e3 este hombre? "
THE LAUGHING MAN. 85
" Un hombre."
"Que lenguashabla?"
" Todas."
" Que cosas sabe? "
" Todas."
"Qualpais?"
" Ningun, y todos."
" Qualdios? "
" Dios."
" Como le llamas? "
" El tonto."
" Como dices que le llamas? '
" El sabio."
" En vuestre tropa que esta? "
" Esta lo que esta."
"Elgefe?"
" No."
"Pues que esta?"
" La alma."*
The chief and the captain parted, each reverting to his
own meditation, and a little while afterwards the Matutina
left the gulf.
Now came the great rolling of the open sex. The ocean in
the spaces between the ioam was slimy in appearance. The
waves, seen through the twilight in indistinct outline, some-
what resembled plashes of gall. Here and there a wave
floating flat showed cracks and stars, like a pane of glass
broken by stones ; in the centre of these stars, in a revolving
orifice, trembled a phosphorescence, like that feline reflection
of vanished light which shines in the eyeballs of owls.
* Tiller of the mountain, who is that man ? — A man.
What tongue does he speak ? — All.
What things does he know ?— All.
What is his country ? — None and all.
Who is his God ?— God.
What do you call him ?— The madman.
What do you say you call him ? — The wise man.
In your band, what is he ? — He is what he is.
The chief ?— No.
Then what is he ?— The soul.
86 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Proudly, like a bold swimmer, the Matutina crossed the
dangerous Shambles shoal. This bank, a hidden obstruction
at the entrance of Portland roads, is not a barrier ; it is an
amphitheatre — a circus of sand under the sea, its benches cut
out by the circling of the waves — an arena, round and sym-
metrical, as high as a Jungfrau, only drowned — a coliseum
of the ocean, seen by the diver in the vision-like transparency
which engulfs him, — such is the Shambles shoal. There
hydras fight, leviathans meet. There, says the legend, at the
bottom of the gigantic shaft, are the wrecks of ships, seized
and sunk by the huge spider Kraken, also called the fish-
mountain. Such things lie in the fearful shadow of the sea.
These spectral realities, unknown to man, are manifested
at the surface by a slight shiver.
In this nineteenth century, the Shambles bank is in ruins;
the breakwater recently constructed has overthrown and
mutilated, by the force of its surf, that high submarine archi-
tecture, just as the jetty, built at the Croisic in 1760, changed,
by a quarter of an hour, the course of the tides. And yet the
tide is eternal. But eternity obeys man more than man
imagines.
CHAPTER IV.
A CLOUD DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHERS ENTERS ON THE
SCENE.
THE old man whom the chief of the band had named first the
Madman, then the Sage, now never left the forecastle. Since
they crossed the Shambles shoal, his attention had been
divided between the heavens and the waters. He looked
down, he looked upwards, and above all watched the north-
east
The skipper gave the helm to a sailor, stepped over the
after hatchway, crossed the gangway, and went on to the
.orecastle. He approached the old man, but not in front.
He stood a little behind, with elbows resting on his hips, with
outstretched hands, the head on one aide, with open eyes and
ched eyebrows, and a smile in the corners of his mouth— an
itudc of curiosity hesitating between mockery and respect.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 87
The old man, either that it was his habit to talk to himself,
or that hearing some one behind incited him to speech, began
to soliloquize while he looked into space.
" The meridian, from which the right ascension is calcu-
lated, is marked in this century by four stars — the Polar,
Cassiopeia's Chair, Andromeda's Head, and the star Algenib,
which is in Pegasus. But there is not one visible."
These words followed each other mechanically, confused,
and scarcely articulated, as if he did not care to pronounce
them. They floated out of his mouth and dispersed.
Soliloquy is the smoke exhaled by the inmost fires of the soul.
The skipper broke in, " My lord ! "
The old man, perhaps rather deaf as well as very thought-
ful, went on, —
" Too few stars, and too much wind. The breeze con-
tinually changes its direction and blows inshore ; thence it
rises perpendicularly. This results from the land being
warmer than the water. Its atmosphere is lighter. The
cold and dense wind of the sea rushes in to replace it. From
this cause, in the upper regions the wind blows towards the
land from every quarter. It would be advisable to make long
tacks between the true and apparent parallel. When the
latitude by observation differs from the latitude by dead
reckoning by not more than three minutes in thirty miles, or
by four minutes in sixty miles, you are in the true course."
The skipper bowed, but the old man saw him not. The
latter, who wore what resembled an Oxford or Gottingen
university gown, did not relax his haughty and rigid attitude.
He observed the waters as a critic of waves and of men. He
studied the billows, but almost as if he was about to demand
his turn to speak amidst their turmoil, and teach them some-
thing. There was in him both pedagogue and soothsayer.
He seemed an oracle of the deep.
He continued his soliloquy, which was perhaps intended to
be heard.
" We might strive if we had a wheel instead of a helm.
With a speed of twelve miles an hour, a force of twenty pounds
exerted on the wheel produce* three
88 THE LAUGHING MAN.
pounds' effect on the course. And more too For in some
cases, with a double block and runner, they can get two
more revolutions."
The skipper bowed a second time, and said, " My lord!
The old man's eye rested on him ; he had turned his head
without moving his body.
"Call me Doctor."
" Master Doctor, I am the skipper."
" Just so," said the doctor.
The doctor, as henceforward we shall call him, appeared
willing to converse.
" Skipper, have you an English sextant? "
" No."
" Without an English sextant you cannot take an altitude
at all."
" The Basques,'" replied the captain, " took altitudes
before there were any English."
" Be careful you are not taken aback."
" I keep her away when necessary."
" Have you tried how many knots she is running? "
" Yes."
"When?"
" Just now."
"How?"
" By the log."
" Did you take the trouble to look at the triangle? "
" Yes."
" Did the sand run through the glass in exactly thirty
seconds? "
" Yes."
" Are you sure that the sand has not worn the hole
between the globes? "
" Yes."
" Have you proved the sand-glass by the oscillations of a
bullet?"
" Suspended by a rope yarn drawn out from the top of a
coil of soaked hemp? Undoubtedly."
" Have you waxed the yarn lest it should stretch? "
THE LAUGHING MAN. 89
" Yes."
" Have you tested the log? "
" I tested the sand-glass by the bullet, and checked the log
by a round shot."
" Of what size was the shot? "
" One foot In diameter."
" Heavy enough? "
"It is an old round shot of our war hooker, La Casse de
Par-Grand."
" Which was in the Armada? "
" Yes."
" And which carried six hundred soldiers, fifty sailors, and
twenty-five guns? "
" Shipwreck knows it."
" How did you compute the resistance of the water to the
shot? "
" By means of a German scale."
" Have you taken into account the resistance of the rope
supporting the shot to the waves ? "
" Yes."
" What was the result? "
" The resistance of the water was 170 pounds."
" That's to say she is running four French leagues an hour."
" And three Dutch leagues."
" But that is the difference merely of the vessel's way and
the rate at which the sea is running ? "
" Undoubtedly."
" Whither are you steering? "
" For a creek I know, between Loyola and St. Sebastian."
" Make the latitude of the harbour's mouth as soon as
possible."
" Yes, as near as I can."
" Beware of gusts and currents. The first cause the
second."
" Traidores." *
" No abuse. The sea understands. Insult nothing. Rest
satisfied with watching."
* Traitors.
po THE LAUGHING MAN.
" I have watched, and I do watch. Just now the tide is
running against the wind; by-and-by, when it turns, we
shall be all right."
" Have you a chart? "
"No; not for this channel."
" Then you sail by rule of thumb? "
" Not at all. I have a compass."
" The compass is one eye, the chart the other."
" A man with one eye can see."
" How do you compute the difference between the true
and apparent course? "
" I've got my standard compass, and I make a guess."
" To guess is all very well. To know for certain is better.'*
" Christopher guessed."
" When there is a fog and the needle revolves treacher-
ously, you can never tell on which side you should look out
for squalls, and the end of it is that you know neither the
true nor apparent day's work. An ass with his chart is
better off than a wizard with his oracle."
" There is no fog in the breeze yet, and I see no cause for
alarm."
" Ships are like flies in the spider's web of the sea."
" Just now both winds and waves are tolerably favour-
able.
" Black specks quivering on the billows — such are men on
the ocean."
" I dare say there will be nothing wrong to-night."
" You may get into such a mess that you will find it hard
to get out of it."
" All goes well at present."
The doctor's eyes were fixed on the north-east. The
skipper continued, —
" Let us once reach the Gulf of Gascony, and I answer for
our safety. Ah ! I should say I am at home there. I know
it well, my Gulf of Gascony. It is a little basin, often very
boisterous; but there, I know every sounding in it and the
nature of the bottom — mud opposite San Cipriano, shells
opposite Cizarque, sand off Cape Penas, little pebbles off
THE LAUGHING MAN. 91
Boncaut de Mimizan, and I know the colour of every
pebble."
The skipper broke oS; the doctor was no longer listening.
The doctor gazed at the north-east Over that icy face
passed an extraordinary expression. All the agony of terror
possible to a mask of stone was depicted there. From his
mouth escaped this word, " Good! "
His eyeballs, which had all at once become quite round like
an owl's, were dilated with stupor on discovering a speck on
the horizon. He added,—
" It is well. As for me, I am resigned/"
The skipper looked at him. The doctor went on talking to
himself, or to some one in the deep,—
" I say, Yes."
Then he was silent, opened his eyes wider and wider with
renewed attention on that which he was watching, and said, —
"It is coming from afar, but not the less surely will it
come."
The arc of the horizon which occupied the visual rays and
thoughts of the doctor, being opposite to the west, was
illuminated by the transcendent reflection of twilight, as it
it were day. This arc, limited in extent, and surrounded by
streaks of grayish vapour, was uniformly blue, but of a leaden
rather than cerulean blue. The doctor, having completely
returned to the contemplation of the sea, pointed to this
atmospheric arc, and said, —
" Skipper, do you see? "
"What?"
" That."
"What?"
" Out there."
"A blue spot? Yes."
"What is it?"
" A niche in heaven."
" For those who go to heaven; for those who go elsewhere
it is another affair." And he emphasized these enigmatical
words with an appalling expression which was unseen in the
darkness.
92 THE LAUGHING MAN=
A silence ensued. The skipper, remembering the two
names given by the chief to this man, asked himself the
question, —
" Is he a madman, or is he a sage? "
The stiff and bony finger of the doctor remained im-
movably pointing, like a sign-post, to the misty blue spot in
the sky.
The skipper looked at this spot.
" In truth," he growled out, " it is not sky but clouds."
" A blue cloud is worse than a black cloud," said the doctor;
" and," he added, " it's a snow-cloud."
" La nube de la nieve,' said the skipper, as if trying to
understand the word better by translating it.
" Do you know what a snow-cloud is? " asked the doctor.
" No."
" You'll know by-and-by."
The skipper again turned his attention to the horizon.
Continuing to observe the cloud, he muttered between his
teeth,—
" One month of squalls, another of wet ; January with its
gales, February with its rains — that's all the winter we
Asturians get. Our rain even is warm. We've no snow but
on the mountains. Ay, ay; look out for the avalanche. The
avalanche is no respecter of persons. The avalanche is a
brute."
" And the waterspout is a monster," said the doctor,
adding, after a pause, " Here it comes." He continued,
"Several winds are getting up together — a strong wind
from the west, and a gentle wind from the east."
" That last is a deceitful one," said the skipper.
The blue cloud was growing larger.
" If the snow," said the doctor, " is appalling when it slips
down the mountain, think what it is when it falls from the
Pole!"
His eye was glassy. The cloud seemed to spread over his
face and simultaneously over the horizon. He continued, in
muting tones,—
THE LAUGHING MAN. 93
" Every minute the fatal hour draws nearer. The will of
Heaven is about to be manifested."
The skipper asked himself again this question, — " Is he
a madman? "
" Skipper," began the doctor, without taking his eyes off
the cloud, " have you often crossed the Channel? "
"This is the first time."
The doctor, who was absorbed by the blue cloud, and who,
as a sponge can take up but a definite quantity of water, had
but a definite measure of anxiety, displayed no more emotion
at this answer of the skipper than was expressed by a slight
shrug of his shoulders.
"How is that?"
" Master Doctor, my usual cruise is to Ireland. I sail from
Fontarabia to Black Harbour or to the Achill Islands. I go
sometimes to Braich-y-Pwll, a point on the Welsh coast.
But I always steer outside the Scilly Islands. I do not know
this sea at all."
" That's serious. Woe to him who is inexperienced on the
ocean! One ought to be familiar with the Channel — the
Channel is the Sphinx. Look out for shoals."
" We are in twenty-five fathoms here."
" We ought to get into fifty-five fathoms to the west, and
avoid even twenty fathoms to the east."
" We'll sound as we get on."
" The Channel is not an ordinary sea. The water rises
fifty feet with the spring tides, and twenty-five with neap
tides. Here we are in slack water. I thought you looked
scared."
" We'll sound to-night."
" To sound you must heave to, and that you cannot do."
"Why not?"
" On account of the wind."
" We'll try."
" The squall is close on us."
" We'll sound, Master Doctor."
" You could not even bring to."
" Trust in God."
94 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" Take care what you say. Pronounce not lightly the
awful name."
" I will sound, I tell you."
" Be sensible; you will have a gale of wind presently."
" I say that I will try for soundings."
" The resistance of the water will prevent the lead from
sinking, and the line will break. Ah! so this is your first
time in these waters? "
" The first time."
" Very well; in that case listen, skipper."
The tone of the word " listen " was so commanding that
the skipper made an obeisance.
" Master Doctor, I am all attention."
" Port your helm, and haul up on the starboard tack."
" What do you mean? "
" Steer your course to the west."
"Caramba! "
" Steer your course to the west."
" Impossible."
" As you will. What I tell you is for the others' sake.
As for myself, I am indifferent."
" But, Master Doctor, steer west? "
" Yes, skipper."
" The wind will be dead ahead."
" Yes, skipper."
' She'll pitch like the devil."
" Moderate your language. Yes, skipper."
" The vessel would be in irons."
" Yes, skipper."
" That means very likely the mast will go."
" Possibly."
" Do you wish me to steer west? "
" Yes."
" I cannot."
1 In that case settle your reckoning with the sea."
" The wind ought to change."
" It will not change all night."
" Why not ? "
THE LAUGHING MAN. 95
" Because it is a wind twelve hundred leagues in length."
" Make headway against such a wind ! Impossible."
" To the west, I tell you."
"I'll try, but in spite of everything she will fall off."
" That's the danger."
" The wind sets us to the east."
" Don't go to the east."
"Why not?"
" Skipper, do you know what is for us the word of death ? "
" No."
" Death is the east"
" I'll steer west."
This time the doctor, having turned right round, looked
the skipper full in the face, and with his eyes resting on him,
as though to implant the idea in his head, pronounced slowly,
syllable by syllable, these words, —
" If to-night out at sea we hear the sound of a bell, the
ship is lost."
The skipper pondered in amaze.
" What do you mean? "
The doctor did not answer. His countenance, expressive
for a moment, was now reserved. His eyes became vacuous.
He did not appear to hear the skipper's wondering question.
He was now attending to his own monologue. His lips let
fall, as if mechanically, in a low murmuring tone, these
words, —
" The time has come for sullied souls to purify themselves."
The skipper made that expressive grimace which raises the
chin towards the nose.
" He is more madman than sage," he growled, and moved
off.
Nevertheless he steered west.
But the wind and the sea were rising.
96 THE LAUGHING MAN.
CHAPTER V.
HARDQUANONNE.
THE mist was deformed by all sorts of inequalities, bulging
out at once on every point of the horizon, as if invisible
mouths were busy puffing out the bags of wind. The forma-
tion of the clouds was becoming ominous. In the west, as
in the east, the sky's depths were now invaded by the blue
cloud: it advanced in the teeth of the wind. These contra-
dictions are part of the wind's vagaries.
The sea, which a moment before wore scales, now wore a
skin — such is the nature of that dragon. It was no longer a
crocodile; it was a boa. The skin, lead-coloured and dirty,
looked thick, and was crossed by Ixeavy wrinkles. Here and
there, on its surface, bubbles of surge, like pustules, gathered
and then burst. The foam was like a leprosy. It was at
this moment that the hooker, still seen from afar by the
child, lighted her signal.
A quarter of an hour elapsed.
The skipper looked for the doctor: he was no longer on
deck. Directly the skipper had left him, the doctor had
stooped his somewhat ungainly form under the hood, and had
entered the cabin; there he had sat down near the stove, on
a block. He had taken a shagreen ink-bottle and a cordwain
pocket-book from his pocket; he had extracted from his
pocket-book a parchment folded four times, old, stained, and
yellow ; he had opened the sheet, taken a pen out of his ink-
case, placed the pocket-book flat on his knee, and the parch-
ment on the pocket-book; and by the rays of the lantern,
which was lighting the cook, he set to writing on the back of
the parchment. The roll of the waves inconvenienced him.
He wrote thus for some time.
As he wrote, the doctor remarked the gourd of aguardiente,
which the Provengal tasted every time he added a grain of
pimento to the puchero, as if he were consulting it in reference
to the seasoning. The doctor noticed the gourd, not because
it was a, bottle of brandy, but because of a name which was
THE LAUGHING MAN. 97
plaited in the wickerwork with red rushes on a background
of white. There was light enough in the cabin to permit of
his reading the name.
The doctor paused, and spelled it in a low voice, —
" Hardquanonne."
Then he addressed the cook.
" I had not observed that gourd before; did it belong to
Hardquanonne? "
"Yes," the cook answered; "to our poor comrade,
Hardquanonne. ' '
The doctor went on, —
" To Hardquanonne, the Fleming of Flanders? "
. "Yes."
" Who is in prison? "
" Yes."
" In the dungeon at Chatham? "
"It is his gourd," replied the cook; " and he was my
friend. I keep it in remembrance of him. When shall we
see him again? It is the bottle he used to wear slung over
his hip."
The doctor took up his pen again, and continued labori-
ously tracing somewhat straggling lines on the parchment.
He was evidently anxious that his handwriting should be
very legible ; and at length, notwithstanding the tremulous-
ness of the vessel and the tremulousness of age, he finished
what he wanted to write.
It was time, for suddenly a sea struck the craft, a mighty
rush of waters besieged the hooker, and they felt her break
into that fearful dance in which ships lead off with the
tempest.
The doctor arose and approached the stove, meeting the
ship's motion with his knees dexterously bent, dried as best
he could, at the stove where the pot was boiling, the lines he
'( had written, refolded the parchment in the pocket-book, and
\ replaced the pocket-book and the inkhorn in his pocket.
The stove was not the least ingenious piece of interior
economy in the hooker. It was j udiciously isolated. Mean-
while the pot heaved— the Provenfal was watching it.
4
98 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" Fish broth," said he.
" For the fishes," repUed the doctor. Then he went on
deck again.
CHAPTER VI.
THEY THINK THAT HELP IS AT HAND.
THROUGH his growing preoccupation the doctor in some
sort reviewed the situation ; and any one near to him might
have heard these words drop from his lips, —
" Too much rolling, and not enough pitching."
Then recalled to himself by the dark workings of his mind,
he sank again into thought, as a miner into his shaft. His
meditation in nowise interfered with his watch on the sea.
The contemplation of the sea is in itself a reverie.
The dark punishment of the waters, eternally tortured,
was commencing. A lamentation arose from the whole main.
Preparations, confused and melancholy, were forming in
space. The doctor observed all before him, and lost no
detail. There was, however, no sign of scrutiny in his face.
One does not scrutinize hell.
A vast commotion, yet half latent, but visible through the
turmoils in space, increased and irritated, more and more, the
winds, the vapours, the waves. Nothing is so logical and
nothing appears so absurd as the ocean. Self-dispersion is
the essence of its sovereignty, and is one of the elements of its
redundance. The sea is ever for and against. It knots that
it may unravel itself; one of its slopes attacks, the other
relieves. No apparition is so wonderful as the waves. Who
can paint the alternating hollows and promontories, the
valleys, the melting bosoms, the sketches ? How render the
thickets of foam, blendings of mountains and dreams ? The
indescribable is everywhere there — in the rending, in the
frowning, in the anxiety, in the perpetual contradiction, in
the chiaroscuro, in the pendants of the cloud, in the keys of
the ever-open vault, in the disaggregation without rupture,
in the funereal tumult caused by all that madness !
The wind had just set due north. Its violence was so
favourable and BO uaef ul in driving them away from England
THE LAUGHING MAN. 99
that the captain of the Matutina had made up his mind to set
all sail. The hooker slipped through the foam as at a gallop,
the wind right aft, bounding from wave to wave in a gay
frenzy. The fugitives were delighted, and laughed; they
clapped their hands, applauded the surf, the sea, the wind,
the sails, the swift progress, the flight, all unmindful of the
future. The doctor appeared not to see them, and dreamt on.
Every vestige of day had faded away. This was the
moment when the child, watching from the distant cliff, lost
sight of the hooker. Up to then his glance had remained
fixed, and, as it were, leaning on the vessel. What part had
that look in fate ? When the hooker was lost to sight in the
distance, and when the child could no longer see aught, the
child went north and the ship went south.
All were plunged in darkness.
CHAPTER VII.
SUPERHUMAN HORRORS.
ON their part it was with wild jubilee and delight that those
on board the hooker saw the hostile land recede and lessen
behind them. By degrees the dark ring of ocean rose higher,
dwarfing in twilight Portland, Purbeck, Tineham, Kim-
meridge, the Matravers, the long streaks of dim cliffs, and
the coast dotted with lighthouses.
England disappeared. The fugitives had now nothing
round them but the sea.
All at once night grew awful.
There was no longer extent nor space; the sky became
blackness, and closed in round the vessel. The snow began
to fall slowly; a few flakes appeared. They might have
been ghosts. Nothing else was visible in the course of the
wind. They felt as if yielded up. A snare lurked in every
possibility.
It is in this cavernous darkness that in our climate the
Polar waterspout makes its appearance.
A great muddy cloud, like to the belly of a hydra, hung
over ocean, and in places its lividity adhered to the waves.
I0o THE LAUGHING MAN.
Some of these adherences resembled pouches with holes,
pumping the sea, disgorging vapour, and refilling them-
selves with water. Here and there these suctions drew up
cones of foam on the sea.
The boreal storm hurled itself on the hooker. The hooker
rushed to meet it. The squall and the vessel met as though
to insult each other.
In the first mad shock not a sail was clewed up, not a jib
lowered, not a reef taken in, so much is flight a delirium.
The mast creaked and bent back as if in fear.
Cyclones, in our northern hemisphere, circle from left to
right, in the same direction as the hands of a watch, with a
velocity which is sometimes as much as sixty miles an hour.
Although she was entirely at the mercy of that whirling
power, the hooker behaved as if she were out in moderate
weather, without any further precaution than keeping her
head on to the rollers, with the wind broad on the bow so as
to avoid being pooped or caught broadside on. This semi-
prudence would have availed her nothing in case of the
wind's shifting and taking her aback.
A deep rumbling was brewing up in the distance. The
roar of the abyss, nothing can be compared to it. It is the
great brutish howl of the universe. What we call matter,
that unsearchable organism, that amalgamation of incom^
mensurable energies, in which can occasionally be detected
an almost imperceptible degree of intention which makes us
shudder, that blind, benighted cosmos, that enigmatical Pan,
has a cry, a strange cry, prolonged, obstinate, and continuous,
which is less than speech and more than thunder. That cry
is the hurricane. Other voices, songs, melodies, clamours,
tones, proceed from nests, from broods, from pairings, from
nuptials, from homes. This one, a trumpet, comes out of
the Naught, which is All. Other voices express the soul of
the universe; this one expresses the monster. It is the howl
of the formless. It is the inarticulate finding utterance in
the indefinite. A thing it is full of pathos and terror. Those
clamours converse above and beyond man. They rise, fall,
undulate, determine waves of sound, form all sorts of wild
THE LAUGHING MAN. 101
surprises for the mind, now burst close to the ear with the
importunity of a peal of trumpets, now assail us with the
rumbling hoarseness of distance. Giddy uproar which
resembles a language, and which, in fact, is a language. It
is the effort which the world makes to speak. It is the
lisping of the wonderful. In this wail is manifested vaguely
all that the vast dark palpitation endures, suffers, accepts,
rejects. For the most part it talks nonsense; it is like an
access of chronic sickness, and rather an epilepsy diffused
than a force employed ; we fancy that we are witnessing the
descent of supreme evil into the infinite. At moments we
seem to discern a reclamation of the elements, some vain
effort of chaos to reassert itself over creation. At times it is
a complaint. The void bewails and justifies itself. It is as
the pleading of the world's cause. We can fancy that the
universe is engaged in a lawsuit ; we listen — we try to grasp
the reasons given, the redoubtable for and against. Such a
moaning of the shadows has the tenacity of a syllogism.
Here is a vast trouble for thought. Here is the raison d'etre
of mythologies and polytheisms. To the terror of those
great murmurs are added superhuman outlines melting away
as they appear — Eumenides which are almost distinct,
throats of Furies shaped in the clouds, Plutonian chimeras
almost defined. No horrors equal those sobs, those laughs,
jfchose tricks of tumult, those inscrutable questions and
answers, those appeals to unknown aid. Man knows not
what to become in the presence of that awful incantation.
He bows under the enigma of those Draconian intonations.
Whatvlatent meaning have they? What do they signify?
What do they threaten ? What do they implore ? It would
seem as though all bonds were loosened. Vociferations from
precipice to precipice, from air to water, from the wind to
the wave, from the rain to the rock, from the zenith to the
nadir, from the stars to the foam — the abyss unmuzzled —
such is that tumult, complicated by some mysterious strife
with evil consciences.
The loquacity of night is not less lugubrious than its
silence. One feels in it the anger of the unknown.
XU2 THE LAUGHING MAN*.
Night is a presence. Presence of what ?
For that matter we must distinguish between night and the
shadows. In the night there is the absolute; in the darkness
the multiple. Grammar, logic as it is, admits of no singular
for the shadows. The night is one, the shadows are many.*
This mist of nocturnal mystery is the scattered, the fugi-
tive, the crumbling, the fatal; one feels earth no longer, one
feels the other reality.
In the shadow, infinite and indefinite, lives something or
some one ; but that which lives there forms part of our death.
After our earthly passage, when that shadow shall be light
for us, the life which is beyond our life shall seize us. Mean-
while it appears to touch and try us. Obscurity is a
pressure. Night is, as it were, a hand placed on our soul.
At certain hideous and solemn hours we feel that which is
beyond the wall of the tomb encroaching on us.
Never does this proximity of the unknown seem more
imminent than in storms at sea. The horrible combines with
the fantastic. The possible interrupter of human actions,
the old Cloud compeller, has it in his power to mould, in
whatsoever shape he chooses, the inconsistent element, the
limitless incoherence, the force diffused and undecided of
aim. That mystery the tempest every instant accepts and
executes some unknown changes of will, apparent or real.
Poets have, in all ages, called this the caprice of the waves.
But there is no such thing as caprice. The disconcerting
enigmas which in nature we call caprice, and in human life
chance, are splinters of a law revealed to us in glimpses.
CHAPTER VIII.
NIX ET NOX.
THE characteristic of the snowstorm is its blackness.
Nature's habitual aspect during a storm, the earth or sea
black and the sky pale, is reversed; the sky is black, the
• The above is a very inefficient and rather absurd translation of the
French. It turns upon the fact that in the French language the word
tor cUrknoaft it» plural— «H*&r«,—
fHE LAUGHING MAN, 103
ocean white, foam below, darkness above; a horizon
walled in with smoke; a zenith roofed with crape. The
tempest resembles a cathedral hung with mourning, but no
light in that cathedral: no phantom lights on the crests of
the waves, no spark, no phosphorescence, naught but a
huge shadow. The polar cyclone differs from the tropical
cyclone, inasmuch as the one sets fire to every light, and the
other extinguishes them all. The world is suddenly con-
verted into the arched vault of a cave. Out of the night falls
a dust of pale spots, which hesitate between sky and sea.
These spots, which are flakes of snow, slip, wander, and flow.
It is like the tears of a winding-sheet putting themselves into
lifelike motion. A mad wind mingles with this dissemina-
tion. Blackness crumbling into whiteness, the furious into
the obscure, all the tumult of which the sepulchre is capable,
a whirlwind under a catafalque — such is the snowstorm.
Underneath trembles the ocean, forming and re-forming over
portentous unknown depths.
In the polar wind, which is electrical, the flakes turn
suddenly into hailstones, and the air becomes filled with
projectiles; the water crackles, shot with grape.
No thunderstrokes : the lightning of boreal storms is silent.
What is sometimes said of the cat, " it swears," may be
applied to this lightning. It is a menace proceeding from
a mouth half open and strangely inexorable. The snow-
storm is a storm blind and dumb; when it has passed, the
ships also are often blind and the sailors dumb.
To escape from such an abyss is difficult.
It would be wrong, however, to believe shipwreck to be
absolutely inevitable. The Danish fishermen of Disco and
the Balesin; the seekers of black whales; Hearn steering
towards Behring Strait, to discover the mouth of Copper-
m:ne River; Hudson, Mackenzie, Vancouver, Ross, Dumont
D'Urville, all underwent at the Pole Itself the wildest
hurricanes, and escaped out of them.
It was into this description of tempest that the hooker had
entered, triumphant and in full sail — frenzy against frenzy.
When Montgomery, escaping from Rouen, threw his galley,
104 THE LAUGHING MAN,
with all the force of its oars, against the chain barring the
Seine at La Bouille, he showed similar effrontery.
The Matutina sailed on fast; she bent so much under her
sails that at moments she made a fearful angle with the sea
of fifteen degrees; but her good bellied keel adhered to the
water as if glued to it. The keel resisted the grasp of
the hurricane. The lantern at the prow cast its light
ahead.
The cloud, full of winds, dragging its tumour over the deep,
cramped and eat more and more into the sea round the
hooker. Not a gull, not a sea-mew, nothing but snow. The
expanse of the field of waves was becoming contracted and
terrible ; only three or four gigantic ones were visible.
Now and then a tremendous flash of lightning of a red
copper colour broke out behind the obscure superposition
of the horizon and the zenith; that sudden release of
vermilion flame revealed the horror of the clouds; that
abrupt conflagration of the depths, to which for an instant
the first tiers of clouds and the distant boundaries of the
celestial chaos seemed to adhere, placed the abyss in per-
spective. On this ground of fire the snow-flakes showed
black — they might have been compared to dark butterflies
flying about in a furnace — then all was extinguished.
The first explosion over, the squall, still pursuing the
hooker, began to roar in thorough bass. This phase of
grumbling is a perilous diminution of uproar. Nothing is so
terrifying as this monologue of the storm. This gloomy
recitative appears to serve as a moment of rest to the
mysterious combating forces, and indicates a species of
patrol kept in the unknown.
The hooker held wildly on her course. Her two mainsails
especially were doing fearful work. The sky and sea were as
of ink with jets of foam running higher than the mast.
Every instant masses of water r,wept the deck like a deluge,
and at each roll of the vessel the hawse-holes, now to star-
board, now 'o larboard, became as so many open mouths
vomiting back the foam into the sea. The women had taken
refuge in the cabin, but the men remained on deck; the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 105
blinding snow eddied round, the spitting surge mingled with
it. All was fury.
At that moment the chief of the band, standing abaft on
the stern frames, holding on with one hand to the shrouds,
and with the other taking off the kerchief he wore round his
head and waving it in the light of the lantern, gay and
arrogant, with pride in his face, and his hair in wild disorder,
intoxicated by all the darkness, cried out, —
"Wearefreel"
" Free, free, free," echoed the fugitives, and the band,
seizing hold of the rigging, rose up on deck.
" Hurrah! " shouted the chief.
And the band shouted in the storm, —
"Hurrah!"
Just as this clamour was dying away in the tempest, a
loud solemn voice rose from the other end of the vessel,
saying, —
"Silence!"
All turned their heads. The darkness was thick, and the
doctor was leaning against the mast so that he seemed part
of it, and they could not see him.
The voice spoke again, —
"Listen!"
All were silent.
Then did they distinctly hear through the darkness the toll
(of a bell.
CHAPTER IX.
THE CHARGE CONFIDED TO A RAGING SEA.
THE skipper, at the helm, burst out laughing, —
" A bell ! that's good. We are on the larboard tack.
What does the bell prove? Why, that we have land to
starboard."
The firm and measured voice of the doctor replied, —
" You have not land to starboard."
" But we have," shouted the skipper.
"No! "
" But that bell tolls from the land."
106 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" That bell," said the doctor, " tolls from the sea."
A shudder passed over these daring men. The haggard
faces of the two women appeared above the companion like
two hobgoblins conjured up. The doctor took a step forward,
separating his tall form from the mast. From the depth of
the night's darkness came the toll of the bell.
The doctor resumed, —
" There is in the midst of the sea, halfway between Port-
land and the Channel Islands, a buoy, placed there as a
caution; that buoy is moored by chains to the shoal, and
floats on the top of the water. On the buoy is fixed an Iron
trestle, and across the trestle a bell is hung. In bad weather
heavy seas toss the buoy, and the bell rings. * That is the
bell you hear."
The doctor paused to allow an extra violent gust of wind
to pass over, waited until the sound of the bell reasserted
itself, and then went on,— >
" To hear that bell in a storm, when the nor'-wester is
blowing, is to be lost. Wherefore? For this reason : if you
hear the bell, it is because the wind brings it to you. But
the wind is nor'-westerly, and the breakers of Aurigny lie
east. You hear the bell only because you are between the
buoy and the breakers. It is on those breakers the wind is
driving you. You are on the wrong side of the buoy. If you
were on the right side, you would be out at sea on a safe
course, and you would not hear the bell. The wind would
not convey the sound to you. You would pass close to the
buoy without knowing it. We are out of our course. That
bell is shipwreck sounding the tocsin. Now, look outl "
As the doctor spoke, the bell, soothed by a lull of the
storm, rang slowly stroke by stroke, and its intermitting
toll seemed to testify to the truth of the old man's words.
It was as the knell of the abyss.
All listened breathless, now to the voice, now to the bell.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 107
CHAPTER X.
THE COLOSSAL SAVAGE, THE STORM.
IN the meantime the skipper had caught up his speaking-
trumpet.
" Strike every sail, my lads; let go the sheets, man the
down-hauls, lower ties and brails. Let us steer to the west,
let us regain the high sea; head for the buoy, steer for the
bell — there's an offing down there. We've yet a chance."
" Try," said the doctor.
Let us remark here, by the way, that this ringing buoy, a
kind of bell tower on the deep, was removed in 1802. There
are yet alive very old mariners who remember hearing it.
It forewarned, but rather too late.
The orders of the skipper were obeyed. The Languedocian
made a third sailor. All bore a hand. Not satisfied with
brailing up, they furled the sails, lashed the earrings,
secured the clew-lines, bunt-lines, and leech-lines, and
clapped preventer-shrouds on the block straps, which thus
might serve as back-stays. They fished the mast. They
battened down the ports and bulls'-eyes, which is a method
of walling up a ship. These evolutions, though executed in
a lubberly fashion, were, nevertheless, thoroughly effective.
The hooker was stripped to bare poles. But in proportion
as the vessel, stowing every stitch of canvas, became more
helpless, the havoc of both winds and waves increased. The
seas ran mountains high. The hurricane, like an executioner
hastening to his victim, began to dismember the craft.
There came, in the twinkling of an eye, a dreadful crash:
the top-sails were blown from the bolt-ropes, the chess-trees
were hewn asunder, the deck was swept clear, the shrouds
were carried away, the mast went by the board, all the
lumber of the wreck was flying in shivers. The main
shrouds gave out although they were turned in, and
stoppered to four fathoms.
The magnetic currents common to snowstorms hastened
the destruction of the rigging, It broke as much from the
io8 THE LAUGHING MAN.
effect of effluvium as the violence of the wind. Most 6f the
chain gear, fouled in the blocks, ceased to work. Forward
the bows, aft the quarters, quivered under the terrific
shocks. One wave washed overboard the compass and its
binnacle. A second carried away the boat, which, like a
box slung under a carriage, had been, in accordance with the
quaint Asturian custom, lashed to the bowsprit. A third
breaker wrenched off the spritsail yard. A fourth swept
away the figurehead and signal light. The rudder only
was left.
To replace the ship's bow lantern they set fire to, and
suspended at the stem, a large block of wood covered with
oakum and tar.
The mast, broken in two, all bristling with quivering
splinters, ropes, blocks, and yards, cumbered the deck. In
falling it had stove in a plank of the starboard gunwale.
The skipper, still firm at the helm, shouted, —
" While we can steer we have yet a chance. The lower
planks hold good. Axes, axes I Overboard with the mast 1
Clear the decks! "
Both crew and passengers worked with the excitement of
despair. A few strokes of the hatchets, and it was done.
They pushed the mast over the side. The deck was cleared.
" Now," continued the skipper, " take a rope's end and
lash me to the helm." To the tiller they bound him.
While they were fastening him he laughed, and shouted,—
" Blow, old hurdy-gurdy, bellow. I've seen your equal
off Cape Machichaco."
And when secured he clutched the helm with that strange
hilarity which danger awakens.
" All goes well, my lads. Long live our Lady of Buglose I
Let us steer west."
An enormous wave came down abeam, and fell on the
vessel's quarter. There is always in storms a tiger-like wave,
a billow fierce and decisive, which, attaining a certain height,
creeps horizontally over the surface of the waters for a time,
then rises, roars, rages, and falling on the distressed vessel
tears it limb from limb.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 109
A cloud of foam covered the entire poop of the Matutina.
There was heard above the confusion of darkness and
waters a crash.
When the spray cleared off, when the stern again rose in
view, the skipper and the helm had disappeared. Both had
been swept away.
The helm and the man they had but just secured to it had
passed with the wave into the hissing turmoil of the hurricane.
The chief of the band, gazing intently into the darkness,
shouted, —
" Te burlas de nosotros ? "
To this defiant exclamation there followed another cry, —
" Let go the anchor. Save the skipper."
They rushed to the capstan and let go the anchor.
Hookers carry but one. In this case the anchor reached
the bottom, but only to be lost. The bottom was of the
hardest rock. The billows were raging with resistless force.
The cable snapped like a thread.
The anchor lay at the bottom of the sea. At the cut-
water there remained but the cable end protruding from the
hawse-hole.
From this moment the hooker became a wreck. The
Matutina was irrevocably disabled. The vessel, just before
in full sail, and almost formidable in her speed, was now
helpless. All her evolutions were uncertain and executed at
random. She yielded passively and like a log to the capri-
cious fury of the waves. That in a few minutes there should
be in place of an eagle a useless cripple, such a transforma-
tion is to be witnessed only at sea.
The howling of the wind became more and more frightful.
A hurricane has terrible lungs ; it makes unceasingly mourn-
ful additions to darkness, which cannot be intensified. The
bell on the sea rang despairingly, as if tolled by a weird hand.
The Matutina drifted like a cork at the mercy of the waves.
She sailed no longer — she merely floated. Every moment she
seemed about to turn over on her back, like a dead fish. The
good condition and perfectly water-tight state of the hull
alone saved her from thia disaster. Below the water-line
IIO THE LAUGHING MAN.
not a plank had started. There was not a cranny, chink,
nor crack; and she had not made a single drop of water in
the hold. This was lucky, as the pump, being out of order,
was useless.
The hooker pitched and roared frightfully in the seething
billows. The vessel had throes as of sickness, and seemed to
be trying to belch forth the unhappy crew.
Helpless they clung to the standing rigging, to the tran-
soms, to the shank painters, to the gaskets, to the broken
planks, the protruding nails of which tore their hands, to the
warped riders, and to all the rugged projections of the stumps
of the masts. From time to time they listened. The toll of
the bell came over the waters fainter and fainter; one would
have thought that it also was in distress. Its ringing was no
more than an intermittent rattle. Then this rattle died
away. Where were they? At what distance from the
buoy? The sound of the bell had frightened them; its
silence terrified them. The north-wester drove them for-
ward $n perhaps a fatal course. They felt themselves
wafted on by maddened and ever-recurring gusts of wind.
The wreck sped forward in the darkness. There is nothing
more fearful than being hurried forward blindfold. They
felt the abyss before them, over them, under them. It waS
no longer a run, it was a rush.
Suddenly, through the appalling density of the snow-
storm, there loomed a red light.
"A lighthouse I " cried the crew.
CHAPTER XI.
THE CASKETS.
IT was indeed the Caskets light.
A lighthouse of the nineteenth century is a high cylinder
of masonry, surmounted by scientifically constructed
machinery for throwing light. The Caskets lighthouse in
particular is a triple white tower, bearing three light-rooms.
These three chambers revolve on clockwork wheels, with
•uch precision that the mna on watch who teea them from
THE LAUGHING MAN. in
sea can invariably take ten steps during their irradiation,
and twenty-five during their eclipse. Everything is based
on the focal plan, and on the rotation of the octagon drum,
formed of eight wide simple lenses in range, having above
and below it two series of dioptric rings; an algebraic gear,
secured from the effects of the beating o£ winds and waves
by glass a millimetre thick, yet sometimes broken by the sea-
eagles, which dash themselves like great moths against these
gigantic lanterns. The building which encloses and sustains
this mechanism, and in which it is set, is also mathematically
constructed. Everything about it is plain, exact, bare,
precise, correct. A lighthouse is a mathematical figure.
In the seventeenth century a lighthouse was a sort of
plume of the land on the seashore. The architecture of a
lighthouse tower was magnificent and extravagant. It was
covered with balconies, balusters, lodges, alcoves, weather-
cocks. Nothing but masks, statues, foliage, volutes, reliefs,
figures large and small, medallions with inscriptions. Pax
in betto, said the Eddystone lighthouse. We may as well
observe, by the way, that this declaration of peace did not
always disarm the ocean. Winstanley repeated it on a
lighthouse which he constructed at his own expense, on a
wild spot near Plymouth. The tower ~being finished, he
shut himself up in it to have it tried by the tempest. The
storm came, and carried off the lighthouse and Winstanley
in it. Such excessive adornment gave too great a hold to
the hurricane, as generals too brilliantly equipped in battle
draw the enemy's fire. Besides whimsical designs in stone,
they were loaded with whimsical designs in iron, copper,
and wood. The ironwork was in relief, the woodwork stood
out. On the sides of the lighthouse there jutted out, cling-
ing to the walls among the arabesques, engines of every
description, useful and useless, windlasses, tackles, pulleys,
counterpoises, ladders, cranes, grapnels. On the pinnacle
around the light delicately-wrought ironwork held great
iron chandeliers, in which were placed pieces of rope steeped
in resin; wicks which burned doggedly, and which no wind
extinguished; and from top to bottom the tower was covered
tu THE LAUGHING MAN.
by a complication of sea-standards, banderoles, banners,
flags, pennons, colours which rose from stage to stage, from
story to story, a medley of all hues, all shapes, all heraldic
devices, all signals, all confusion, up to the light chamber,
making, in the storm, a gay riot of tatters about the blaze.
That insolent light on the brink of the abyss showed like a
defiance, and inspired shipwrecked men with a spirit of daring.
But the Caskets light was not after this fashion.
It was, at that period, merely an old barbarous lighthouse,
such as Henry I. had built it after the loss of the White Ship
— a flaming pile of wood under an iron trellis, a brazier
behind a railing, a head of hair flaming in the wind.
The only improvement made in this lighthouse since the
twelfth century was a pair of forge-bellows worked by an
indented pendulum and a stone weight, which had been
added to the light chamber in 1610.
The fate of the sea-birds who chanced to fly against these
old lighthouses was more tragic than those of our days. The
birds dashed against them, attracted by the light, and fell
into the brazier, where they could be seen struggling like
black spirits in a hell, and at times they would fall back
again between the railings upon the rock, red hot, smoking,
lame, blind, like half-burnt flies out of a lamp.
To a full-rigged ship in good trim, answering readily to the
pilot's handling, the Caskets light is useful; it cries, "Look
out; " it warns her of the shoal. To a disabled ship it is
simply terrible. The hull, paralyzed and inert, without
resistance, without defence against the impulse of the storm
or the mad heaving of the waves, a fish without fins, a bird
without wings, can but go where the wind wills. The light-
house shows the end — points out the spot where it is doomed
to disappear— throws light upon the burial. It is the torch
of the sepulchre.
To light up the inexorable chasm, to warn against the
inevitable, what more tragic mockery I
THE LAUGHING MAN. 113
CHAPTER XII.
FACE TO FACE WITH THE ROCK.
THE wretched people in distress on board the Matutina under-
stood at once the mysterious derision which mocked their
shipwreck. The appearance of the lighthouse raised their
spirits at first, then overwhelmed them. Nothing could be
done, nothing attempted. What has been said of kings, we
may say of the waves — we are their people, we»are their
prey. All that they rave must be borne. The nor'-wester
was driving the hooker on the Caskets. They were near-
ing them; no evasion was possible. They drifted rapidly
towards the reef; they felt that they were getting into
shallow waters ; the lead, if they could have thrown it to any
purpose, would not have shown more than three or four
fathoms. The shipwrecked people heard the dull sound of the
waves being sucked within the submarine caves of the steep
rock. They made out, under the lighthouse, like a dark
cutting between two plates of granite, the narrow passage
of the ugly wild-looking little harbour, supposed to be full of
the skeletons of men and carcasses of ships. It looked like
the mouth of a cavern, rather than the entrance of a port.
They could hear the crackling of the pile on high within the
iron grating. A ghastly purple illuminated the storm ; the
collision of the rain and hail disturbed the mist. The black
cloud and the red flame fought, serpent against serpent;
live ashes, reft by the wind, flew from the fire, and the
sudden assaults of the sparks seemed to drive the snow-
flakes before them. The breakers, blurred at first in out-
line, now stood out in bold relief, a medley of rocks with
peaks, crests, and vertebrae. The angles were formed by
strongly marked red lines, and the inclined planes in blood-
like streams of light. As they neared it, the outline of the
reefs increased and rose — sinister.
One of the women, the Irishwoman, told her beads wildly.
In place of the skipper, who was the pilot, remained the
chief, who was the captain. The Basques all know the
1 14 THE LAUGHING MAN,
mountain and the sea. They are bold on the precipice, and
inventive in catastrophes.
They neared the cliff. They were about to strike. Sud-
denly they were so close to the great north rock of the
Caskets that it shut out the lighthouse from them. They
saw nothing but the rock and the red light behind it. The
huge rock looming in the mist was like a gigantic black
woman with a hood of fire.
That ill-famed rock is called the Biblet. It faces the
north side the reef, which on the south is faced by another
ridge, L'Etacq-aux-giulmets. The chief looked at the
Biblet, and shouted, —
" A man with a will to take a rope to the rock ! Who can
swim? "
No answer.
No one on board knew how to swim, not even the sailors —
an ignorance not uncommon among seafaring people.
A beam nearly free of its lashings was swinging loose. The
chief clasped it with both hands, crying, " Help me."
They unlashed the beam. They had now at their dis-
posal the very thing they wanted. From the defensive,
they assumed the offensive.
It was a longish beam of heart of oak, sound and strong,
useful either as a support or as an engine of attack — a lever
for a burden, a ram against a tower.
" Ready! " shouted the chief.
All six, getting foothold on the stump of the mast, threw
their weight on the spar projecting over the side, straight as
a lance towards a projection of the cliff.
It was a dangerous manoeuvre. To strike at a mountain
is audacity indeed. The six men might well have been
thrown into the water by the shock.
There is variety in struggles with storms. After the
lurricane, the shoal; after the wind, the rock. First the
intangible, then the immovable, to be encountered.
Some minutes passed, such minutes as whiten men's hair.
The rock and the vessel were about to come in collision.
The rock, like a culprit, awaited the blow.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 1x5
A resistless wave rushed in; it ended the respite. It
caught the vessel underneath, raised it, and swayed it for
an instant as the sling swings its projectile.
" Steady 1 " cried the chief ; " it is only a rock, and we are
men."
The beam was couched, the six men were one with it, its
sharp bolts tore their arm-pits, but they did not feel them.
The wave dashed the hooker against the rock.
Then came the shock.
It came under the shapeless cloud of foam which always
hides such catastrophes.
When this cloud fell back into the sea, when the waves
rolled back from the rock, the six men were tossing about the
deck, but the Matutina was floating alongside the rock —
clear of it. The beam had stood and turned the vessel ; the
sea was running so fast that in a few seconds she had left
the Caskets behind.
Such things sometimes occur. It was a straight stroke of
the bowsprit that saved Wood of Largo at the mouth of the
Tay. In the wild neighbourhood of Cape Winterton, and
under the command of Captain Hamilton, it was the
appliance of such a lever against the dangerous rock,
Branodu-um, that saved the Royal Mary from shipwreck,
although she was but a Scotch built frigate. The force of
the waves can be so abruptly discomposed that changes of
direction can be easily managed, or at least are possible even
in the most violent collisions. There is a brute in the
tempest. The hurricane is a bull, and can be turned.
The whole secret of avoiding shipwreck is to try and pass
from the secant to the tangent.
Such was the service rendered by the beam to the vessel.
It had done the work of an oar, had taken the place of a
rudder. But the manoeuvre once performed could not be
repeated. The beam was overboard ; the shock of the
collision had wrenched it out of the men's hands, and it was
lost in the waves. To loosen another beam would have been
to dislocate the hull.
The hurricane carried, off the Matutina. Presently the
u6 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Caskets showed as a harmless encumbrance on the horizon.
Nothing looks more out of countenance than a reef of rocks
under such circumstances. There are in nature, in its
obscure aspects, in which the visible blends with the in-
visible, certain motionless, surly profiles, which seem to
express that a prey has escaped.
Thus glowered the Caskest while the Matutina fled.
The lighthouse paled in distance, faded, and dis-
appeared.
There was something mournful in its extinction. Layers
ot mist sank down upon the now uncertain light. Its rays
died in the waste of waters; the flame floated, struggled, sank,
and lost its form. It might have been a drowning creature.
The brasier dwindled to the snuff of a candle ; then nothing
more but a weak, uncertain flutter. Around it spread a
circle of extravasated glimmer; it was like the quenching of
light in the pit of night.
The bell which had threatened was dumb. The light-
house which had threatened had melted away. And yet it
was more awful now that they had ceased to threaten. One
was a voice, the other a torch. There was something human
about them.
They were gone, and nought remained but the abyss.
CHAPTER XIII.
FACE TO FACE WITH NIGHT.
AGAIN was the hooker running with the shadow into im-
measurable darkness.
The Matutina, escaped from the Caskets, sank and rose
from billow to billow. A respite, but in chaos.
Spun round by the wind, tossed by all the thousand
motions of the wave, she reflected every mad oscillation of
the sea. She scarcely pitched at all — a terrible symptom of
a ship's distress. Wrecks merely roll. Pitching is a con-
vulsion of the strife. The helm alone can turn a vessel to
the wind.
In storms, and more especially in the meteors of BUOW, sea
THE LAUGHING MAN. 117
and night end by melting into amalgamation, resolvitig into
nothing but a smoke. Mists, whirlwinds, gales, motion in
all directions, no basis, no shelter, no stop. Constant re~
commencement, one gulf succeeding another. No horizon
visible; intense blackness for background. Through all
these the hooker drifted.
To have got free of the Caskets, to have eluded the rock,
v/as a victory for the shipwrecked men ; but it was a victory
which left them in stupor. They had raised no cheer: at
sea such an imprudence is not repeated twice. To throw
down a challenge where they could not cast the lead, would
have been too serious a jest.
The repulse of the rock was an impossibility achieved.
They were petrified by it. By degrees, however, they began
to hope again. Such are the insubmergable mirages of the
soul ! There is no distress so complete but that even in the
most critical moments the inexplicable sunrise of hope is
seen in its depths. These poor wretches were ready to ac-
knowledge to themselves that they were saved. It was on
their lips.
But suddenly something terrible appeared to them in the
darkness.
On the port bow arose, standing stark, cut out on the back-
ground of mist, a tall, opaque mass, vertical, right-angled, a
tower of the abyss. They watched it open-mouthed.
The storm was driving them towards it.
They knew not what it was. It was the Ortach rock.
CHAPTER XIV.
ORTACH.
THE reef reappeared. After the Caskets comes Ortach. The
storm is no artist; brutal and all-powerful, it never varies
its appliances. The darkness is inexhaustible. Its snares
and perfidies never come to an end. As for man, he soon
conies to the bottom of his resources. Man expends his
strength, the abyss never.
The shipwrecked men turned towards the chief, their
u8 THE LAUGHING MAN,
hope. He could only shrug his shoulders. Dismal contempt
of helplessness.
A pavement in the midst of the ocean— such is the Ortach
rock. The Ortach, all of a piece, rises up in a straight line
to eighty feet above the angry beating of the waves. Waves
and ships break against it. An immovable cube, it plunges
its rectilinear planes apeak into the numberless serpentine
curves of the sea.
At night it stands an enormous block resting on the folds
of a huge black sheet. In time of storm it awaits the stroke
of the axe, which is the thunder-clap.
But there is never a thunder-clap during the snowstorm.
True, the ship has the bandage round her eyes; darkness is
knotted about her ; she is like one prepared to be led to the
scaffold. As for the thunderbolt, which makes quick ending,
it is not to be hoped for.
The Matutina, nothing better than a log upon the waters,
drifted towards this rock as she had drifted towards the
other. The poor wretches on board, who had for a moment
believed themselves saved, relapsed into their agony. The
destruction they had left behind faced them again. The reef
reappeared from the bottom of the sea. Nothing had been
gained.
The Caskets are a figuring iron * with a thousand com-
partments. The Ortach is a wall. To be wrecked on the
Caskets is to be cut into ribbons; to strike on the Ortach is
to be crushed into powder.
Nevertheless, there was one chance.
On a straight frontage such as that of the Ortach neither
the wave nor the cannon ball can ricochet. The operation
is simple: first the flux, then the reflux; a wave advances, a
billow returns.
In such cases the question of life and death is balanced
thus: if the wave carries the vessel on the rock, she breaks
oa it and is lost; if the billow retires before the ship has
touched, she is carried back, she is saved.
It was a moment of great anxiety; those on board saw
* Gaufrifr, the iron with which a pattern is traced on stuff.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 119
through the gloom the great decisive wave bearing down on
them. How far was it going to drag them? If the wave
broke upon the ship, they were carried on the rock and
dashed to pieces. If it passed under the ship ....
The wave did pass under.
They breathed again.
But what of the recoil? What would the surf do with
them? The surf carried them back. A few minutes later
the Matutina was free of the breakers. The Ortach faded
from their view, as the Caskets had done. It was their
second victory. For the second time the hooker had verged
on destruction, and had drawn back in time.
CHAPTER XV.
PORTENTOSUM MARE.
MEANWHILE a thickening mist had descended on the drifting
wretches. They were ignorant of their whereabouts, they
could scarcely see a cable's length around. Despite a furious
storm of hail which forced them to bend down their heads,
the women had obstinately refused to go below again. No
one, however hopeless, but wishes, if shipwreck be inevitable,
to meet it in the open air. When so near death, a ceiling
above one's head seems like the first outline of a coffin.
They were now in a short and chopping sea. A turgid
sea indicates its constraint. Even in a fog the entrance into
a strait may be known by the boiling-like appearance of the
waves. And thus it was, for they were unconsciously coast-
ing Aurigny. Between the west of Ortach and the Caskets and
the east of Aurigny the sea is hemmed in and cramped, and
the uneasy position determines locally the condition of
storms. The sea suffers like others, and when it suffers it is
irritable. That channel is a thing to fear.
The Matutina was in it.
Imagine under the sea a tortoise shell as big as Hyde
Park or the Champs Elysees, of which every striature is a
shallow, and every embossment a reef. Such is the western
ftj^roacli of Auriga,/, a The »e& cover* and conceals this ship-
120 THE LAUGHING MAN.
wrecking apparatus. On this conglomeration of submarine
breakers the cloven waves leap and foam — in calm weather,
a chopping sea; in storms, a chaos.
The shipwrecked men observed this new complication
without endeavouring to explain it to themselves. Suddenly
they understood it. A pale vista broadened in the zenith;
a wan tinge overspread the sea; the livid light revealed on the
port side a long shoal stretching eastward, towards which
the power of the rushing wind was driving the vessel. The
shoal was Aurigny.
What was that shoal? They shuddered. They would
have shuddered even more had a voice answered them —
Aurigny.
No isle so well defended against man's approach as Aurigny.
Below and above water it is protected by a savage guard,
of which Ortach is the outpost. To the west, Burhou,
Sauteriaux, Anfroque, Niangle, Fond du Croc, Les Ju-
melles, La Grosse, La Clanque, Les Eguillons, Le Vrac, La
Fosse-Maliere ; to the east, Sauquet, Hommeau Floreau, La
Brinebetais, La Queslingue, Croquelihou, La Fourche, Le Saut,
Noire Pute, Coupie, Orbue. These are hydra-monsters of the
species reef.
One of these reefs is called Le But, the goal, as if to imply
that every voyage ends there.
This obstruction of rocks, simplified by night and sea,
appeared to the shipwrecked men in the shape of a single
dark band, a sort of black blot on the horizon.
Shipwreck is the ideal of helplessness ; to be near land, and
unable to reach it; to float, yet not to be able to do so in any
desired direction ; to rest the foot on what seems firm and is
fragile; to be full of life, when o'ershadowed by death; to
be the prisoner of space; to be walled in between sky and
ocean; to have the infinite overhead like a dungeon; to be
encompassed by the eluding elements of wind and waves;
and to be seized, bound, paralyzed — such a load of misfor-
tune stupefies and crushes us. We imagine that in it we
catch a glimpse of the sneer of the opponent who is beyond
our reach. That which holds you fast is that which releases
THE LAUGHING MAN. 121
the birds and sets the fishes free. It appears nothing, and is
everything. We are dependent on the air which is ruffled by
our mouths ; we are dependent on the water which we catch
in the hollow of our hands. Draw a glassful from the storm,
and it is but a cup of bitterness — a mouthful is nausea, a
waveful is extermination. The grain of sand in the desert,
the foam-flake on the sea, are fearful symptoms. Omnipotence
takes no care to hide its atom, it changes weakness into
strength, fills naught with all ; and it is with the infinitely little
that the infinitely great crushes you. It is with its drops
the ocean dissolves you. You feel you are a plaything.
A plaything — ghastly epithet !
The Matutina was a little above Aurigny, which was not an
unfavourable position; but she was drifting towards its
northern point, which was fatal. As a bent bow discharges
its arrow, the nor'-wester was shooting the vessel towards the
northern cape. Off that point, a little beyond the harbour
of Corbelets, is that which the seamen of the Norman archi-
pelago call a " singe."
The " singe," or race, is a furious kind of current. A
wreath of funnels in the shallows produces in the waves a
wreath of whirlpools. You escape one to fall into another.
A ship caught hold of by the race, winds round and round
until some sharp rock cleaves her hull ; then the shattered
vessel stops, her stern rises from the waves, the stem
completes the revolution in the abyss, the stern sinks in,
and all is sucked down. A circle of foam broadens and
floats, and nothing more is seen on the surface of the waves
but a few bubbles here and there rising from the smothered
breathings below.
The three most dangerous races in the whole Channel are
one close to the well-known Girdler Sands, one at Jersey
between the Pignonnet and the Point of Noirmont, and the
race of Aurigny.
Had a local pilot been on board the Matutina, he could
have warned them of their fresh peril. In place of a pilot, they
had their instinct. In situations of extreme danger men are
endowed with second sight. High contortions of foam were
I22 THE LAUGHING MAN,
flying along the coast in the frenzied raid of the wind. It
was the spitting of the race. Many a bark has been swamped
In that snare. Without knowing what awaited them, they
approached the spot with horror.
How to double that cape? There were no means of
doing it.
Just as they had seen, first the Caskets, then Ortach, rise
before them, they now saw the point of Aurigny, all of steep
rock. It was like a number of giants, rising up one after
another — a series of frightful duels.
Charybdis and Scylla are but two; the Caskets, Ortach,
and Aurigny are three.
The phenomenon of the horizon being invaded by the
rocks was thus repeated with the grand monotony of the
abyss. The battles of the ocean have the same sublime
tautology as the combats of Homer.
Each wave, as they neared it, added twenty cubits to the
cape, awfully magnified by the mist; the fast decreasing
distance seemed more inevitable — they were touching the
skirts of the racel The first fold which seized them would
drag them in — another wave surmounted, and all would
be over.
Suddenly the hooker was driven back, as by the blow of a
Titan's fist. The wave reared up under the vessel and fell
back, throwing the waif back in its mane of foam. The
Matutina, thus impelled, drifted away from Aurigny.
She was again on the open sea.
Whence had come the succour? From the wind. The
breath of the storm had changed its direction.
The wave had played with them; now it was the wind's
turn. They had saved themselves from the Caskets. Off
Ortach it was the wave which had been their friend. Now
it was the wind. The wind had suddenly veered from north
to south. The sou'-wester had succeeded the nor'-wester.
The current is the wind in the waters; the wind is the
current in the air. These two forces had just counteracted
each other, and it had been the wind's will to snatch its prey
from the current.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 123
The sudden fantasies of ocean are uncertain. They are,
perhaps, an embodiment of the perpetual, when at their
mercy man must neither hope nor despair. They do and
they undo. The ocean amuses itself. Every shade of wild,
untamed ferocity is phased in the vastness of that cunning
sea, which Jean Bart used to call the " great brute." To its
claws and their gashings succeed soft intervals of velvet
paws. Sometimes the storm hurries on a wreck, at others it
works out the problem with care; it might almost be said
that it caresses it. The sea can afford to take its time, as
men in their agonies find out.
We must own that occasionally these lulls of the torture
announce deliverance. Such cases are rare. However this
may be, men in extreme peril are quick to believe in rescue;
the slightest pause in the storm's threats is sufficient; they
tell themselves that they are out of danger. After believing
themselves buried, they declare their resurrection; they
feverishly embrace what they do not yet possess; it is clear
that the bad luck has turned; they declare themselves satis-
fied; they are saved ; they cry quits with God. They should
not be in so great a hurry to give receipts to the Unknown.
The sou'-wester set in with a whirlwind. Shipwrecked men
have never any but rough helpers. The Matutina was
dragged rapidly out to sea by the remnant of her rigging —
like a dead woman trailed by the hair. It was like the
enfranchisement granted by Tiberius, at the price of
violation.
The wind treated with brutality those whom it saved ; it
rendered service with fury; it was help without pity.
The wreck was breaking up under the severity of its
deliverers.
Hailstones, big and hard enough to charge a blunderbuss,
smote the vessel; at every rotation of the waves these hail-
stones rolled about the deck like marbles. The hooker,
whose deck was almost flush with the water, was being
beaten out of shape by the rolling masses of water and its
sheets of spray. On board it each man was for himself.
They clung on as best they could. As each sea swept over
I24 THE LAUGHING MAN.
them, it was with a sense of surprise they saw that all were
still there. Several had their faces torn by splinters.
Happily despair has stout hands. In terror a child's hand
has the grasp of a giant. Agony makes a vice of a woman's
fingers. A girl in her fright can almost bury her rose-
coloured fingers in a piece of iron. With hooked fingers they
hung on somehow, as the waves dashed on and passed off
them; but every wave brought them the fear of being swept
away.
Suddenly they were relieved.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE PROBLEM SUDDENLY WORKS IN SILENCE.
THE hurricane had just stopped short. There was no longer
in the air sou' -wester or nor'-wester. The fierce clarions of
space were mute. The whole of the waterspout had poured
from the sky without any warning of diminution, as if it had
slided perpendicularly into a gulf beneath. None knew what
had become of it; flakes replaced the hailstones, the snow
began to fall slowly. No more swsll : the sea flattened down.
Such sudden cessations are peculiar to snowstorms. The
electric effluvium exhausted, all becomes still, even the wave,
which in ordinary storms often remains agitated for a long
time. In snowstorms it is not so. No prolonged anger in
the deep. Like a tired-out worker it becomes drowsy
directly, thus almost giving the lie to the laws of statics, but
not astonishing old seamen, who know that the sea is full
of unforeseen surprises.
The same phenomenon takes place, although very rarely,
in ordinary storms. Thus, in our time, on the occasion of
the memorable hurricane of July 2/th, 1867, at Jersey the
wind, after fourteen hours' fury, suddenly relapsed into a
dead calm.
In a few minutes the hooker was floating in sleeping waters.
At the same time (for the last phase of these storms
resembles the first) they could distinguish nothing; all that
had been made visible in the convulsions of the meteoric
THE LAUGHING MAN. 125
cloud was again dark. Pale outlines were fused in vague
mist, and the gloom of infinite space closed about the vessel.
The wall of night — that circular occlusion, that interior of a
cylinder the diameter of which was lessening minute by
minute — enveloped the Matutina, and, with the sinister
deliberation of an encroaching iceberg, was drawing in
dangerously. In the zenith nothing — a lid of fog closing
down. It was as if the hooker were at the bottom of the well
of the abyss.
In that well the sea was a puddle of liquid lead. No stir
in the waters — ominous immobility 1 The ocean is never
less tamed than when it is still as a pool.
All was silence, stillness, blindness.
Perchance the silence of inanimate objects is taciturnity.
The last ripples glided along the hull. The deck was
horizontal, with an insensible slope to the sides. Some
broken planks were shifting about irresolutely. The block
on which they had lighted the tow steeped in tar, in place
of the signal light which had been swept, away, swung no
longer at the prow, and no longer let fall burning drops into
the sea. What little breeze remained in the clouds was
noiseless. The snow fell thickly, softly, with scarce a slant.
No foam of breakers could be heard. The peace of shadows
was over all.
This repose succeeding all the past exasperations and
paroxysms was, for the poor creatures so long tossed about,
an unspeakable gomfort. It was as though the punishment
of the rack had ceased. They caught a glimpse about them
and above them of something which seemed like a consent
that they should be saved. They regained confidence. All
that had been fury was now tranquillity. It appeared to
them a pledge of peace. Their wretched hearts dilated.
They were able to let go the end of rope or beam to which
they had clung, to rise, hold themselves up, stand, walk,
move about. They felt inexpressibly calmed. There are in
the depths of darkness such phases of paradise, preparations
for other things. It was clear that they were delivered out
of the storm, out of the foam, out of the wind, out of the
126 THE LAUGHING MAN,
Uproar. Henceforth all the chances were in their favour.
In three or four hours it would be sunrise. They would be
seen by some passing ship; they would be rescued. The
worst was over; they were re-entering life. The important
feat was to have been able to keep afloat until the cessation
of the tempest. They said to themselves, "It is all over
this time."
Suddenly they found that all was indeed over.
One of the sailors, the northern Basque, Galdeazun by
name, went down into the hold to look for a rope, then came
above again and said, —
" The hold is full."
" Of what? " asked the chief.
" Of water," answered the sailor.
The chief cried out, —
" What does that mean? "
" It means," replied Galdeazun, " that in half an hour we
shall founder."
CHAPTER XVII.
THE LAST RESOURCE.
THERE was a hole in the keel. A leak had been sprung.
When it happened no one could have said. Was it when
they touched the Caskets ? Was it off Ortach ? Was it when
they were whirled about the shallows west of Aurigny ? It
was most probable that they had touched some rock there.
They had struck against some hidden buttress which they
had not felt in the midst of the convulsive fury of the wind
which was tossing them. In tetanus who would feel a prick ?
The other sailor, the southern Basque, whose name was
Ave Maria, went down into the hold, too, came on deck
again, and said, —
" There are two varas of water in the hold."
About six feet.
Ave Maria added, " In less than forty minutes we shall
sink."
Where was the leak? They couldn't find it. It was
hidden by the water which wa» filling up the hold. The
THE LAUGHING MAN. 127
vessel had a hole in her hull somewhere under the water-line,
quite forward in the keel. Impossible to find it — impossible
to check it. They had a wound which they could not stanch.
The water, however, was not rising very fast.
The chief called out, —
" We must work the pump."
Galdeazun replied, " We have no pump left."
" Then," said the chief, " we must make for land."
"Where is the land? "
" I don't know."
" Nor I."
" But it must be somewhere."
" True enough."
" Let some one steer for it."
" We have no pilot."
" Stand to the tiller yourself."
" We have lost the tiller."
" Let's rig one out of the first beam we can lay hands on.
Nails — a hammer — quick — some tools."
" The carpenter's box is overboard, we have no tools."
" We'll steer all the same, no matter where."
" The rudder is lost." •
" Where is the boat? We'll get in and row."
" The boat is lost."
" We'll row the wreck."
" We have lost the oars."
" We'll sail."
" We have lost the sails and the mast."
" We'll rig one up "/ith a pole and a tarpaulin for sail
Let's get clear of this and trust in the wind."
" There is no wind."
The wind, indeed, had left them, the storm had fled; and
its departure, which they had believed to mean safety,
meant, in fact, destruction. Had the sou'-wester continued
it might have driven them wildly on some shore — might have
beaten the leak in speed — might, perhaps, have carried them
to some propitious sandbank, and cast them on it before the
hooker foundered. The swiftness of the storm, bearing them
128 THE LAUGHING MAN.
away, might have enabled them to reach land ; but no more
wind, no more hope. They were going to die because the
hurricane was over.
The end was near!
Wind, hail, the hurricane, the whirlwind — these are wild
combatants that may be overcome; the storm can be taken
in the weak point of its armour; there are resources against
the violence which continually lays itself open, is off its
guard, and often hits wide. But nothing is to be done
against a calm ; it offers nothing to the grasp of which you
can lay hold.
The winds are a charge of Cossacks: stand your ground
and they disperse. Calms are the pincers of the
executioner.
The water, deliberate and sure, irrepressible and heavy,
rose in the hold, and as it rose the vessel sank — it was
happening slowly.
Those on board the wreck of the Matutina felt that most
hopeless of catastrophes — an inert catastrophe undermining
them. The still and sinister certainty of their fate petrified
them. No stir in the air, no movement on the sea. The
motionless is the inexorable. Absorption was sucking them
down silently. Through the depths of the dumb waters —
without anger, without passion, not willing, not knowing,
not caring — the fatal centre of the globe was attracting
them downwards. Horror in repose amalgamating them
with itself. It was no longer the wide open mouth of the sea,
the double jaw of the wind and the wave, vicious in its threat,
the grin of the waterspout, the foaming appetite of the
breakers — it was as if the wretched beings had under them
the black yawn of the infinite.
They felt themselves sinking into Death's peaceful depths.
The height between the vessel and the water was lessening—
that was all. They could calculate her disappearance to the
moment. It was the exact reverse of submersion by the
rising tide. The water was not rising towards them; they
were sinking towards it. They were digging their own
grave. Their owa weight was their eextoa.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 129
They were being executed, not by the law of man, but by
the law of things.
The snow was falling, and as the wreck was now motion-
less, this white lint made a cloth over the deck and covered
the vessel as with a winding-sheet.
The hold was becoming fuller and deeper — no means of
getting at the leak. They struck a light and fixed three or
four torches in holes as best they could. Galdeazun brought
some old leathern buckets, and they tried to bale the hold
out, standing in a row to pass them from hand to hand ; but
the buckets were past use, the leather of some was un-
stitched, there were holes in the bottoms of the others, and
the buckets emptied themselves on the way. The difference
in quantity between the water which was making its way in
and that which they returned to the sea was ludicrous — for a
ton that entered a glassful was baled out; they did not
improve their condition. It was like the expenditure of a
miser, trying to exhaust a million, halfpenny by halfpenny.
The chief said, " Let us lighten the wreck."
During the storm they had lashed together the few chests
which were on deck. These remained tied to the stump of
the mast. They undid the lashings and rolled the chests
overboard through a breach in the gunwale. One of these
trunks belonged to the Basque woman, who could not repress
a sigh.
"Oh, my new cloak lined with scarlet 1 Oh, my poor
stockings of birchen-bark lace ! Oh, my silver ear-rings to
wear at mass on May Day ! "
The deck cleared, there remained the cabin to be seen to.
It was greatly encumbered; in it were, as may be remem-
bered, the luggage belonging to the passengers, and the bales
belonging to the sailors. They took the luggage, and threw
it over the gunwale. They carried up the bales and cast
them into the sea.
Thus they emptied the cabin. The lantern, the cap, the
barrels, the sacks, the bales, and the water-butts, the pot of
soup, all went over into the waves.
They unscrewed the nuts of the iron stove, long since
5
x3o THE LAUGHING MAN.
extinguished: they pulled it out, hoisted it on deck, dragged
it to the side, and threw it out of the vessel.
They cast overboard everything they could pull out of the
deck — chains, shrouds, and torn rigging.
From time to time the chief took a torch, and throwing its
light on the figures painted on the prow to show the draught
of water, looked to see how deep the wreck had settled down.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE HIGHEST RESOURCE.
THE wreck being lightened, was sinking more slowly, but
none the less surely.
The hopelessness of their situation was without resource — •
without mitigation ; they had exhausted their last expedient.
'* Is there anything else we can throw overboard? "
The doctor, whom every one had forgotten, rose from the
companion, and said,
" Yes."
" What? " asked the chief.
The doctor answered, " Our Crime."
They shuddered, and all cried out, —
" Amen."
The doctor standing up, pale, raised his hand to heaven,
saying,—
" Kneel down."
They wavered — to waver is the preface to kneeling down.
The doctor went on, —
" Let us throw our crimes into the sea, they weigh us
down; it is they that are sinking the ship. Let us think no
more of safety — let us think of salvation. Our last crime,
above all, the crime which we committed, or rather com-
pleted, just now— O wretched beings who are listening to me
it is that which is overwhelming us. For those who leave
intended murder behind them, it is an Impious insolence to
tempt the abyss. He who sins against a child, sins against
God. True, we were obliged to put to sea, but it was certain
perdition. The storm, warned by the shadow of our crime,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 131
came on. It is well. Regret nothing, however. There, not
far off in the darkness, are the sands of Vauville and Cape la
Hogue. It is France. There was but one possible shelter for
us, which was Spain. France is no less dangerous to us than
England. Our deliverance from the sea would have led but
to the gibbet. Hanged or drowned — we had no alternative.
God has chosen for us ; let us give Him thanks. He has
vouchsafed us the grave which cleanses. Brethren, the in-
evitable hand is in it. Remember that it was we who just
now did our best to send on high that child, and that at this
very moment, now as I speak, there is perhaps, above our
heads, a soul accusing us before a Judge whose eye is on us.
Let us make the best use of this last respite ; let us make an
effort, if we still may, to repair, as far as we are able, the evil
that we have wrought. If the child survives us, let us come
to his aid; if he is dead, let us seek his forgiveness. Let us
cast our crime from us. Let us ease our consciences of its
weight. Let us strive that our souls be not swallowed up
before God, for that is the awful shipwreck. Bodies go to
the fishes, souls to the devils. Have pity on yourselves.
Kneel down, I tell you. Repentance is the bark which never
sinks. You have lost your compass 1 You are wrong I You
still have prayer."
The wolves became lambs — such transformations occur in
last agonies; tigers lick the crucifix; when the dark portal
opens ajar, belief is difficult, unbelief impossible. However
imperfect may be the different sketches of religion essayed by
man, even when his belief is shapeless, even when the outline
of the dogma is not in harmony with the lineaments of the
eternity he foresees, there comes in his last hour a trembling
of the soul. There is something which will begin when life
is over; this thought impresses the last pang.
A man's dying agony is the expiration of a term. In that
fatal second he feels weighing on him a diffused responsibility.
That which has been complicates that which is to be. The
past returns and enters into the future. What is known
becomes as much an abyss as the unknown. And the two
chasms, the one which is full by his faults, the other of bis
1 32 THE LAUGHING MAN.
anticipations, mingle their reverberations. It is this con-
fusion of- the two gulfs which terrifies the dying man.
They had spent their last grain of hope on the direction of
life ; hence they turned in the other. Their only remaining
chance was in its dark shadow. They understood it. It
came on them as a lugubrious flash, followed by the relapse
of horror. That which is intelligible to the dying man is as
what is perceived in the lightning. Everything, then noth-
ing ; you see, then all is blindness. After death the eye will
reopen, and that which was a flash will become a sun.
They cried out to the doctor, —
" Thou, thou, there is no one but thee. We will obey thee,
what must we do? Speak."
The doctor answered, —
" The question is how to pass over the unknown precipice
and reach the other bank of life, which is beyond the tomb.
Being the one who knows the most, my danger is greater
than yours. You do well to leave the choice of the bridge
to him whose burden is the heaviest."
He added,—
" Knowledge is a weight added to conscience."
He continued, —
" How much time have we still? "
Galdeazun looked at the water-mark, and answered, —
" A little more than a quarter of an hour."
" Good," said the doctor.
The low hood of the companion on which he leant his
elbows made a sort of table; the doctor took from his
pocket his inkhorn and pen, and his pocket-book out of
which he drew a parchment, the same one on the back of
which he had written, a few hours before, some twenty
cramped and crooked lines.
" A light," he said.
The snow, falling like the spray of a cataract, had extin-
guished the torches one after another; there was but one left,
Ave Maria took it out of the place where it had been stuck,
and holding it in his hand, came and stood by the doctor's
side. J
THE LAUGHING MAN. 133
The doctor replaced his pocket-book in his pocket, put
down the pen and inkhorn on the hood of the companion,
unfolded the parchment, and said, —
" Listen."
Then in the midst of the sea, on the failing bridge (a sort
of shuddering flooring of the tomb), the doctor began a
solemn reading, to which all the shadows seemed to listen.
The doomed men bowed their heads around him. The
flaming of the torch intensified their pallor. What the
doctor read was written in English. Now and then, when
one of those woebegone looks seemed to ask an explanation*
the doctor would stop, to repeat — whether in French, or
Spanish, Basque, or Italian — the passage he had just read.
Stifled sobs and hollow beatings of the breast were heard.
The wreck was sinking more and more.
The reading over, the doctor placed the parchment flat on
the companion, seized his pen, and on a clear margin which
he had carefully left at the bottom of what he had written, he
signed himself, GERNADUS GEESTEMUNDE: Doctor.
Then, turning towards the others, he said, —
" Come, and sign."
The Basque woman approached, took the pen, and signed
herself, ASUNCION.
She handed the pen to the Irish woman, who, not knowing
how to write, made a cross.
The doctor, by the side of this cross, wrote, BARBARA
FERMOY, of Tyrrif Island, in the Hebrides.
Then he handed the pen to the chief of the band.
The chief signed, GAIZDORRA: Captal.
The Genoese signed himself under the chief's name,
GlANGIRATE.
The Languedocian signed, JACQUES QUARTOURZE: alias,
the Narbonnais.
The Provencal signed, LUC-PIERRE CAPGAROUPE, of the
Galleys of Mahon.
Under these signatures the doctor added a note: —
"Of the crew of three men, the skipper having been washed
overboard by a sea, but two remain, and they have signed."
I34 THE LAUGHING MAN.
The two sailors affixed their names underneath the note.
The northern Basque signed himself, GALDEAZUN.
The southern Basque signed, AVE MARIA: Robber.
Then the doctor said, —
" Capgaroupe."
" Here," said the Proven9al.
" Have you Hardquanonne's flask? "
" Yes."
" Give it me."
Capgaroupe drank off the last mouthful of brandy, and
handed the flask to the doctor.
The water was rising in the hold; the wreck was sinking
deeper and deeper into the sea. The sloping edges of the
ship were covered by a thin gnawing wave, which was rising.
All were crowded on the centre of the deck.
The doctor dried the ink on the signatures by the heat of
the torch, and folding the parchment into a narrower com-
pass than the diameter of the neck, put it into the flask.
He called for the cork.
" I don't know where it is," said Capgaroupe.
" Here is a piece of rope," said Jacques Quartourze.
The doctor corked the flask with a bit of rope, and asked
for some tar. Galdeazun went forward, extinguished the
signal light with a piece of tow, took the vessel in which it
was contained from the stern, and brought it, half full of
burning tar, to the doctor.
The flask holding the parchment which they had all
signed was corked and tarred over.
" It is done," said the doctor.
And from out all their mouths, vaguely stammered in
every language, came the dismal utterances of the cata-
combs.
" Ainsi soit-il! "
"Meaculpa! "
" Asi seal "
"Aro rail "
"Amen! "
It was as though the sombre voices of Babel were scattered
THE LAUGHING MAN. 135
through the shadows as Heaven uttered its awful refusal to
hear them.
The doctor turned away from his companions in crime and
distress, and took a few steps towards the gunwale. Reaching
the side, he looked into space, and said, in a deep voice, —
"Bist du bei mir?" *
Perchance he was addressing some phantom.
The wreck was sinking.
Behind the doctor all the others were in a dream. Prayer
mastered them by main force. They did Dot bow, they were
bent. There was something involuntary in their condition;
they wavered as a sail flaps when the breeze fails. And the
haggard group took by degrees, with clasping of hands and
prostration of foreheads, attitudes various, yet of humilia-
tion. Some strange reflection of the deep seemed to soften
their villainous features.
The doctor returned towards them. Whatever had been
his past, the old man was great in the presence of the
catastrophe.
The deep reserve of nature which enveloped him pre-
occupied without disconcerting him. He was not one to be
taken unawares. Over him was the calm of a silent horror:
on his countenance the majesty of God's will comprehended.
This old and thoughtful outlaw unconsciously assumed the
air of a pontiff.
He said, —
" Attend to me."
He contemplated for a moment the waste of water, and
added, —
" Now we are going to die."
Then he took the torch from the hands of Ave Maria, and
waved it.
A spark broke from it and flew into the night.
Then the doctor cast the torch into the sea.
The torch was extinguished : all light disappeared.
Nothing left but the huge, unfathomable shadow. It was
like the filling up of the grave.
* Art them HROT me ?
i36 THE LAUGHING MAN.
In the darkness the doctor was heard saying, —
" Let us pray."
All knelt down.
It was no longer on the snow, but in the water, that they
knelt.
They had but a few minutes more.
The doctor alone remained standing.
The flakes of snow falling on him had sprinkled him with
white tears, and made him visible on the background of
darkness. He might have been the speaking statue of the
shadow.
The doctor made the sign of the cross and raised his voice,
while beneath his feet he felt that almost imperceptible
oscillation which prefaces the moment in which a wreck is
about to founder. He said, —
" Pater noster qui es in ccelis."
The Proven9al repeated in French, —
" Notre Pere qui 6tes aux cieux."
The Irishwoman repeated in Gaelic, understood by the
Basque woman, —
" AT nathair ata ar neamh."
The doctor continued, —
" Sanctificetur nomen tuum."
" Que votre nom soit sanctifie," said the Proven9al.
" Naomhthar hainm," said the Irishwoman.
" Adveniat regnum tuum," continued the doctor
" Que votre regne arrive," said the Proven9al.
" Tigeadh do rioghachd," said the Irishwoman.
As they knelt, the waters had risen to their shoulders.
The doctor went on, —
" Fiat voluntas tua."
" Que votre volonte soit faite," stammered the Proven9al.
And the Irishwoman and Basque woman cried, —
" Deuntar do thoil ar an Hhalamb."
" Sicut in ccelo, sicut in terra," said the doctor.
No voice answered him.
He looked down. All their heads were under water. They
had let themselves be drowned on their knees.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 13?
The doctor took in his right hand the flask which he had
placed on the companion, and raised it above his head.
The wreck was going down. As he sank, the doctor
murmured the rest of the prayer.
For an instant his shoulders were above water, then his
head, then nothing remained but his arm holding up the
flask, as if he were showing it to the Infinite.
His arm disappeared; there was no greater fold on the
deep sea than there would have been on a tun of oil. The
snow continued falling.
One thing floated, and was carried by the waves into the
darkness. It was the tarred flask, kept afloat by its osier
cover.
BOOK THE THIRD.
THB CHILD IN THE SHADOW.
CHAPTER I.
CHESIL.
THE storm was no less severe on land than on sea. The same
wild enfranchisement of the elements had taken place
around the abandoned child. The weak and innocent become
their sport in the expenditure of the unreasoning rage of their
blind forces. Shadows discern not, and things inanimate
have not the clemency they are supposed to possess.
On the land there was but little wind. There was an
inexplicable dumbness in the cold. There was no hail. The
thickness of the falling snow was fearful.
Hailstones strike, harass, bruise, stun, crush. Snow-
flakes do worse: soft and inexorable, the snowflake does its
work in silence; touch it, and it melts. It is pure, even as
the hypocrite is candid. It is by white particles slowly
heaped upon each other that the flake becomes an avalanche
and the knave a criminal.
The child continued to advance into the mist. The fog
presents but a soft obstacle; hence its danger. It yields,
and yet persists. Mist, like snow, is full of treachery. The
child, strange wrestler at war with all these risks, had suc-
ceeded in reaching the bottom of the descent, and had
gained Chesil. Without knowing it he was on an isthmus,
with the ocean on each side; so that he could not lose his
way in the fog, in the snow, or in the darkness, without falling
into the deep waters of the gulf on the right hand, or into
THE LAUGHING MAN. 139
the raging billows of the high sea on the left. He was
travelling on, in ignorance, between these two abysses.
The Isthmus of Portland was at this period singularly
sharp and rugged. Nothing remains at this date of its past
configuration. Since the idea of manufacturing Portland
stone into Roman cement was first seized, the whole rock has
been subjected to an alteration which has completely changed
its original appearance. Calcareous lias, slate, and trap are
still to be found there, rising from layers of conglomerate, like
teeth from a gum; but the pickaxe has broken up and
levelled those bristling, rugged peaks which were once the
fearful perches of the ossifrage. The summits exist no longer
where the labbes and the skua gulls used to flock together,
soaring, like the envious, to sully high places. In vain
might you seek the tall monolith called Godolphin, an old
British word, signifying " white eagle." In summer you
may still gather on those surfaces, pierced and perforated like
a sponge, rosemary, pennyroyal, wild hyssop, and sea-fennel
which when infused makes a good cordial, and that herb full
of knots, which grows in the sand and from which they
make matting ; but you no longer find gray amber, or black
tin, or that triple species of slate — one sort green, one blue,
and the third the colour of sage-leaves. The foxes, the
badgers, the otters, and the martens have taken themselves
off; on the cliffs of Portland, as well as at the extremity of
Cornwall, where there were at one time chamois, none
remain. They still fish in some inlets for plaice and pil-
chards; but the scared salmon no longer ascend the Wey,
between Michaelmas and Christmas, to spawn. No more are
seen there, as during the reign of Elizabeth, those old un-
known birds as large as hawks, who could cut an apple ia two,
but ate only the pips. You never meet those crows with
yellow beaks, called Cornish choughs in English, pyrrocorax
in Latin, who, in their mischief, would drop burning twigs on
thatched roofs. Nor that magic bird, the fulmar, a wanderer
from the Scottish archipelago, dropping from his bill an oil
which the islanders used to burn in their lamps. Nor do you
ever find in the evening, in the plash of the ebbing tide, that
ancient, legendary neitse, with the feet of a hog and the bleat
of a call The tide no longer throws up the whiskered seal,
with its curled ears and sharp jaws, dragging itself along on
its nailless paws. On that Portland — nowadays so changed
T4o THE LAUGHING MAN.
as scarcely to be recognized— the absence of forests pre-
cluded nightingales; but now the falcon, the swan, and the
wild goose have fled. The sheep of Portland, nowadays,
are fat and have fine wool; the few scattered ewes, which
nibbled the salt grass there two centuries ago, were small and
tough and coarse in the fleece, as became Celtic flocks
brought there by garlic-eating shepherds, who lived ,to a
hundred, and who, at the distance of half a mile, could pierce
a cuirass with their yard-long arrows. Uncultivated land
makes coarse wool. The Chesil of to-day resembles in no
particular the Chesil of the past, so much has it been dis-
turbed by man and by those furious winds which gnaw the
very stones.
At present this tongue of land bears a railway, terminating
in a pretty square of houses, called Chesilton, and there is a
Portland station. Railway carriages roll where seals used to
crawl.
The Isthmus of Portland two hundred years ago was a
back of sand, with a vertebral spine of rock.
The child' s danger changed its form. What he had had to fear
in the descent was falling to the bottom of the precipice ; in
the isthmus, it was falling into the holes. After dealing with
the precipice, he must deal with the pitfalls. Everything on
the sea-shore is a trap — the rock is slippery, the strand is
quicksand. Resting-places are but snares. It is walking on
ice which may suddenly crack and yawn with a fissure,
through which you disappear. The ocean has false stages
below, like a well-arranged theatre.
The long backbone of granite, from which fall away both
slopes of the isthmus, is awkward of access. It is difficult to
find there what, in scene-shifters' language, are termed
practicables. Man has no hospitality to hope for from the
ocean ; from the rock no more than from the wave. The sea
is provident for the bird and the fish alone. Isthmuses are
especially naked and nigged; the wave, which wears and
mines them on either side, reduces them to the simplest form.
Everywhere there were sharp relief ridges, cuttings, frightful
fragments of torn stone, yawning with many points, like the
jaws of a shark; breaknecks of wet moss, rapid slopes of rock
ending in the sea. Whosoever undertakes to pass over an
isthmus meets at every step misshapen blocks, as large as
houses, in the forms of shin-bones, shoulder-blades, and
THE LAUGHING MAN. 141
thigh-bones, the3 hideous anatomy of dismembered rocks.
It is not without reason that these stria of the sea-shore are
called cdtes.*
The wayfarer must get out as he best can from the con-
fusion of these ruins. It is like journeying over the bones
of an enormous skeleton.
Put a child to this labour of Hercules.
Broad daylight might have aided him. It was night. A
guide was necessary. He was alone. All the vigour of man-
hood would not have been too much. He had but the feeble
strength of a child. In default of a guide, a footpath might
have aided him; there was none.
By instinct he avoided the sharp ridge of the rocks, and
kept to the strand as much as possible. It was there that
he met with the pitfalls. They were multiplied before him
under three forms: the pitfall of water, the pitfall of snow,
and the pitfall of sand. This last is the most dangerous of
all, because the most illusory. To know the peril we face is
alarming; to be ignorant of it is terrible. The child was
fighting against unknown dangers. He was groping his way
through something which might, perhaps, be the grave.
He did not hesitate. He went round the rocks, avoided
the crevices, guessed at the pitfalls, obeyed the twistings and
turnings caused by such obstacles, yet he went on. Though
unable to advance in a straight line, he walked with a firm
step. When necessary, he drew back with energy. He knew
how to tear himself in time from the horrid bird-lime of the
quicksands. He shook the snow from about him. He
entered the water more than once up to the knees. Directly
that he left it, his wet knees were frozen by the intense cold
of the night. He walked rapidly in his stiffened garments;
yet he took care to keep his sailor's coat dry and warm on
his chest. He was still tormented by hunger.
The chances of the abyss are illimitable. Everything is
possible in it, even salvation. The issue may be found,
though it be invisible. How the child, wrapped in a
smothering winding-sheet of snow, lost on a narrow eleva-
tion between two jaws of an abyss, managed to cross the
isthmus is what he could not himself have explained. He
had slipped, climbed, rolled, searched, walked, persevered,
that is all. Such is the secret of all triumphs. At the end
* C5tes, coasts, costa, ribs.
i42 THE LAUGHING MAN.
of somewhat less than half an hour he felt that the ground
was rising. He had reached the other shore. Leaving
Chesil, he had gained terra firma.
The bridge which now unites Sandford Castle with Small-
mouth Sands did not then exist. It is probable that in his
intelligent groping he had reascended as far as Wyke Regis,
where there was then a tongue of sand, a natural road
crossing East Fleet.
He was saved from the isthmus; but he found himself
again face to face with the tempest, with the cold, with the
night*
Before him once more lay the plain, shapeless in the
density of impenetrable shadow. He examined the ground,
seeking a footpath. Suddenly he bent down. He had dis-
covered, in the snow, something which seemed to him a track.
It was indeed a track — the print of a foot. The print was
cut out clearly in the whiteness of the snow, which rendered
it distinctly visible. He examined it. It was a naked footf
too small for that of a man, too large for that of a child.
It was probably the foot of a woman. Beyond that mark
was another, then another, then another. The footprints
followed each other at the distance of a step, and struck
across the plain to the right. They were still fresh, and
slightly covered with little snow. A woman had just passed
that way.
This woman was walking in the direction in which the
child had seen the smoke. With his eyes fixed on the foot-
prints, he set himself to follow them.
CHAPTER II.
THE EFFECT OF SNOW.
HE journeyed some time along this course. Unfortunately
the footprints were becoming less and less distinct. Dense
and fearful was the falling of the snow. It was the time
when the hooker was so distressed by the snow-storm at sea.
The child, in distress like the vessel, but after another
fashion, had, in the inextricable intersection of shadows
which rose up before him, no resource but the footsteps in
the snow, and he held to it as the thread of a labyrinth.
Suddenly, whether the mow had filled them up or for some
THE LAUGHING MAN. 143
other reason, the footsteps ceased. All became even, level,
Smooth, without a stain, without a detail. There was now
nothing but a white cloth drawn over the earth and a black
one over the sky. It seemed as if the foot-passenger had
flown away. The child, in despair, bent down and searched ;
but in vain.
As he arose he had a sensation of hearing some indistinct
sound, but he could not be sure of it. It resembled a voice,
a breath, a shadow. It was more human than animal ; more
sepulchral than living. It was a sound, but the sound of a
dream.
He looked, but saw nothing.
Solitude, wide, naked and livid, was before him. He
listened. That which he had thought he heard had faded
away. Perhaps it had been but fancy. He still listened.
All was silent.
There was illusion in the mist.
He went on his way again. He walked forward at random,
with nothing henceforth to guide him.
As he moved away the noise began again. This time he
could doubt it no longer. It was a groan, almost a sob.
He turned. He searched the darkness of space with his
eyes. He saw nothing. The sound arose once more. If
limbo could cry out, it would cry in such a tone.
Nothing so penetrating, so piercing, so feeble as the voice
• — for it was a voice. It arose from a soul. There was
palpitation in the murmur. Nevertheless, it seemed uttered
almost unconsciously. It was an appeal of suffering, not
knowing that it suffered or that it appealed.
The cry — perhaps a first breath, perhaps a last sigh —
was equally distant from the rattle which closes life and the
wail with which it commences. It breathed, it was stifled,
it wept, a gloomy supplication from the depths of night.
The child fixed his attention everywhere, far, near, on high,
below. There was no one. There was nothing. He listened.
The voice arose again. He perceived it distinctly. The
sound somewhat resembled the bleating of a lamb.
Then he was frightened, and thought of flight.
The groan again. This was the fourth time. It was
strangely miserable and plaintive. One felt that after that
last effort, more mechanical than voluntary, the cry would
probably be extinguished. It was an expiring exclamation,
I44 THE LAUGHING MAN.
instinctively appealing to the amount of aid held in suspense
in space. It was some muttering of agony, addressed to a
possible Providence.
The child approached in the direction from whence the
sound came.
Still he saw nothing.
He advanced again, watchfully.
The complaint continued. Inarticulate and confused as
it was, it had become clear — almost vibrating. The child
was near the voice ; but where was it ?
He was close to a complaint. The trembling of a cry
passed by his side into space. A human moan floated away
into the darkness. This was what he had met. Such at
least was his impression, dim as the dense mist in which he
was lost.
Whilst he hesitated between an instinct which urged him
to fly and an instinct which commanded him to remain, he
perceived in the snow at his feet, a few steps before him, a
sort of undulation of the dimensions of a human body — a
little eminence, low, long, and narrow, like the mould over a
grave — a sepulchre in a white churchyard.
At the same time the voice cried out. It was from beneath
the undulation that it proceeded. The child bent down,
crouching before the undulation, and with both his hands
began to clear it away.
Beneath the snow which he removed a form grew under his
hands; and suddenly in the hollow he had made there
appeared a pale face.
The cry had not proceeded from that face. Its eyes were
shut, and the mouth open but full of snow.
It remained motionless ; it stirred not under the hands of
the child. The child, whose fingers were numbed with frost,
shuddered when he touched its coldness. It was that of a
woman. Her dishevelled hair was mingled with the snow.
The woman was dead.
Again the child set himself to sweep away the snow. The
neck of the dead woman appeared; then her shoulders,
clothed in rags. Suddenly he felt something move feebly
under his touch. It was something small that was buried,
and which stirred. The child swiftly cleared away the snow,
discovering a wretched little body— thin, wan with cold, still
alive, lying naked on the dead woman's naked breast.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 145
It was a little girl.
It had been swaddled up, but in rags so scanty that in its
struggles it had freed itself from its tatters, tinder it its
attenuated limbs, and above it its breath, had somewhat
melted the snow. A nurse would have said that it was five
or six months old, but perhaps it might be a year, for growth,
in poverty, suffers heart-breaking reductions which some-
times even produce rachitis. When its face was exposed to
the air it gave a cry, the continuation of its sobs of distress.
For the mother not to have heard that sob, proved her
irrevocably dead.
The child took the infant in his arms. The stiffened body
of the mother was a fearful sight ; a spectral light proceeded
from her face. The mouth, apart and without breath,
seemed to form in the indistinct language of shadows her
answer to the questions put to the dead by the invisible.
The ghastly reflection of the icy plains was on that counten-
ance. There was the youthful forehead under the brown
hair, the almost indignant knitting of the eyebrows, the
pinched nostrils, the closed eyelids, the lashes glued together
by the rime, and from the corners of the eyes to the corners
of the mouth a deep channel of tears. The snow lighted up
the corpse. Winter and the tomb are not adverse. The
corpse is the icicle of man. The nakedness of her breasts was
pathetic. They had fulfilled their purpose. On them was a
sublime blight of the life infused into one being by another
from whom life has fled, and maternal majesty was there
instead of virginal purity. At the point of one of the nipples
was a white pearl. It was a drop of milk frozen.
Let us explain at once. On the plains over which the
deserted boy was passing in his turn a beggar woman,
nursing her infant and searching for a refuge, had lost her way
a few hours before. Benumbed with cold she had sunk under
the tempest, and could not rise again. The falling snow had
covered her. So long as she was able she had clasped her
little girl to her bosom, and thus died.
The infant had tried to suck the marble breast. Blind
trust, inspired by nature, for it seems that it is pos-
sible ior a woman to suckle her child even after her
last sigh.
But the lips of the infant had been unable to find the
breast, where the drop of milk, stolen by death, had frozen,
I46 THE LAUGHING MAN.
whilst under the snow the child, more accustomed to the
cradle than the tomb, had wailed.
The deserted child had heard the cry of the dying child.
He disinterred it.
He took it in his arms.
When she felt herself in his arms she ceased crying. The
faces of the two children touched each other, and the purple
lips of the infant sought the cheek of the boy, as it had been
a breast. The little girl had nearly reached the moment
when the congealed blood stops the action of the heart. Her
mother had touched her with the chill of her own death — a
corpse communicates death; its numbness is infectious. Pier
feet, hands, arms, knees, seemed paralyzed by cold. The boy
felt the terrible chill. He had on him a garment dry and
warm — his pilot jacket. He placed the infant on the breast
of the corpse, took off his jacket, wrapped the infant in it,
took it up again in his arms, and now, almost naked, under
the blast of the north wind which covered him with eddies of
snow-flakes, carrying the infant, he pursued his journey.
The little one having succeeded in finding the boy's cheek,
again applied her lips to it, and, soothed by the warmth, she
slept. First kiss of those two souls in the darkness.
The mother lay there, her back to the snow, her face to the
night; but perhaps at the moment when the little boy
stripped himself to clothe the little girl, the mother saw him
from the depths of infinity.
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
Jen journeying onwards, he had met but three persons of
b human society into which he was, perchance, 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
J resolutely than ever, with less strength and an added
ten. He was now almost naked. The few rags which
THE LAUGHING MAN. 147
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 con-
tinued 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 their being frost-bitten. At other times, his throat
feeling as if it were on fire, he put a little snow in his mouth
and sucked itj this for a moment assuaged his thirst, but
changed it into fever — a relief which was an aggravation.
The storm had become shapeless from its violence. Del-
uges of snow are possible. This was one. The paroxysm
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 travelled under this north wind, still towards 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 travelling.
Doubting, he yet persevered.
Two or three times the little infant cried. Then he
adopted in his gait 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 round 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.
Having cleared the ravine, he reached the high lands swept
by the winds, where the snow lay thin. Then he found the
14$ THE LAUGHING MAN.
surface a chert of ice. The little girl's lukewarm br
playing on hi* lace, wanned it for a moment, then lia;
and froze in h» hair, stinening it into icicles.
He felt the approach of another danger. He could not
aflordtofalL He knew that if he did so he should never rise
again, He was overcome by fatigue, and the weight of the
dftrift^»«« would, as with the dead woman, have held him to
the ground, and the ice glued him alive to the earth.
bad tripped upon the dope* of precipices, and had
recovered himself; he had stumbled into holes, and had got
out again* Thenceforward the slightest fall would be death;
a false step opened for him a tomb. He must not slip. He
bad not strength to rise even to his knees. .Now every-
thing was slippery; everywhere there was rime and frozen
snow. The bttle creature whom he carried made his progress
iUy difficult She was not only a burden, which his
ness and exhaustion made excessive, but was also an
embarrassment She occupied both his arms, and to
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
/ernow,
advanced, reeling at every step, as if on a spring board,
and accomplishing, without spectators, miracles of equilib-
Let us repeat that he was, perhaps, followed on this
path of pain by eyes unsleeping in the distances of the
»hadow»-4he eyes of the mother and the eyes of God. He
staggered, sli pped, recovered himself, took care of the ir >
and, gathering the jacket about her, he covered up her head}
staggered again, advanced, slipped, then drew himself
The cowardly wind drove against him. Apparently, he made
mttcb more way than was necessary. He was, to all appear,
•ace, on the plains where Bincleaves Farm was afterwards
iUMished, between what are now called Spring Gardem
WA toe Parsonage House, Homesteads and cottages
occupy the place of waste lands. Sometimes km than 4
entury separates a steppe from a city,
«ly» a -tell having occurred in the icy blast which was
- - .'...'.-.>...-:.:,' . ..,,' <...-....,< .,:..,,., -,,:....,..
axe MAX.
n negative
i ship which
.oil when
10 1 "
A: length, then, ' ad. Ho \
amid>
plowed within him t'.
'.i he \\..
thenceforward thoro would no longer bo
nor ti o him th
chances behind him. The infa-.
ran.
His eves \\ere t:\ed Q
He never look his e\ es fcd man mi
thus on N- through the half -opened '.
his sepulchre. There were the chimneys of which tie
seen the •
\o smoke ATOM from them now. He wt
lie reached the houses. 1 le
\ an open
• disuse.
I In- two houses. In
neither caudle nor Lamp j nor in I
: nor in the whole town, so far as eve could n
The house to ihe right WM a roof rather than a h.
nothiii;; could be more mean. The walls were oi mn
nun' \\as oi straw, and there was more thatch than wall. A
nettle, springing from the bottom of the wall. re..
the roof. The hovel had but one door, which was like
of a dog-kennel: and a \\uulow. which was but a hole. All
-lint up. At the side an inhabit e told t ha
;e was also inhabited.
The house on the left was large, high. b\r
-. with a slated root". It was also closed. 1
rich man's home, opposite to that of the pair.
The bov did not h« Cached the ••
• ;on. The double . [oor of Oil
I5o THE LAUGHING MAN,
with large nails, was of the land that leads one to expect that
behind it there is a stout armoury 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 pane 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 strait of houses which stretched away in front of him,
so dark that it seemed more like a gulf between two cliffs
than the entrance to a town.
CHAPTER IV.
ANOTHER FORM OF DESERT.
IT was Weymouth which he had just entered. Weymouth
then was not the respectable and fine Weymouth of to-day.
Ancient Weymouth did not present, like the present one,
an irreproachable rectangular quay, with an inn and a statue
in honour 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
towards the east, fashioned flat on the soil by cutting away
the turf and leaving the bare chalk to the view, the white
horse, an acre long, bearing the lang upon his back, and
always turning, in honour of George III., his tail to the city.
These honours, however, were deserved. George III., having
THE LAUGHING MAN. 151
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, a hundred and eighty years ago, was about as
symmetrical as a game of spillikins in confusion. In legends
it is said that Astaroth travelled 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 Wey-
mouth— 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 in
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 equinoctial tides; a heap of old grandmother
houses, crowded round a 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 sole and a bottle of wine, had to suffer the humiliation
of eating a pennyworth of soup made of fish — which soup,
by-the-bye, was very good. Wretched fare 1
The deserted child, canying 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 at 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 Scrambridge 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 Wey, connecting Weymouth with Mel-
,S2 THE LAUGHING MAN.
combe Regis, and under the arches of which the Backwater
joins the harbour.
Weymouth, a hamlet, was then the suburb of Melcombe
Regis, a city and port. Now Melcombe Regis is a parish of
Weymouth. The village has absorbed the city. It was the
bridge which did the work. Bridges are strange vehicles of
suction, which inhale the population, and sometimes swell
one river-bank at the expense of its opposite neighbour.
The boy went to the bridge, which at that period was a
covered timber structure. He crossed it. Thanks to its
roofing, there was no snow on the planks. His bare feet had
a moment's comfort as they crossed them. Having passed
over the bridge, he was in Melcombe Regis. ^ There were
fewer wooden houses than stone ones there. 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.
At Melcombe Regis, 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, makes the head swim. All its
lethargies mingle their nightmares, its slumbers are a crowd,
and from its human bodies lying prone there arises a vapour
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. Hence arise entanglements. Dreams,
those clouds, interpose their folds and their transparencies
over that star, the mind. Above those closed eyelids, where
vision has taken the place of 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 surround-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 153
ing chimera, in which he suspects a reality, impedes him.
The waking man, wending his way amidst the sleep phantoms
of others, unconsciously pushes 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 o£ 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
be was struggling.
He entered Conycar Lane, and perceived at the end of that
passage the Backwater, 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. Alban's Row.
There, by chance and without selection, he knocked vio-
lently at any house that he happened to pass. His blows,
on which he was expending bis 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 tolled slowly behind him from the old belfry
of St. Nicholas.
Then all sank into silence again.
That no inhabitant 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 1690 they were just over a somewhat severe
outbreak of the plague in London, and that the fear of
receiving 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 into the midst of
life, and remained alone. This was the summit of misery.
i54 THE LAUGHING MAN,
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 situa-
tions as the voice of the hour. It is a declaration of indiffer-
ence. 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 onwards 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 zigzags through lanes,
and at the end of a winding passage found himself in a rather
wide open space. It was a piece of waste land not built
upon — 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 planes of snow marked out the
wide slopes of Radipole. 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 despair-
ing wanderer threw around him.
All at once he heard a menace.
CHAPTER V.
MISANTHROPY PLAYS ITS PRANKS.
A STRANGE and alarming grinding of teeth reached him
through the darkness.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 155
, 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
Bnarl.
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 centre 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 any one there? "
The child answered, —
' Yes."
'Who?"
•I."
' You ? Who are you ? whence do you come ? '
' I am weary," said the child.
4 What o'clock is it?"
' I am cold."
' What are you doing there ? "
' I am hungry."
The head replied, —
" Every one 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 hia
I56 THE LAUGHING MAN.
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 motion-
less.
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 I " cried the voice of the man.
The jaws retreated, the growling ceased.
" Come upl " 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 porringer
and a saucepan, containing to all appearance something tq
eat. The savoury odour was perceptible. The hut wag
furnished with a chest, a stool, and an unlighted lantern
which hung from the ceiling. Besides, to the partition werq
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 under-
stood nothing, and which were utensils for cooking and
THE LAUGHING MAN. r 57
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 you put it down! You could not be more
careful were it a case of relics. Is it that you are 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-
ine-quicks.
" Here are clothes."
He chose out of a heap a woollen 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.
I58 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" Come, you limb ; you have nothing frost-bitten 1 I was a
fool to fancy you had something frozen, hind legs or fore
paws. You will not lose the use of them this time. Dress
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 porringer which was smoking
upon the stove. What the child saw in the porringer was
again heaven to him — namely, a potato and a bit of bacon.
" You are hungry; eat I "
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 porringer 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 1 Isn't he a greedy
scoundrel? When such scum are hungry, they eat in a
revolting fashion. You should see a lord sup. In my time
I have seen dukes eat. They don't eat ; that's noble.
They drink, however. Come, you pig, stuff yourself 1 "
The absence 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 involv-
ing 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 in proprid persona in
the Banqueting House, where are 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 it into my head to come to this Weymouth seven
times devoted to the infernal deities? I have sold nothing
since morning. I have harangued the snow. I have played
the flute to the hurricane. I have not pocketed a farthing;
THE LAUGHING MAN.
and now, to-night, beggars drop in. Horrid place!
160 THE LAUGHING MAN.
"Well, who goes there? " said the man. " Here is an-
other of them. When is this to end ? Who is there ? To
arms! Corporal, call out the guard I Another bang 1 What
have you brought me, thief I 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 phial, muttering
savagely, " What an infernal place! "
Then he looked at the little infant. ' 'Tis a girl I one can
tell that 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 swathed
her in a rag, which, though of coarse linen, was clean and dry.
This rough and sudden dressing made the infant angry.
" She mews 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 phial 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 phial to be sure that 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 phial at the necessary incline, grumbling,
" They are all the same, the cowards! When they have all
they want they are silent."
The child had drunk so ravenously, and had 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 Ursus. "A fine
gobbler this one, tool "
He drew away the sponge which she was sucking, allowed
the cough to subside, and then replaced the phial 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 satisfac-
tion ; now it was gratitude. He watched the infant's
renewal of life; the completion of the resurrection begun by
THE LAUGHING MAN. 161
himself filled his eyes with an ineffable brilliancy. Ursus
went on muttering angry words between his teeth. The
little boy now and then lifted towards Ursus his eyes moist
with the unspeakable emotion which the poor little being
felt, but was unable to express Ursus addressed him
furiously.
"Well, will you eat?"
" And you? " said the child, trembling all over, and with
tears in his eyes. " You will have nothingl "
" 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 Ursus. " What has it got to do with me?
Who speaks of me? Wretched little barefooted clerk of
Penniless Parish, I tell you, eat it all up I 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 porringer.
Ursus muttered, " This building is badly joined. The cold
comes in by the window pane." A pane had indeed been
broken in front, either by a jolt of the caravan or by a stone
thrown by some mischievous boy. Ursus had placed a star
of paper over the fracture, which had become unpasted.
The blast entered there.
He was half seated 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, and infants at their mothers' breast.
"She is drunk," said Ursus; and he continued, "After
this, preach sermons on temperance! "
The wind tore from the pane the Blaster 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, Ursus grumbled, —
" Drunkenness begins in the infant in swaddling clothes.
What useful trouble Bishop Tillotson gives himself, thunder-
ing against excessive drinking. What an odious draught of
wind 1 And then my stove is old. It allows puffs of smoke
to escape enough to give you trichiasis. One has the incon-
venience of cold, and the inconvenience of fire. One cannot
see clearly. That being over there abuses my hospitality.
Well, I have not been able to distinguish the animal's face
6
162 THE LAUGHING MAN.
yet. Comfort is wanting here. By Jove I 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 Philoxenus, who wished to possess the
neck of a crane, so as to be longer in tasting the pleasures of
the table. Receipts to-day, naught. 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. Every one is well down here. It's a
cursed town, where every one is well 1 The skies alone have
diarrhoea — what snow! Anaxagoras 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 fiends 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 paunch, another an
academician's pate. You may observe a form in every
sound. To every fresh wind a fresh demon. The ear hears,
the eye sees, the crash is a face. Zounds 1 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 inn, or do I not? Why should I
trade with these travellers ? The universal 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 voracity of travellers. I am a prey — the prey
of those dying of hunger. Winter, night, a pasteboard hut
an unfortunate friend below and without, the storm,
potato, a fire as big as my fist, parasites, the wind penetratin
through every cranny, not a halfpenny, and bundles whici
set to howling. I open them and find beggars inside. I
this fair? Besides, the laws are violated. Ah! vagabon
with your vagabond child! Mischievous pick-pocket, evil
minded abortion, so you walk the streets after curfew? I
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 rule:
regulations, you lawless wretches. Vagabonds ar<
THE IvAUGHING MAN. 163
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 chanced 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 1 I understand what is right and do what is
wrong. O the ruffian! to come here in such a state I I
did not see the snow upon them when they came in; it had
melted, and here's 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 miners' standard I 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
beggardom of England. I shall have for employment, office,
and function, to fashion the miscarried fortunes of that colos-
sal 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 Doctor Linacre, 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 Hervey, and of study-
ing 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 caligenous vapour arises from
the planet. Such was the opinion of John Kepler, who was
born the year before the Massacre of St. 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, humours, and conditions,
that wise men of all periods have not hesitated to despise,
THE LAUGHING MAN.
and whose extravagance and passion the most moderate men
in their justice detest. Oh, 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, that we should not become
too discouraged, that we may have the stupidity to consent
to bear our being, and not profit by the magnificent oppor-
tunities to hang ourselves which cords and nails afford,
nature puts on an air of taking a little care of man — not
to-night, 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 morning 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 sewn
the hem. 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 phial, and grumbled, —
" She has drunk it 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 bear-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 growing glutton. It will be a worm gnawing at the
vitals of my industry."
He spread out, still with one arm, the bear-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 the fire.
Having done so, he placed the phial on the stove, and
exclaimed, —
" I'm thirsty, if you like I "
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 phial, uncorked it, poured into it
all the milk that remained, which was just sufficient to fill it.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 165
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. Tht temperature of the water which it con-
tained had been unequally modified by the proximity of
the stove.
He swallowed some mouthfuls and made a grimace.
" Water 1 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 his supper. The
porringer 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 towards 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 don't know? "
" I was abandoned this evening on the sea-shore."
" You little scamp 1 what's your name ? He is so good for
nothing that his relations desert him."
" I have no relations."
" Give in a little to my tastes, 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." I
" It is not your sister? "
" No."
"Who is it then?"
" It is a baby that I found."
" Found? "
166 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" 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 b*>w of a phi-
losopher.
" Dead 1 Lucky for her 1 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 bear-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 bear-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."
THE LAUGHING MAN. 167,
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 promiscuous-
ness 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 foretastes 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 two 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 holy 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.
* " Their lips -were four red roses on a stem,
Which in their summer beauty kissed each other."
Shakespeare.
168 THE LAUGHINP MAN.
CHAPTER VI.
THE AWAKING.
THE beginning of day is sinister. A sad pale light penetrated
the hut. It was the frozen dawn. That wan 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 taking possession of the horizon. The con-
stellations 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 Boy slept less
heavily than the girl. At length, a ray brighter than the
others broke through the pane, 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 gazed
dreamily at the letters of the inscription — " Ursus, Philoso-
pher " — 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.
Ursus was returning. He ascended the steps, his ex-
tinguished lantern in his hand. At the same time the
pattering of four paws fell upon the steps. It was Homo,
following Ursus, 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 got halfway up the steps, and placed both forepaws
within the caravc>n, leaning 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,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 169
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 bear-skin, and, standing up,
placed himself in front of the little infant, who was sleeping
more soundly than ever.
Ursus 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 I Dead! stone dead 1 "
He bent down, and put a shovelful of turf mould 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 as clearly with his nose as
Christopher Columbus did with his mind, I should be still
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 I What silence in her eyes ! How
can any one 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 sidled 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, —
I7o THE LAUGHING MAN.
"Is it Thou?"
Then his brow dropped, as if under a burden, und
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."
Ursua 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 morel "
" I am not laughing," said the child.
Ursus was seized with a shudder 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 towards 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 in folio, bound in soft parchment.
He turned the pages with his thumb, stopped at a certain one,
opened the book wide on the stove, and read, —
; ' De Denasatis,' it is here."
And he continued, —
" Bucca fissa usque ad aures, genezivis denudatis, nasoque
murdridato, masca eris, et ridebis semper."
" There it is for certain."
THE LAUGHING MAN. 171
Then he replaced the book on one of the shelves, growling.
" It might not be wholesome to inquire too deeply into a
case of the kind. We will remain on the surface. Laugh
away, my boy! "
Just then the little girl awoke. Her good-day was a cry.
" Come, nurse, give her the breast," said Ursus.
The infant sat up. Ursus taking the phial 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."
PART II.
BOOK THE FIRST.
THE EVERLASTING PRESENCE OF THE
PAST: MAN REFLECTS MAN.
CHAPTER I.
LORD CLANCHARLIE.
THERE was, in those days, an old tradition.
That tradition was Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie.
Linnaeus Baron Clancharlie, a contemporary of Cromwell,
was one of the peers of England — few in number, be it 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 Clancharlie 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 Clancharlie had persisted
in his fidelity to it. It would have been easy for the noble
patrician to re-enter the reconstituted upper house, repent-
ance 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 Clancharlie had failed to under-
stand what was due to events. While the nation over-
whelmed with acclamation the king come to retake posses-
sion of England, while unanimity was recording its verdict,
while the people were bowing their salutation to the
monarchy, while the dynasty was rising anew amidst a
glorious and triumphant recantation, at the moment when
THE LAUGHING MAN.
the past was becoming the future, and the future becoming
the past, that nobleman remained 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 out-
law. 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 nook of the lake,
between Chillon, where is the dungeon of Bonnivard, and
Vevay, where is Ludlow'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 passer-by. 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 justifi-
able. England was happy; a restoration is as the reconcilia-
tion 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 Whig 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 sufficed that they should
take the oath of allegiance to the king. When these facts
were considered— the glorious reign, the excellent king,
august princes given back by divine mercy to the people's
love; when it was remembered that persons of such con-
sideration as Monk, and, later on, Jeffreys, had rallied round
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 Clancharlie could not be
THE LAUGHING MAN. 177
ignorant of this, and that it only depended on himself to be
seated by their side, glorious in his honours; that England
had, thanks to her king, risen again to the summit of pros-
perity; that London was all banquets and carousals; that
everybody was rich and enthusiastic, that the court was
gallant, gay, and magnificent; — ii oy chance, far from these
splendours, in some melancholy, indescribable half-light, like
nightfall, that old man, clad in the same garb as the common
people, was observed pale, absent-minded, bent towards the
grave, standing on the shore of the lake, scarce heeding the
storm and 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 Clancharlie, 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 Clancharlie had never
had any brains. Every one agreed on that point.
n.
It is disagreeable to see one's fellows practise obstinacy.
Imitations of Regulus are not popular, and public opinion
holds them in some derision. Stubborn people are like
reproaches, and we have a right to laugh at them.
Besides, to sum up, are these perversities, these rugged
notches, virtues ? Is there not in these excessive advertise-
ments of self-abnegation and of honour 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." The true virtue is common
sense — what falls ought to fall, what succeeds ought to
succeed. Providence acts advisedly, it crowns 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
I78 THE LAUGHING MAN,
the other the triumph; then doubt is no longer possible, the
honest man rallies 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 weal, 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 some one must necessarily sacrifice himself. To
be faithful to public functions is true fidelity. The retire-
ment of public officials would paralyse the state. What I
banish yourself! — how weak! As an. example? — what
vanity I As a defiance ? — what audacity 1 What do you set
yourself up to be, I wonder? Learn that we are just as good
as you. If we chose we too could be intractable and untame-
able, and do worse things than you ; but we prefer to be
sensible people. Because I am a Trimalcion, you think that
I could not be a Cato ! What nonsense I
in.
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 Fronde, France had
been humiliated; with the aid of the Duke of Braganza, the
power of Spain had been lessened. Cromwell had tamed
Mazarin; 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 eight millions ; Algiers
and Tunis had been attacked; Jamaica conquered; Lisbon
humbled; French rivalry encouraged in Barcelona, and
Masaniello in Naples; Portugal had been made fast to
England ; the seas had been swept of Barbary pirates from
Gibraltar to Crete; maritime domination had been founded
under two forms, Victory and Commerce. On the loth of
August, 1653, the man of thirty-three victories, the old
THE LAUGHING MAN. 179
admirai who called himself the sailors' grandfather, Martin
Happertz 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 Mediter-
ranean of the Venetian, and by the patent of navigation,
England had taken possession of the sea-coast 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 Crom-
well; and Cromwell played with Calais and Dunkirk as with
two shuttlecocks on a battledore. 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, " / wish the
Republic of England to be respected,as was respected the Republic
of Rome.1* 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 Stuarts 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
Breda. He had conceded to England oblivion of the period
in which the son of the Huntingdon brewer placed his foot on
the neck of Louis XIV. England said its mea culpa, and
breathed again. The cup of joy was, as we have just said,
full ; gibbets for the regicides adding to the universal delight.
A restoration is a smile; but a few gibbets 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 ambi-
tion. The spirit of lawlessness had been expelled. Royalty
was reconstituted. Men had recovered from the follies 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 I Admirable was the return to
common sense. England had been in a dream. What joy
to be quit of such errors 1 Was ever anything so mad?
we be if every one had hi* Hghta?
lgo THE LAUGHING MAN.
every one'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 a Babel. 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 two 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 1 what an absurd ideal 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 ar? 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, suppressing sight, suppresses covet-
ousness: whence innocence. He who reads, thinks; who
thinks, reasons. But not to 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 " Achitophel." It was about the time when M. Huet,
Bishop of Avranchea, wrote to Saumaiao, who had done the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 181
author of " Paradise Lost " the honour 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:
Dry den 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 happi-
ness 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 Linnaeus Clancharlie had inflicted this vexation upon
honest men. To sulk at his country's happiness, alack, what
aberration 1
We know that in 1650 Parliament had drawn up this form
of declaration: " / promise to remain faithful to the republic,
without king, sovereign, or lord.'' Under pretext of having
taken this monstrous oath, Lord Clancharlie 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 morose esteem 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 honour to
believe that he had entered the republican ranks only to
observe the more closely the flaws in the republican armour,
and to smite it the more surely, when the day should come,
for the sacred cause of the king. These lurkings in ambush
for the convenient hour to strike the enemy a death-blow in
the back are attributes to loyalty. Such a line of conduct
had been expected of Lord Clancharlie, so strong was the
wish to judge him favourably; but, in the face of his strange
persistence in republicanism, people were obliged to lower
their estimate. Evidently Lord Clancharlie was confirmed
in his convictions — that is to say, an idiot I
The explanation given by the indulgent, wavered between
puerile 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 a
rebel. And, after all, what was this Lord Clancharlie? A
,82 THE LAUGHING MAN.
ten He had fled his camp, the aristocracy, for that ol
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 Clancharlie'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 con-
tagion? over the widespread gladness at the revival of the
monarchy, denounced by him as a lazaretto, he was the black
flag. What I could he look thus askance at order recon-
stituted, a nation exalted, and a religion restored? Over
such serenity why cast his shadow? Take umbrage at
England's contentment I Must he be the one blot in the
clear blue sky I Be as a threat I Protest against a nation's
willl refuse his Yes to the universal consent 1 It would be
disgusting, if it were not the part of a fool. Clancharlie
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 honour of having
saved society, becomes very rich, sheds a glory over his own
THE LAUGHING MAN. 183
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 1
Lord Clancharlie 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 Clancharlie 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 over-
strained delicacy. Excess of conscientiousness degenerates
into infirmity. Scruple is one-handed when a sceptre is to be
seized, and a eunuch when fortune is to be wedded. Dis-
trust 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 reascend; fools remain in it. Conscience must not
be allowed to practise 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 Clancharlie.
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 I
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
adherence to the Stuarts. For this they deserve praise.
They naturally calumniated him a little. The obstinate are
repulsive to the compliant. Men of sense, in favour and good
places at Court, weary of his disagreeable attitude, took
pleasure in saying, " // 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 Hyde." One of
his old friends went so far as to whisper, " He told me so him-
self." Remote as was the solitude of Linnaeus Clancharlie,
something of this talk would reach him through the outlaws
,84 THE LAUGHING*- MAN.
he met, such as old regicides like Andrew Brcmghton, who
lived at Lausanne. Clancharlie 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."
IV.
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 revarnished. All the past re-
appeared, 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, Mazarin, 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
republican reveries. He did not appreciate the profitable
example given by kings in those grand Babylonian gaieties,
which, after all, maintain luxury. He did not understand
the utility of vice. Here is a maxim : Do not extirpate vice,
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 Clancharlie 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 what 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 regicidea, He was a more genuine recon-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 185
structor of authority. He infused vigour 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 Jeffreys, and its sword to Kirke. That useful
Colonel, one day, hung and rehung the same man, a re-
publican, asking him each time, " Will you renounce the
republic? " The villain, having each time said " No," was
dispatched. " / hanged him four times" said Kirke, with
satisfaction. The renewal of executions is a great sign of
power in the executive authority. Lady Lisle, who, though
she had sent her son to fight against Monmouth, had con-
cealed two rebels in her house, was executed ; another rebel,
having been honourable enough to declare that an Anabaptist
female had given him shelter, was pardoned, and the woman
was burned alive. Kirke, on another occasion, gave a town
to understand that he knew its principles to be republican, by
hanging nineteen 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
Jeffreys and Kirke, was a prince imbued with true religion;
he practised mortification in the ugliness of his mistresses;
he listened to le Pere la Colombiere, a preacher almost as
unctuous as le Pere Cheminais, but with more fire, who had
the glory of being, during the first part of his life, the coun-
sellor 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 enabled 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
Linnaeus Clancharlie. 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.
,86 THE LAUGHINO MAN,
CHAPTER II.
LORD DAVID DIRRY-MOIR.
Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie had not always been old and
proscribed; 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.
Distrust the loosely-clasped girdle. Male •prceoinctam
juvenem cavete. Lord Clancharlie, 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, just as his father was going into
exile. Hence he had never seen his father. This bastard of
Lord Clanchaiiie had grown up as page at the court of
Charles II. He was styled Lord David Dirry-Moir: he was
a lord by courtesy, his mother being a woman of quality.
The mother, while Lord Clancharlie was becoming 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 Charles 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, boarded at the king's expense, by a natural
revulsion of feeling, an ardent adherent of the Stuarts. Lord
David was for some time one of the hundred and seventy
wearing the great sword, while afterwards, entering the corps
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 Charles II.
After which he prospered under James II.
The king is dead. Long live the king I It is the non deficit
alter, aureus.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 187
It was on the accession of the Duke of York that he
obtained permission to call himself Lord David Dirry-Moir,
from an estate which his mother, who hafd just died, had left
him, in that great forest of Scotland, where is found the krag,
a bird which scoops out a nest with its beak in the trunk of
the oak.
II.
James IL 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 mien 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 gentleman of the
bedchamber, at a salary of a thousand a year.
It was a fine promotion. A gentleman of the bedchamber
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 ^260. Under him were the five coachmen of the
king, the five postilions 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-
horses which the king kept at Newmarket, and which cost his
Majesty £600 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 Duppa. Mr.
Baker, who was clerk of the crown, and Mr. Brown, who was
clerk of the Parliament, kotowed 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 give 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
1 88 THE LAUGHING MAN.
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 almonry, 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 in
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 was
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 pro^
duces 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 Dirry-Moir 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
Dirry-Moir, lord by courtesy, into a lord by right.
in.
The opportunity occurred.
One day it was announced that several things had hap-
pened to the old exile, Lord Clancharlie, 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 prob-
ably legend and conjecture. If these random tales were to
TEJE LAUGHING MAN. 189
be credited, Lord Clancharlie must have had his republican-
ism intensified towards the end of his life, to the extent of
marrying (strange obstinacy of the exile!) Ann 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 Clancharlie.
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 to-day. Lord Clancharlie 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 orphaned 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 Dirry-Moir sole and positive heir in default of
legitimate issue, and by his royal pleasure, of Lord Linnaeus
Clancharlie, his natural father, the absence of all other issue
and descent being established, patents of which grant were
registered in the House of Lords. By these patents the king
instituted Lord David Dirry-Moir in the titles, rights, and
prerogatives of the late Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie, 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,
every one knew why. This little infant was called the Duchess
Josiana.
The English fashion then ran on Spanish names. One of
Charles II. 's bastards was called Carlos, Earl of Plymouth.
It is likely that Josiana was a contraction for Josefa-y-Ana.
Josiana, however, may have been a name — the feminine of
Josias. One of Henry VIII. 's gentlemen was called Josias du
Passage.
It was to this little duchess that the king granted the
peerage of Clancharlie. She was a peeress till there should be
a peer; the peer should be her husband. The peerage was
founded on a double castleward, the barony of Clancharlie
J9o THE LAUGHIKS
and the barony of Hunkerville; besides, the barons of Clan-
charlie were, in recompense of an anciynt feat of arms, and
by royal licence, Marquises of Corleone, in Sicily.
Peers of England cannot bear foreign titles; there are,
nevertheless, exceptions; thus— Henry Arundal, Baron
Arundel of Wardour, was, as well as Lord Clifford, a Count
of the Holy Roman Empire, of which Lord Cowper is a prince.
The Duke of Hamilton is Duke of Chatelherault, in France;
Basil Fielding, Earl of Denbigh, is Count of Hapsburg, of
Lauffenberg, and of Rheinfelden, in Germany. The Duke of
Marlborough was Prince of Mindelheim, in Suabia, just as the
Duke of Wellington was Prince of Waterloo, in Belgium.
The same Lord Wellington was a Spanish Duke of Ciudad
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 Clancharlie
were all noble. These lands, burghs, bailiwicks, fiefs, rents,
freeholds, and domains, adherent to the peerage of Clan-
charlie-Hunkerville, belonged provisionally to Lady' Josiana,
and the king declared that, once married to Josiana, Lord
David Dirry-Moir should be Baron Clancharlie.
Besides the Clancharlie inheritance, Lady Josiana had her
own fortune. She possossed great wealth, much of which
was derived from the gifts of Madame sans queue to the Duke
of York. Madame sans queue is short for Madame. Henri'
etta of England, Duchess of Orleans, the lady of highest rank
in France after the queen, was thus called.
IV.
Having prospered under Charles and: James, Lord David
prospered under William. His Jacobite jeeling 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 him-
self 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; assiduous at feasts,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 191
at galas, 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 valour; a courtier
on the surface, a paladin below; quite young at forty-five.
Lord David sang French songs, an elegant gaiety which had
delighted Charles II. He loved eloquence and fine language.
He greatly admired those celebrated discourses which are
called the funeral orations of Bossuet.
From his mother he had inherited almost enough to live on,
about /i 0,000 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
cow-hide, which turned over,, with spurs. He had hats like
nobody else's, unheard-of lace, and bands of which he alone
had the pattern.
CHAPTER III.
THE DUCHESS JOSIANA.
TOWARDS 1705, although Lady Josiana was twenty-three and
Lord David forty- four, the wedding had not yet taken place,
and that for the best reasons in the world. Did they hate
each other? Far from it; but what cannot escape from you
inspires you with no haste to obtain it. Josiana wanted to
remain free, David to remain young. To have no tie until
as late as possible appeared to him to be a prolongation of
youth. Middle-aged young men abounded in those rakish
times. They grew gray as young fops. The wig was an
accomplice: later on, powder became the auxiliary. At
fifty-five Lord Charles Gerrard, Baron Gerrard, one of the
Gerrards of Bromley, filled London with his successes. The
young and pretty Duchess of Buckingham, Countess of
Coventry, made a fool of herself for love of the handsome
I92 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Thomas Bellasys, Viscount Fauconberg, who was sixty-seven.
People quoted the famous verses of Corneille, the septua-
genarian, to a girl of twenty—" Marquise, si mon visage."
Women, too, had their successes in the autumn of life.
Witness Ninon and Marion. Such were the models of the day.
Josiana and David carried on a flirtation of a particular
shade. They did not love, they pleased, each other. To be
at each other's side sufficed them. Why hasten the Con-
clusion ? The novels of those days carried lovers and engaged
couples to that kind of stage which was the most becoming.
Besides, Josiana, while she knew herself to be a bastard, felt
herself a princess, and carried her authority over him with a
high tone in all their arrangements. She had a fancy for
Lord David. Lord David was handsome, but that was over
and above the bargain. She considered him to be fashion-
able.
To be fashionable Is everything. Caliban, fashionable and
magnificent, would distance Ariel, poor. Lord David was
handsome, so much the better. The danger in being hand-
some is being insipid; and that he was not. He betted,
boxed, ran into debt. Josiana thought great things of his
horses, his dogs, his losses at play, his mistresses. Lord
David, on his side, bowed down before the fascinations of the
Duchess Josiana — a maiden without spot or scruple, haughty,
inaccessible, and audacious. He addressed sonnets to her,
which Josiana sometimes read. In these sonnets he declared
that to possess Josiana would be to rise to the stars, which
did not prevent his always putting the ascent off to the
following year. He waited in the antechamber outside
Josiana's heart; and this suited the convenience of both.
At court all admired the good taste of this delay. Lady
Josiana said, " It is a bore that I should be obliged to marry
Lord David; I, who would desire nothing better than to be
in love with him I "
Josiana was "the flesh." Nothing could be more re-
splendent. She was very tall — too tall. Her hair was of
that tinge which might be called red gold. She was plump,
fresh, strong, and rosy, with immense boldness and wit. She
had eyes which were too intelligible. She had neither lovers
nor chastity. She walled herself round with pride. Men I
oh, fie ! a god only would be worthy of her, or a monster. If
virtue consists in the protection of an inaccessible position,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 193
Josiana possessed all possible virtue, but without any
innocence. She disdained intrigues ; but she would not have
been displeased had she been supposed to have engaged in
some, provided that the objects were uncommon, and pro-
portioned to the merits of one so highly placed. She thought
little of her reputation, but much of her glory. To appear
yielding, and to be unapproachable, is perfection. Josiana
felt herself majestic and material. Hers was a cumbrous
beauty. She usurped rather than charmed. She trod upon
hearts. She was earthly. She would have been as much
astonished at being proved to have a soul in her bosom as
wings on her back. She discoursed on Locke; she was
polite; she was suspected of knowing Arabic.
To be " the flesh " and to be woman are two different
things. Where a woman is vulnerable, on the side of pity,
for instance, which so readily turns to love, Josiana was not.
Not that she was unfeeling. The ancient comparison of flesh
to marble is absolutely false. The beauty of flesh consists in
not being marble: its beauty is to palpitate, to tremble, to
blush, to bleed, to have firmness without hardness, to be
white without being cold, to have its sensations and its
infirmities ; its beauty is to be life, and marble is death.
Flesh, when it attains a certain degree of beauty, has al-
most a claim to the right of nudity; it conceals itself in its
own dazzling charms as in a veil. He who might have looked
upon Josiana nude would have perceived her outlines only
through a surrounding glory. She would have shown herself
without hesitation to a satyr or a eunuch. She had the self-
possession of a goddess. To have made her nudity a
torment, ever eluding a pursuing Tantalus, would have been
an amusement to her.
The king had made her a duchess, and Jupiter a Nereid — a
double irradiation of which the strange brightness of this
creature was composed. In admiring her you felt yourself
becoming a pagan and a lackey. Her origin had been
bastardy and the ocean. She appeared to have emerged from
the foam. From the stream had risen the first jet of her
destiny; but the spring was royal. In her there was some-
thing of the wave, of chance, of the patrician, and of the
tempest. She was well read and accomplished. Never had
a passion approached her, yet she had sounded them all-
She had a disgust for realizations, and at the same time a
I94 THE LAUGHING MAN.
taste for them. If she had stabbed herself, it would, like
Lucretia, not have been until afterwards. She was a virgin
stained with every defilement in its visionary stage.$
was a possible Astarte in a real Diana. She was, in the
insolence of high birth, tempting and inaccessible. Never-
theless, she might find it amusing to plan a fall for herself.
She dwelt in a halo of glory, half wishing to descend from it,
and perhaps feeling curious to know what a fall was like.
She was a little too heavy for her cloud. To err is a diver-
sion. Princely unconstraint has the privilege of experiment,
and what is frailty in a plebeian is only frolic in a duchess.
Josiana was in everything — in birth, in beauty, in irony, in
brilliancy — almost a queen. She had felt a moment's
enthusiasm for Louis de Bouffles, who used to break horse-
shoes between his fingers. She regretted that Hercules was
dead. She lived in some undefined expectation of a voluptu-
ous and supreme ideal.
Morally, Josiana brought to one's mind the line —
" Un beau torse de femme en hydre se termine."
Hers was a noble neck, a splendid bosom, heaving harmoni-
ously over a royal heart, a glance full of life and light, a
countenance pure and haughty, and who knows ? below the
surface was there not, in a semi-transparent and misty depth,
an undulating, supernatural prolongation, perchance de-
formed and dragon-like — a proud virtue ending in vice in
the depth of dreams.
II.
With all that she was a prude.
It was the fashion.
Remember Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was of a type that prevailed in England for
three centuries — the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth.
Elizabeth was more than English — she was Anglican. Hence
the deep respect of the Episcopalian Church for that queen —
a respect resetted by the Church of Rome, which counter-
balanced it with a dash of excommunication. In the mouth
of Sixtus V., when anathematizing Elizabeth, malediction
turned to madrigal. " Un gran cervello di principessa," he
•ays. Mary Stuart, less concerned with the church and
THE LAUGHING MAN. 195
more with the woman part of the question, had little respect
for her sister Elizabeth, and wrote to her as queen to queen
and coquette to prude: " Your disinclination to marriage
arises from your not wishing to lose the liberty of being made
love to." Mary Stuart played with the fan, Elizabeth with
the axe. An uneven match. They were rivals, besides, in
literature. Mary Stuart composed French verses ; Elizabeth
translated Horace. The ugly Elizabeth decreed herself
beautiful ; liked quatrains and acrostics ; had the keys of
towns presented to her by cupids; bit her lips after the
Italian fashion, rolled her eyes after the Spanish; had in her
wardrobe three thousand dresses and costumes, of which
several were for the character of Minerva and Amphitrite;
esteemed the Irish for the width of their shoulders ; covered
her farthingale with braids and spangles; loved roses;
cursed, swore, and stamped; struck her maids of honour
with her clenched fists; used to send Dudley to the devil;
beat Burleigh, the Chancellor, who would cry — poor old fool 1
spat on Matthew ; collared Hatton ; boxed the ears of Essex ;
showed her legs to Bassompierre ; and was a virgin.
What she did for Bassompierre the Queen of Sheba had
done for Solomon ; * consequently she was right, Holy Writ
having created the precedent. That which is biblical may
well be Anglican. Biblical precedent goes so far as to speak
of a child who was called Ebnehaquem or Melilechet — that
is to say, the Wise Man's son.
Why object to such manners? Cynicism is at least as
good as hypocrisy.
Nowadays England, whose Loyola is named Wesley, casts
down her eyes a little at the remembrance of that past age.
She is vexed at the memory, yet proud of it.
These fine ladies, moreover, knew Latin. From the
1 6th century this had been accounted a feminine accomplish-
ment. Lady Jane Grey had carried fashion to the point of
knowing Hebrew. The Duchess Josiana Latinized. Then
(another fine thing) she was secretly a Catholic; after the
manner of her uncle, Charles II., rather than her father,
James II. James II. had lost his crown for his Catholicism,
and Josiana did not care to risk her peerage. Thus it was
that while a Catholic amongst her intimate friends and the
* Regina Saba coram rege crura denudavit. — Schicklardus in Prcemio
Tarich Jersici, F. 65.
196 THE LAUGHING MAN.
refined of both sexes, she was outwardly a Protestant for the
benefit of the riffraff.
This is the pleasant view to take of religion. You en]oy
all the good things belonging to the official Episcopalian
church, and later on you die, like Grotius, in the odour of
Catholicity, having the glory of a mass being said for you by
le Pere Petau.
Although plump and healthy, Josiana was, we repeat, a
perfect prude.
At times her sleepy and voluptuous way of dragging out
the end of her phrases was like the creeping of a tiger's paws
in the jungle.
The advantage of prudes is that they disorganize the
human race. They deprive it of the honour of their ad-
herence. Beyond all, keep the human species at a distance.
This is a point of the greatest importance.
When one has not got Olympus, one must take the Hotel
de Rambouillet. Juno resolves herself into Araminta. A
pretension to divinity not admitted creates affectation. In
default of thunderclaps there is impertinence. The temple
shrivels into the boudoir. Not having the power to be a
goddess, she is an idol.
There is besides, in prudery, a certain pedantry which is
pleasing to women. The coquette and the pedant are neigh-
bours. Their kinship is visible in the fop. The subtile is
derived from the sensual. Gluttony affects delicacy, a
grimace of disgust conceals cupidity. And then woman feels
her weak point guarded by all that casuistry of gallantry
which takes the place of scruples in prudes. It is a line of
circumvallation with a ditch. Every prude puts on an air of
repugnance. It is a protection. She will consent, but she
disdains — for the present.
Josiana had an uneasy conscience. She felt such a leaning
towards immodesty that she was a prude. The recoils of
pride in the direction opposed to our vices lead us to those
of a contrary nature. It was the excessive effort to be chaste
which made her a prude. To be too much on the defensive
points to a secret desire for attack; the shy woman is not
strait-laced. She shut herself up in the arrogance of the
exceptional circumstances of her rank, meditating, perhaps,
all the while, some sudden lapse from it.
It was the dawn of the eighteenth century. England was a
THE LAUGHING MAN. 197
sketch of what France was during the regency. Walpole and
Dubois are not unlike. Marlborough was fighting against
his former king, James II., to whom it was said he had sold
his sister, Miss Churchill. Bolingbroke was in his meridian,
and Richelieu in his dawn. Gallantry found its convenience
in a certain medley of ranks. Men were equalized by the
same vices as they were later on, perhaps, by the same ideas.
Degradation of rai.k, an aristocratic prelude, began what
the revolution was to complete. It was not very far off the
time when Jelyotte was seen publicly sitting, in broad day-
light, on the bed of the Marquise d'Epinay. It is true (for
manners re-echo each other) that in the sixteenth century
Smeton's nightcap had been found under Anne Boleyn's
pillow.
If the word woman signifies fault, as I forget what Council
decided, never was woman so womanlike as then. Never,
covering her frailty by her charms, and her weakness by her
omnipotence, has she claimed absolution more imperiously.
In making the forbidden the permitted fruit, Eve fell; in
making the permitted the forbidden fruit, she triumphs.
That is the climax. In the eighteenth century the wife bolts
out her husband. She shuts herself up in Eden with Satan.
Adam is left outside.
in.
All Josiana's instincts impelled her to yield herself gallantly
rather than to give herself legally. To surrender on the
score of gallantry implies learning, recalls Menalcas and
Amaryllis, and is almost a literary act. Mademoiselle de
Scudery, putting aside the attraction of ugliness for ugliness'
sake, had no other motive for yielding to Pelisson.
The maiden a sovereign, the wife a subject, such was the
old English notion. Josiana was deferring the hour of this
subjection as long as she could. She must eventually marry
Lord David, since such was the royal pleasure. It was a
necessity, doubtless ; but what a pity I Josiana appreciated
Lord David, and showed him off. There was between them
a tacit agreement neither to conclude nor to break off the
engagement. They eluded each other. This method of
making love, one step in advance and two back, is expressed
in the dances of the period, the minuet and the gavotte.
It is unbecoming to be married — fades one's ribbons and
Z98 THE LAUGHING MAN.
makes one look old. An espousal is a dreary absorption of
brilliancy. A woman handed over to you by a notary, how
commonplace I The brutality of mariiage creates definite
situations; suppresses the will; kills choice; has a syntax,
like grammar; replaces inspiration by orthography; makes
a dictation of love ; disperses all Life's mysteries ; diminishes
the rights both of sovereign and subject; by a turn of the
scale destroys the charming equilibrium ci the sexes, the one
robust in bodily strength, the other all-powerful in feminine
weakness — strength on one side, beauty on the other; makes
one a master and the other a servant, while without marriage
one is a slave, the other a queen.
To make Love prosaically decent, how gross 1 to deprive it
of all impropriety, how dull 1
Lord David was ripening. Forty; 'tis a marked period.
He did not perceive this, and in truth he looked no more than
thirty. He considered it more amusing to desire Josiana
than to possess her. He possessed others. He had
mistresses. On the other hand, Josiana had dreams.
The Duchess Josiana had a peculiarity, less rare than
it is supposed. One of her eyes was blue and the other
black. Her pupils were made for love and hate, for
happiness and misery. Night and day were mingled in her
look.
Her ambition was this — to show herself capable of im-
possibilities. One day she said to Swift, " You people fancy
that you know what scorn is." " You people " meant the
human race.
She was a skin-deep Papist. Her Catholicism did not ex-
ceed the amount necessary for fashion. She would have been
a Puseyite in the present day. She wore great dresses of
velvet, satin, or moire, some composed of fifteen or sixteen
yards of material, with embroideries of gold and silver; and
round her waist many knots of pearls, alternating with other
precious stones. She was extravagant in gold lace. Some-
times she wore an embroidered cloth jacket like a bachelor.
She rode on a man's saddle, notwithstanding the invention
of side-saddles, introduced into England in the fourteenth
century by Anne, wife of Richard II. She washed her face,
arms, shoulders, and neck, in sugar-candy, diluted in white of
egg, after the fashion of Castile. There came over her face,
after any one had spoken wittily in her presence, a reflective
THE LAUGHING MAN. 199
smile of singular grace. She was free from malice, and
rather good-natured than otherwise.
CHAPTER IV.
THE LEADER OF FASHION.
JOSIANA was bored. The fact is so natural as to be scarcely
worth mentioning.
Lord David held the position of judge in the gay life of
London. He was looked up to by the nobility and gentry.
Let us register a glory of Lord David's. He was daring
enough to wear his own hair. The reaction against the wig
was beginning. Just as in 1824 Eugene Deveria was the first
to allow his beard to grow, so in 1702 Prince Devereux was
the first to risk wearing his own hair in public disguised by
artful curling. For to risk one's hair was almost to risk one's
head. The indignation was universal. Nevertheless Prince
Devereux was Viscount Hereford, and a peer of England.
He was insulted, and the deed was well worth the insult. In
the hottest part of the row Lord David suddenly appeared
without his wig and in his own hair. Such conduct shakes
the foundations of society. Lord David was insulted even
more than Viscount Hereford. He held his ground. Prince
Devereux was the first, Lord David Dirry-Moir the second.
It is sometimes more difficult to be second than first. It
requires less genius, but more courage. The first, intoxicated
by the novelty, may ignore the danger ; the second sees the
abyss, and rushes into it. Lord David flung himself into the
abyss of no longer wearing a wig. Later on these lords found
imitators. Following these two revolutionists, men found
sufficient audacity to wear their own hair, and powder was
introduced as an extenuating circumstance.
In order to establish, before we pass on, an important
period of history, we should remark that the first blow in
the war of wigs was really struck by a Queen, Christina of
Sweden, who wore man's clothes, and had appeared in 1680,
in her hair of golden brown, powdered, and brushed up from
her head. She had, besides, says Misson, a slight beard.
The Pope, on his part, by a bull of March 1694, had some-
what let down the wig, by taking it from the heads of bishops
and priests, and in ordering churchmen to let their hair grow.
2oo THE LAUGHING MAN.
Lord David, then, did not wear a wig, and did wear cow-
hide boots. Such great things made him a mark for public
admiration. There was not a club of which he was not the
leader, not a boxing match in which he was net desired as
referee. The referee is the arbitrator.
He had drawn up the rules of several clubs in high life. He
founded several resorts of fashionable society, of which one,
the Lady Guinea, was still in existence in Pall Mall in 1772.
The Lady Guinea was a club in which all the youth of the
peerage congregated. They gamed there. The lowest stake
allowed was a rouleau of fifty guineas, and there was never
less than 20,000 guineas on the table. By the side of each
player was a little stand on which to place his cup of tea,
and a gilt bowl in which to put the rouleaux of guinea^. The
players, like servants when cleaning knives, wore leather
sleeves to save their lace, breastplates of leather to protect
their ruffles, shades on their brows to shelter their eyes from
the great glare of the lamps, and, to keep their cuils in order,
broad-brimmed hats covered with flowers. They were
masked to conceal their excitement, especially when playing
the game of quinze. All, moreover, had their coats turned
the wrong way, for luck. Lord David was a member of the
Beefsteak Club, the Surly Club, and of the Splitfarthing
Club, of the Cross Club, the Scratchpenny Club, of the Sealed
Knot, a Royalist Club, and of the Martinus Scribblerus,
founded by Swift, to take the place of the Rota, founded by
Milton.
Though handsome, he belonged to the Ugly Club. This
club was dedicated to deformity. The members agreed to
fight, not about a beautiful woman, but about an ugly man.
The hall of the club was adorned by hideous portraits —
Thersites, Triboulet, Duns, Hudibras, Scarron; over the
chimney was JEsop, between two men, each blind of an eye,
Codes and Camoens (Codes being blind of the left, Camoens
of the right eye), so arranged that the two profiles without
eyes were turned to each other. The day that the beautiful
Mrs. Visart caught the small pox the Ugly Club toasted her.
This club was still in existence in the beginning of the nine-
teenth century, and Mirabeau was elected an honorary
member.
Since the restoration of Charles II. revolutionary clubs
had been abolished. The tavern in the little street by Moor-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 201
fields, where the Calf's Head Club was held, had been pulled
down; It was so called because on the 3oth of January, the
day on which the blood of Charles I. flowed on the scaffold,
the members had drunk red wine out of the skull of a calf to
the health of Cromwell. To the republican clubs had suc-
ceeded monarchical clubs. In them people amused them-
selves with decency.
******
There was the Hell-fire Club, where they played at being
impious. It was a joust of sacrilege. Hell was at auction
there to the highest bidder In blasphemy.
There was the Butting Club, so called from Its members
butting folks with their heads. They found some street
porter with a wide chest and a stupid countenance. They
offered him, and compelled him, if necessary, to accept a pot
of porter, in return for which he was to allow them to butt
him with their heads four times in the chest, and on this they
betted. One day a man, a great brute of a Welshman named
Gogangerdd, expired at the third butt, This looked serious.
An inquest was held, and the jury returned the following
verdict: " Died of an inflation of the heart, caused by
excessive drinking." Gogangerdd had certainly drunk the
contents of the pot of porter.
There was the Fun Club. Fun is like cant, like humour, a
word which is untranslatable. Fun is to farce what pepper
is to salt. To get into a house and break a valuable mirror,
slash the family portraits, poison the dog, put the cat in the
aviary, is called " cutting a bit of fun." To give bad news
which is untrue, whereby people put on mourning by mistake,
is fun. It was fun to cut a square hole in the Holbein at
Hampton Court. Fun would have been proud to have
broken the arm of the Venus of Milo. Under James II. a
young millionaire lord who had during the night set fire to a
thatched cottage — a feat which made all London burst with
laughter — was proclaimed the King of Fun. The poor devils
in the cottage were saved in their night clothes. The members
of the Fun Club, all of the highest aristocracy, used to run
about London during the hours when the citizens were asleep,
pulling the hinges from the shutters, cutting off the pipes of
pumps, filling up cisterns, digging up cultivated plots of
. ground, putting out lamps, sawing through the beams which
supported houses, breaking the window panes, especially in
202 THE LAUGHING MAN.
the poor quarters of the town. It was the rich who acted thus
towards the poor. For this reason no complaint was possible.
That was the best of the joke. These manners have not
altogether disappeared. In many places in England and in
English possessions — at Guernsey, for instance — your house
is now and then somewhat damaged during the night, or a
fence is broken, or the knocker twisted off your door. If it
were poor people who did these things, they would be sent to
jail; but they are done by pleasant young gentlemen.
The most fashionable of the clubs was presided over by an
emperor, who wore a crescent on his forehead, and was called
the Grand Mohawk. The Mohawk surpassed the Fun. Do
evil for evil's sake was the programme. The Mohawk Club
had one great object — to injure. To fulfil this duty all
means were held good. In becoming a Mohawk the
members took an oath to be hurtful. To injure at any price,
no matter when, no matter whom, no matter where, was a
matter of duty. Every member of the Mohawk Club was
bound to possess an accomplishment. One was " a dancing
master; " that is to say he made the rustics frisk about by
pricking the calves of their legs with the point of his sword.
Others knew how to make a man sweat; that is to say, a
circle of gentlemen with drawn rapiers would surround a poor
wretch, so that it was impossible for him not to turn his back
upon some one. The gentleman behind him chastised him
for this by a prick of his sword, which made him spring
round ; another prick in the back warned the fellow that one
of noble blood was behind him, and so on, each one wounding
him in his turn. When the man, closed round by the circle
of swords and covered with blood, had turned and danced
about enough, they ordered their servants to beat him with
sticks, to change the course of his ideas. Others " hit the
lion " — that is, they gaily stopped a passenger, broke his nose
with a blow of the fist, and then shoved both thumbs into his
eyes. If his eyes were gouged out, he was paid for them.
Such were towards the beginning of the eighteenth century,
the pastimes of the rich idlers of London. The idlers of Paris
had theirs. M. de Charolais was firing his gun at a citizen
standing on his own threshold. In all times youth has had
its amusements.
Lord David Dirry-Moir brought into all these institutions
his magnificent and liberal spirit. Just like any one else, he
THE LAUGHING MAN. 203
would gaily set fire to a cot of woodwork and thatch, and just
scorch those within; but he would rebuild their houses in
stone. He insulted two ladies. One was unmarried — he
gave her a portion; the other was married — he had her
husband appointed chaplain.
Cockfighting owed him some praiseworthy improvements.
It was marvellous to see Lord David dress a cock for the pit.
Cocks lay hold of each other by the feathers, as men by the
hair. Lord David, therefore, made his cock as bald as
possible. With a pair of scissors he cut off all the feathers
from the tail and from the head to the shoulders, and all
those on the neck. So much less for the enemy's beak, he
used to say. Then he extended the cock's wings, and cut
each feather, one after another, to a point, and thus the wings
were furnished with darts. So much for the enemy's eyes,
he would say. Then he scraped its claws with a penknife,
sharpened its nails, fitted it with spurs of sharp steel, spat on
its head, spat on its neck, anointed it with spittle, as they
used to rub oil over athletes ; then set it down in the pit, a
redoubtable champion, exclaiming, " That's how to make a
cock an eagle, and a bird of the poultry yard a bird of the
mountain."
Lord David attended prize-fights, and was their living law.
On occasions of great performances it was he who had the
stakes driven in and ropes stretched, and who fixed the
number of feet for the ring. When he was a second, he
followed his man step by step, a bottle in one hand, a sponge
in the other, crying out to him to hit hard, suggesting strata-
gems, advising him as he fought, wiping 'away the blood,
raising him when overthrown, placing him on his knee,
putting the mouth of the bottle between his teeth, and from
his own mouth, filled with water, blowing a fine rain into his
eyes and ears — a thing which reanimates even a dying man.
If he was referee, he saw that there was no foul play, pre-
vented any one, whosoever he might be, from assisting the
combatants, excepting the seconds, declare the man beaten
who did not fairly face his opponent, watched that the time
between the rounds did not exceed half a minute, prevented
butting, and declared whoever resorted to it beaten, and
forbade a man's being hit when down. All this science, how-
ever, did not render him a pedant, nor destroy his ease of
manner in society.
204 THE LAUGHING MAN.
When he was referee, rough, pimple-faced, unshorn friends
of either combatant never dared to come to the aid of their
failing man, nor, in order to upset the chances of the betting,
jumped over the barrier, entered the ring, broke the ropes,
pulled down the stakes, and violently interposed in the battle.
Lord David was one of the few referees whom they dared not
thrash.
No one could train like him. The pugilist whose trainer he
consented to become was sure to win. Lord David would
choose a Hercules — massive as a rock, tall as a tower — and
make him his child. The problem was to turn that human
rock from a defensive to an offensive state. In this he
excelled. Having once adopted the Cyclops, he never left
him. He became his nurse; he measured out his wine,
weighed his meat, and counted his hours of sleep. It was
he who invented the athlete's admirable rulers, afterwards
reproduced by Morley. In the mornings, a raw egg and a
glass of sherry; at twelve, some slices of a leg of mutton,
almost raw, with tea; at four, toast and tea; in the evening,
pale ale and toast; after which he undressed his man, rubbed
him, and put him to bed. In the street he never allowed him
to leave his sight, keeping him out of every danger — runaway
horses, the wheels of carriages, drunken soldiers, pretty girls.
He watched over his virtue. This maternal solicitude con-
tinually brought some new perfection into the pupil's educa-
tion. He taught him the blow with the fist which breaks the
teeth, and the twist of the thumb which gouges out the eye.
What could be more touching ?
Thus he was preparing himself for public life to which he
was to be called later on. It is no easy matter to become an
accomplished gentleman.
Lord David Dirry-Moir was passionately fond of open-air
exhibitions, of shows, of circuses with wild beasts, of the
caravans of mountebanks, of clowns, tumblers, merrymen,
open-air farces, and the wonders of a fair. The true noble is
he who smacks of the people. Therefore it was that Lord
David frequented the taverns and low haunts of London and
the Cinque Porte. In order to be able at need, and without
compromising his rank in the white squadron, to be cheek-by-
jowl with a topman or a calker, he used to wear a sailor's
jacket when he went into the slums. For such disguise his
not wearing a wig was convenient: for even under Louis
THE LAUGHING MAN. 205
XIV. the people kept to their hair like the lion to his mane.
This gave him great freedom of action. The low people
whom Lord David used to meet in the stews, and with whom
he mixed, held him in high esteem, without ever dreaming
that he was a lord. They called him Tom- Jim- Jack. Under
this name he was famous and very popular amongst the dregs
of the people. He played the blackguard in a masterly style :
when necessary, he used his fists. This phase of his fashion-
able life was highly appreciated by Lady Josiana.
CHAPTER V.
QUEEN ANNE.
I.
ABOVE this couple there was Anne, Queen of England. An
ordinary woman was Queen Anne. She was gay, kindly,
august — to a certain extent. No quality of hers attained to
virtue, none to vice. Her stoutness was bloated, her fun
heavy, her good-nature stupid. She was stubborn and
weak. As a wife she was faithless and faithful, having
favourites to whom she gave up her heart, and a husband for
whom she kept her bed. As a Christian she was a heretic
and a bigot. She had one beauty — the well-developed neck
of a Niobe. The rest of her person was indifferently formed.
She was a clumsy coquette and a chaste one. Her skin was
white and fine ; she displayed a great deal of it. It was she
who introduced the fashion of necklaces of large pearls
clasped round the throat. She had a narrow forehead,
sensual lips, fleshy cheeks, large eyes, short sight. Her
short sight extended to her mind. Beyond a burst of
merriment now and then, almost as ponderous as her anger,
she lived in a sort of taciturn grumble and a grumbling
silence. Words escaped from her which had to be guessed
at. She was a mixture of a good woman and a mischievous
devil. She liked surprises, which is extremely woman-like.
Anne was a pattern — just sketched roughly — of the universal
Eve. To that sketch had fallen that chance, the throne.
She drank. Her husband was a Dane, thoroughbred. A
Tory, she governed by the Whigs — like a woman, like a mad
woman. She had fits of rage. She was violent, a brawler.
Nobody more awkward than Anne in directing affairs of
state. She allowed events to fall about as they might
206 THE LAUGHING MAN.
chance. Her whole policy was cracked. She excelled In
bringing about great catastrophes from little causes. When
a whim of authority took hold of her, she called it giving a
stir with the poker. She would say with an air of profound
thought, " No peer may keep his hat on before the king
except De Courcy, Baron Kingsale, an Irish peer; " or, " It
would be an injustice were my husband not to be Lord High
Admiral, since my father was." And she made George of
Denmark High Admiral of England and of all her Majesty's
plantations. She was perpetually perspiring bad humour;
she did not explain her thought, she exuded it. There was
something of the Sphinx in this goose.
She rather liked fun, teasing, and practical jokes. Could
she have made Apollo a hunchback, it would have delighted
her. But she would have left him a god. Good-natured,
her ideal was to allow none to despair, and to worry all. She
had often a rough word in her mouth; a little more, and she
would have sworn like Elizabeth. From time to time she
would take from a man's pocket, which she wore in her skirt,
a little round box, of chased silver, on which was her portrait,
in profile, between the two letters Q. A. ; she would open this
box, and take from it, on her finger, a little pomade, with
which she reddened her lips, and, having coloured her mouth,
would laugh. She was greedily fond of the flat Zealand
gingerbread cakes. She was proud of being fat.
More of a Puritan than anything else, she would, neverthe-
less, have liked to devote herself to stage plays. She had an
absurd academy of music, copied after that of France. In
1700 a Frenchman, named Foretroche, wanted to build a
royal circus at Paris, at a cost of 400,000 francs, which scheme
was opposed by D'Argenson. This Forteroche passed into
England, and proposed to Queen Anne, who was Immediately
charmed by the idea, to build in London a theatre with
machinery, with a fourth under-stage finer than that of the
King of France. Like Louis XIV., she liked to be driven at a
gallop. Her teams and relays would sometimes do the
distance between London and Windsor in less than an hour
and a quarter.
ii.
^ In Anne's time no meeting was allowed without the permis-
sion of two justices of the peace. The assembly of twelve
THE LAUGHING MAN. 207
persons, were it only to eat oysters and drink porter, was a
felony. Under her reign, otherwise relatively mild, pressing
for the fleet was carried on with extreme violence — a gloomy
evidence that the Englishman is a subject rather than a
citizen. For centuries England suffered under that process
of tyranny which gave the lie to all the old charters of
freedom, and out of which France especially gathered a cause
of triumph and indignation. What in some degree diminishes
the triumph is, that while sailors were pressed in England,
soldiers were pressed in France. In every great town of
France, any able-bodied man, going through the streets on
his business, was liable to be shoved by the crimps into a
house called the oven. There he was shut up with others in
the same plight; those fit for service were picked out, and
the recruiters sold them to the officers. In 1695 there were
thirty of these ovens in Paris.
The laws against Ireland, emanating from Queen Anne,
were atrocious. Anne was born in 1664, two years before
the great fire of London, on which the astrologers (there were
some left, and Louis XIV. was born with the assistance of an
astrologer, and swaddled in a horoscope) predicted that, being
the elder sister of fire, she would be queen. And so she was,
thanks to astrology and the revolution of 1688. She had the
humiliation of having only Gilbert, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, for godfather. To be godchild of the Pope was no
longer possible in England. A mere primate is but a poor
sort of godfather. Anne had to put up with one, however.
It was her own fault. Why was she a Protestant?
Denmark had paid for her virginity (virginitas empta, as
the old charters expressed it) by a dowry of ^6,250 a year,
secured on the bailiwick of Wardinburg and the island of
Fehmarn. Anne followed, without conviction, and by
routine, the traditions of William. The English under that
royalty born of a revolution possessed as much liberty as
they could lay hands on between the Tower of London, into
which they put orators, and the pillory, into which they put
writers. Anne spoke a little Danish in her private chats
with her husband, and a little French in her private chats
with Bolingbroke. Wretched gibberish; but the height of
English fashion, especially at court, was to talk French.
There was never a bon mot but in French. Anne paid a deal
of attention to her coins, especially to copper coins, which
208 THE LAUGHING MAN.
are the low and popular ones; she wanted to cut a great
figure on them. Six farthings were struck during her reign.
On the back of the first three she had merely a throne struck,
on the back of the fourth she ordered a triumphal chariot,
and on the back of the sixth a goddess holding a sword in one
hand and an olive branch in the other, with the scroll, Bella
et pace. Her father, James II., was candid and cruel; she
was brutal.
At the same time she was mild at bottom. A contradic-
tion which only appears such. A fit of anger metamorphosed
her. Heat sugar and it will boil.
Anne was popular. England liked feminine rulers. Why ?
France excludes them. There is a reason at once. Perhaps
there is no other. With English historians Elizabeth em-
bodies grandeur, Anne good-nature. As they will. Be it so.
But there is nothing delicate in the reigns of these women.
The lines are heavy. It is gross grandeur and gross good-..
nature. As to their Immaculate virtue, England is tenacious
of it, and we are not going to oppose the idea. Elizabeth
was a virgin tempered by Essex; Anne, a wife complicated
by Bolingbroke.
III.
One idiotic habit of the people is to attribute to the king
what they do themselves. They fight. Whose the glory?
The king's. They pay. Whose the generosity? The
king's. Then the people love him for being so rich. The
king receives a crown from the poor, and returns them a
farthing. How generous he is I The colossus which is the
pedestal contemplates the pigmy which is the statue. How
great is this myrmidon 1 he is on my back. A dwarf has an
excellent way of being taller than a giant : it is to perch him-
self on his shoulders. But that the giant should allow it,
there is the wonder ; and that he should admire the height of
the dwarf, there is the folly. Simplicity of mankind 1 The
equestrian statue, reserved for kings alone, is an excellent
figure of royalty: the horse is the people. Only that the
horse becomes transfigured by degrees. It begins in an ass ;
it ends in a lion. Then it throws its rider, and you have 1642
in England and 1789 in France; and sometimes it devours
him, and you have in England 1649, and in France 1793.
That the lion should relapse into the donkey is astonishing;
THE LAUGHING MAN. 209
but it is so. This was occurring in England. It had re-
sumed the pack-saddle, idolatry of the crown. Queen Anne,
as we have just observed, was popular. What was she doing
to be so ? Nothing. Nothing ! — that is all that is asked of
the sovereign of England. He receives for that nothing
^1,250,000 a year. In 1705, England which had had but
thirteen men of war under Elizabeth, and thirty-six under
James I., counted a hundred and fifty in her fleet. The English
had three armies, 5 ,000 men in Catalonia ; 1 0,000 in Portugal ;
50,000 in Flanders; and besides, was paying £1,666,666 a
year to monarchical and diplomatic Europe, a sort of
prostitute the English people has always had in keeping.
Parliament having voted a patriotic loan of thirty-four
million francs of annuities, there had been a crush at the
Exchequer to subscribe it. England was sending a squadron
to the East Indies, and a squadron to the West of Spain under
Admiral Leake, without mentioning the reserve of four
hundred sail, under Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovel. England
had lately annexed Scotland. It was the interval between
Hochstadt and Ramillies, and the first of these victories was
foretelling the second. England, in its cast of the net at
Hochstadt, had made prisoners of twenty-seven battalions
and four regiments of dragoons, and deprived France of one
hundred leagues of country — France drawing back dismayed
from the Danube to the Rhine. England was stretching her
hand out towards Sardinia and the Balearic Islands. She
was bringing into her ports in triumph ten Spanish line-of-
battle ships, and many a galleon laden with gold. Hudson
Bay and Straits were already half given over by Louis XIV.
It was felt that he was about to give up his hold over Acadia,
St. Christopher, and Newfoundland, and that he would be
but too happy if England would only tolerate the King of
France fishing for cod at Cape Breton. England was about
to impose upon him the shame of demolishing himself the
fortifications of Dunkirk. Meanwhile, she had taken
Gibraltar, and was taking Barcelona. What great things
accomplished ! How was it possible to refuse Anne admira-
tion for taking the trouble of living at the period ?
From a certain point of view, the reign of Anne appears a
reflection of the reign of Louis XIV. Anne, for a moment
even with that king in the race which is called history, bears
to him the vague resemblance of a reflection. Like him, she
2IO THE LAUGHING MAN.
plays at a great reign; she has her monuments, her arts, her
victories, her captains, her men of letters, her privy purse to
pension celebrities, her gallery of chefs-d'oeuvre, side by side
with those of his Majesty. Her court, too, was a cortege,
with the features of a triumph, an order and a march. It
was a miniature copy of all the great men of Versailles, not
giants themselves. In it there is enough to deceive the eye;
add God save the Queen, which might have been taken from
Lulli, and the ensemble becomes an illusion. Not a person-
age is missing. Christopher Wren is a very passable Man-
sard; Somers is as good as Lamoignon; Anne has a Racine
in Dryden, a Boileau in Pope, a Colbert in Godolphin, a
Louvois in Pembroke, and a Turenne in Marlborough.
Heighten the wigs and lower the foreheads. The whole is
solemn and pompous, and the Windsor of the time has a
faded resemblance to Marly. Still the whole wae effeminate,
and Anne's Pere Tellier was called Sarah Jennings. How-
ever, there is an outline of incipient irony, which fifty years
later was to turn to philosophy, in the literature of the age,
and the Protestant Tartuffe is unmasked by Swift just in the
same way as the Catholic Tartuffe is denounced by Moliere,
Although the England of the period quarrels and fights
France, she imitates her and draws enlightenment from her;
and the light on the fa9ade of England is French light. It is
a pity that Anne's reign lasted but twelve years, or the
English would not hesitate to call it the century of Anne, as
we say the century of Louis XIV. Anne appeared in 1702,
as Louis XIV. declined. It is one of the curiosities of history,
that the rise of that pale planet coincides with the setting of
the planet of purple, and that at the moment in which France
had the king Sun, England should have had the queen Moon.
A detail to be noted. Louis XIV., although they made
war with him, was greatly admired in England. " He is the
kind of king they want in France," said the English. The
love of the English for their own liberty is mingled with a
certain acceptance of servitude for others. That favourable
regard of the chains which bind their neighbours sometimes
attains to enthusiasm for the despot next door.
To sum up, Anne rendered her people hureux, as the French
translator of Beeverell's book repeats three times, with
graceful reiteration at the sixth and ninth page of his dedica-
tion and the third of his preface.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 211
IV,
Queen Anne bore a little grudge to the Duchess Josiana,
for two reasons. Firstly, because she thought the Duchess
Josiana handsome. Secondly, because she thought the
Duchess Josiana's betrothed handsome. Two reasons for
jealousy are sufficient for a woman. One is sufficient for a
queen. Let us add that she bore her a grudge for being her
sister. Anne did not like women to be pretty. She con-
sidered it against good morals. As for herself, she was ugly.
Not from choice, however. A part of her religion she derived
from that ugliness. Josiana, beautiful and philosophical,
was a cause of vexation to the queen. To an ugly queen, a
pretty duchess is not an agreeable sister.
There was another grievance, Josiana's " improper " birth.
Anne was the daughter of Anne Hyde, a simple gentlewoman,
legitimately, but vexatiously, married by James II. when
Duke of York. Anne, having this inferior blood in her veins,
felt herself but half royal, and Josiana, having come into the
world quite irregularly, drew closer attention to the incorrect-
ness, less great, but really existing, in the birth of the queen.
The daughter of misalliance looked without love upon the
daughter of bastardy, so near her. It was an unpleasant
resemblance. Josiana had a right to say to Anne, " My
mother was at least as good as yours." At court no one said
so, but they evidently thought it. This was a bore for her
royal Majesty. Why this Josiana? What had put it into
her head to be born ? What good was a Josiana ? Certain
relationships are detrimental. Nevertheless, Anne smiled on
Josiana. Perhaps she might even have liked her, had she
not been her sister.
CHAPTER VI.
BARKILPHEDRO.
IT is useful to know what people do, and a certain surveil-
lance is wise. Josiana had Lord David watched by a little
creature of hers, in whom she reposed confidence, and whose
name was Barkilphedro.
Lord David had Josiana discreetly observed by a creature
of his, of whom he was sure, and whose name was Barkih
phedro.
2I2 THE LAUGHING MAN,
Queen Anne, on her part, kept herself secretly informed of
the actions and conduct of the Duchess Josiana, her bastard
sister, and of Lord David, her future brother-in-law by the
left hand, by a creature of hers, on whom she counted fully,
and whose name was Barkilphedro.
This Barkilphedro had his fingers on that keyboard —
Josiana, Lord David, a queen. A man between two women.
What modulations possible I What amalgamation of souls I
Barkilphedro had not always held the magnificent position
of whispering into three ears.
He was an old servant of the Duke of York. He had tried
to be a churchman but had failed. The Duke of York, an
English and a Roman prince, compounded of royal Popery
and legal Anglicanism, had his Catholic house and his .
Protestant house, and might have pushed Barkilphedro in
one or the other hierarchy; but he did not judge him to be
Catholic enough to make him almoner, or Protestant enough
to make him chaplain. So that between two religions,
Barkilphedro found himself with his soul on the ground.
Not a bad posture, either, for certain reptile souls.
Certain ways are impracticable, except by crawling flat on
the belly.
An obscure but fattening servitude had long made up
Barkilphedro's whole existence. Service is something; but
he wanted power besides. He was, perhaps, about to reach
it when James II. fell. He had to begin all over again.
Nothing to do under William III., a sullen prince, and ex-
ercising in his mode of reigning a prudery which he believed
to be probity. Barkilphedro, when his protector, James II.,
was dethroned, did not lapse all at once into rags. There is
a something which survives deposed princes, and which feeds
and sustains their parasites. The remains of the exhaustible
sap causes leaves to live on for two or three days on the
branches of the uprooted tree; then, all at once, the leaf
yellows and dries up: and thus it is with the courtier.
Thanks to that embalming which is called legitimacy, the
prince himself, although fallen and cast away, lasts and keeps
preserved; it is not so with the courtier, much more dead
than the king. The king, beyond there, is a mummy; the
courtier, here, is a phantom. To be the shadow of a shadow
is leanness indeed. Hence Barkilphedro became famished.
Then he took up the character of a man of letters.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 213
But he was thrust back even from the kitchens. Some-
times he knew not where to sleep. " Who will give me
shelter?" he would ask. He struggled on. All that is
interesting in patience in distress he possessed. He had,
besides, the talent of the termite — knowing how to bore a
hole from the bottom to the top. By dint of making use of
the name of James II., of old memories, of fables of fidelity,
of touching stories, he pierced as far as the Duchess Josiana's
heart.
Josiana took a liking to this man of poverty and wit, an
interesting combination. She presented him to Lord Dirry-
Moir, gave him a shelter in the servants' hall among her
domestics, retained him in her household, was kind to him,
and sometimes even spoke to him. Barkilphedro felt neither
hunger nor cold again. Josiana addressed him in the second
person ; it was the fashion for great ladies to do so to men of
letters, who allowed it. The Marquise de Mailly received
Roy, whom she had never seen before, in bed, and said to
him, " C'est toi qui as fait 1'Annee galantel Bonjour."
Later on, the men of letters returned the custom. The day
came when Fabre d' Eglantine said to the Duchesse de
Rohan, " N'est-tu pas la Chabot? "
For Barkilphedro to be " thee'd " and " thou'd " was a
success; he was overjoyed by it. He had aspired to this
contemptuous familiarity. "'Lady Josiana thees-and-thous
me," he would say to himself. And he would rub his hands.
He profited by this theeing-and-thouing to make further way.
He became a sort of constant attendant in Josiana's private
rooms; in no way troublesome; unperceived; the duchess
would almost have changed her shift before him. All this,
however, was precarious. Barkilphedro was aiming at a
position. A duchess was half- way; an underground passage
which did not lead to the queen was having bored for
nothing.
One day Barkilphedro said to Josiana, —
" Would your Grace like to make my fortune? '"
" What dost thou want? "
" An appointment."
" An appointment? for theel "
" Yes, madam."
" What an idea! thou to ask for an appointment I thou,
who art good for nothing."
2I4 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" That's just the reason."
Josiana burst out laughing.
" Among the offices to which thou art unsuited, which dost
thou desire? "
" That of cork drawer of the bottles of the ocean."
Josiana's laugh redoubled.
" What meanest thou? Thou art fooling."
" No, madam."
" To amuse myself, I shall answer you seriously," said the
duchess. " What dost thou wish to be? Repeat it."
" Uncorker of the bottles of the ocean."
" Everything is possible at court. Is there an appoint-
ment of that kind? "
" Yes, madam."
" This is news to me. Go on."
" There is such an appointment."
" Swear it on the soul which thou dost not possess."
" I swear it."
" I do not believe thee."
" Thank you, madam."
" Then thou wishest? Begin again."
" To uncork the bottles of the ocean."
" That is a situation which can give little trouble. It is
like grooming a bronze horse."
"Very nearly."
" Nothing to do. Well 'tis a situation to suit thee. Thou
art good for that much."
" You see I am good for something."
"Come! thou art talking nonsense. Is there such an
appointment? "
Barkilphedro assumed an attitude of deferential gravity.
" Madam, you had an august father, James II., the king,
and you have an illustrious brother-in-law, George of
Denmark, Duke of Cumberland; your father was, and your
brother is, Lord High Admiral of England "
" Is what thou tellest me fresh news ? I know all that as
well as thou."
" But here is what your Grace does not know. In the sea
there are three kinds of things : those at the bottom, lagan ;
those which float, flotsam ; those which the sea throws up
on the shore, jetsam."
"And then?"
THE LAUGHING MAN. 215
" These three things — lagan, flotsam, and jetsam — belong
to the Lord High Admiral."
"And then?"
" Your Grace understands."
" No."
" All that is in the sea, all that sinks, all that floats, all that
is cast ashore — all belongs to the Admiral of England."
"Everything! Really? And then?"
" Except the sturgeon, which belongs to the king."
" I should have thought," said Josiana, " all that would
have belonged to Neptune."
" Neptune is a fool. He has given up everything. He
has allowed the English to take everything."
" Finish what thou wert saying."
" ' Prizes^ of the sea ' is the name given to such, treasure
trove"
" Be it so."
"It is boundless: there is always something floating,
something being cast up. It is the contribution of the sea —
the tax which the ocean pays to England."
With all my heart. But pray conclude."
Your Grace understands that in this way the ocean
creates a department."
Where? "
At the Admiralty."
What department?"
The Sea Prize Department."
Well?"
The department is subdivided into three offices — Lagan,
Flotsam, and Jetsam — and in each there is an officer."
" And then? "
" A ship at sea writes to give notice on any subject to those
on land — that it is sailing in such a latitude; that it has
met a sea monster; that it is in sight of shore; that it is in
distress; that it is about to founder; that it is lost, etc.
The captain takes a bottle, puts into it a bit of paper on
which he has written the information, corks up the flask, and
casts it into the sea. If the bottle goes to the bottom, it is
in the department of the lagan officer; if it floats, it is in the
department of the flotsam officer; if it be thrown upon shore,
it concerns the jetsam officer."
" And wouldst thou like to be the jetsam officer? *'
az6 THE LAUGHING MAN,
" Precisely so."
" And that is what thou callest uncorking the bottles oi
the ocean ? "
" Since there is such an appointment."
" Why dost thou wish for the last-named place in preference
to both the others ? "
" Because it is vacant just now."
" In what does the appointment consist? '"
" Madam, in 1598 a tarred bottle, picked up by a man,
conger-fishing on the strand of Epidium Promontorium, was
brought to Queen Elizabeth; and a parchment drawn out of
it gave information to England that Holland had taken,
without saying anything about it, an unknown country,
Nova Zembla; that the capture had taken place in June,
1596; that in that country people were eaten b^ bears; and
that the manner of passing the winter was described on a
paper enclosed in a musket-case hanging in the chimney of
the wooden house built in the island, and left by the
Dutchmen, who were all dead: and that the chimney was
built of a barrel with the end knocked out, sunk into the
roof."
" I don't understand much of thy rigmarole."
" Be it so. Elizabeth understood. A country the more
for Holland was a country the less for England. The bottle
which had given the information was held to be of importance ;
and thenceforward an order was issued that anybody who
should find a sealed bottle on the sea-shore should take it to
the Lord High Admiral of England, under pain of the
gallows. The admiral entrusts the opening of such bottles
to an officer, who presents the contents to the queen, if there
be reason for so doing."
" Are many such bottles brought to the Admiralty? '"
" But few. But it's all the same. The appointment
exists. There is for the office a room and lodgings at the
Admiralty."
" And for that way of doing nothing, how is one paid? "
" One hundred guineas a year."
" And thou wouldst trouble me for that much? "
" It is enough to live upon."
" Like a beggar."
'* As it becomes one of my sort."
"One hundred guineas! It's a bagatelle."
THE LAUGHING MAN. 217
" What keeps you for a minute, keeps us for a year.
That's the advantage of the poor."
" Thou shalt have the place."
A week afterwards, thanks to Josiana's exertions, thanks
to the influence of Lord David Dirry-Moir, Barkilphedro —
safe thenceforward, drawn out of his precarious existence,
lodged, and boarded, with a salary of a hundred guineas —
was installed at the Admiralty.
CHAPTER VII.
BARKILPHEDRO GNAWS HIS WAY.
THERE is one thing the most pressing of all : to be ungratef uL
Barkilphedro was not wanting therein.
Having received so many benefits from Josiana, he had
naturally but one thought — to revenge himself on her.
When we add that Josiana was beautiful, great, young, rich,
powerful, illustrious, while Barkilphedro was ugly, little, old,
poor, dependent, obscure, he must necessarily revenge him-
self for all this as well.
When a man is made out of night, how is he to forgive so
many beams of light?
Barkilphedro was an Irishman who had denied Ireland —
a bad species.
Barkilphedro had but one thing in his favour — that he had
a very big belly. A big belly passes for a sign of kind-
heartedness. But his belly was but an addition to Barkil-
phedro's hypocrisy; for the man was full of malice.
What was Barkilphedro 's age? None. The age neces-
sary for his project of the moment. He was old in his
wrinkles and gray hairs, young in the activity of his mind.
He was active and ponderous; a sort of hippopotamus-
monkey. A royalist, certainly; a republican — who knows?
a Catholic, perhaps; a Protestant, without doubt. For
Stuart, probably; for Brunswick, evidently. To be For
is a power only on the condition of being at the same time
Against. Barkilphedro practised this wisdom.
The appointment of drawer of the bottles of the ocean was
not as absurd as Barkilphedro had appeared to make out.
The complaints, which would in these times be termed decla-
mations, of Garcia Fernandez in his " Chart-Book of the
2i8 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Sea," against the robbery of jetsam, called right of wreck,
and against the pillage of wreck by the inhabitants of the
coast, had created a sensation in England, and had obtained
for the shipwrecked this reform — that their goods, chattels,
aud property, instead of being stolen by the country- people,
were confiscated by the Lord High Admiral. All the dfbris
of the sea cast upon the English shore — merchandise, broken
hulls of ships, bales, chests, etc. — belonged to the Lord High
Admiral ; but — and here was revealed the importance of the
place asked for by Barkilphedro — the floating receptacles
containing messages and declarations awakened particularly
the attention of the Admiralty. Shipwrecks are one of
England's gravest cares. Navigation being her life, ship-
wreck is her anxiety. England is kept in perpetual care by
the sea. The little glass bottle thrown to the waves by the
doomed ship, contains final intelligence, precioils from every
point of view. Intelligence concerning the ship, intelligence
concerning the crew, intelligence concerning the place, the
time, the manner of loss, intelligence concerning the winds
which have broken up the vessel, intelligence concerning the
currents which bore the floating flask ashore. The situation
filled by Barkilphedro has been abolished more than a
century, but it had its real utility. The last holder was
William Hussey, of Doddington, in Lincolnshire. The man
who held it was a sort of guardian of the things of the sea.
All the closed and sealed-up vessels, bottles, flasks, jars,
thrown upon the English coast by the tide were brought to
him. He alone had the right to open them ; he was first in
the secrets of their contents; he put them in order, and
ticketed them with his signature. The expression " loger
un papier au greffe," still used in the Channel Islands, is
thence derived. However, one precaution was certainly
taken. Not one of these bottles could be unsealed except
in the presence of two jurors of the Admiralty sworn to
secrecy, who signed, conjointly with the holder of the
jetsam office, the official report of the opening. But these
jurors being held to secrecy, there resulted for Barkilphedro
a certain discretionary latitude; it depended upon him, to
a certain extent, to suppress a fact or bring it to light.
These fragile floating messages were far from being what
Barkilphedro had told Josiana, rare and insignificant. Some
times they reached land with little delay; at others, after
THE LAUGHING MAN. 219
many years. That depended on the winds and the currents.
The fashion of casting bottles on the surface of the sea has
somewhat passed away, like that of vowing offerings, but in
those religious times, those who were about to die were glad
thus to send their last thought to God and to men, and at
times these messages from the sea were plentiful at the
Admiralty. A parchment preserved in the hall at Audlyene
(ancient spelling), with notes by the Earl of Suffolk, Grand
Treasurer of England under James I., bears witness that in
the one year, 1615, fifty-two flasks, bladders, and tarred
vessels, containing mention of sinking ships, were brought
and registered in the records of the Lord High Admiral.
Court appointments are the drop of oil in the widow's
cruse, they ever increase. Thus it is that the porter has
become chancellor, and the groom, constable. The special
officer charged with the appointment desired and obtained
by Barkilphedro was invariably a confidential man.
Elizabeth had wished that it should be so. At court, to
speak of confidence is to speak of intrigue, and to speak of
intrigue is to speak of advancement. This functionary had
come to be a personage of some consideration. He was a
clerk, and ranked directly after the two grooms of the
almonry. He had the right of entrance into the palace, but
we must add, what was called the humble entrance — humilis
intro'itus — and even into the bed-chamber. For it was the
custom that he should inform the monarch, on occasions of
sufficient importance, of the objects found, which were often
very curious: the wills of men in despair, farewells cast to
fatherland, revelations of falsified logs, bills of lading, and
crimes committed at sea, legacies to the crown, etc., that he
should maintain his records in communication with the
court, and should account, from time to time, to the king or
queen, concerning the opening of these ill-omened bottles.
It was the black cabinet of the ocean.
Elizabeth, who was always glad of an opportunity of
speaking Latin, used to ask Tonfield, of Coley in Berkshire,
jetsam officer of her day, when he brought her one of these
papers cast up by the sea, " Quid mihi scribit Neptunus? "
(What does Neptune write me?)
The way had been eaten, the insect had succeeded.
Barkilphedro approached the queen.
This was all he wanted.
220 THE LAUGHING MAN.
To make his fortune ?
No.
To unmake that of others ?
A greater happiness.
To hurt is to enjoy.
To have within one the desire of injuring, vague but implac-
able, and never to lose sight of it, is not given to all.
Barkilphedro possessed that fixity of intention.
As the bulldog holds on with his jaws, so did his thought.
To feel himself inexorable gave him a depth of gloomy
satisfaction. As long as he had a prey under his teeth, or
in his soul, a certainty of evil-doing, he wanted nothing.
He was happy, shivering in the cold which his neighbour
was suffering. To be malignant is an opulence. Such a
man is believed to be poor, and, in truth, is so; but he has
all his riches in malice, and prefers having them so. Every-
thing is in what contents one. To do a bad turn, which is
the same as a good turn, is better than money. Bad for
him who endures, good for him who does it. Catesby, the
colleague of Guy Fawkes, in the Popish powder plot, said:
"To see Parliament blown upside down, I wouldn't miss it
for a million sterling.'*
What was Barkilphedro? That meanest and most
terrible of things — an envious man.
Envy is a thing ever easily placed at court.
Courts abound in impertinent people, in idlers, in rich
loungers hungering for gossip, in those who seek for needles
in trusses of hay, in triflers, in banterers bantered, in witty
ninnies, who cannot do without converse with an envious
man.
What a refreshing thing is the evil spoken to you of others.
Envy is good stuff to make a spy. There is a profound
analogy between that natural passion, envy, and that social
function, espionage. The spy hunts on others' account,
like the dog. The envious man hunts on his own, like the
cat.
A fierce Myself, such is the envious man.
He had other qualities. Barkilphedro was discreet,
secret, concrete. He kept in everything and racked himself
with his hate. Enormous baseness implies enormous vanity.
He was liked by those whom he amused, and hated by all
others; but he felt that he was disdained by those who hated
THE LAUGHING MAN. 221
him, and despised by those who liked him. He restrained
himself. All his gall simmered noiselessly in his hostile
resignation. He was indignant, as if rogues had the right
to be so. He was the furies' silent prey. To swallow every-
thing was his talent. There were deaf wraths within him,
frenzies of interior rage, black and brooding flames unseen;
he was a smoke-consuming man of passion. The surface
was smiling. He was kind, prompt, easy, amiable, obliging.
Never mind to whom, never mind where, he bowed. For a
breath of wind he inclined to the earth. What a source of
fortune to have a reed for a spine! Such concealed and
venomous beings are not so rare as is believed. We live
surrounded by ill-omened crawling things. Wherefore the
malevolent? A keen question I The dreamer constantly
proposes it to himself, and the thinker never resolves it.
Hence the sad eye of the philosophers ever fixed upon that
mountain of darkness which is destiny, and from the top of
which the colossal spectre of evil casts handfuls of serpents
over the earth.
Barkilphedro's body was obese and his face lean. A fat
bust and a bony countenance. His nails were channelled
and short, his fingers knotted, his thumbs flat, his hair
coarse, his temples wide apart, and his forehead a murderer's,
broad and low. The littleness of his eye was hidden under
his bushy eyebrows. His nose, long, sharp, and flabby,
nearly met his mouth. Barkilphedro, properly attired as
an emperor, would have somewhat resembled Domitian.
His face of muddy yellow might have been modelled in
slimy paste — his immovable cheeks were like putty ; he had
all kinds of ugly refractory wrinkles ; the angle of his jaw was
massive, his chin heavy, his ear underbred. In repose, and
seen in profile, his upper lip was raised at an acute angle,
showing two teeth. Those teeth seemed to look at you.
The teeth can look, just as the eye can bite.
Patience, temperance, continence, reserve, self-control,
amenity, deference, gentleness, politeness, sobriety, chastity,
completed and finished Barkilphedro. He culumniated those
virtues by their possession.
In a short time Barkilphedro took a foothold at court.
222 THE LAUGHING MAN.
CHAPTER VIII.
INFERI.
THERE are two ways of making a footing at court. In the
clouds, and you are august; in the mud, and you are
powerful.
In the first case, you belong to Olympus.
In the second case, you belong to the private closet.
He who belongs to Olympus has but the thunderbolt, he
who is of the private closet has the police.
The private closet contains all the instruments of govern-
ment, and sometimes, for it is a traitor, its chastisement.
Heliogabalus goes there to die. Then it is called the latrines.
Generally it is less tragic. It is there that Alberoni
admires Vendome. Royal personages willingly make it
their place of audience. It takes the place of the throne.
Louis XIV. receives the Duchess of Burgundy there. Philip
V. is shoulder to shoulder there with the queen. The priest
penetrates into it. The private closet is sometimes a branch
of the confessional. Therefore it is that at court there are
underground fortunes — not always the least. If, under
Louis XL, you would be great, be Pierre de Rohan, Marshal
of France ; if you would be influential, be Olivier le Daim,
the barber; if you would, under Mary de Medicis, be glorious,
be Sillery, the Chancellor; if you would be a person of con-
sideration, be La Hannon, the maid; if you would, under
Louis XV., be illustrious, be Choiseul, the minister; if you
would be formidable, be Lebel, the valet. Given, Louis XIV.,
Bontemps, who makes his bed, is more powerful than
Louvois, who raises his armies, and Turenne, who gains his
victories. From Richelieu, take Pere Joseph, and you have
Richelieu nearly empty. There is the mystery the less,
lis Eminence in scarlet is magnificent; his Eminence in gray
3 terrible. What power in being a worm ! All the Narvaez
amalgamated with all the O'Donnells do less work than one
Sor Patrocinio.
Of course the condition of this power is littleness. If you
would remain powerful, remain petty. Be Nothingness.
The serpent in repose, twisted into a circle, is a figure at the
same time of the infinite and of naught.
One of these viper-like fortunes had fallen to Barkilphedro.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 223
He had crawled where he wanted.
Flat beasts can get in everywhere. Louis XIV. had bugs
in his bed and Jesuits in his policy.
The incompatibility is nil.
In this world everything is a clock. To gravitate is to
oscillate. One pole is attracted to the other. Francis I.
is attracted by Triboulet ; Louis XIV. is attracted by Lebel.
There exists a deep affinity between extreme elevation and
extreme debasement.
It is abasement which directs. Nothing is easier of com-
prehension. It is he who is below who pulls the strings.
No position more convenient. He is the eye, and has the
ear. He is the eye of the government ; he has the ear of the
king. To have the eye of the king is to draw and shut, at
one's whim, the bolt of the royal conscience, and to throw into
that conscience whatever one wishes. The mind of the king
is his cupboard ; if he be a rag-picker, it is his basket. The
ears of kings belong not to kings, and therefore it is that, on
the whole, the poor devils are not altogether responsible
for their actions. He who does not possess his own thought
does not possess his own deed. A king obeys — what? Any
evil spirit buzzing from outside in his ear; a noisome fly of
the abyss.
This buzzing commands. A reign is a dictation.
The loud voice is the sovereign; the low voice,
sovereignty. Those who know how to distinguish, in a
reign, this low voice, and to hear what it whispers to the
loud, are the real historians.
CHAPTER IX.
HATE IS AS STRONG AS LOVE,
QUEEN ANNE had several of these low voices about her.
Barkilphedro was one.
Besides the queen, he secretly worked, influenced, and
plotted upon Lady Josiana and Lord David. As we have
said, he whispered in three ears, one more than Dangeau.
Dangeau whispered in but two, in the days when, thrusting
himself between Louis XIV., in love with Henrietta, his
sister-in-law, and Henrietta, in love with Louis XIV., her
brother-in-law, he being Louis's secretary, without the
224 THE LAUGHING MAN.
knowledge of Henrietta, and Henrietta's without the
knowledge of Louis, he wrote the questions and answers of
both the love-making marionettes.
Barkilphedro was so cheerful, so accepting, so incapable
of taking up the defence of anybody, possessing so little
devotion at bottom, so ugly, so mischievous, that it was
quite natural that a regal personage should come to be unable
to do without him. Once Anne had tasted Barkilphedro
she would have no other flatterer. He flattered her as they
flattered Louis the Great, by stinging her neighbours.
" The king being ignorant," says Madame de Montchevreuil,
" one is obliged to mock at the savants."
To poison the sting, from time to time, is the acme of art.
Nero loves to see Locusta at work.
Royal palaces are very easily entered; these madrepores
have a way in soon guessed at, contrived, examined, and
scooped out at need by the gnawing thing which is called
the courtier. A pretext to enter is sufficient. Barkilphedro,
having found this pretext, his position with the queen soon
became the same as that with the Duchess Josiana — that of
an indispensable domestic animal. A witticism risked one
day by him immediately led to his perfect understanding of
the queen and how to estimate exactly her kindness of heart.
The queen was greatly attached to her Lord Steward,
William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, who was a great
fool. This lord, who had obtained every Oxford degree and
did not know how to spell, one fine morning committed the
folly of dying. To die is a very imprudent thing at court,
for there is then no further restraint in speaking of you.
The queen, in the presence of Barkilphedro, lamented the
event, finally exclaiming, with a sigh, —
" It is a pity that so many virtues should have been borne
and served by so poor an intellect."
" Dieu veuille avoir son anel " whispered Barkilphedro,
in a low voice, and in French.
The queen smiled. Barkilphedro noted the smile. His
conclusion was that biting pleased. Free licence had been
given to his spite. From that day he thrust his curiosity
everywhere, and his malignity with it. He was given his
way, so much was he feared. He who can make the king
laugh makes the others tremble. He was a powerful buffoon.
Every day he worked his way forward — underground.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 225
people
226 THE LAUGHING MAN.
gate of London, which was entered by the Harwich road,
and on which was displayed a statue of Charles II., with a
painted angel on his head, and beneath his feet a carved lion
and unicorn. From Hunkerville House, in an easterly wind,
you heard the peals of St. Marylebone. Corleone Lodge was
a Florentine palace of brick and stone, with a marble
colonnade, built on pilework, at Windsor, at the head of
the wooden bridge, and having one of the finest courts in
England.
In the latter palace, near Windsor Castle, Josiana was
within the queen's reach. Nevertheless, Josiana liked it.
Scarcely anything in appearance, everything in the root,
such was the influence of Barkilphedro over the queen.
There is nothing more difficult than to drag up these bad
grasses of the court — they take a deep root, and offer no hold
above the surface. To root out a Roquelaure, a Triboulet,
or a Brummel, is almost impossible.
From day to day, and more and more, did the queen take
Barkilphedro into her good graces. Sarah Jennings is
famous; Barkilphedro is unknown. His existence remains
ignored. The name of Barkilphedro has not reached as far
as history. All the moles are not caught by the mole-
trapper.
Barkilphedro, once a candidate for orders, had studied a
little of everything. Skimming all things leaves naught for
result. One may be victim of the omnis res scibilis. Having
the vessel of the Danaides in one's head is the misfortune of
a whole race of learned men, who may be termed the sterile.
What Barkilphedro had put into his brain had left it empty.
The mind, like nature, abhors vacuum. Into emptiness
nature puts love; the mind often puts hate. Hate occupies.
Hate for hate's sake exists. Art for art's sake exists in
nature more than is believed. A man hates — he must do
something. Gratuitous hate — formidable wordl It means
hate which is itself its own payment. The bear lives by
icking his claws. Not indefinitely, of course. The claws
must be revictualled — something must be put under them.
Hate indistinct is sweet, and suffices for a time; but one
must end by having an object. An animosity diffused over
creation is exhausting, like every solitary pleasure. Hate
ithout an object is like a shooting-match without a target.
What lends interest to the game is a heart to be pierced.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 227
One cannot hate solely for honour; some seasoning is
necessary — a man, a woman, somebody, to destroy. This
service of making the game interesting; of offering an end;
of throwing passion into hate by fixing it on an object; of
of amusing the hunter by the sight of his living prey;
giving the watcher the hope of the smoking and boiling
blood about to flow; of amusing the bird-catcher by the
credulity of the uselessly- winged lark; of being a victim,
unknowingly reared for murder by a master-mind — all this
exquisite and horrible service, of which the person rendering
it is unconscious, Josiana rendered Barkilphedro.
Thought is a projectile. Barkilphedro had, from the first
day, begun to aim at Josiana the evil intentions which were
in his mind. An intention and a carbine are alike.
Barkilphedro aimed at Josiana, directing against the duchess
all his secret malice. That astonishes you 1 What has the
bird done at which you fire ? You want to eat it, you say.
And so it was with Barkilphedro.
Josiana could not be struck in the heart — the spot where
the enigma lies is hard to wound; but she could be struck in
the head — that is, in her pride. It was there that she thought
herself strong, and that she was weak.
Barkilphedro had found it out. If Josiana had been able
to see clearly through the night of Barkilphedro, if she had
been able to distinguish what lay in ambush behind his
smile, that proud woman, so highly situated, would have
trembled. Fortunately for the tranquillity of her sleep, she
was in complete ignorance of what was in the man.
The unexpected spreads, one knows not whence. The
profound depths of life are dangerous. There is no small
hate. Hate is always enormous. It preserves its stature
in the smallest being, and remains a monster. An elephant
hated by a worm is in danger.
Even before he struck, Barkilphedro felt, with joy, the
foretaste of the evil action which he was about to com-
mit. He did not as yet know what he was going to do to
Josiana; but he had made up his mind to do something.
To have come to this decision was a great step taken.
To crush Josiana utterly would have been too great a
triumph. He did not hope for so much; but to humiliate
her, lessen her, bring her grief, redden her proud eyes with
tears of rage — what a success 1 He counted on it. Tenacious,
22g THE LAUGHING MAN.
diligent, faithful to the torment of his neighbour, not to be
torn from his purpose, nature had not formed him for
nothing. He well understood how to find the flaw in
Josiana's golden armour, and how to make the blood of that
Olympian flow.
What benefit, we ask again, would accrue to him in so
doing? An immense benefit — doing evil to one who had
done good to him. What is an envious man? An un-
grateful one. He hates the light which lights and warms
him. Zoilus hated that benefit to man, Homer, To inflict
on Josiana what would nowadays be called vivisection — to
place her, all convulsed, on his anatomical table ; to dissect
her alive, at his leisure, in some surgery ; to cut her up, as an
amateur, while she should scream — this dream delighted
Barkilphedro 1
To arrive at this result it was necessary to suffer somewhat
himself; he did so willingly. We may pinch ourselves with
our own pincers. The knife as it shuts cuts our fingers. What
does it matter? That he should partake of Josiana's torture
was a matter of little moment. The executioner handling
the red-hot iron, when about to brand a prisoner, takes no
heed of a little burn. Because another suffers much, he
suffers nothing. To see the victim's writhings takes all pain
from the inflicter.
Do harm, whatever happens.
To plan evil for others is mingled with an acceptance of
some hazy responsibility. We risk ourselves in the danger
which we impel towards another, because the chain of events
sometimes, of course, brings unexpected accidents. This
does not stop the man who is truly malicious. He feels as
much joy as the patient suffers agony. He is tickled by the
laceration of the victim. The malicious man blooms in
hideous joy. Pain reflects itself on him in a sense of
welfare. The Duke of Alva used to warm his hands at the
stake. The pile was torture, the reflection of it pleasure.
That such transpositions should be possible makes one
shudder. Our dark side is unfathomable. Supplice exquis
ixquisite torture)— the expression is in Bodin *— has per-
haps this terrible triple sense: search for the torture; suffer-
ing of the tortured; delight of the torturer.
Ambition, appetite — all such words signify some one
* Book I., p. 196.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 229
sacrificed to some one satiated. It Is sad that hope should
be wicked. Is it that the outpourings of our wishes flow
naturally to the direction to which we most incline — that of
evil? One of the hardest labours of the just man is to
expunge from his soul a malevolence which it is difficult to
efface. Almost all our desires, when examined, contain
what we dare not avow.
In the completely wicked man this exists In hideous
perfection. So much the worse for others, signifies so much
the better for himself. The shadows of the caverns of man's
mind.
Josiana, in a plenitude of security the fruit of ignorant
pride, had a contempt for all danger. The feminine faculty
of disdain is extraordinary. Josiana's disdain, unreasoning,
involuntary, and confident. Barkilphedro was to her so
contemptible that she would have been astonished had any
one remarked to her that such a creature existed. She went,
and came, and laughed before this man who was looking at
her with evil eyes. Thoughtful, he bided his time.
In proportion as he waited, his determination to cast a
despair into this woman's life augmented. Inexorable high
tide of malice.
In the meantime he gave himself excellent reasons for his
determination. It must not be thought that scoundrels are
deficient in self-esteem. They enter into details with them-
selves in their lofty monologues, and they take matters with
a high hand. How? This Josiana had bestowed charity
on him! She had thrown some crumbs of her enormous
wealth to him, as to a beggar. She had nailed and riveted
him to an office which was unworthy him. Yes; that he,
Barkilphedro, almost a clergyman, of varied and profound
talent, a learned man, with the material in him for a bishop,
should have for employ the registration of nasty patience-
trying shards, that he should have to pass his life in the
garret of a register-office, gravely uncorking stupid bottles,
incrusted with all the nastiness of the sea, deciphering musty
parchments, like filthy conjuring-books, dirty wills, and
other illegible stuff of the kind, was the fault of this Josiana.
Worst of all, this creature " thee'd " and " thou'd " him!
And he should not revenge himself — he should not punish
such conduct I Well, in that case there would no longer be
justice on earth 1
230 THE LAUGHING MAN.
CHAPTER X.
THE FLAME WHICH WOULD BE SEEN IF MAN WERE
TRANSPARENT.
WHAT! this woman, this extravagant thing, this libidinous
dreamer, a virgin until the opportunity occurred, this bit of
flesh as yet unfreed, this bold creature under a princess's
coronet; this Diana by pride, as yet untaken by the first
comer, just because chance had so willed it; this bastard of
a low-lived king who had not the intellect to keep his place;
this duchess by a lucky hit, who, being a fine lady, played
the goddess, and who, had she been poor, would have been
a prostitute; this lady, more or less, this robber of a pro-
scribed man's goods, this overbearing strumpet, because one
day he, Barkilphedro, had not money enough to buy his
dinner, and to get a lodging — she had had the impudence to
seat him in her house at the corner of a table, and to put him
up in some hole in her intolerable palace. Where? never
mind where. Perhaps in the barn, perhaps In the cellar;
what does it matter? A little better than her valets, a little
worse than her horses. She had abused his distress — his,
Barkilphedro's — in hastening to do him treacherous good; a
thing which the rich do in order to humiliate the poor, and
to tie them, like curs led by a string. Besides, what did the
service she rendered him cost her? A service Is worth what
it costs. She had spare rooms In her house. She came to
Barkilphedro's aid! A great thing, indeed. Had she eaten
a spoonful the less of turtle soup for it? had she deprived
herself of anything in the hateful overflowing of her super-
fluous luxuries? No. She had added to it a vanity, a
luxury, a good action like a ring on her finger, the relief of a
man of wit, the patronization of a clergyman. She could
give herself airs; say, " I lavish kindness; I fill the mouths
of men of letters; I am his benefactress. How lucky the
wretch was to find me outl What a patroness of the arts I
All for having set up a truckle bed in a wretched garre fc
in the roof. As for the place in the Admiralty, Barkilphedro
owed it to Josiana; by Jove, a pretty appointment! Josiana
Kad made Barkilphedro what he was. She had created him.
Be it so. Yes, created nothing— less than nothing. For
THE LAUGHING MAN. 231
in his absurd situation, he felt borne down, tongue-tied,
disfigured. What did he owe Josiana? The thanks due
from a hunchback to the mother who bore him deformed.
Behold your privileged ones, your folks overwhelmed with
fortune, your parvenus, your favourites of that horrid step-
mother Fortune 1 And that man of talent, Barkilphedro,
was obliged to stand on staircases, to bow to footmen, to
climb to the top of the house at night, to be courteous,
assiduous, pleasant, respectful, and to have ever on his
muzzle a respectful grimace 1 Was not it enough to make
him gnash his teeth with ragel And all the while she was
putting pearls round her neck, and making amorous poses
to her fool, Lord David Dirry-Moir; the hussy 1
Never let any one do you a service. They will abuse the
advantage it gives them. Never allow yourself to be taken
in the act of inanition. They would relieve you. Because
he was starving, this woman had found it a sufficient pretext
to give him bread. From that moment he was her servant;
a craving of the stomach, and there i£ a chain for life! To
be obliged is to be sold. The happy, the powerful, make use
of the moment you stretch out your hand to place a penny in
it, and at the crisis of your weakness make you a slave, and
a slave of the worst kind, the slave of an act of charity — a
slave forced to love the enslaver. What infamy 1 what want
of delicacy! what an assault on your self-respect \ Then all
is over. You are sentenced for life to consider this man
good, that woman beautiful; to remain in the back rows;
to approve, to applaud, to admire, to worship, to prostrate
yourself, to blister your knees by long genuflections, to sugar
your words when you are gnawing your lips with anger,
when you are biting down your cries of fury, and when you
have within you more savage turbulence and more bitter
foam than the ocean!
It is thus that the rich make prisoners of the poor.
This slime of a good action performed towards you bedaubs
and bespatters you with mud for ever.
An alms is irremediable. Gratitude is paralysis. A
benefit is a sticky and repugnant adherence which deprives
you of free movement. Those odious, opulent, and spoiled
creatures whose pity has thus injured you are well aware of
this. It is done — you are their creature. They have bought
you — and how ? By a bone taken from their dog and cast to
232 THE LAUGHING MAN.
you. They have flung that bone at your head. You nave
been stoned as much as benefited. It is all one. Have you
gnawed the bone— yes or no? You have had your place in
the dog-kennel as well. Then be thankful— be ever thank-
ful. Adore your masters. Kneel on indefinitely. A bene-
fit implies an understood inferiority accepted by you. It
means that you feel them to be gods and yourself a poor
deviL Your diminution augments them. Your bent form
makes theirs more upright. In the tones of their voices
there is an impertinent inflexion. Their family matters —
their marriages, their baptisms, their child-bearings, their
progeny — all concern you. A wolf cub is born to them.
Well, you have to compose a sonnet, You are a poet be-
cause you are low. Isn't it enough to make the stars fall!
A little more, and they would make you wear their old shoes.
" Who have you got there, my dear? How ugly he ist
Who is that man?"
" I do not know. A sort of scholar, whom I feed."
Thus converse these idiots, without even lowering their
voice. You hear, and remain mechanically amiable. If
you are ill, your masters will send for the doctor — not their
own. Occasionally they may even inquire after you. Being
of a different species from you, and at an inaccessible height
above you, they are affable. Their height makes them easy.
They know that equality is impossible. By force of disdain
they are polite. At table they give you a little nod. Some-
times they absolutely know how your name is spelt! They
only show that they are your protectors by walking uncon-
sciously over all the delicacy and susceptibility you possess.
They treat you with good-nature. Is all this to be borne?
No doubt he was eager to punish Josiana. He must teach
her with whom she had to deal !
O my rich gentry, because you cannot eat up everything,
because opulence produces indigestion seeing that your
stomachs are no bigger than ours, because it is, after all,
better to distribute the remainder than to throw it away,
you exalt a morsel flung to the poor into an act of magnifi-
cence. Oh, you give us bread, you give us shelter, you
give us clothes, you give us employment, and you push
audacity, folly, cruelty, stupidity, and absurdity to the
pitch of believing that we are grateful I The bread is the
bread of servitude, the shelter is a footman's bedroom, the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 233
clothes are a livery, the employment Is ridiculous, paid for,
It is true, but brutalizing.
Oh, you believe in the right to humiliate us with lodging
and nourishment, and you imagine that we are your debtors,
and you count on our gratitude ! Very well; we will eat up
your substance, we will devour you alive and gnaw your
heart-strings with our teeth.
This Josianal Was it not absurd? What merit had she?
She had accomplished the wonderful work of coming into
the world as a testimony of the folly of her father and the
shame of her mother. She had done us the favour to exist,
and for her kindness in becoming a public scandal they paid
her millions; she had estates and castles, warrens, parks,
lakes, forests, and I know not what besides, and with all that
she was making a fool of herself, and verses were addressed
to her I And Barkilphedro, who had studied and laboured
and taken pains, and stuffed his eyes and his brain with
great books, who had grown mouldy in old works and in
tcience, who was full of wit, who could command armies,
tvho could, if he would, write tragedies like Otway and
Dryden, who was made to be an emperor — Barkilphedro had
been reduced to permit this nobody to prevent him from
dying of hunger. Could the usurpation of the rich, the
hateful elect of chance, go further? They put on the
semblance of being generous to us, of protecting us, and of
smiling on us, and we would drink their blood and lick our
lips after itl That this low woman of the court should have
the odious power of being a benefactress, and that a man so
superior should be condemned to pick up such bribes falling
from such a hand, what a frightful iniquity I And what social
system is this which has for its base disproportion and in-
justice? Would it not be best to take it by the four corners,
and to throw pell-mell to the ceiling the damask tablecloth,
and the festival, and the orgies, and the tippling and drunken-
ness, and the guests, and those with their elbows on the table,
and those with their paws under it, and the insolent who give
and the idiots who accept, and to spit it all back again in the
face of Providence, and fling all the earth to the heavens?
In the meantime let us stick our claws into Josiana.
Thus dreamed Barkilphedro. Such were the ragings of his
soul. It is the habit of the envious man to absolve himself,
amalgamating with his personal grievance the public wrongs.
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236 THE LAUGHING MAN.
The noble beast feels the bite, and expends his mighty
anger against the atom. An encounter with a tiger would
weary him less; see how the actors exchange their parts.
The lion, humiliated, feels the sting of the insect; and the
flea can say, " I have in my veins the blood of a lion."
However, these reflections but half appeased the cravings
of Barkilphedro's pride. Consolations, palliations at most.
To vex is one thing; to torment would be infinitely better.
Barkilphedro had a thought which returned to him without
ceasing: his success might not go beyond just irritating the
epidermis of Josiana. What could he hope for more—he so
obscure against her so radiant ? A scratch is worth but little
to him who longs to see the crimson blood of his flayed victim,
and to hear her cries as she lies before him more, than naked,
without even that garment the skin I With such a craving,
how sad to be powerless 1
Alas, there is nothing perfect 1
However, he resigned himself. Not being able to do
better, he only dreamed half his dream. To play a treacherous
trick is an object after all.
What a man is he who revenges himself for a benefit
received I Barkilphedro was a giant among such men.
Usually, ingratitude is forgetfulness. With this man,
patented hi wickedness, it was fury. The vulgar ingrate is
full of ashes j what was within Barkilphedro? A furnace —
a furnace walled round by hate, silence, and rancour, await-
ing Josiana for fuel. Never had a man abhorred a woman
to such a point without reason. How terrible! She was
his dream, his preoccupation, his ennui, his rage.
Perhaps he was a little in love with her.
CHAPTER XI.
BARKILPHEDRO IN AMBUSCADE.
To find the vulnerable spot In Josiana, and to strike her
there, was, for all the causes we have just mentioned, the
imperturbable determination of Barkilphedro. The wish
is sufficient; the power is required. How was he to set
about it? There was the question.
Vulgar vagabonds set the scene of any wickedness they
I to commit with care. They do not feel themselves
THE LAUGHING MABf. 237
strong enough to seize the opportunity as it pa sses, to take
possession of it by fair means or foul, and to constrain it to
serve them. Deep scoundrels disdain preliminary combina-
tionSc They start from their villainies alone, merely arming
themselves all round, prepared to avail themselves of various
chances which may occur, and then, like Barkilphedro, await
the opportunity. They know that a ready-made scheme
runs the risk of fitting ill into the event which may present
itself. It is not thus that a man makes himself master of
possibilities and guides them as one pleases. You can come
to no previous arrangement with destiny. To-morrow will
not obey you, There is a certain want of discipline in chance.
Therefore they watch for it, and summon it suddenly,
authoritatively, on the spot. No plan, no sketch, no rough
model j no ready-made shoe ill-fitting the unexpected. They
plunge headlong into the dark. To turn to immediate and
rapid profit any circumstance that can aid him is the quality
which distinguishes the able scoundrel, and elevates the
villain into the demon. To strike suddenly at fortune, that
is true genius.
The true scoundrel strikes you from a sling with the first
stone he can pick up. Clever malefactors count on the un-
expected, that senseless accomplice of so many crimes.
They grasp the incident and leap on it; there is no better
Ars Poetica for this species of talent. Meanwhile be sure
with whom you have to deal. Survey the ground.
With Barkilphedro the ground was Queen Anne. Barkil-
phedro approached the queen, and so close that sometimes
he fancied he heard the monologues of her Majesty. Some-
times he was present unheeded at conversations between the
sisters. Neither did they forbid his sliding in a word. He
profited by this to lessen himself — a way of inspiring con
fidence. Thus one day in the garden at Hampton Court,
being behind the duchess, who was behind the queen, he
heard Anne, following the fashion, awkwardly enunciating
sentiments.
" Animals are happy," said the queen. " They run no
risk of going to hell."
" They are there already," replied Joslana.
This answer, which bluntly substituted philosophy for
religion, displeased the queen. If, perchance, there was
depth in the observation, Anne felt shocked.
a3g THE LAUGHING MAN.
!y dear," said she to Josiana, " we talk of hell like a
couple of fools. Ask Barkilphedro all about it. He ought to
know such things."
" As a devil? " said Josiana.
" As a beast,'* replied Barkilphedro, with a bow.
" Madam," said the queen to Josiana, "he is cleverer
than we."
For a man like Barkilphedro to approach the queen was
to obtain a hold on her. He could say, " I hold her." Now,
he wanted a means of taking advantage of his power for his
own benefit. He had his foothold in the court To be
settled there was a fine thing. No chance could now escape
him. More than once he had made the queen smile malici-
ously. This was having a licence to shoot. But was there
any preserved game ? Did this licence to shoot permit him
to break the wing or the leg of one like the sister of her
Majesty? The first point to make clear was, did the queen
love her sister? One false step would lose all. Barkil-
phedro watched.
Before he plays the player looks at the cards. What
trumps has he? Barkilphedro began by examining the age
of the two women. Josiana, twenty-three; Anne, forty-
one. So far so good. He held trumps. The moment that
a woman ceases to count by springs, and begins to count by
winters, she becomes cross. A dull rancour possesses her
against the time of which she carries the proofs., Fresh-
blown beauties, perfumes for others, are to such a one but
thorns. Of the roses she feels but the prick. It seems as if all
the freshness is stolen from her, and that beauty decreases
in her because it increases in others.
To profit by this secret ill-humour, to dive into the wrinkle
on the face of this woman of forty, who was a queen, seemed
a good game for Barkilphedro.
Knvy excels in exciting jealousy, as a rat draws the
crocodile from its hole.
Barkilphedro fixed his wise gaze on Anne. He saw into
the queen as one sees into a stagnant pool. The marsh has
transparency. In dirty water we see vices, in muddy
water we see stupidity; Anne was muddy water.
Embryos of sentiments and larvae of ideas moved in her
* brain. They were not distinct; they had scarcely any
line. But they were realities, however shapeless. The
LAUGHING MAN. 239
queen thought ^J&fc ; tte queen desired that. To decide
what was the dtf^iculiy. The confused transformations
which work in stagnant water are difficult to study. The
queen, habitually obscure, sometimes made sudden and
stupid revelations. It was on these that it was necessary to
seize. He must take advantage of them on the moment.
How did the queen feel towards the Duchess Josiana ? Did
she wish her good or evil ?
Here was the problem. Barkilphedro set himself to solve
it. This problem solved, he might go further.
Divers chances served Barkilphedro — his tenacity at the
watch above all.
Anne was, on her husband's side, slightly related to the
new Queen of Prussia, wife of the king with the hundred
chamberlains. She had her portrait painted on enamel, after
the process of Turquet of Mayerne. This Queen of Prussia
had also a younger illegitimate sister, the Baroness Drika.
One day, in the presence of Barkilphedro, Anne asked the
Russian ambassador some question about this Drika.
"" They say she is rich ? "
' Very rich."
' She has palaces ? "
1 More magnificent than those of her sister, the queen."
' Whom will she marry? "
' A great lord, the Count Gormo."
1 Pretty? "
' Charming.**
' Is she young? "
' Very young."
' As beautiful as the queen ? "
The ambassador lowered his voice, and replied, —
* More beautiful."
1 That is insolent," murmured Barkilphedro.
The queen was silent; then she exclaimed, —
" Those bastards! "
Barkilphedro noticed the plural.
Another time, when the queen was leaving the chapel,
Barkilphedro kept pretty close to her Majesty, behind the
two grooms of the almonry. Lord David Dirry-Moir, cross-
ing the ranks of women, made a sensation by his handsome
appearance. As he passed there was an explosion of feminine
exclamations.
24o THE LAUGHIK6
"How elegant! HowgaUantI VhatV^L'oble airi
handsome I "
" How disagreeable! " grumbled the cfueen.
Barkilphedro overheard this ; it decided him.
He could hurt the duchess without displeasing the queen.
The first problem was solved; but now the second presented
itself.
What could he do to harm the duchess? What means
did his wretched appointment offer to attain so difficult an
object?
Evidently none.
CHAPTER XII.
SCOTLAND, IRELAND, AND ENGLAND.
LET us note a circumstance. Josiana had le tour,
This is easy to understand when we reflect that she was,
although illegitimate, the queen's sister — that is to say, a
princely personage.
To have le tour — what does it mean ?
Viscount St. John, otherwise Bolingbroke, wrote as follows
to Thomas Lennard, Earl of Sussex : —
" Two things mark the great — in England, they have l&
tour; in France, le pour."
When the King of France travelled, the courier of the court
stopped at the halting-place in the evening, and assigned
lodgings to his Majesty's suite.
Amongst the gentlemen some had an immense privilege.
" They have le pour," says the Journal Historique for the year
1694, page 6; " which means that the courier who marks the
billets puts ' pour ' before their names — as, ' Pour M. le
Prince de Soubise; * instead of which, when he marks the
lodging of one who is not royal, he does not put pour, but
simply the name — as, ' Le Due de Gesvres, le Due de
Mazarin.' ' This pour on a door indicated a prince or a
favourite. A favourite is worse than a prince. The king
granted le pour, like a blue ribbon or a peerage.
Avoir le tour in England was less glorious but more real.
!t was a sign of intimate communication with the sovereign,
fVhoever might be, by birth or favour, in a position to receive
direct communications from majesty, had in the wall of their
bedchamber a shaft in, which was adjusted a bell. The bell
THE LAUGHING MAN. 241
sounded, th'e shaft opened, a royal missive appeared on a gold
plate or on a cushion of velvet, and the shaft closed. This
was intimate and solemn, the mysterious in the familiar.
The shaft was used for no other purpose. The sound of the
bell announced a royal message. No one saw who brought
It. It was of course merely the page of the king or the queen.
Leicester avait le tour under Elizabeth; Buckingham under
James I. Josiana had it under Anne, though not much in
favour. Never was a privilege more envied.
This privilege entailed additional servility. The recipient
was more of a servant. At court that which elevates, de-
grades, Avoir le tour was said in French; this circumstance
of English etiquette having, probably, been borrowed from
some old French folly.
Lady Josiana, a virgin peeress as Elizabeth had been a
virgin queen, led — sometimes in the City, and sometimes in
the country, according to the season — an almost princely life,
SJid kept nearly a court, at which Lord David was courtier,
with many others.
Not being married, Lord David and Lady Josiana could
show themselves together in public without exciting ridicule,
and they did so frequently. They often went to plays and
racecourses in the same carriage, and sat together in the same
box. They were chilled by the impending marriage, which
was not only permitted to them, but imposed upon them;
but they felt an attraction for each other's society. The
privacy permitted to the engaged has a frontier easily passed.
From this they abstained ; that which is easy is in bad taste.
The best pugilistic encounters then took place at Lambeth,
a parish in which the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury has a
palace though the air there is unhealthy, and a rich library
open at certain hours to decent people.
One evening in winter there was in a meadow there, the
gates of which were locked, a fight, at which Josiana, escorted
by Lord David, was present. She had asked, —
" Are women admitted? "
And David had responded, —
" Sunt fcemince magnates I "
Liberal translation, " Not shopkeepers." Literal transla-
tion, " Great ladies exist. A duchess goes everywhere 1 "
This is why Lady Josiana saw a boxing match.
Lady Josiana made only this concession to propriety— she
242 THE LAUGHING MAN.
dressed as a man, a very common custom at that perlocL
Women seldom travelled otherwise. Out of every six
persons who travelled by the coach from Windsor, it was rare
that there were not one or two amongst them who were
women in male attire; a certain sign of high birth.
Lord David, being in company with a woman, could not
take any part in the match himself, and merely assisted as one
of the audience.
Lady Josiana betrayed her quality in one way; she had an
opera-glass, then used by gentlemen only.
This encounter in the noble science was presided over by
Lord Germaine, great-grandfather, or grand-uncle, of that
Lord Germaine who, towards the end of the eighteenth
century, was colonel, ran away in a battle, was afterwards
made Minister of War, and only escaped from the bolts of
the enemy, to fall by a worse fate, shot through and through
by the sarcasm of Sheridan.
' Many gentlemen were betting. Harry Bellew, of Carleton,
who had claims to the extinct peerage of Bella-aqua, with
Henry, Lord Hyde, member of Parliament for the borough
of Dunhivid, which is also called Launceston; the Honour-
able Peregrine Bertie, member for the borough of Truro, with
Sir Thomas Colpepper, member for Maidstone; the Laird of
Lamyrbau, which is on the borders of Lothian, with Samuel
Trefusis, of the borough of Penryn; Sir Bartholomew Grace-
dieu, of the borough of Saint Ives, with the Honourable
Charles Bodville, who was called Lord Robartes, and who
was Gustos Rotulorum of the county of Cornwall; besides
many others.
Of the two combatants, one was an Irishman, named after
his native mountain in Tipperary, Phelem-ghe-Madone, and
the other a Scot, named Helmsgail.
They represented the national pride of each country.
Ireland and Scotland were about to set to ; Erin was going
to fisticuff Gajothel. So that the bets amounted to over
forty "thousand guineas, besides the stakes.
The two champions were naked, excepting short breeches
buckled over the hips, and spiked boots laced as high as the
ankles.
Helmsgail, the Scot, was a youth scarcely nineteen, but he
had already had his forehead sewn up, for which reason they
laid 2\ to i on him. The month before he had broken the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 243
ribs and gouged out the eyes of a pugilist named Sixmiles-
*vater. This explained the enthusiasm he created. He had
won his backers twelve thousand pounds. Besides having
his forehead sewn up Helmsgail's jaw had been broken. He
was neatly made and active. He was about the height of a
small woman, upright, thick-set, and of a stature low and
threatening. And nothing had been lost of the advantages
given him by nature; not a muscle which was not trained to
its object, pugilism. His firm chest was compact, and brown
and shining like brass. He smiled, and three teeth which he
had lost added to his smile.
His adversary was tall and overgrown — that is to say,
weak.
He was a man of forty years of age, six feet high, with the
chest of a hippopotamus, and a mild expression of face. The
blow of his fist would break in the deck of a vessel, but he did
not know how to use it.
The Irishman, Phelem-ghe-Madone, was all surface, and
seemed to have entered the ring to receive rather than to
give blows. Only it was felt that he would take a deal of
punishment. Like underdone beef, tough to chew, and im-
possible to swallow. He was what was termed, in local slang,
raw meat. He squinted. He seemed resigned.
The two men had passed the preceding night In the same
bed, and had slept together. They had each drunk port wine
from the same glass, to the three-inch mark.
Each had his group of seconds — men of savage expression,
threatening the umpires when it suited their side. Amongst
Helmsgail's supporters was to be seen John Gromane, cele-
brated for having carried an ox on his back; and one called
John Bray, who had once carried on his back ten bushels of
flour, at fifteen pecks to the bushel, besides the miller himself,
and had walked over two hundred paces under the weight.
On the side of Phelem-ghe-Madone, Lord Hyde had brought
from Launceston a certain Kilter, who lived at Green Castle,
and could throw a stone weighing twenty pounds to a greater
height than the highest tower of the castle.
These three men, Kilter, Bray, and Gromane, were Cornish-
nen by birth, and did honour to their county.
The other seconds were brutal fellows, with broad backs,
bowed legs, knotted fists, dull faces ; ragged, fearing nothing,
nearly ail jail-birds.
244 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Many of them understood admirably how to make the
police drunk. Each profession should have its peculiar
talents.
The field chosen was farther off than the bear garden,
where they formerly baited bears, bulls, and dogs; it was
beyond the line of the farthest houses, by the side of the
ruins of the Priory of Saint Mary Overy, dismantled by
Henry VIII. The wind was northerly, and biting; a small
rain fell, which was instantly frozen into ice. Some gentle-
men present were evidently fathers of families, recognized as
such by their putting up their umbrellas.
On the side of Phelem-ghe-Madone was Colonel Moncreif,
as umpire; and Kilter, as second, to support him on his
knee.
On the side of Helmsgail, the Honourable Pughe Beau-
maris was umpire, with Lord Desertum, from Kilcarry, as
bottle-holder, to support him on his knee.
The two combatants stood for a few seconds motionless in
the ring, whilst the watches were being compared. They
then approached each other and shook hands.
Phelem-ghe-Madone said to Helmsgail, —
" I should prefer going home."
Helmsgail answered, handsomely, —
" The gentlemen must not be disappointed, on any
account."
Naked as they were, they ,felt the cold. Phelem-ghe-
Madone shook. His teeth chattered.
Dr. Eleanor Sharpe, nephew of the Archbishop of York,
cried out to them, —
" Set to, boys; it will warm you."
Those friendly words thawed them.
They set to.
But neither one nor the other was angry. There were
three ineffectual rounds. The Rev. Doctor Gumdraith, one
of the forty Fellows of All Souls' College, cried, —
" Spirit them up with gin."
But the two umpires and the two seconds adhered to the
rule. Yet It was exceedingly cold.
First blood was claimed.
They were again set face to face.
They looked at each other, approached, stretched their
arms, touched each other's fists, and then drew back.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 245
All at once, Helmsgail, the little man, sprang forward.
The real fight had begun..
Phelem-ghe-Madone was struck in the face, between the
eyes. His whole face streamed with blood. The crowd
cried, —
" Helmsgail has tapped his claret 1 "
There was applause. Phelem-ghe-Madone, turning his
arms like the sails of a windmill, struck out at random.
The Honourable Peregrine Bertie said, " Blinded; " but he
was not blind yet.
Then Helmsgail heard on all sides these encouraging
words, —
" Bung up his peepers I "
On the whole, the two champions were really well matched;
and, notwithstanding the unfavourable weather, it was seen
that the fight would be a success.
The great giant, Phelem-ghe-Madone, had to bear the
inconveniences of his advantages; he moved heavily. His
arms were massive as clubs; but his chest was a mass. His
little opponent ran, struck, sprang, gnashed his teeth; re-
doubling vigour by quickness, from knowledge of the science.
On the one side was the primitive blow of the fist — savage,
uncultivated, in a state of ignorance; on the other side, the
civilized blow of the fist. Helmsgail fought as much with his
nerves as with his muscles, and with as much intention as
force. Phelem-ghe-Madone was a kind of sluggish mauler —
somewhat mauled himself, to begin with. It was art against
nature. It was cultivated ferocity against barbarism.
It was clear that the barbarian would be beaten, but not
very quickly. Hence the interest.
A little man against a big one, and the chances are in
favour of the little one. The cat has the best of it with a
dog. Goliaths are always vanquished by Davids.
A hail of exclamations followed the combatants.
"Bravo, Helmsgail I Good! Well done, Highlander!
Now, Phelem I "
And the friends of Helmsgail repeated their benevolent
exhortation, —
" Bung up his peepers ! "
Helmsgail did better. Rapidly bending down and back
again, with the undulation of a serpent, he struck Phelem-
ghe-Madone in the sternum. The Colossus staggered.
246 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" Foul blow! " cried Viscount Barnard.
Phelem-ghe-Madone sank down on the knee of his second,
saying,—
" I am beginning to get warm.
Lord Desertum consulted the umpires, and said, —
" Five minutes before time is called."
Phelem-ghe-Madone was becoming weaker. Kilter wiped
the blood from his face and the sweat from his body with a
flannel, and placed the neck of a bottle to his mouth. They
had come to the eleventh round. Phelem, besides the scar
on his forehead, had his breast disfigured by blows, his belly
swollen, and the fore part of the head scarified. Helmsgail
was untouched.
A kind of tumult arose amongst the gentlemen.
Lord Barnard repeated, " Foul blow."
" Bets void! " said the Laird of Lamyrbau.
" I claim my stake! " replied Sir Thomas Colpepper.
And the honourable member for the borough of Saint
Ives, Sir Bartholomew Gracedieu, added, " Give me
back my five hundred guineas, and I will go. Stop the
fight."
Phelem arose, staggering like a drunken man, and said, —
" Let us go on fighting, on one condition — that I also shall
have the right to give one foul blow."
They cried " Agreed ! " from all parts of the ring. Helms-
gail shrugged his shoulders. Five minutes elapsed, and they
set to again.
The fighting, which was agony to Phelem, was play to
Helmsgail. Such are the triumphs of science.
The little man found means of putting the big one into
chancery — that is to say, Helmsgail suddenly took under his
left arm, which was bent like a steel crescent, the huge head
of Phelem-ghe-Madone, and held it there under his armpits,
the neck bent and twisted, whilst Helmsgail's right fist fell
again and again like a hammer on a nail, only from below and
striking upwards, thus smashing his opponent's face at his
ease. When Phelem, released at length, lifted his head, he
had no longer a face.
That which had been a nose, eyes, and a mouth now
looked only like a black sponge, soaked in blood. He spat,
and on the ground lay four of his teeth.
Then he fell. Kilter received him on his knee.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 247
Helmsgail was hardly touched: he had some insignificant
bruises and a scratch on his collar bone.
No one was cold now. They laid sixteen and a quarter to
one on Helmsgail.
Harry Carleton cried out, —
" It is all over with Phelem-ghe-Madone. I will lay my
peerage of Bella-aqua, and my title of Lord Bellew, against
the Archbishop of Canterbury's old wig, on Helmsgail."
" Give me your muzzle," said Kilter to Phelem-ghe-
Madone. And stuffing the bloody flannel into the bottle, he
washed him all over with gin. The mouth reappeared, and
he opened one eyelid. His temples seemed fractured.
' " One round more, my friend," said Kilter; and he added,
," for the honour of the low town."
I The Welsh and the Irish understand each other, still Phelem
made no sign of having any power of understanding left.
Phelem arose, supported by Kilter. It was the twenty-
fifth round. From the way in which this Cyclops, for he had
but one eye, placed himself in position, it was evident that
this was the last round, for no one doubted his defeat. He
placed his guard below his chin, with the awkwardness of a
failing man.
Helmsgail, with a skin hardly sweating, cried out, —
"I'll back myself, a thousand to one."
Helmsgail, raising his arm, struck out; and, what was
fctrange, both fell. A ghastly chuckle was heard. It was
Phelem-ghe-Madone's expression of delight. While receiv-
ing the terrible blow given him by Helmsgail on the skull, he
had given him a foul blow on the navel.
Helmsgail, lying on his back, rattled in his throat.
The spectators looked at him as he lay on the ground, and
said," Paid back I " All clapped their hands, even those who
had lost. Phelem-ghe-Madone had given foul blow for foul
blow, and had only asserted his right.
They carried Helmsgail off on a hand-barrow. The
opinion was that he would not recover.
Lord Robartes exclaimed, " I win twelve hundred guineas."
Phelem-ghe-Madone was evidently maimed for life.
As she left, Josiana took the arm of Lord David, an act
which was tolerated amongst people " engaged." She said
to him, —
" It is very fine, but "
248 THE LAUGHING MAN.
"But what?"
" 1 thought it would have driven away my spleen. It has
not."
Lord David stopped, looked at Josiana, shut his mouth,
and inflated his cheeks, whilst he nodded his head, which
signified attention, and said to the duchess, —
" For spleen there is but one remedy."
" What is it? "
" Gwynplaine."
The duchess asked, —
" And who is Gwynplaine? "
BOOK THE SECOND.
GWYNPLAINE AND DEA.
CHAPTER I.
WHEREIN WE SEE THE FACE OF HIM OF WHOM WE
HAVE HITHERTO SEEN ONLY THE ACTS.
NATURE had been prodigal of her kindness to Gwynplaine.
She had bestowed on him a mouth opening to his ears, ears
folding over to his eyes, a shapeless nose to support the spec-
tacles of the grimace maker, and a face that no one could look
upon without laughing.
We have just said that nature had loaded Gwynplaine with
her gifts. But was it nature ? Had she not been assisted ?
Two slits for eyes, a hiatus for a mouth, a snub protuber-
ance with two holes for nostrils, a flattened face, all having
for the result an appearance of laughter; it is certain that
nature never produces such perfection single-handed.
But is laughter a synonym of joy?
If, in the presence of this mountebank — for he was one —
the first impression of gaiety wore off, and the man were ob-
served with attention, traces of art were to be recognized.
Such a face could never have been created by chance; it must
have resulted from intention. Such perfect completeness is
not in nature. Man can do nothing to create beauty, but
everything to produce ugliness. A Hottentot profile can-
not be changed into a Roman outline, but out of a Grecian
nose you may make a Calmuck's. It only requires to ob-
literate the root of the nose and to flatten the nostrils. The
dog Latin of the Middle Ages had a reason for its creation of
25o THE LAUGHING MAN.
erb denasare. Had Gwynplaine when a child been so
worthy of attention that his face had been subjected to trans-
mutation ? Why not ? Needed there a greater motive than
the speculation of his future exhibition? According to all
appearance, industrious manipulators of children had worked
upon his face. It seemed evident that a mysterious and
probably occult science, which was to surgery what alchemy
was to chemistry, had chiselled his flesh, evidently at a very
tender age, and manufactured his countenance with pre-
meditation. That science, clever with the knife, skilled in
obtusions and ligatures, had enlarged the mouth, cut away
the lips, laid bare the gums, distended the ears, cut the
cartilages, displaced the eyelids and the cheeks, enlarged the
zygomatic muscle, pressed the scars and cicatrices to a level,
turned back the skin over the lesions whilst the face was thus
stretched, from all which resulted that powerful and profound
piece of sculpture, the mask, Gwynplaine.
Man is not born thus.
However it may have been, the manipulation of Gwyn-
plaine had succeeded admirably. Gwynplaine was a gift of
Providence to dispel the sadness of man.
Of what providence ? Is there a providence of demons as
well as of God ? We put the question without answering it.
Gwynplaine was a mountebank. He showed himself on
the platform. No such effect had ever before been produced.
Hypochondriacs were cured by the sight of him alone. He
was avoided by folks in mourning, because they were com-
pelled to laugh when they saw him, without regard to their
decent gravity. One day the executioner came, and Gwyn-
plaine made him laugh. Every one who saw Gwynplaine
held his sides; he spoke, and they rolled on the ground.
as removed from sadness as is pole from pole. Spleen
at the one; Gwynplaine at the other.
Thus he rose rapidly in the fair ground and at the cross
roads to the very satisfactory renown of a horrible man.
:t was Gwynplaine's laugh which created the laughter of
others, yet he did not laugh himself. His face laughed; his
thoughts did not. The extraordinary face which chance or
a special and weird industry had fashioned for him, laughed
lone. Gwynplaine had nothing to do with it. The outside
d not depend on the interior. The laugh which he had not
placed, himself, on his brow, on his eyelids, on his mouth, he
THE LAUGHING MAN. 251
could not remove. It had been stamped for ever on his face,
it was automatic, and the more irresistible because it seemed
petrified. No one could escape from this rictus. Two con-
vulsions of the face are infectious; laughing and yawning.
By virtue of the mysterious operation to which Gwynplaine
had probably been subjected in his infancy, every part of his
face contributed to that rictus; his whole physiognomy led
to that result, as a wheel centres in the nave. All his emotions,
whatever they might have been, augmented his strange face
of joy, or to speak more correctly, aggravated it. Any
astonishment which might seize him, any suffering which he
might feel, any anger which might take possession of him,
any pity which might move him, would only increase this
hilarity of his muscles. If he wept, he laughed; and what-
ever Gwynplaine was, whatever he wished to be, whatever
he thought, the moment that he raised his head, the crowd,
if crowd there was, had before them one impersonation : an
overwhelming burst of laughter.
It was like a head of Medusa, but Medusa hilarious. All
feeling or thought in the mind of the spectator was suddenly
put to flight by the unexpected apparition, and laughter was
inevitable. Antique art formerly placed on the outsides of
the Greek theatre a joyous brazen face, called comedy. It
laughed and occasioned laughter, but remained pensive. All
parody which borders on folly, all irony which borders on
wisdom, were condensed and amalgamated in that face. The
burden of care, of disillusion, anxiety, and grief were ex-
pressed in its impassive countenance, and resulted in a
lugubrious sum of mirth. One corner of the mouth was
raised, in mockery of the human race ; the other side, in blas-
phemy of the gods. Men confronted that model of the ideal
sarcasm and exemplification of the irony which each one
possesses within him; and the crowd, continually renewed
round its fixed laugh, died away with delight before its
sepulchral immobility of mirth.
One might almost have said that Gwynplaine was that
dark, dead mask of ancient comedy adjusted to the body of
a living man. That infernal head of implacable hilarity he
supported on his neck. What a weight for the shoulders of
a man — an everlasting laugh !
An everlasting laugh !
Let us understand each other; we will explain. The
252 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Manichseans believed the absolute occasionally gives way, and
that God Himself sometimes abdicates for a time. So also
of the will. We do not admit that it can ever be utterly
powerless. The whole of existence resembles a letter modi-
fied in the postscript. For Gwynplaine the postscript was
this: by the force of his will, and by concentrating all his
attention, and on condition that no emotion should come to
distract and turn away the fixedness of his effort, he could
manage to suspend the everlasting rictus of his face, and to
throw over it a kind of tragic veil, and then the spectator
laughed no longer; he shuddered.
This exertion Gwynplaine scarcely ever made. It was
a terrible effort, and an insupportable tension. -Moreover, it
happened that on the slightest distraction, or the slightest
emotion, the laugh, driven back for a moment, returned like
a tide with an impulse which was irresistible in proportion to
the force of the adverse emotion.
With this exception, Gwynplaine's laugh was everlasting.
On seeing Gwynplaine, all laughed. When they had laughed
they turned away their heads. Women especially shrank
from him with horror. The man was frightful. The joy-
ous convulsion of laughter was as a tribute paid; they sub-
mitted to it gladly, but almost mechanically. Besides, when
once the novelty of the laugh had passed over, Gwynplaine
was intolerable for a woman to see, and impossible to con-
template. But he was tall, well made, and agile, and no
way deformed, excepting in his face.
This led to the presumption that Gwynplaine was rather
a creation of art than a work of nature. Gwynplaine, beauti-
ful in figure, had probably been beautiful in face. At his
birth he had no doubt resembled other infants. They had
left the body intact, and retouched only the face.
Gwynplaine had been made to order — at least, that was
probable. They had left him his teeth; teeth are necessary
to a laugh. The death's head retains them. The operation
performed on him must have been frightful. That he had
no remembrance of it was no proof that it had not taken
place. Surgical sculpture of the kind could never have suc-
ceeded except on a very young child, and consequently on
e having little consciousness of what happened to him, and
who might easily take a wound for a sickness. Besides, we
must remember that they had in those times means of putting
THE LAUGHING MAN. 25.3
patients to sleep, and of suppressing all suffering ; only then
it was called magic, while now it is called anaesthesia.
Besides this face, those who had brought him up had given
him the resources of a gymnast and an athlete. His arti-
culations usefully displaced and fashioned to bending the
wrong way, had received the education of a clown, and could,
like the hinges of a door, move backwards and forwards. In
appropriating him to the profession of mountebank nothing
had been neglected. His hair had been dyed with ochre once
for all ; a secret which has been rediscovered at the present
day. Pretty women use it, and that which was formerly
considered ugly is now considered an embellishment. Gwyn-
plaine had yellow hair. His hair having probably been
dyed with some corrosive preparation, had left it woolly and
rough to the touch. Its yellow bristles, rather a mane than
a head of hair, covered and concealed a lofty brow, evidently
made to contain thought. The operation, whatever it had
been, which had deprived his features of harmony, and put
all their flesh into disorder, had had no effect on the bony
structure of his head. The facial angle was powerful and
surprisingly grand. Behind his laugh there was a soul,
dreaming, as all our souls dream.
However, his laugh was to Gwynplaine quite a talent. He
could do nothing with it, so he turned it to account. By
means of it he gained his living.
Gwynplaine, as you have doubtless already guessed, was
the child abandoned one winter evening on the coast of Port-
land, and received into a poor caravan at Weymouth.
CHAPTER II.
DEA.
THAT boy was at this time a man. Fifteen years had
elapsed. It was in 1705. Gwynplaine was in his twenty-
fifth year.
Ursus had kept the two children with him. They were a
group of wanderers. Ursus and Homo had aged. Ursus had
become quite bald. The wolf was growing gray. The age of
wolves is not ascertained like that of dogs. According to
Moliere, there are wolves which live to eighty, amongst others
the little koupara, and the rank wolf, the Canis nubilus of Say.
THE LAUGHING MAN.
The little girl found on the dead woman was now a tall
creature of sixteen, with brown hair, slight, fragile, almost
trembling from delicacy, and almost inspiring fear lest she
should break; admirably beautiful, her eyes full of light, yet
blind. That fatal winter night which threw down the beggar
woman and her infant in the snow had struck a double blow.
It had killed the mother and blinded the child. Gutta
serena had for ever paralysed the eyes of the girl, now become
woman in her turn. On her face, through which the light
of day never passed, the depressed corners of the mouth
indicated the bitterness of the privation. Her eyes, large
and clear, had a strange quality: extinguished for ever to
her, to others they were brilliant. They were mysterious
torches lighting only the outside. They gave light but
possessed it not. These sightless eyes were resplendent.
A captive of shadow, she lighted up the dull place she
inhabited. From the depth of her incurable darkness, from
behind the black wall called blindness, she flung her rays.
She saw not the sun without, but her soul was perceptible
from within.
In her dead look there was a celestial earnestness. She
was the night, and from the irremediable darkness with which
she was amalgamated she came out a star.
Ursus, with his mania for Latin names, had christened her
Dea. He had taken his wolf into consultation. He had
said to him, " You represent man, I represent the beasts.
We are of the lower world; this little one shall represent the
world on high. Such feebleness is all-powerful. In this
manner the universe shall be complete in our hut in its
three orders — human, animal, and Divine." The wolf
made no objection. Therefore the foundling was called
Dea.
As to Gwynplaine, Ursus had not had the trouble of in-
venting a name for him. The morning of the day on which
5 had realized the disfigurement of the little boy and the
lindness of the infant he had asked him, " Boy, what is
your name? "and the boy had answered, " They call me
jynplaine." " Be Gwynplaine, then," said Ursus.
tea assisted Gwynplaine in his performances. If human
' could be summed up, it might have been summed up
Gwynplaine and Dea. Each seemed born in a compart-
tne sepulchre; Gwynplaine in the horrible, Dea in
THE LAUGHING MAN. 255
the darkness. Their existences were shadowed by two
different kinds of darkness, taken from the two formidable
sides of night. Dea had that shadow in her, Gwynplaine had
it on him. There was a phantom in Dea, a spectre in
Gwynplaine. Dea was sunk in the mournful, Gwynplaine
in something worse. There was for Gwynplaine, who could
see, a heartrending possibility that existed not for Dea, who
was blind; he could compare himself with other men. Now,
in a situation such as that of Gwynplaine, admitting that he
should seek to examine it, to compare himself with others
was to understand himself no more. To have, like Dea,
empty sight from which the world is absent, is a supreme
distress, yet less than to be an enigma to oneself ; to feel that
something is wanting here as well, and that something, one-
self; to see the universe and not to see oneself. Dea had a
veil over her, the night; Gwynplaine a mask, his face. In-
expressible fact, it was by his own flesh that Gwynplaine was
masked J What his visage had been, he knew not. His face
had vanished. They had affixed to him a false self. He had
for a face, a disappearance. His head lived, his face was
dead. He never remembered to have seen it. Mankind was
for Gwynplaine, as for Dea, an exterior fact. It was far-off.
She was alone, he was alone. The isolation of Dea was
funereal, she saw nothing; that of Gwynplaine sinister, he
saw all things. For Dea creation never passed the bounds
of touch and hearing.; reality was bounded, limited, short,
immediately lost, Nothing was infinite to her but darkness.
For Gwynplaine to live was to have the crowd for ever before
him and outside him. Dea was the proscribed from light,
Gwynplaine the banned of life. They were beyond the pale
of hope, and had reached the depth of possible calamity;
they had sunk into It, both of them. An observer who had
watched them would have felt his reverie melt into im-
measurable pity. What must they not have suffered 1 The
decree of misfortune weighed visibly on these human
creatures, and never had fate encompassed two beings who
had done nothing to deserve it, and more clearly turned
destiny into torture, and life into hell.
They were in a Paradise.
They were in love.
Gwynplaine adored Dea. Dea idolized Gwynplaine.
" How beautiful you are! " she would say to him.
256
THE LAUGHING MAN.
CHAPTER III.
" OCULOS NON HABET, ET VIDET."
ONLY one woman on earth saw Gwynplaine. It was the
blind girl. She had learned what Gwynplaine had done for
her, from Ursus, to whom he had related his rough journey
from Portland to Weymouth, and the many sufferings which
he had endured when deserted by the gang. She knew that
when an infant dying upon her dead mother, suckling a
corpse, a being scarcely bigger than herself had taken her up ;
that this being, exiled, and, as it were, buried under the
refusal of the universe to aid him, had heard her cry; that
all the world being deaf to him, he had not been deaf to her;
that the child, alone, weak, cast off, without resting-place
here below, dragging himself over the waste, exhausted by
fatigue, crushed, had accepted from the hands of night a
burden, another child; that he, who had nothing to expect
in that obscure distribution which we call fate, had charged
himself with a destiny; that naked, in anguish and distress,
he had made himself a Providence; that when Heaven had
closed he had opened his heart; that, himself lost, he had
saved; that having neither roof -tree nor shelter, he had been
an asylum; that he had made himself mother and nurse;
that he who was alone in the world had responded to deser-
tion by adoption; that lost in the darkness he had given an
example; that, as if not already sufficiently burdened, he
had added to his load another's misery; that in this world,
which seemed to contain nothing for him, he had found a
duty; that where every one else would have hesitated, he had
advanced; that where every one else would have drawn back,
he consented; that he had put his hand into the jaws of the
grave and drawn out her— Dea. That, himself half naked,
he had given her his rags, because she was cold; that
famished, he had thought of giving her food and drink; that
for one little creature, another little creature had combated
death; that he had fought it under every form; under the
form of winter and snow, under the form of solitude, under
the form of terror, under the form of cold, hunger, and
thirst, under the form of whirlwind, and that for her, Dea,
this Titan of ten had given battle to the immensity of night.
She knew that as a child he had done this, and that now as a
THE LAUGHING MAN. 257
man, he was strength to her weakness, riches to her poverty,
healing to her sickness, and sight to her blindness. Through
the mist of the unknown by which she felt herself encom-
passed, she distinguished clearly his devotion, his abnegation,
his courage. Heroism in immaterial regions has an outline ;
she distinguished this sublime outline. In the inexpressible
abstraction in which thought lives unlighted by the sun, Dea
perceived this mysterious lineament of virtue. In the sur-
rounding of dark things put in motion, which was the only
impression made on her by reality; in the uneasy stagnation
of a creature, always passive, yet always on the watch for
possible evil; In the sensation of being ever defenceless,
which is the life of the blind — she felt Gwynplaine above her;
Gwynplaine never cold, never absent, never obscured;
Gwynplaine sympathetic, helpful, and sweet-tempered.
Dea quivered with certainty and gratitude, her anxiety
changed into ecstasy, and with her shadowy eyes she con-
templated on the zenith from the depth of her abyss the rich
light of his goodness. In the ideal, kindness is the sun ; and
Gwynplaine dazzled Dea.
To the crowd, which has too many heads to have a thought,
and too many eyes to have a sight — to the crowd who,
superficial themselves, judge only of the surface, Gwynplaine
was a clown, a merry-andrew, a mountebank, a creature
grotesque, a little more and a little less than a beast. The
crowd knew only the face.
For Dea, Gwynplaine was the saviour, who had gathered
her into his arms in the tomb, and borne her out of it; the
consoler, who made life tolerable; the liberator, whose hand,
holding her own, guided her through that labyrinth called
blindness. Gwynplaine was her brother, friend, guide,
support ; the personification of heavenly power ; the husband,
winged and resplendent. Where the multitude saw the
monster, Dea recognized the archangel. It was that Dea,
blind, perceived his soul.
CHAPTER IV.
WELL-MATCHED LOVERS.
URSUS being a philosopher understood. He approved of the
fascination of Dea. He said, The blind see the invisible. He
9
258 THE LAUGHING MAN.
said, Conscience is vision. Then., looking at Gwynplaine, he
murmured, Semi-monster, but demi-god.
Gwynplaine, on the other hand, was madly in love with
Dea.
There is the invisible eye, the spirit, and the visible eye, the
pupil. He saw her with the visible eye. Dea was dazzled by
the ideal; Gwynplaine, by the real. Gwynplaine was not
ugly; he was frightful. He saw his contrast before him: in
proportion as he was terrible, Dea was sweet. He was
horror; she was grace. Dea was his dream. She seemed a
vision scarcely embodied. There was in her whole person,
in her Grecian form, in her fine and supple figure, swaying like
a reed; in her shoulders, on which might have been invisible
wings ; in the modest curves which indicated her sex, to the
soul rather than to the senses ; in her fairness, which
amounted almost to transparency; in the august and
reserved serenity of her look, divinely shut out from earth;
in the sacred innocence of her smile — she was almost an angel,
and yet just a woman.
Gwynplaine, we have said, compared himself and com-
pared Dea.
His existence, such as it was, was the result of a double and
unheard-of choice. It was the point of intersection of two
rays — one from below and one from above — a black and a
white ray. To the same crumb, perhaps pecked at at once
by the beaks of evil and good, one gave the bite, the other the
kiss. Gwynplaine was this crumb — an atom, wounded and
caressed. Gwynplaine was the product of fatality combined
with Providence. Misfortune had placed its finger on him;
happiness as well. Two extreme destinies composed his
strange lot. He had on him an anathema and a benediction.
He was the elect, cursed. Who was he? He knew not.
When he looked at himself, he saw one he knew not; but
this unknown was a monster. Gwynplaine lived as it were
beheaded, with a face which did not belong to him. This
face was frightful, so frightful that it was absurd. It caused
as much fear as laughter. It was a hell-concocted absurdity,
.t was the shipwreck of a human face into the mask of an
animal. Never had been seen so total an ecJ ipse of humanity
in a human face; never parody more complete; never had
apparition more frightful grinned in nightmare; never had
everything repulsive to woman been more hideously amal-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 259
gamated in a man. The unfortunate heart, masked and
calumniated by the face, seemed for ever condemned to
solitude under it, as under a tombstone.
Yet no! Where unknown malice had done its worst,
invisible goodness had lent its aid. In the poor fallen one,
suddenly raised up, by the side of the repulsive, it had placed
the attractive; on the barren shoal it had set the loadstone;
it had caused a soul to fly with swift wings towards the
deserted one; it had sent the dove to console the creature
whom the thunderbolt had overwhelmed, and had made
beauty adore deformity. For this to be possible it was
necessary that beauty should not see the disfigurement. For
this good fortune, misfortune was required. Providence had
made Dea blind.
Gwynplaine vaguely felt himself the object of a redemp-
tion. Why had he been persecuted? He knew not. Why
redeemed ? He knew not. All he knew was that a halo had
encircled his brand. When Gwynplaine had been old
enough to understand, Ursus had read and explained to him
the text of Doctor Conquest de Denasatis, and in another
folio, Hugo Plagon, the passage, Nares habens mutilas ; but
Ursus had prudently abstained from " hypotheses," and had
been reserved in his opinion of what it might mean. Supposi-
tions were possible. The probability of violence inflicted on
Gwynplaine when an infant was hinted at, but for Gwyn-
plaine the result was the only evidence. His destiny was to
live under a stigma. Why this stigma? There was no
answer.
Silence and solitude were around Gwynplaine. All was un-
certain in the conjectures which could be fitted to the tragical
reality; excepting the terrible fact, nothing was certain. In
his discouragement Dea intervened a sort of celestial inter-
position between him and despair. He perceived, melted
and inspirited by the sweetness of the beautiful girl who
turned to him, that, horrible as he was, a beautified wonder
affected his monstrous visage. Having been fashioned to
create dread, he was the object of a miraculous exception,
that it was admired and adored in the ideal by the light;
and, monster that he was, he felt himself the contemplation
of a star.
Gwynplaine and Dea were united, and these two suffering
hearts adored each other. One nest and two birds — that was
2<5o THE LAUGHING MAN.
their story. They had begun to feel a universal law — to
please, to seek, and to find each other.
Thus hatred had made a mistake. The persecutors of
Gwynplaine, whoever they might have been — the deadly
enigma, from wherever it came — had missed their aim. They
had intended to drive him to desperation; they had suc-
ceeded in driving him into enchantment. They had affianced
him beforehand to a healing wound. They had predestined
him for consolation by an infliction. The pincers of the
executioner had softly changed into the delicately-moulded
hand of a girl. Gwynplaine was horrible — artificially horrible
— made horrible by the hand of man. They -had hoped to
exile him for ever: first, from his family, if his family existed,
and then from humanity. When an infant, they had made
him a ruin; of this ruin Nature had repossessed herself, as
she does of all ruins. This solitude Nature had consoled, as
she consoles all solitudes. Nature comes to the succour of
the deserted; where all is lacking, she gives back her whole
self. She flourishes and grows green amid ruins; she has
ivy for the stones and love for man.
Profound generosity of the shadows 1
CHAPTER V.
THE BLUE SKY THROUGH THE BLACK CLOUD.
THUS lived these unfortunate creatures together — Dea, re-
lying; Gwynplaine, accepted. These orphans were all in
all to each other, the feeble and the deformed. The widowed
were betrothed. An inexpressible thanksgiving arose out of
their distress. They were grateful. To whom? To the
obscure immensity. Be grateful in your own hearts. That
suffices. Thanksgiving has wings, and flies to its right desti-
nation. Your prayer knows its way better than you can.
How many men have believed that they prayed to Jupiter,
when they prayed to Jehovah I How many believers in
amulets are listened to by the Almighty 1 How many atheists
there are who know not that, in the simple fact of being good
and sad, they pray to God I
Gwynplaine and Dea were grateful. Deformity is expul-
sion. Blindness is a precipice. The expelled one had been
adopted ; the precipice was habitable.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 261
Gwynplaine had seen a brilliant light descending on him,
in an arrangement of destiny which seemed to put, in the
perspective of a dream, a white cloud of beauty having the
form of a woman, a radiant vision in which there was a heart;
and the phantom, almost a cloud and yet a woman, clasped
him; and the apparition embraced him; and the heart
desired him. Gwynplaine was no longer deformed. He was
beloved. The rose demanded the caterpillar in marriage,
feeling that within the caterpillar there was a divine butterfly.
Gwynplaine the rejected was chosen. To have one's desire
Is everything. Gwynplaine had his, Dea hers.
The abjection of the disfigured man was exalted and dilated
into intoxication, into delight, into belief; and a hand was
stretched out towards the melancholy hesitation of the blind
girl, to guide her in her darkness.
It was the penetration of two misfortunes into the ideal
which absorbed them. The rejected found a refuge in each
other. Two blanks, combining, filled each other up. They
held together by what they lacked : in that in which one was
poor, the other was rich. The misfortune of the one made
the treasure of the other. Had Dea not been blind, would
she have chosen Gwynplaine? Had Gwynplaine not been
disfigured, would he have preferred Dea? She would prob-
ably have rejected the deformed, as he would have passed
by the infirm. What happiness for Dea that Gwynplaine
was hideous I What good fortune for Gwynplaine that Dea
was blind! Apart from their providential matching, they
were impossible to each other. A mighty want of each other
was at the bottom of their loves. Gwynplaine saved Dea.
Dea saved Gwynplaine. Apposition of misery produced
adherence. It was the embrace of those swallowed in the
abyss ; none closer, none more hopeless, none more exquisite.
Gwynplaine had a thought — " What should I be without
her? " Dea had a thought — " What should I be without
him?" The exile of each made a country for both. The two
incurable fatalities, the stigmata of Gwynplaine and the
blindness of Dea, j oined them together in contentment. They
sufficed to each other. They imagined nothing beyond each
other. To speak to one another was a delight, to approach
was beatitude; by force of reciprocal intuition they became
united in the same reverie, and thought the same thoughts.
In Gwynplaine's tread Dea believed that she heard the step
262 THE LAUGHING MAN,
of one deified. They tightened their mutual grasp in a sort
of sidereal chiaroscuro, full of perfumes, of gleams, of music,
of the luminous architecture of dreams. They belonged to
each other; they knew themselves to be for ever united in the
same joy and the same ecstasy ; and nothing could be stranger
than this construction of an Eden by two of the damned.
They were inexpressibly happy. In their hell they had
created heaven. Such was thy power, O Love 1 Dea heard
Gwynplaine's laugh; Gwynplaine saw Dea's smile. Thus
ideal felicity was found, the perfect joy of life was realized,
the mysterious problem of happiness was solved; and by
whom ? By two outcasts.
For Gwynplaine, Dea was splendour. For Dea, Gwyn-
plaine was presence. Presence is that profound mystery
which renders the invisible world divine, and from which
results that other mystery — confidence. In religions this is
the only thing which is irreducible; but this irreducible thing
suffices. The great motive power is not seen; it is felt.
Gwynplaine was the religion of Dea. Sometimes, lost in her
sense of love towards him, she knelt, like a beautiful priestess
before a gnome in a pagoda, made happy by her adoration.
Imagine to yourself an abyss, and in its centre an oasis of
light, and In this oasis two creatures shut out of life, dazzling
each other. No purity could be compared to their loves.
Dea was ignorant what a kiss might be, though perhaps she
desired it; because blindness, especially in a woman, has its
dreams, and though trembling at the approaches of the un-
known, does not fear them all. As to Gwynplaine, his
sensitive youth made him pensive. The more delirious he
felt, the more timid he became. He might have dared any-
thing with this companion of his early youth, with this
creature as innocent of fault as of the light, with this blind
girl who saw but one thing— that she adored him! But he
would have thought it a theft to take what she might have
given; so he resigned himself with a melancholy satisfaction
to love angelically, and the conviction of his deformity re-
solved Itself into a proud purity.
These Chappy creatures dwelt in the ideal. They were
spouses in it at distances as opposite as the spheres. They
exchanged in its firmament the deep effluvium which is in
infinity attraction, and on earth the sexes. Their kisses were
the kisses of souls.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 263
They had always lived a common life. They knew them-
selves only in each other's society. The infancy of Dea had
coincided with the youth of Gwynplaine. They had grown
up side by side. For a long time they had slept in the same
bed, for the hut was not a large bedchamber. They lay on
the chest, Ursus on the floor ; that was the arrangement. One
fine day, whilst Dea was still very little, Gwynplaine felt
himself grown up, and it was in the youth that shame arose.
He said to Ursus, " I will also sleep on the floor." And at
night he stretched himself, with the old man, on the bear skin.
Then Dea wept. She cried for her bed-fellow; but Gwyn-
plaine, become restless because he had begun to love, decided
to remain where he was. From that time he always slept by
the side of Ursus on the planks. In the summer, when the
nights were fine, he slept outside with Homo.
When thirteen, Dea had not yet become resigned to the
arrangement. Often in the evening she said, " Gwynplaine,
come close to me; that will put me to sleep." A man lying
by her side was a necessity to her innocent slumbers.
Nudity is to see that one is naked. She ignored nudity.
It was the ingenuousness of Arcadia or Otaheite. Dea
untaught made Gwynplaine wild. Sometimes it happened
that Dea, when almost reaching youth, combed her long hair
as she sat on her bed — her chemise unfastened and falling
off revealed indications of a feminine outline, and a vague
commencement of Eve — and would call Gwynplaine.
Gwynplaine blushed, lowered his eyes, and knew not what
to do in presence of this innocent creature. Stammering,
he turned his head, feared, and fled. The Daphnis of dark-
ness took flight before the Chloe of shadow.
Such was the idyll blooming in a tragedy.
Ursus said to them, —
" Old brutes, adore each other! '
CHAPTER VI.
URSUS AS TUTOR, AND URSUS AS GUARDIAN.
URSUS added, —
" Some of these days I will play them a nasty trick. I
will marry them."
Ursus taught Gwynplaine the theory of love. He said to
him, —
264 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" Do you know how the Almighty lights the fire called
love ? He places the woman underneath, the devil between,
and the man at the top. A match — that is to say, a look —
and behold, it is all on fire."
" A look Is unnecessary," answered Gwynplaine, thinking
of Dea.
And Ursus replied, —
" Booby 1 Do souls require mortal eyes to see each other ? "
Ursus was a good fellow at times. Gwynplaine, sometimes
madly in love with Dea, became melancholy, and made use of
the presence of Ursus as a guard on himself. One day Ursus
said to him, —
" Bahl do not put yourself out. When in love, the cock
shows himself."
" But the eagle conceals himself," replied Gwynplaine.
At other times Ursus would say to himself, apart, —
" It is wise to put spokes in the wheels of the Cytherean
car. They love each other too much. This may have its
disadvantages. Let us avoid a fire. Let us moderate these
hearts."
Then Ursus had recourse to warnings of this nature, speak-
ing to Gwynplaine when Dea slept, and to Dea when Gwyn-
plaine's back was turned: —
" Dea, you must not be so fond of Gwynplaine. To live
in the life of another is perilous. Egoism is a good root of
happiness. Men escape from women. And then Gwynplaine
might end by becoming infatuated with you. His success
is so great I You have no idea how great his success is! "
" Gwynplaine, disproportions are no good. So much
ugliness on one side and so much beauty on another ought
to compel reflection. Temper your ardour, my boy. Do not
become too enthusiastic about Dea. Do you seriously con-
sider that you are made for her? Just think of your
deformity and her perfection 1 See the distance between
her and yourself. She has everything, this Dea. What a
white skint What hair! Lips like strawberries I And her
foot I her hand 1 Those shoulders, with their exquisite curve !
Her expression is sublime. She walks diffusing light; and
in speaking, the grave tone of her voice is charming. But
for all this, to think that she is a woman 1 She would not
be such a fool as to be an angel. She is absolute beauty.
Repeat all this to yourself, to calm your ardour."
THE LAUGHING MAN, 265
These speeches redoubled the love of Gwynplaine and Dea,
and Ursus was astonished at his want of success, just as one
who should say, " It Is singular that with all the oil I throw
on fire I cannot extinguish it."
Did he, then, desire to extinguish their love, or to cool it
even?
Certainly not. He would have been well punished had he
succeeded. At the bottom of his heart this love, which was
flame for them and warmth for him, was his delight.
But it is natural to grate a little against that which charms
us ; men call it wisdom.
Ursus had been, in his relations with Gwynplaine and Dea,
almost a father and a mother. Grumbling all the while, he
had brought them up ; grumbling all the while, he had
nourished them. His adoption of them had made the hut
roll more heavily, and he had been oftener compelled to
harness himself by Homo's side to help to draw it.
We may observe, however, that after the first few years,
when Gwynplaine was nearly grown up, and Ursus had grown
quite old, Gwynplaine had taken his turn, and drawn Ursus.
Ursus, seeing that Gwynplaine was becoming a man, had
cast the horoscope of his deformity. " It has made your
fortune! " he had told him.
This family of an old man and two children, with a wolf,
had become, as they wandered, a group more and more
intimately united. There errant life had not hindered educa-
tion. " To wander is to grow," Ursus said. Gwynplaine
was evidently made to exhibit at fairs. Ursus had cultivated
in him feats of dexterity, and had encrusted him as much as
possible with all he himself possessed of science and wisdom.
Ursus, contemplating the perplexing mask of Gwynplaine's
face, often growled, —
" He has begun well." It was for this reason that he had
perfected him with every ornament of philosophy and
wisdom.
He repeated constantly to Gwynplaine, —
" Be a philosopher. To be wise is to be invulnerable.
You see what I am. I have never shed a tears. This is the
result of my wisdom. Do you think that occasion for tears
has been wanting, had I felt disposed to weep ? "
Ursus, in one of his monologues in the hearing of the wolf,
said, —
266 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" I have taught Gwynplalne everything, Latin included.
I have taught Dea nothing, music included."
He had taught them both to sing. He had himself a
pretty talent for playing on the oaten reed, a little flute of
that period. He played on it agreeably, as also on the
chiffonie, a sort of beggar's hurdy-gurdy, mentioned in the
Chronicle of Bertrand Duguesclin as the "truant instru-
ment," which started the symphony. These instruments
attracted the crowd. Ursus would show them the chiffonie,
and say, " It is called organistrum in Latin."
He had taught Dea and Gwynplaine to sing, according to
the method of Orpheus and of Egide Binchois-. Frequently
he interrupted the lessons with cries of enthusiasm, such as
" Orpheus, musician of Greece I Binchois, musician of
Picardyl"
These branches of careful culture did not occupy the chil-
dren so as to prevent their adoring each other. They had
mingled their hearts together as they grew up, as two saplings
planted near mingle their branches as they become trees.
" No matter," said Ursus. " I will marry them."
Then he grumbled to himself, —
" They are quite tiresome with their love."
The past — their little past, at least — had no existence for
Dea and Gwynplaine. They knew only what Ursus had told
them of it. They called Ursus father. The only remembrance
which Gwynplaine had of his infancy was as of a passage of
demons over his cradle. He had an impression of having
been trodden in the darkness under deformed feet. Was
this intentional or not ? He was ignorant on this point.
That which he remembered clearly and to the slightest detail
were his tragical adventures when deserted at Portland,, The
finding of Dea made that dismal night a radiant date for
him.
The memory of Dea, even more than that of Gwynplaine,
was lost in clouds. In so young a child all remembrance
melts away. She recollected her mother as something cold.
Had she ever seen the sun? Perhaps so. She made efforts
to pierce into the blank which was her past life.
" The sun!— what was it? "
She had some vague memory of a thing luminous and
warm, of which Gwynplaine had taken the place.
They spoke to each other in low tones. It is certain that
THE LAUGHING MAN. 267
cooing is the most important thing in the world. Dea often
said to Gwynplaine, —
" Light means that you are speaking,"
Once, no longer containing himself, as he saw through a
muslin sleeve the arm of Dea, Gwynplaine brushed its trans-
parency with his lips — ideal kiss of a deformed mouth t Dea
felt a deep delight; she blushed like a rose. This kiss from
a monster made Aurora gleam on that beautiful brow full of
night. However, Gwynplaine sighed with a kind of terror,
and as the neckerchief of Dea gaped, he could not refrain
from looking at the whiteness visible through that glimpse of
Paradise.
Dea pulled up her sleeve, and stretching towards Gwyn-
plaine her naked arm, said, —
" Again I "
Gwynplaine fled.
The next day the game was renewed, with variations.
It was a heavenly subsidence into that sweet abyss called
love.
At such things heaven smiles philosophically.
CHAPTER VII.
BLINDNESS GIVES LESSONS IN CLAIRVOYANCE.
AT times Gwynplaine reproached himself. He made his
happiness a case of conscience. He fancied that to allow a
woman who could not see him to love him was to deceive her.
What would she have said could she have suddenly ob-
tained her sight? How she would have felt repulsed by
what had previously attracted hert How she would have
recoiled from her frightful loadstone! What a cry I What
covering of her facet What a flight! A bitter scruple
harassed him. He told himself that such a monster as he
had no right to love. He was a hydra idolized by a staio It
was his duty to enlighten the blind star,
One day he said to Dea,—
" You know that I am very ugly."
" I know that you are sublime," she answered.
He resumed, —
" When you hear all the world laugh, they laugh at me
because I am horrible,"
268 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" I love you," said Dea.
After a silence, she added, —
" I was in death; you brought me to life. When you are
here, heaven is by my side. Give me your hand, that I may
touch heaven."
Their hands met and grasped each other. They spoke no
more, but were silent in the plenitude of love.
Ursus, who was crabbed, had overheard this. The next
day, when the three were together, he said, —
" For that matter, Dea is ugly also."
The word produced no effect. Dea and Gwynplaine were
not listening. Absorbed in each other, they rarely heeded
such exclamations of Ursus. Their depth was a dead loss.
This time, however, the precaution of Ursus, " Dea is also
ugly," indicated in this learned man a certain knowledge of
women. It is certain that Gwynplaine, in his loyalty, had
been guilty of an imprudence. To have said, 7 am ugly, to
any other blind girl than Dea might have been dangerous.
To be blind, and in love, is to be twofold blind. In such a
situation dreams are dreamt. Illusion is the food of
dreams. Take illusion from love, and you take from it its
aliment. It is compounded of every enthusiasm, of both
physical and moral admiration.
Moreover, you should never tell a woman a word difficult
to understand. She will dream about it, and she often dreams
falsely. An enigma in a reverie spoils it. The shock caused
by the fall of a careless word displaces that against which it
strikes. At times it happens, without our knowing why,
that because we have received the obscure blow of a chance
word the heart empties itself insensibly of love. He who
loves perceives a decline in his happiness. Nothing is to be
feared more than this slow exudation from the fissure in the
vase.
Happily, Dea was not formed of such clay. The stuff of
which other women are made had not been used in her
construction. She had a rare nature. The frame, but not
the heart, was fragile. A divine perseverance in love was in
the heart of her being.
The whole disturbance which the word used by Gwyn-
plaine had produced in her ended in her saying one day, —
"To be ugly— what is it ? It is to do wrong. Gwyn-
plaine only does good. He is handsome."
THE LAUGHING MAN. 269
Then, under the form of Interrogation so iamiliar to
children and to the blind, she resumed, —
" To see — what is it that you call seeing ? For my own
part, I cannot see; I know. It seems that to see means to
hide."
" What do you mean? " said Gwynplaine.
Dea answered, —
" To see is a thing which conceals the true."
" No," said Gwynplaine.
" But yes," replied Dea, " since you say you are ugly."
She reflected a moment, and then said, " Story-teller 1 "
Gwynplaine felt the joy of having confessed and of not
being believed. Both his conscience and his love were
consoled.
Thus they had reached, Dea sixteen, Gwynplaine nearly
twenty-five. They were not, as it would now be expressed,
" more advanced " than the first day. Less even ; for it may
be remembered that on their wedding night she was nine
months and he ten years old. A sort of holy childhood had
continued in their love. Thus it sometimes happens that
the belated nightingale prolongs her nocturnal song till dawn.
Their caresses went no further than pressing hands, or lips
brushing a naked arm. Soft, half-articulate whispers suf-
ficed them.
Twenty-four and sixteen I So it happened that Ursus, who
did not lose sight of the ill turn he intended to do them,
said, —
" One of these days you must choose a religion."
" Wherefore ? " inquired Gwynplaine.
" That you may marry."
" That is already done," said Dea.
Dea did not understand that they could be more man and
wife than they were already.
At bottom, this chimerical and virginal content, this
Innocent union of souls, this celibacy taken for marriage, was
not displeasing to Ursus.
Besides, were they not already married? If the indis-
soluble existed anywhere, was it not in their union ? Gwyn-
plaine and Deal They were creatures worthy of the love
they mutually felt, flung by misfortune into each other's
arms. And as if they were not enough in this first link, love
had survened on misfortune, and had attached them, united
27o THE LAUGHING MAN.
and bound them together. What power could ever break
that iron chain, bound with knots of flowers? They were
indeed bound together.
Dea had beauty, Gwynplaine had sight. Each brought a
dowry. They were more than coupled — they were paired;
separated solely by the sacred interposition of innocence.
Though dream as Gwynplaine would, however, and absorb
all meaner passions as he could in the contemplation of Dea
and before the tribunal of conscience, he was a man. Fatal
laws are not to be eluded. He underwent, like everything
else in nature, the obscure fermentations willed by the
Creator. At times, therefore, he looked at the women who
were in the crowd, but he immediately felt that the look was
a sin, and hastened to retire, repentant, into his own soul.
Let us add that he met with no encouragement. On the
face of every woman who looked upon him he saw aver-
sion antipathy, repugnance, and rejection. It was clear
that no other than Dea was possible for him. This aided his
repentance.
CHAPTER VIII.
NOT ONLY HAPPINESS, BUT PROSPERITY
WHAT true things are told in stories ! The burnt scar of the
invisible fiend who has touched you is remorse for a wicked
thought. In Gwynplaine evil thoughts never ripened, and
he had therefore no remorse. Sometimes he felt regret.
Vague mists of conscience.
What was this?
Nothing.
Their happiness was complete — so complete that they
were no longer even poor.
From 1689 to 1704 a great change had taken place.
t happened sometimes, in the year 1704, that as night fell
on some^little village on the coast, a great, heavy van, drawn
by a pair of stout horses, made its entry. It was like the
11 of a vessel reversed— the keel for a roof, the deck for a
floor, placed on four wheels. The wheels were all of the same
ze, and high as wagon wheels. Wheels, pole, and van
e all painted green, with a rhythmical gradation of shades,
ich ranged from bottle green for the wheels to apple green
the roofing. This green colour had succeeded in drawing
THE LAUGHING MAN. 271
attention to the carriage, which was known, in all the fair
grounds as The Green Box. The Green Box had but two
windows, one at each extremity, and at the back a door with
steps to let down. On the roof, from a tube painted green
like the rest, smoke arose. This moving house was always
varnished and washed afresh. In front, on a ledge fastened
to the van, with the window for a door, behind the horses
and by the side of an old man who held the reins and directed
the team, two gipsy women, dressed as goddesses, sounded
their trumpets. The astonishment with which the villagers
regarded this machine was overwhelming.
This was the old establishment of Ursus, its proportions
augmented by success, and improved from a wretched booth
into a theatre. A kind of animal, between dog and wolf, was
chained under the van. This was Homo. The old coachman
who drove the horses was the philosopher himself.
Whence came this improvement from the miserable hut to
the Olympic caravan?
From this — Gwynplaine had become famous.
It was with a correct scent of what would succeed amongst
men that Ursus had said to Gwynplaine, —
" They made your fortune."
Ursus, it may be remembered, had made Gwynplaine his
pupil. Unknown people had worked upon his face; he, on
the other hand, had worked on his mind, and behind this
well-executed mask he had placed all that he could of
thought. So soon as the growth of the child had rendered
him fitted for it, he had brought him out on the stage — that
is, he had produced him in front of the van.
The effect of his appearance had been surprising. The
passers-by were immediately struck with wonder. Never
had anything been seen to be compared to this extraordinary
mimic of laughter. They were ignorant how the miracle of
infectious hilarity had been obtained. Some believed it to
be natural, others declared it to be artificial, and as con-
jecture was added to reality, everywhere, at every cross-road
on the journey, in all the grounds of fairs and f£tes, the
crowd ran after Gwynplaine. Thanks to this great attrac-
tion, there had come into the poor purse of the wandering
group, first a rain of farthings, then of heavy pennies, and
finally of shillings. The curiosity of one place exhausted,
they passed on to another. Rolling does not enrich a stone,
272 THE LAUGHING MAN.
but it enriches a caravan; and year by }^ear, from city to
city, with the increased growth of Gwynplaine's persoa and
of his ugliness, the fortune predicted by Ursus had come.
" What a good turn they did you there, my boy!" said
Ursus.
This " fortune " had allowed Ursus, who was the adminis-
trator of Gwynplaine's success, to have the chariot of his
dreams constructed — that is to say, a caravan large enough
to carry a theatre, and to sow science and art in the high-
ways. Moreover, Ursus had been able to add to the group
composed of himself, Homo, Gwynplaine, and Dea, two
horses and two women, who were the goddesses Of the troupe,
as we have just said, and its servants. A mythological
frontispiece was, in those days, of service to a caravan of
mountebanks.
" We are a wandering temple," said Ursus.
These two gipsies, picked up by the philosopher from
amongst the vagabondage of cities and suburbs, were ugly
and young, and were called, by order of Ursus, the one
Phoebe, and the other Venus.
For these read Fibi and Vinos, that we may conform to
English pronunciation.
Phoebe cooked; Venus scrubbed the temple.
Moreover, on days of performance they dressed Dea.
Mountebanks have their public life as well as princes, and
on these occasions Dea was arrayed, like Fibi and Vinos, in a
Florentine petticoat of flowered stuff, and a woman's jacket
without sleeves, leaving the arms bare. Ursus and Gwyn-
plaine wore men's jackets, and, like sailors on board a man-of-
war, great loose trousers. Gwynplaine had, besides, for his
work and for his feats of strength, round his neck and over
shoulders, an esclavine of leather. He took charge of the
horses. Ursus and Homo took charge of each other.
Dea, being used to the Green Box, came and went in the
tenor of the wheeled house, with almost as much ease and
certainty as those who saw.
The eye which could penetrate within this structure and its
•nal arrangements might have perceived in a corner,
to the planks, and immovable on its four wheels, the
I hut of Ursus, placed on half-pay, allowed to rust, and
•om thenceforth dispensed the labour of rolling as Ursus
was relieved from the labour of drawing it.
THE LAUGHING MAN.
2/4 THE LAUGHING MAN.
turned away from it with horror. It was, perhaps, for some
such pious invention, that Solon kicked out Thespis.
For all that Thespis has lasted much longer than is gener-
ally believed. The travelling theatre is still in existence. It
was on those stages on wheels that in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, they performed in England the ballets and
dances of Amner and Pilkington; in France, the pastorals
of Gilbert Colin ; in Flanders, at the annual fairs, the double
choruses of Clement, called Non Papa? in Germany, the
" Adam and Eve " of Theiles; and, in Italy, the Venetian
exhibitions of Animuccia and of Cafossis, the " Silvae " of
Gesualdo, the ' Prince of Venosa," the " Satyr " of Laura
Guidiccioni, the " Despair of Philene," the " Death of
Ugolina," by Vincent Galileo, father of the astronomer, which
Vincent Galileo sang his own music, and accompanied himself
on his viol de gamba ; as well as all the first attempts of the
Italian opera which, from 1580, substituted free inspiration
for the madrigal style.
The chariot, of the colour of hope, which carried Ursus,
Gwynplaine, and their fortunes, and in front of which Fibi
and Vinos trumpeted like figures of Fame, played its part of
this grand Bohemian and literary brotherhood. Thespis
would no more have disowned Ursus than Congrio would
have disowned Gwynplaine,
Arrived at open spaces in 'towns or villages, Ursus, in the
intervals between the too-tooing of Fibi and Vinos, gave
instructive revelations as to the trumpetings.
" This symphony is Gregorian," he would exclaim.
" Citizens and townsmen, the Gregorian form of worship,
this great progress, is opposed In Italy to the Ambrosial
ritual, and in Spain to the Mozarabic ceremonial, and has
achieved its triumph over them with difficulty."
After which the Green Box drew up in some place chosen
by Ursus, and evening having fallen, and the panel stage
having been let down, the theatre opened, and the perform-
ance began.
The scene of the Green Box represented a landscape
painted by Ursus ; and as he did not know how to paint, it
represented a cavern just as well as a landscape. The
curtain, which we call drop nowadays, was a checked silk,
with squares of contrasted colours.
The public stood without, in the street, la the fair, forming
THE LAUGHING MAN. 375
a semicircle round the stage, exposed to the sun and the
showers ; an arrangement which made rain less desirable
for theatres in those days than now* When they could, they
acted in an inn yard, on which occasions the windows of the
different stories made rows of boxes for the spectators. The
theatre was thus more enclosed, and the audience a more
paying one. Ursus was in everything — in the piece, in the
company, in the kitchen, in the orchestra. Vinos beat the
drum, and handled the sticks with great dexterity. Fibi
played on the morache, a kind of guitar. The wolf had been
promoted to be a utility gentleman, and played, as occasion
required, his little parts. Often when they appeared side
by side on the stage — Ursus in his tightly-laced bear's skin,
Homo with his wolf's skin fitting still better — no one could
tell which was the beast. This nattered Ursus^
CHAPTER IX.
ABSURDITIES WHICH FOLKS WITHOUT TASTE CALL POETRY.
THE pieces written by Ursus were Interludes — a kind of com-
position out of fashion nowadays. One of these pieces,
which has not come down to us, was entitled " Ursus Rursus."
It is probable that he played the principal part himself. A
pretended exit, followed by a reappearance, was apparently
its praiseworthy and sober subject. The titles of the inter-
ludes of Ursus were sometimes Latin, as we have seen, and
the poetry frequently Spanish. The Spanish verses written
by Ursus were rhymed, as was nearly all the Castilian poetry
of that period. This did not puzzle the people. Spanish
was then a familiar languages and the English sailors spoke
Castilian even as the Roman sailors spoke Carthaginian (see
Plautus). Moreover, at a theatrical representation, as at
mass, Latin, or any other language unknown to the audience,
is by no means a subject of care with them. They get out
of the dilemma by adapting to the sounds familiar words.
Our old Gallic France was particularly prone to this manner
of being devout, At church, under cover of an Immolatus,
the faithful chanted, " I will make merry; " and under a
Sanctus, " Kiss me, sweet."
The Council of Trent was required to put an end to these
familiarities.
275 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Ursus had composed expressly for Gwynpla!*** an Inter-
lude, with which he was well pleased. It was his best work.
He had thrown his whole soul into it. To give the sum of
all one's talents in the production is the greatest triumph
that any one can achieve. The toad which produces a toad
achieves a grand success. You doubt it? Try, then, to
do as much.
Ursus had carefully polished this Interlude. This bear's
cub was entitled " Chaos Vanquished." Here it was: — A
night scene. When the curtain drew up, the crowd, massed
around the Green Box, saw nothing but blackness. In this
blackness three confused forms moved in the reptile state —
a wolf, a bear, and a man. The wolf acted the wolf; Ursus,
the bear; Gwynplaine, the man. The wolf and the bear
represented the ferocious forces of Nature — unreasoning
hunger and savage ignorance. Both rushed on Gwynplaine.
It was chaos combating man. No face could be distin-
guished. Gwynplaine fought infolded in a winding-sheet,
and his face was covered by his thickly-falling locks. All
else was shadow. The bear growled, the wolf gnashed his
teeth, the man cried out. The man was down; the beasts
overwhelmed him. He cried for aid and succour; he hurled
to the unknown an agonized appeal. He gave a death-
rattle. To witness this agony of the prostrate man, now
scarcely distinguishable from the brutes, was appalling.
The crowd looked on breathless; in one minute more the
wild beasts would triumph, and chaos reabsorb man. A
struggle— cries — howlings ; then, all at once, silence.
A song in the shadows. A breath had passed, and they
heard a voice. Mysterious music floated, accompanying this
chant of the invisible ; and suddenly, none knowing whence
or how, a white apparition arose. This apparition was a
light; this light was a woman; this woman was a spirit.
Dea — calm, fair, beautiful, formidable in her serenity and
sweetness — appeared in the centre of a luminous mist. A
profile of brightness in a dawn! She was a voice — a voice
light, deep, indescribable. She sang in the new-born light —
she, invisible, made visible. They thought that they heard
the hymn of an angel or the song of a bird. At this appari-
tion the man, starting up in his ecstasy, struck the beasts
with his fists, and overthrew them.
Then the vision, gliding along in a manner difficult to
THE LAUGHING MAN. 277
understand, and therefore the more admired, sang these
words in Spanish sufficiently pure for the English sailors who
were present:—
"Ora! llora!
De palabra
Nace razon.
De luz el son." *
Then looking down, as if she saw a gulf beneath, she went
on,—
" Noche, quita te de alii !
El alba canta hallali." f
As she sang, the man raised himself by degrees ; instead
of lying he was now kneeling, his hands elevated towards the
vision, his knees resting on the beasts, which lay motionless,
and as if thunder-stricken.
She continued, turning towards him, —
" Es menester a cielos ir,
Y tu que llorabas reir." J
And approaching him with the majesty of a star, she
added, —
•' Gebra barzon ;
Deja, monstruo.
A tu negro
Caparazon." §
And she put her hand on his brow. Then another voice arose,
deeper, and consequently still sweeter— a voice broken and
enwrapt with a gravity both tender and wild. It was the
human chant responding to the chant of the stars. Gwn-
plaine, still in obscurity, his head under Dea's hand, and
kneeling on the vanquished bear and wolf, sang, —
" O ven I ama !
Eres alma,
Soy corazon,"
And suddenly from the shadow a ray of light fell full upon
Gwynplaine. Then, through the darkness, was the monster
full exposed.
To describe the commotion of the crowd is impossible.
* Pray I weep I Reason i* born of the word. Song creates light.
f Night, away ! the dawn sings hallali.
j Thou must go to heaven and smile, thou that weepest.
§ Break the yoke j throw off, monster, thy dark clothing.
|j O come and love ! thou art soul, I am heart.
278 THE LAUGHING MAN.
A sun of laughter rising, such was the effect. Laughter
springs from unexpected causes, and nothing could be more
unexpected than this termination. Never was sensation
comparable to that produced by the ray of light striking on
that mask, at once ludicrous and terrible. They laughed
all around his laugh. Everywhere — above, below, behind,
before, at the uttermost distance; men, women, old gray-
heads, rosy-faced children; the good, the wicked, the gay,
the sad, everybody. And even in the streets, the passers-by
who could see nothing, hearing the laughter, laughed also.
The laughter ended in clapping of hands and stamping of
feet. The curtain dropped: Gwynplaine was recalled with
frenzy. Hence an immense success. Have you seen " Chaos
Vanquished ? " Gwynplaine was run after. The listless
came to laugh, the melancholy came to laugh, evil con-
sciences came to laugh — a laugh so irresistible that it seemed
almost an epidemic. But there is a pestilence from which
men do not fly, and that is the contagion of joy. The suc-
cess, it must be admitted, did not rise higher than the
populace. A great crowd means a crowd of nobodies.
" Chaos Vanquished " could be seen for a penny. Fashion-
able people never go where the price of admission is a penny.
Ursus thought a good deal of his work, which he had
brooded over for a long time. " It is in the style of one
Shakespeare," he said modestly.
The juxtaposition of Dea added to the indescribable
effect produced by Gwynplaine. Her white face by the side
of the gnome represented what might have been called
divine astonishment. The audience regarded Dea with a
sort of mysterious anxiety. She had in her aspect the
dignity of a virgin and of a priestess, not knowing man and
knowing God. They saw that she was blind, and felt that
she could see. She seemed to stand on the threshold of the
supernatural. The light that beamed on her seemed half
earthly and half heavenly. She had come to work on earth,
and to work as heaven works, in the radiance of morning.
Finding a hydra, she formed a soul. She seemed like a
creative power, satisfied but astonished at the result of her
creation ; and the audience fancied that they could see in the
divine surprise of that face desire of the cause and wonder at
the result. They felt that she loved this monster. Did she
know that he was one? Yes? since she touched him. No?
THE LAUGHING MAN. 279
since she accepted him. This depth of night and this glory
of day united, formed In the mind of the spectator a chiaro-
scuro in which appeared endless perspectives. How much
divinity exists In the germ, in what manner the penetration
of the soul into matter is accomplished, how the solar ray is
an umbilical cord, how the disfigured is transfigured, how the
deformed becomes heavenly — all these glimpses of mysteries
added an almost cosmical emotion to the convulsive hilarity
produced by Gwynplaine. Without going too deep — for
spectators do not like the fatigue of seeking below the sur-
face— something more was understood than was perceived.
And this strange spectacle had the transparency of an
avatar.
As to Dea, what she felt cannot be expressed by human
words. She knew that she was in the midst of a crowd, and
knew not what a crowd was. She heard a murmur, that was
all. For her the crowd was but a breath. Generations are
passing breaths. Man respires, aspires, and expires. In
that crowd Dea felt herself alone, and shuddering as one
hanging over a precipice. Suddenly, in this trouble of
innocence in distress, prompt to accuse the unknown, in her
dread of a possible fall, Dea, serene notwithstanding, and
superior to the vague agonies of peril, but inwardly shudder-
ing at her isolation, found confidence and support. She had
seized her thread of safety in the universe of shadows; she
put her hand on the powerful head of Gwynplaine.
Joy unspeakable 1 she placed her rosy fingers on his forest
of crisp hair. Wool when touched gives an impression of
softness. Dea touched a lamb which she knew to be a lion.
Her whole heart poured out an ineffable love. She felt out of
danger — she had found her saviour. The public believed that
they saw the contrary. To the spectators the being loved
was Gwynplaine, and the saviour was Dea. What matters ?
thought Ursus, to whom the heart of Dea was visible. And
Dea, reassured, consoled and delighted, adored the angel
whilst the people contemplated the monster, and endured,
fascinated herself as well, though in the opposite sense, that
dread Promethean laugh.
True love is never weary. Being all soul it cannot cool.
A brazier comes to be full of cinders; not so a star. Her
exquisite impressions were renewed every evening for Dea,
and she was ready to weep with tenderness whilst the
280 THE LAUGHING MAN.
audience was in convulsions of laughter. Those around her
were but joyful; she was happy.
The sensation of gaiety due to the sudden shock caused by
the rictus of Gwynplaine was evidently not intended by
Ursus. He would have preferred more smiles and less laugh-
ter, and more of a literary triumph. But success consoles.
He reconciled himself every evening to his excessive triumph,
as he counted how many shillings the piles of farthings
made, and how many pounds the piles of shillings; and
besides, he said, after all, when the laugh had passed,
" Chaos Vanquished " would be found in the depths of their
minds, and something of it would remain there.
Perhaps he was not altogether wrong : the foundations of
a work settle down in the mind of the public. The truth is,
that the populace, attentive to the wolf, the bear, to the man,
then to the music, to the howlings governed by harmony, to
the night dissipated by dawn, to the chant releasing the light,
accepted with a confused, dull sympathy, and with a cer-
tain emotional respect, the dramatic poem of " Chaos
Vanquished," the victory of spirit over matter, ending with
the joy of man*
Such were the vulgar pleasures of the people.
They sufficed them. The people had not the means of
going to the noble matches of the gentry, and could not, like
lords and gentlemen, bet a thousand guineas on Helmsgail
against Phelem-ghe-madone.
CHAPTER X.
AN OUTSIDER'S VIEW OF MEN AND THINGS.
MAN has a notion of revenging himself on that which pleases
him. Hence the contempt felt for the comedian.
This being charms me, diverts, distracts, teaches, enchants,
consoles me; flings me into an ideal world, is agreeable and
useful to me. What evil can I do him in return ? Humiliate
him. Disdain is a blow from afar. Let us strike the blow.
He pleases me, therefore he is vile. He serves me, therefore
[ hate him. Where can I find a stone to throw at him?
Priest, give me yours. Philosopher, give me yours. Bossuet,
excommunicate him. Rousseau, insult him. Orator, spit
the pebbles from your mouth at him. Bear, fling your stone.
Let us cast stones at the tree, hit the fruit and eat it. ' ' Bravo i ' '
THE LAUGHING MAN. 281
and " Down withhim I " To repeat poetry is to be infected with
the plague. Wretched playactor, we will put him in the
pillory for his success. Let him follow up his triumph with
our hisses. Let him collect a crowd and create a solitude.
Thus it is that the wealthy, termed the higher classes, have
invented for the actor that form of isolation, applause.
The crowd is less brutal. They neither hated nor despised
Gwynplaine. Only the meanest calker of the meanest crew
of the meanest merchantman, anchored in the meanest
English seaport, considered himself immeasurably superior
to this amuser of the "scum," and believed that a calker is
as superior to an actor as a lord is to a calker.
Gwynplaine was, therefore, like all comedians, applauded
and kept at a distance. Truly, all success in this world is a
crime, and must be expiated. He who obtains the medal
has to take its reverse side as well.
For Gwynplaine there was no reverse. In this sense, both
sides of his medal pleased him. He was satisfied with the
applause, and content with the isolation. In applause he
was rich, in isolation happy.
To be rich in his low estate means to be no longer wretch-
edly poor — to have neither holes in his clothes, nor cold at his
hearth, nor emptiness in his stomach. It is to eat when
hungry and drink when thirsty. It is to have everything
necessary, including a penny for a beggar. This indigent
wealth, enough for liberty, was possessed by Gwynplaine.
So far as his soul was concerned, he was opulent. He had
love. What more could he want? Nothing.
You may think that had the offer been made to him to
remove his deformity he would have grasped at it. Yet he
would have refused it emphatically. What! to throw off
his mask and have his former face restored; to be the creature
he had perchance been created, handsome and charming?
No, he would never have consented to it. For what would
he have to support Dea ? What would have become of that
poor child, the sweet blind girl who loved him ? Without his
rictus, which made him a clown without parallel, he would
have been a mountebank, like any other; a common athlete,
a picker up of pence from the chinks in the pavement, and
Dea would perhaps not have had bread every day. It was
with deep and tender pride that he felt himself the protec-
tor of the helpless and heavenly creature. Night, solitude,
282 THE LAUGHING MAN.
nakedness, weakness, ignorance, hunger, and thirst— seven
yawning jaws of misery — were raised around her, and he was
the St. George fighting the dragon. He triumphed over
poverty. How? By his deformity. By his deformity he
was useful, helpful, victorious, great. He had but to show
himself, and money poured in. He was a master of crowds,
the sovereign of the mob. He could do everything for Dea.
Her wants he foresaw; her desires, her tastes, her fancies, in
the limited sphere in which wishes are possible to the blind,
he fulfilled. Gwynplaine and Dea were, as we have already
shown, Providence to each other. He felt himself raised on
her wings; she felt herself carried in his arms. To protect the
being who loves you, to give what she requires to her who
shines on you as your star, can anything be sweeter ? Gwyn-
plaine possessed this supreme happiness, and he owed it to
his deformity. His deformity had raised him above all. By
it he had gained the means of life for himself and others ; by
it he had gained independence, liberty, celebrity, internal
satisfaction and pride. In his deformity he was inaccessible.
The Fates could do nothing beyond this blow in which they
had spent their whole force, and which he had turned into a
triumph. This lowest depth of misfortune had become the
summit of Elysium. Gwynplaine was imprisoned in his
deformity, but with Dea. And this was, as we have already
said, to live in a dungeon of paradise. A wall stood between
them and the living world. So much the better. This wall
protected as well as enclosed them. What could affect Dea,
what could affect Gwynplaine, with such a fortress around
them ? To take from him his success was impossible. They
would have had to deprive him of his face. Take from him
his love. Impossible. Dea could not see him. The blind-
ness of Dea was divinely incurable. What harm did his
deformity do Gwynplaine ? None. What advantage did it
give him? Every advantage. He was beloved, notwith-
standing its horror, and perhaps for that very cause. In-
firmity and deformity had by instinct been drawn towards
and coupled with each other. To be beloved, is not that
everything? Gwynplaine thought of his disfigurement only
with gratitude. He was blessed in the stigma. With joy
he felt that it was irremediable and eternal. What a bless-
ing that it was so! While there were highways and fair-
grounds, and journeys to take, the people below and the sky
THE LAUGHING MAN. 283
above, they would be sure to live, Dea would want nothing,
and they should have love. Gwynplaine would not have
changed faces with Apollo. To be a monster was his form of
happiness.
Thus, as we said before, destiny had given him all, even to
overflowing. He who had been rejected had been preferred.
He was so happy that he felt compassion for the men
around him. He pitied "the rest of the world. It was,
besides, his instinct to look about him, because no one is
always consistent, and a man's nature is not always theo-
retic ; he was delighted to live within an enclosure, but from
time to time he lifted his head above the wall. Then he
retreated again with more joy into his loneliness with Dea,
having drawn his comparisons. What did he see around him ?
What were those living creatures of which his wandering
life showed him so many specimens, changed every day?
Always new crowds, always the same multitude, ever new
faces, ever the same miseries. A jumble of ruins. Every
evening every phase of social misfortune came and encircled
his happiness.
The Green Box was popular.
Low prices attract the low classes. Those who came were
the weak, the poor, the little. They rushed to Gwynplaine
as they rushed to gin. They came to buy a pennyworth of
forgetfulness. From the height of his platform Gwynplaine
passed those wretched people in review. His spirit was
enwrapt in the contemplation of every succeeding apparition
of widespread misery. The physiognomy of man is modelled
by conscience, and by the tenor of life, and is the result of a
crowd of mysterious excavations. There was never a suffer-
ing, not an anger, not a shame, not a despair, of which
Gwynplaine did not see the wrinkle. The mouths of those
children had not eaten. That man was a father, that
woman a mother, and behind them their families might be
guessed to be on the road to ruin. There was a face already
marked by vice, on the threshold of crime, and the reasons
were plain — ignorance and indigence. Another showed the
stamp of original goodness, obliterated by social pressure,
and turned to hate. On the face of an old woman he saw
starvation; on that of a girl, prostitution. The same fact,
and although the girl had the resource of her youth, all the
sadder for that I In the crowd were arms without tools ; the
284 "HE LAUGHING MAN.
workers asked only for work, but the work was wanting'
Sometimes a soldier came and seated himself by the work-
men, sometimes a wounded pensioner; and Gwynplaine saw
the spectre of war. Here Gwynplaine read want of work ;
there man-farming, slavery. On certain brows he saw an
indescribable ebbing back towards animalism, and that slow
return of man to beast, produced on those below by the dull
pressure of the happiness of those above. There was a break
in the gloom for Gwynplaine. He and Dea had a loophole
of happiness; the rest was damnation. Gwynplaine felt
above him the thoughtless trampling of the powerful, the
rich, the magnificent, the great, the elect of chance. Below
he saw the pale faces of the disinherited. He saw himself
and Dea, with their little happiness, so great to themselves,
between two worlds. That which was above went and came,
free, joyous, dancing, trampling under foot; above him the
world which treads, below the world which is trodden upon.
It is a fatal fact, and one indicating a profound social evil,
that light should crush the shadow 1 Gwynplaine thoroughly
grasped this dark evil. What! a destiny so reptile ? Shall
a man drag himself thus along with such adherence to dust
and corruption, with such vicious tastes, such an abdication
of right, or such abjectness that one feels inclined to crush
him under foot ? Of what butterfly is, then, this earthly life
the grub?
What I in the crowd which hungers and which denies
everywhere, and before all, the questions of crime and shame
(the inflexibility of the law producing laxity of conscience),
is there no child that grows but to be stunted, no virgin but
matures for sin, no rose that blooms but for the slime of the
snail ?
His eyes at times sought everywhere, with the curiosity of
emotion, to probe the depths of that darkness, in which there
died away so many useless efforts, and in which there
struggled so much weariness : families devoured by society,
morals tortured by the laws, wounds gangrened by penalties,
poverty gnawed by taxes, wrecked intelligence swallowed up
by ignorance, rafts in distress alive with the famished, feuds,
dearth, death-rattles, cries, disappearances. He felt the
vague oppression of a keen, universal suffering. He saw the
vision of the foaming wave of misery dashing over the crowd
9f humanity. He was safe in port himself, as he watched
THE LAUGHING MAN. 285
the wreck around him. Sometimes he laid his disfigured
head in his hands and dreamed.
What folly to be happy ! How one dreams 1 Ideas were
born within him. Absurd notions crossed his brain.
Because formerly he had succoured an infant, he felt a
ridiculous desire to succour the whole world. The mists of
reverie sometimes obscured hlis individuality, and he lost his
ideas of proportion so far as to ask himself the question,
" What can be done for the poor? " Sometimes he was so
absorbed in his subject as to express it aloud. Then Ursus
shrugged his shoulders aud looked at him fixedly. Gwyn-
plaine continued his reverie.
"Oh, were I powerful, would I not aid the wretched?
But what am I? An atom. What can I do? Nothing."
He was mistaken. He was able to do a great deal for the
wretched. He could make them laugh; and, as we have
said, to make people laugh is to make them forget. What a
benefactor on earth is he who can bestow forgetfulness !
CHAPTER XI.
GWYNPLAINE THINKS JUSTICE, AND URSUS TALKS TRUTH.
A PHILOSOPHER is a spy. Ursus, a watcher of dreams,
studied his pupil.
Our monologues leave on our brows a faint reflection,
distinguishable to the eye of a physiognomist. Hence what
occurred to Gwynplaine did not escape Ursus. One day, as
Gwynplaine was meditating, Ursus pulled him by his jacket,
and exclaimed, —
" You strike me as being an observer! You fool I Take
care; it is no business of youis. You have one thing to do
— to love Dea. You have two causes of happiness — the first
is, that the crowd sees your muzzle; the second is, that Dea
does not. You have no right to the happiness you possess,
for no woman who saw your mouth would consent to your
kiss; and that mouth which has made your fortune, and that
face which has given you riches, are not your own. You were
not born with that countenance. It was borrowed from the
grimace which is at the bottom of the infinite. You have
stolen your mask from the devil. You are hideous; be
satisfied with having drawn that prize in the lottery. There
are in this world (and a very good thing too) the happy by
286 THE LAUGHING MAN.
right and the happy by luck. You are happy by luck. You
are in a cave wherein a star is enclosed. The poor star be-
longs to you. Do not seek to leave the cave, and guard your
star, O spider! You have in your web the carbuncle, Venus.
Do me the favour to be satisfied. I see your dreams are
troubled. It is idiotic of you. Listen; I am going to speak
to you in the language of true poetry. Let Dea eat beefsteaks
and mutton chops, and in six months she will be as strong as
a Turk; marry her immediately, give her a child, two children,
three children, a long string of children. That is what I call
philosophy. Moreover, it is happiness, which is no folly. To
have children is a glimpse of heaven. Have brats — wipe them,
blow their noses, dirt them, wash them, and put them to bed.
Let them swarm about you. If they laugh, it is well ; if they
howl, it is better — to cry is to live. Watch them suck at six
months, crawl at a year, walk at two, grow tall at fifteen, fall
in love at twenty. He who has these joys has everything.
For myself, I lacked the advantage; and that is the reason
why I am a brute. God, a composer of beautiful poems and
the first of men of letters, said to his fellow-workman, Moses,
' Increase and multiply.' Such is the text. Multiply, you
beast 1 As to the world, it is as it is; you cannot make nor
mar it. Do not trouble yourself about it. Pay no atten-
tion to what goes on outside. Leave the horizon alone. A
comedian is made to be looked at, not to look. Do you know
what there is outside ? The happy by right. You, I repeat,
are the happy by chance. You are the pickpocket of the
happiness of which they are the proprietors. They are the
legitimate possessors; you are the intruder. You live in
concubinage with luck. What do you want that you have
not already? Shibboleth help me! This fellow is a rascal.
To multiply himself by Dea would be pleasant, all the same.
Such happiness is like a swindle. Those above who possess
happiness by privilege do not like folks below them to have
io much enjoyment. If they ask you what right you have to
be happy, you will not know what to answer. You have no
patent, and they have. Jupiter, Allah, Vishnu, Sabaoth, it
does not matter who, has given them the passport to happi-
Fear them. Do not meddle with them, lest they
should meddle with you. Wretch! do you know what the
man is who is happy by right? He is a terrible being. He
is a lord. A lord! He must have intrigued pretty well in
SHE LAUGHING MAN. 287
the devil's unknown country before he was born, to enter
life by the door he did. How difficult it must have been to
him to be born 1 It is the only trouble he has given himself;
but, just heavens, what a one! — to obtain from destiny, the
blind blockhead, to mark him in his cradle a master of men.
To bribe the box-keeper to give him the best place at the
show. Read the memoranda in the old hut, which I have
placed on half-pay. Read that breviary of my wisdom, and
you will see what it is to be a lord. A lord is one who has all
and is all. A lord is one who exists above his own nature.
A lord is one who has when young the rights of an old man;
when old, the success in intrigue of a young one; if vicious,
the homage of respectable people; if a coward, the command
of brave men ; if a do-nothing, the fruics of labour; if ignorant,
the diploma of Cambridge or Oxford; if a fool, the admiration
of poets; if ugly, the smiles of women; if a Thersites, the
helm of Achilles ; if a hare, the skin of a lion. Do not mis-
understand my words. I do not say that a lord must
necessarily be ignorant, a coward, ugly, stupid, or old. I only
mean that he may be all those things without any detriment
to himself. On the contrary. Lords are princes. The
King of England is only a lord, the first peer of the peerage;
that is all, but it is much. Kings were formerly called lords
— the Lord of Denmark, the Lord of Ireland, the Lord of the
Isles. The Lord of Norway was first called king three hundred
years ago. Lucius, the most ancient king in England, "was
spoken to by Saint Telesphorus as my Lord Lucius. The lords
are peers — that is to say, equals — of whom ? Of the king.
I do not commit the mistake of confounding the lords with
parliament. The assembly of the people which the Saxons
before the Conquest called wittenagemote, the Normans, after
the Conquest, entitled parliamentum. By degrees the people
were turned out. The king's letters clause convoking the
Commons, addressed formerly ad concilium impendendum,
are now addressed ad consentiendum. To say yes is their
liberty. The peers can say no; and the proof is that they
have said it. The peers can cut off the king's head. The
people cannot. The stroke of the hatchet which decapitated
Charles I. is an encroachment, not on the king, but on the
peers, and it was well to place on the gibbet the carcass of
Cromwell. The lords have power. Why? Because they
have riches. Who has turned over the leaves of the Doomsday
288 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Book? It Is the proof that the lords possess England. It is
the registry of the estates of subjects, compiled under William
the Conqueror; and it is in the charge of the Chancellor of
the Exchequer. To copy anything in it you have to pay
twopence a line. It is a proud book. Do you know that I
was domestic doctor to a lord, who was called Marmaduke,
and who had thirty-six thousand a year? Think of that,
you hideous idiot I Do you know that, with rabbils only
from the warrens of Earl Lindsay, they could feed all the riff-
raff of the Cinque Ports ? And the good order kept I Every
poacher is hung. For two long furry ears sticking out of a
game bag I saw the father of six children hanging on the
gibbet. Such is the peerage. The rabbit of a great lord is
of more importance than God's image in a man.
" Lords exist, you trespasser, do you see? and we must
think it good that they do ; and even if we do not, what harm
will it do them ? The people object, indeed 1 Why? Plautus
himself would never have attained the comicality of such an
idea. A philosopher would be jesting if he advised the poor
devil of the masses to cry out against the size and weight of
the lords. Just as well might the gnat dispute with the foot
of an elephant. One day I saw a hippopotamus tread upon
a molehill; he crushed it utterly. He was innocent. The
great soft-headed fool of a mastodon did not even know of
the existence of moles. My son, the moles that are trodden
on are the human race. To crush is a law. And do you
think that the mole himself crushes nothing? Why, it is
the mastodon of the neshworm, who is the mastodon of the
globeworm. But let us cease arguing. My boy, there are
coaches in the world; my lord is inside, the people under the
wheels; the philosopher gets out of the way. Stand aside,
and let them pass. As to myself, I love lords, and shun them.
[ lived with one; the beauty of my recollections suffices me.
I remember his country house, like a glory in a cloud. My
dreams are all retrospective. Nothing could be more admi-
rable than Marmaduke Lodge in grandeur, beautiful symmetry,
rich avenues, and the ornaments and surroundings of the
edifice. The houses, country seats, and palaces of the lords
present a selection of all that is greatest and most mag-
nificent in this flourishing kingdom. I love our lords. I
thank them for being opulent, powerful, and prosperous.
I myself am clothed in shadow, and I look with interest upon
THE LAUGHING MAN. 289
the shred of heavenly blue which Is called a lord. You enter
Marmaduke Lodge by an exceedingly spacious courtyard,
which forms an oblong square, divided into eight spaces, each
surrounded by a balustrade; on each side is a wide approach,
and a superb hexagonal fountain plays in the midst; this
fountain is formed of two basins, which are surmounted by a
dome of exquisite openwork, elevated on six columns. It was
there that I knew a learned Frenchman, Monsieur 1'Abbe du
Cros, who belonged to the Jacobin monastery in the Rue
Saint Jacques. Half the library of Erpenius is at Marma-
duke Lodge, the other half being at the theological gallery at
Cambridge. I used to read the books, seated under the
ornamented portal. These things are only shown to a select
number of curious travellers. Do you know, you ridiculous
boy, that William North, who Is Lord Grey of Rolleston, and
sits fourteenth on the bench of Barons, has more forest trees
on his mountains than you have hairs on your horrible noddle ?
Do you know that Lord Norreys of Rycote, who is Earl of
Abingdon, has a square keep a hundred feet high, having this
device — Virtus ariete fortioy; which you would think meant
that virtue is stronger than a ram, but which really means,
you idiot, that courage is stronger than a battering-machine.
Yes, I honour, accept, respect, and revere our lords. It is
the lords who, with her royal Majesty, work to procure and
preserve the advantages of the nation. Their consummate
wisdom shines in intricate junctures. Their precedence over
others I wish they had not ; but they have it. What is called
principality in Germany, grandeeship in Spain, is called
peerage in England and France. There being a fair show of
reason for considering the world a wretched place enough,
heaven felt where the burden was most galling, and to prove
that it knew how to make happy people, created lords for the
satisfaction of philosophers. This acts as a set-off, and gets
heaven out of the scrape, affording it a decent escape from a
false position. The great are great. A peer, speaking of
himself, says we. A peer is a plural. The king qualifies the
peer consanguinei nostri. The peers have made a multitude
of wise laws ; amongst others, one which condemns to death
any one who cuts down a three-year-old poplar tree. Their
supremacy is such that they have a language of their own.
In heraldic style, black, which is called sable for gentry, is
called saturne for princes, and diamond for peers. Diamond
10
290 THE LAUGHING MAN.
dust, a night thick with stars, such Is the night of the happy I
Even amongst themselves these high and mighty lords have
their own distinctions. A baron cannot wash with a viscount
without his permission. These are indeed excellent things,
and safeguards to the nation. What a fine thing it is for the
people to have twenty-five dukes, five marquises, seventy-six
earls, nine viscounts, and sixty-one barons, making altogether
a hundred and seventy-six peers, of which some are your
grace, and some my lord I What matter a few rags here and
there, withal: everybody cannot be dressed in gold. Let the
rags be. Cannot you see the purple? One balances the
other. A thing must be built of something. Yes, of course,
there are the poor — what of them 1 They line the happiness
of the wealthy. Devil take it 1 our lords are our glory I The
pack of hounds belonging to Charles, Baron Mohun, costs
him as much as the hospital for lepers In Moorgate, and for
Christ's Hospital, founded for children, in 1553, by Edward
VI. Thomas Osborne, Duke of Leeds, spends yearly on his
liveries five thousand golden guineas. The Spanish grandees
have a guardian appointed by law to prevent their ruining
themselves. That is cowardly. Our lords are extravagant
and magnificent. I esteem them for it. Let us not abuse
them like envious folks. I feel happy when a beautiful
vision passes. I have not the light, but I have the reflection.
A reflection thrown on my ulcer, you will say. Go to the
deyill I am a Job, delighted in the contemplation of
Trimalcion. Oh, that beautiful and radiant planet up there I
But the moonlight is something. To suppress the lords was
an idea which Orestes, mad as he was, would not have
dared to entertain. To say that the lords are mischievous or
useless is as much as to say that the state should be revolu-
tionized, and that men are not made to live like cattle,
browsing the grass and bitten by the dog. The field is shorn
by the sheep, the sheep by the shepherd. It is all one to
me. I am a philosopher, and I care about life as much as
a fly. Life is but a lodging. When I think that Henry
Bowes Howard, Earl of Berkshire, has In his stable twenty-
four state carriages, of which one is mounted In silver and
another in gold— good heavens! I know that every one
has not got twenty-four state carriages; but there is no need
to complain for all thata Because you were cold one night,
what was that to him? It concerns you only. Others
THE LAUGHING MAN. 291
besides you suffer cold and hunger. Don't you know that
without that cold, Dea would not have been blind, and if Dea
were not blind she would not love, you ? Think of that, you
fool I And, besides, if all the people who are lost were to
complain, there would be a pretty tumult 1 Silence is the
rule. I have no doubt that heaven imposes silence on the
damned, otherwise heaven itself would be punished by their
everlasting cry. The happiness of Olympus is bought by the
silence of Cocytus. Then, people, be silent! I do better
myself; I approve and admire. Just now I was enumerat-
ing the lords, and I ought to add to the list two archbishops
and^ twenty-four bishops. Truly, I am quite affected when
I think of it I I remember to have seen at the tithe-gathering
of the Rev. Dean of Raphoe, who combined the peerage with
the church, a great tithe of beautiful wheat taken from the
peasants in the neighbourhood, and which the dean had not
been at the trouble of growing. This left him time to say his
prayers. Do you know that Lord Marmaduke, my master, was
Lord Grand Treasurer of Ireland, and High Seneschal of the
sovereignty of Knaresborough in the county of York? Do
you know that the Lord High Chamberlain, which Is an
office hereditary in the family of the Dukes of Ancaster,
dresses the king for his coronation, and receives for his
trouble forty yards of crimson velvet, besides the bed on
which the king has slept; and that the Usher of the Black
Rod is his deputy? I should like to see you deny this, that
the senior viscount of England is Robert Brent, created a
viscount by Henry V. The lords' titles imply sovereignty
over land, except that of Earl Rivers, who cakes his title from
his family name. How admirable is the right which they
have to tax others, and to levy, for instance, four shillings in
the pound sterling income-tax, which has just been continued
for another year I And all the time taxes on distilled spirits,
on the excise of wine and beer, on tonnage and poundage,
on cider, on perry, on mum, malt, and prepared barley, on
coals, and on a hundred things besides. Let us venerate
things as they are. The clergy themselves depend on the
lords. The Bishop of Man is subject to the Earl of Derby
The lords have wild beasts of their own, which they place In
their armorial bearings. God not having made enough, they
have Invented others. They have created the heraldic wild
boar, who is as much above the wild boar as the wfld boar
292 THE LAUGHING MAN.
is above the domestic pig and the lord is above the priest.
They have created the griffin, which is an eagle to lions, and
a lion to eagles, terrifying lions by his wings, and eagles by
his mane. They have the guivre, the unicorn, the serpent,
the salamander, the tarask, the dree, the dragon, and the hip-
pogriff. All these things, terrible to us, are to them but an
ornament and an embellishment. They have a menagerie
which they call the blazon, in which unknown beasts roar.
The prodigies of the forest are nothing compared to the
inventions of their pride. Their vanity is full -of phantoms
which move as in a sublime night, armed with helm and
cuirass, spurs on their heels and the sceptres in their hands,
saying in a grave voice, "We are the ancestors 1 " The
canker-worms eat the roots, and panoplies eat the people.
Why not ? Are we to change the laws ? The peerage is part
of the order of society. Do you know that there is a duke in
Scotland who can ride ninety miles without leaving his own
estate? Do you know that the Archbishop of Canterbury
has a revenue of £40,000 a year? Do you know that her
Majesty has £700,000 sterling from the civil list, besides
castles, forests, domains, fiefs, tenancies, freeholds, pre-
bendaries, tithes, rent, confiscations, and fines, which bring
in over a million sterling ? Those who are not satisfied are
hard to please."
" Yes," murmured Gwynplaine sadly, " the paradise of
the rich is made out of the hell of the poor."
CHAPTER XII.
URSUS THE POET DRAGS ON URSUS THE PHILOSOPHER.
THEN Dea entered. He looked at her, and saw nothing but
her. This is love ; one may be carried away for a moment by
the importunity of some other idea, but the beloved one
enters, and all that does not appertain to her presence
immediately fades away, without her dreaming that perhaps
she is effacing in us a world.
Let us mention a circumstance. In " Chaos Vanquished,"
the word monstruo, addressed to Gwynplaine, displeased Dea.
Sometimes, with the smattering of Spanish which every one
knew at the period, she took it into her head to replace it by
quiero, which signifies, " I wish it." Ursus tolerated, although
not without an expression of impatience, this alteration in
THE LAUGHING MAN. 293
his text. He might have said to Dea, as in our day Moessard
said to Vissot, Tu manques de respect au repertoire.
" The Laughing Man."
Such was the form of Gwynplaine's fame. His name,
Gwynplaine, little known at any time, had disappeared under
his nickname, as his face had disappeared under its grin.
His popularity was like his visage — a mask.
His name, however, was to be read on a large placard in
front of the Green Box, which offered the crowd the following
narrative composed by Ursus : —
" Here is to be seen Gwynplaine, deserted at the age of ten,
on the night of the 29th of January, 1690, by the villainous
Comprachicos, on the coast of Portland. The little boy has
grown up, and is called now, THE LAUGHING MAN.
The existence of these mountebanks was as an existence of
lepers in a leper-house, and of the blessed in one of the
Pleiades. There was every day a sudden transition from the
noisy exhibition outside, into the most complete seclusion.
Every evening they made their exit from this world. They
were like the dead, vanishing on condition of being reborn
next day. A comedian is a revolving light, appearing one
moment, disappearing the next, and existing for the public
but as a phantom or a light, as his life circles round. To
exhibition succeeded isolation. When the performance was
finished, whilst the audience were dispersing, and their mur-
mur of satisfaction was dying away in the streets, the Green
Box shut up its platform, as a fortress does its drawbridge,
and all communication with mankind was cut off. On one
side, the universe; on the other, the caravan; and this
caravan contained liberty, clear consciences, courage,
devotion, innocence, happiness, love — all the constellations.
Blindness having sight and deformity beloved sat side by
side, hand pressing hand, brow touching brow, and whis-
pered to each other, intoxicated with love.
The compartment in the middle served two purposes — for
the public it was a stage, for the actors a dining-room.
Ursus, ever delighting in comparisons, profited by the
diversity of its uses to liken the central compartment in the
Green Box to the arradach in an Abyssinian hut.
Ursus counted the receipts, then they supped. In love all
is ideal. In love, eating and drinking together affords oppor-
tunities for many sweet promiscuous touches, by which a
294 THE LAUGHING MAN.
mouthful becomes a kiss. They drank ale or wine from the
same glass, as they might drink dew out of the same lily.
Two souls in love are as full of grace as two birds. Gwyn-
plaine waited on Dea, cut her bread, poured out her drink,
approached her too close.
" Hum I " cried Ursus, and he turned away, his scolding
melting into a smile.
The wolf supped under the table, heedless of everything
which did actually not concern his bone.
Fibi and Vinos shared the repast, but gave little trouble.
These vagabonds, half wild and as uncouth as ever, spoke in
the gipsy language to each other.
At length Dea re-entered the women's apartment with Fibi
and Vinos. Ursus chained up Homo under the Green Box;
Gwynplaine looked after the horses, the lover becoming a
groom, like a hero of Homer's or a paladin of Charlemagne's.
At midnight, all were asleep, except the wolf, who, alive to his
responsibility, now and then opened an eye. The next morn-
ing they met again. They breakfasted together, generally on
ham and tea. Tea was introduced into England in 1678.
Then Dea, after the Spanish fashion, took a siesta, acting
on the advice of Ursus, who considered her delicate, and
slept some hours, while Gwynplaine and Ursus did all the
little jobs of work, without and within, which their wander-
ing life made necessary. Gwynplaine rarely wandered away
from the Green Box, except on unfrequented roads and in soli-
tary places. In cities he went out only at night, disguised in
a large, slouched hat, so as not to exhibit his face in the street.
His face was to be seen uncovered only on the stage.
The Green Box had frequented cities but little. Gwyn-
plaine at twenty-four had never seen towns larger than the
Cinque Ports. His renown, however, was increasing. It
began to rise above the populace, and to percolate through
higher ground. Amongst those who were fond of, and ran
after, strange foreign curiosities and prodigies, it was known
that there was somewhere in existence, leading a wandering
life, now here, now there, an extraordinary monster. They
talked about him, they sought him, they asked where he was.
The laughing man was becoming decidedly famous. A
certain lustre was reflected on " Chaos Vanquished."
So much so, that, one day, Ursus, being ambitious, said,—
" We must go to London."
BOOK THE THIRD.
THE BEGINNING OF THE FISSURE.
CHAPTER I.
THE TADCASTER INN.
AT that period London had but one bridge — London Bridge,
with houses built upon it. This bridge united London to
Southwark, a suburb which was paved with flint pebbles
taken from the Thames, divided into small streets and alleys,
like the City, with a great number of buildings, houses,
dwellings, and wooden huts jammed together, a pell-mell
mixture of combustible matter, amidst which fire might take
its pleasure, as 1666 had proved. Southwark was then
pronounced Soudric, it is now pronounced Sousouorc, or near
it; indeed, an excellent way of pronouncing English names
is not to pronounce them. Thus, for Southampton, say
Stpntn.
It was the time when " Chatham " was pronounced
fa faime.
The Southwark of those days resembles the Southwark of
to-day about as much as Vaugirard resembles Marseilles. It
was a village — it is a city. Nevertheless, a considerable
trade was carried on there. The long old Cyclopean wall by
the Thames was studded with rings, to which were anchored
the river barges.
This wall was called the Effroc Wall, or Effroc Stone.
York, in Saxon times, was called Effroc. The legend related
that a Duke of Effroc had been drowned at the foot of the
wall. Certainly the water there was deep enough to drown
a duke. At low water it was six good fathoms. The excel-
296 THE LAUGHING MAN.
lence of this little anchorage attracted sea vessels, and the
old Dutch tub, called the Vograat, came to anchor at the
Effroc Stone. The Vograat made the crossing from London
to Rotterdam, and from Rotterdam to London, punctually
once a week. Other barges started twice a day, either for
Deptford, Greenwich, or Gravesend, going down with one
tide and returning with the next. The voyage to Graves-
end, though twenty miles, was performed in six hours.
The Vograat was of a model now no longer to be seen,
except in naval museums. It was almost a junk. At that
time, while France copied Greece, Holland copied China.
The Vograat, a heavy hull with two masts, was partitioned
perpendicularly, so as to be water-tight, having a narrow
hold in the middle, and two decks, one fore and the other aft.
The decks were flush as in the iron turret- vessels of the pres-
ent day, the advantage of which is that in foul weather, the
force of the wave is diminished, and the inconvenience of
which is that the crew is exposed to the action of the sea,
owing to there being no bulwarks. There was nothing to
save any one on board from falling over. Hence the frequent
falls overboard and the losses of men, which have caused the
model to fall into disuse. The Vograat went to Holland
direct, and did not even call at Gravesend.
An old ridge of stones, rock as much as masonry, ran along
the bottom of the Effroc Stone, and being passable at all
tides, was used as a passage on board the ships moored to
the wall. This wall was, at intervals, furnished with steps,
.t marked the southern point of Southwark. An embank-
ment at the top allowed the passers-by to rest their elbows on
the Effroc Stone, as on the parapet of a quay. Thence they
could look down on the Thames; on the other side of the
water London dwindled away into fields.
Up the river from the Effroc Stone, at the bend of the
Thames which is nearly opposite St. James's Palace, behind
Lambeth House, not far from the walk then called Foxhall
(Vauxhall, probably), there was, between a pottery in which
hey made porcelain, and a glass-blower's, where they made
>rnamental bottles, one of those large unenclosed spaces
covered with grass, called formerly in France cultures and
mails, and in England bowling-greens. Of bowling-green,
a green on which to roll a ball, the French have made
boultngn*. Folks have this green inside their houses now-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 297
adays, only It is put on the table, Is a cloth instead of turf,
and is called billiards.
It is difficult to see why, having boulevard (boule-vert),
which is the same word as bowling-green, the French should
have adopted boulingrin. It is surprising that a person so
grave as the Dictionary should indulge in useless luxuries.
The bowling-green of Southwark was called Tarrinzeau
Field, because it had belonged to the Barons Hastings, who
are also Barons Tarrinzeau and Mauchline. From the Lords
Hastings the Tarrinzeau Field passed to the Lords Tadcaster,
who had made a speculation of it, just as, at a later date, a
Duke of Orleans made a speculation of the Palais Royal.
Tarrinzeau Field afterwards became waste ground and
parochial property.
Tarrinzeau Field was a kind of permanent fair ground
covered with jugglers, athletes, mountebanks, and music on
platforms; and always full of " fools going to look at the
devil," as Archbishop Sharp said. To look at the devil
means to go to the play.
Several inns, which harboured the public and sent them
to these outlandish exhibitions, were established in this place,
which kept holiday all the year round, and thereby prospered.
These inns were simply stalls, inhabited only during the day.
In the evening the tavern-keeper put into his pocket the key
of the tavern and went away.
One only of these inns was a house, the only dwelling in the
whole bowling-green, the caravans of the fair ground having
the power of disappearing at any moment, considering the
absence of any ties in the vagabond life of all mountebanks.
Mountebanks have no roots to their lives.
This inn, called the Tadcaster, after the former owners of
the ground, was an inn rather than a tavern, an hotel rather
than an inn, and had a carriage entrance and a large
yard.
The carriage entrance, opening from the court on the field,
was the legitimate door of the Tadcaster Inn, which had,
beside it, a small bastard door, by which people entered. To
call it bastard is to mean preferred. This lower door was the
only one used, It opened into the tavern, properly so called,
which was a large taproom, full of tobacco smoke, furnished
with tables, and low in the ceiling. Over it was a window on
the first floor, to the iron bars of which was fastened and
298 THE LAUGHING MAN.
hung the sign of the inn. The principal door was barred and
bolted, and always remained closed.
It was thus necessary to cross the tavern to enter the court-
yard.
At the Tadcaster Inn there was a landlord and a boy.
The landlord was called Master Nicless, the boy Govicum.
Master Nicless — Nicholas, doubtless, which the English habit
of contraction had made Nicless, was a miserly widower, and
one who respected and feared the laws. As to his appear-
ance, he had bushy eyebrows and hairy hands. The boy,
aged fourteen, who poured out drink, and answered to the
name of Govicum, wore a merry face and an apron. His
hair was cropped close, a sign of servitude.
He slept on the ground floor, in a nook in which they
formerly kept a dog. This nook had for window a bull's-
eye looking on the bowling-green.
CHAPTER II.
OPEN-AIR ELOQUENCE.
ONE very cold and windy evening, on which there was every
reason why folks should hasten on their way along the street,
a man, who was walking in Tarrinzeau Field close under the
walls of the tavern, stopped suddenly. It was during the
last months of winter between 1704 and 1705. This man,
whose dress indicated a sailor, was of good mien and fine
figure, things imperative to courtiers, and not forbidden to
common folk.
Why did he stop? To listen. What to? To a voice
apparently speaking in the court on the other side of the wall,
a voice a little weakened by age, but so powerful notwith-
standing that it reached the passer-by in the street. At the
same time might be heard in the enclosure, from which the
voice came, the hubbub of a crowd.
This voice said, —
" Men and women of London, here I am ! I cordially wish
you joy of being English. You are a great people. I say
more : you are a great populace. Your fisticuffs are even
better than your sword thrusts. You have an appetite.
You are the nation which eats other nations — a magnificent
function! This suction of the world makes England pre.e
eminent. As politicians and philosophers, in the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 299
ment of colonies, populations, and industry, and in the
desire to do others any harm which may turn to your own
good, you stand alone. The hour will come when two
boards will be put up on earth — inscribed on one side, Men;
on the other, Englishmen. I mention this to your glory, I,
who am neither English nor human, having the honour to be
a bear. Still more — I am a doctor. That follows. Gentle-
men, I teach. What? Two kinds of things — things which
I know, and things which I do not. I sell my drugs and I sell
my ideas. Approach and listen. Science invites you. Open
your ear; if it is small, it will hold but little truth; if large,
a great deal of folly will find its way in. Now, then, atten-
tion 1 I teach the Pseudoxia Epidemica. I have a comrade
who will make you laugh, but I can make you think. We
live in the same box, laughter being of quite as old a family
as thought. When people asked Democritus, ' How do you
know ? ' he answered, ' I laugh.' And if I am asked, ' Why do
you laugh? ' I shall answer, « I know.' However, I am not
laughing. I am the rectifier of popular errors. I take upon
myself the task of cleaning your intellects. They require it.
Heaven permits people to deceive themselves, and to be
deceived. It is useless to be absurdly modest. I frankly
avow that I believe in Providence, even where it is wrong.
Only when I see filth — errors are filth — I sweep them away.
How am I sure of what I know? That concerns only my-
self. Every one catches wisdom as he can. Lactantius
asked questions of, and received answers from, a bronze head
of Virgil. Sylvester II. conversed with birds. Did the birds
speak? Did the Pope twitter? That is a question. The
dead child of the Rabbi Eleazer talked to Saint Augustine.
Between ourselves, I doubt all these facts except the last.
The dead child might perhaps talk, because under its tongue
it had a gold plate, on which were engraved divers constella-
tions. Thus he deceived people. The fact explains itself.
You see my moderation. I separate the true from the false.
See! here are other errors in which, no doubt, you partake,
poor Ignorant folks that you are, and from which I wish to
free you. Dioscorides believed that there was a god in the
henbane; Chrysippus in the cynopaste; Josephus in the
root bauras; Homer in the plant moly. They were all
vvvrong. The spirits in herbs are not gods but devils. I have
tiested this iact. It is not true that the serpent which tempted
300 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Eve had a human face, as Cadmus relates. Garcias de Horto,
Cadamosto, and John Hugo, Archbishop of TrevesP deny
that it is sufficient to saw down a tree to catch an elephant.
I incline to their opinion. Citizens, the efforts of Lucifer are
the cause of all false impressions. Under the reign of such a
prince it is natural that meteors of error and of perdition
should arise. My friends, Claudius Pulcher did not die
because the fowls refused to come out of the fowl house. The
fact is, that Lucifer, having foreseen the death of Claudius
Pulcher, took care to prevent the birds feeding. That
Beelzebub gave the Emperor Vespasian the virtue of curing
the lame and giving sight to the blind, by his touch, was an
act praiseworthy in itself, but of which the motive was
culpable. Gentlemen, distrust those false doctors, who sell
the root of the bryony and the white snake, and who make
washes with honey and the blood of a cock. See clearly
through that which is false. It is not quite true that Orion
was the result of a natural function of Jupiter. The truth
is that it was Mercury who produced this star In that way.
It is not true that Adam had a navel. When St. George
killed the dragon he had not the daughter of a saint standing
by his side. St. Jerome had not a clock on the chimney-
piece of his study; first, because living in a cave, he had no
study; secondly, because he had no chimney-piece; thirdly,
because clocks were not yet inventedo Let us put these
things right. Put them right. > O gentlefolks, who listen to
me, if any one tells you that a lizard will be born in your head
i you smell the herb valerian ; that the rotting carcase of
the ox changes into bees, and that of the horse into hornets ;
that a man weighs more when dead than when alive ; that
the blood of the he-goat dissolves emeralds ; that a cater-
illar, a fly, and a spider, seen on the same tree, announces
famine, war, and pestilence ; that the falling sickness is to
be cured by a worm found in the head of a buck— do not
elieve him. These things are errors. But now listen to
The skin of a sea-calf is a safeguard against thunder.
The toad feeds upon earth, which causes a stone to come into
The rose of Jericho blooms on Christmas Eve.
erpents cannot endure the shadow of the ash tree. The
elephant has no joints, and sleeps resting upright against a
ee. Make a toad sit upon a cock's egg, and he will hatch
a scorpion which will become a salamander A blind person
THE LAUGHING MAN. 301
will recover sight by putting one hand on the left side of the
altar and the other on his eyes. Virginity does not hinder
maternity. Honest people, lay these truths to heart. Above
all, you can believe in Providence in either of two ways,
either as thirst believes in the orange, or as the ass believes in
the whip. Now I am going to introduce you to my family."
Here a violent gust of wind shook the "window-frames and
shutters of the inn, which stood detached. It was like a
prolonged murmur of the sky. The orator paused a moment,
and then resumed.
" An interruption ; very good. Speak, north wind.
Gentlemen, I am not angry. The wind is loquacious, like all
solitary creatures. There is no one to keep him company
up there, so he jabbers. I resume the thread of my discourse.
Here you see associated artists. We are four — a lupo
principium. I begin by my friend, who is a wolf. He does
not conceal it. See him I He is educated, grave, and
sagacious. Providence, perhaps, entertained for a moment
the idea of making him a doctor of the university; but for
that one must be rather stupid, and that he is not. I may
add that he has no prejudices, and is not aristocratic. He
chats sometimes with bitches; he who, by right, should
consort only with she-wolves. His heirs, if he have any, will
no doubt gracefully combine the yap of their mother with
the howl of their father. Because he does howl. He howls
in sympathy with men. He barks as well, in condescension
to civilization — a magnanimous concession. Homo is a dog
made perfect. Let us venerate the dog. The dog — curious
animal I sweats with its tongue and smiles with its tail.
Gentlemen, Homo equals in wisdom, and surpasses in
cordiality, the hairless wolf of Mexico, the wonderful xoloi'tze-
niski. I may add that he is humble. He has the modesty of
a wolf who is useful to men. He is helpful and charitable,
and says nothing about it. His left paw knows not the good
which his right paw does. These are his merits. Of the
other, my second friend, I have but one word to say. He
is a monster. You will admire him. He was formerly
abandoned by pirates on the shores of the wild ocean. This
third one is blind. Is she an exception? No, we are all
blind. The miser is blind ; he sees gold, and he does not see
riches. The prodigal is blind; he sees the beginning, and
does not see the end. The coquette is blind; she does not
302 THE LAUGHING MAN.
see her wrinkles. The learned man is blind ; he does not see
his own ignorance. The honest man is blind; he does not
see the thief. The thief is blind; he does not see God. God
is blind; the day that he created the world He did not see
the devil manage to creep into it. I myself am blind; I
speak, and do not see that you are deaf. This blind girl who
accompanies us is a mysterious priestess. Vesta has con-
fided to her her torch. She has in her character depths as
soft as a division in the wool of a sheep. I believe her to be
a king's daughter, though I do not assert it as a fact. A
laudable distrust is the attribute of wisdom. For my own
part, I reason and I doctor, I think and I heal. Chirurgus
sum. I cure fevers, miasmas, and plagues. Almost all our
melancholy and sufferings are issues, which if carefully treated
relieve us quietly from other evils which might be worse. All
the same I do not recommend you to have an anthrax,
otherwise called carbuncle. It is a stupid malady, and
serves no good end. One dies of it — that is all. I am
neither uncultivated nor rustic. I honour eloquence and
poetry, and live in an innocent union with these goddesses.
I conclude by a piece of advice. Ladies and gentlemen,
on the sunny side of your dispositions, cultivate virtue,
modesty, honesty, probity, justice, and love. Each one here
below may thus have his little pot of flowers on his window-
sill. My lords and gentlemen, I have spoken. The play is
about to begin."
^ The man who was apparently a sailor, and who had been
listening outside, entered the lower room of the inn, crossed
it, paid the necessary entrance money, reached the court-
yard which was full of people, saw at the bottom of it a
caravan on wheels, wide open, and on the platform an old
man dressed in a bearskin, a young man looking like a mask,
a blind girl, and a wolf.
" Gracious heaven 1 " he cried, " what delightful people! "
CHAPTER III.
WHERE THE PASSER-BY REAPPEARS.
THE Green Box, as we have just seen, had arrived in London:
:t was established at Southwark. Ursus had been tempted
by the bowling-green, which had one great recommendation,
that it was always fair-day there, even in winter.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 303
The dome of St. Paul's was a delight to Ursus.
London, take it all in all, has some good in it. It was a
brave thing to dedicate a cathedral to St. Paul. The real
cathedral saint is St. Peter. St. Paul is suspected of imagina-
tion, and in matters ecclesiastical imagination means heresy.
St. Paul is a saint only with extenuating circumstances. He
entered heaven only by the artists' door.
A cathedral is a sign. St. Peter is the sign of Rome, the
city of the dogma ; St. Paul that of London, the city of
schism.
Ursus, whose philosophy had arms so long that it embraced
everything, was a man who appreciated these shades of
difference, and his attraction towards London arose, per-
haps, from a certain taste of his for St. Paul.
The yard of the Tadcaster Inn had taken the fancy of
Ursus. It might have been ordered for the Green Box. It
was a theatre ready-made. It was square, with three sides
built round, and a wall forming the fourth. Against this
wall was placed the Green Box, which they were able to draw
into the yard, owing to the height of the gate. A large
wooden balcony, roofed over, and supported on posts, on
which the rooms of the first story opened, ran round the
three fronts of the interior fa$ade of the house, making two
right angles. The windows of the ground floor made boxes,
the pavement of the court the pit, and the balcony the
gallery. The Green Box, reared against the wall, was thus
in front of a theatre. It was very like the Globe, where they
played " Othello," " King Lear," and " The Tempest."
In a corner behind the Green Box was a stable.
Ursus had made his arrangements with the tavern keeper,
Master Nicless, who, owing to his respect for the law, would
not admit the wolf without charging him extra.
The placard, " Gwynplaine, the Laughing Man," taken
from its nail in the Green Box, was hung up close to the sign
of the inn. The sitting-room of the tavern had, as we have
seen, an inside door which opened into the court. By the
side of the door was constructed off-hand, by means of an
empty barrel, a box* for the money-taker, who was sometimes
Fibi and sometimes Vinos. This was managed much as at
present. Pay and pass in. Under the placard announcing
the Laughing Man was a piece of wood, painted white,
hung on two nails, on which was written in charcoal in
304 THE LAUGHING MAN.
large letters the title of Ursus's grand piece, "Chaos
Vanquished."
In the centre of the balcony, precisely opposite the Green
Box, and in a compartment having for entrance a window
reaching to the ground, there had been partitioned off a
space " for the nobility." It was large enough to hold, in
two rows, ten spectators.
" We are in London," said Ursus. " We must be pre-
pared for the gentry."
He had furnished this box with the best chairs in the inn,
and had placed in the centre a grand arm-chair of yellow
Utrecht velvet, with a cherry-coloured pattern, in case some
alderman's wife should come.
They began their performances. The crowd immediately
nocked to them, but the compartment for the nobility
remained empty. With that exception their success became
so great that no mountebank memory could recall its
parallel. All Southwark ran in crowds to admire the
Laughing Man.
The merry-andrews and mountebanks of Tarrinzeau Field
were aghast at Gwynplaine. The effect he caused was as
that of a sparrow-hawk flapping his wings in a cage of gold-
finches, and feeding in their seed-trough. Gwynplaine ate
up their public.
Besides the small fry, the swallowers of swords and the
grimace makers, real performances took place on the green.
There was a circus of women, ringing from morning till night
with a magnificent peal of all sorts of instruments — psal-
teries, drums, rebecks, micamons, timbrels, reeds, dulcimers,
gongs, chevrettes, bagpipes, German horns, English
eschaqueils, pipes, flutes, and flageolets.
In a large round tent were some tumblers, who could not
have equalled our present climbers of the Pyrenees— Dulma,
Bordenave, and Meylonga— who from the peak of Pierrefitte
lescend to the plateau of Limason, an almost perpendicular
height. There was a travelling menagerie, where was to be
seen a performing tiger, who, lashed by the keeper, snapped
at the whip and tried to swallow tne lash. Even this
comedian of jaws and claws was eclipsed in success.
Curiosity, applause, receipts, crowds, the Laughing Man
monopolized everything. It happened in the twinkling of
aa eye. Nothing was thought of but the Green Box.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 305
" ' Chaos Vanquished ' is ' Chaos Victor,' " said Ursus,
appropriating half Gwynplaine's success, and taking the
wind out of his sails, as they say at sea. That success was
prodigious. Still it remained local. Fame does not cross
the sea easily. It took a hundred and thirty years for the
name of Shakespeare to penetrate from England into France.
The sea is a wall ; and if Voltaire — a thing which he very
much regretted when it was too late — had not thrown a
bridge over to Shakespeare, Shakespeare might still be in
England, on the other side of the wall, a captive in insular
glory.
The glory of Gwynplaine had not passed London Bridge.
It was not great enough yet to re-echo throughout the
city. At least not at first. But Southwark ought to have
sufficed to satisfy the ambition of a clown. Ursus said, —
" The money bag grows palpably bigger."
They played " Ursus Rursus " and " Chaos Vanquished."
Between the acts Ursus exhibited his power as an en-
gastrimist, and executed marvels of ventriloquism. He
imitated every cry which occurred in the audience — a song,
a cry, enough to startle, so exact the imitation, the singer or
the crier himself, and now and then he copied the hubbub
of the public, and whistled as if there were a crowd of people
within him,, These were remarkable talents. Besides this
he harangued like Cicero, as we have just seen, sold his drugs,
attended sickness, and even healed the sick.
Southwark was enthralled.
Ursus was satisfied with the applause of Southwark, but
by no means astonished.
" They are the ancient Trinobantes," he said.
Then he added, " I must not mistake them, for delicacy
of taste, for the Atrobates, who people Berkshire, or the
Belgians, who inhabited Somersetshire, nor for the Parisians,
who founded York."
At every performance the yard of the inn, transformed into
a pit, was filled with a ragged and enthusiastic audience.
It was composed of watermen, chairmen, coachmen, and
bargemen, and sailors, just ashore, spending their wages in
feasting and women. In it there were felons, ruffians, and
blackguards, who were soldiers condemned for some crime
against discipline to wear their red coats, which were lined
with black, inside outfc and from thence the name of black-
30$ THE LAUGHING MAN.
guard, which the French turn into blagueurs. All these
flowed from the street into the theatre, and poured back from
the theatre into the tap. The emptying of tankards did
not decrease their success.
Amidst what it is usual to call the scum, there was one
taller than the rest, bigger, stronger, less poverty-stricken,
broader in the shoulders; dressed like the common people,
but not ragged.
Admiring and applauding everything to the skies, clearing
his way with his fists, wearing a disordered periwig, swearing,
shouting, joking, never dirty, and, at need, ready to blacken
an eye or pay for a bottle.
This frequenter was the passer-by whose cheer of enthusi-
asm has been recorded.
This connoisseur was suddenly fascinated, and had adopted
the Laughing Man. He did not come every evening, but
when he came he led the public — applause grew into acclama-
tion— success rose not to the roof, for there was none, but to
the clouds, for there were plenty of them. Which clouds
(seeing that there was no roof) sometimes wept over the
masterpiece of Ursus.
His enthusiasm caused Ursus to remark this man, and
Gwynplaine to observe him.
They had a great friend in this unknown visitor.
Ursus and Gwynplaine wanted to know him; at least, to
know who he was.
One evening Ursus was in the side scene, which was the
kitchen-door of the Green Box, seeing Master Nicless stand-
ing by him, showed him this man in the cro. wd, and asked
him, —
' Do you know that man? "
Of course I do."
'Who is he?"
A sailor."
What is his name? " said Gwynplaine, interrupting.
" Tom- Jim- Jack," replied the inn-keeper.
Then as he redescended the steps at the back of the Green
Box, to enter the inn, Master Nicless let fall this profound
reflection, so deep as to be unintelligible,—
" What a pity that he should not be a lord. He would
make a famous scoundrel."
Otherwise, although established in the tavern, the group in
THE LAUGHING MAN. 507
the Green Box had in no way altered their manner of living,
and held to their isolated habits. Except a few words ex-
changed now and then with the tavern-keeper, they held no
communication with any of those who were living, either
permanently or temporarily, in the inn; and continued to
keep to themselves.
Since they had been at Southwark, Gwynplaine had made
it his habit, after the performance and the supper of both
family and horses — when Ursus and Dea had gone to bed in
their respective compartments — to breathe a little the fresh
air of the bowling-green, between eleven o'clock and mid-
night.
A certain vagrancy in our spirits impels us to take walks
at night, and to saunter under the stars. There is a mys-
terious expectation in youth. Therefore it is that we are
prone to wander out in the night, without an object.
At that hour there was no one in the fair-ground, except,
perhaps, some reeling drunkard, making staggering shadows
in dark corners. The empty taverns were shut up, and the
lower room in the Tadcaster Inn was dark, except where, in
some corner, a solitary candle lighted a last reveller. An
indistinct glow gleamed through the window-shutters of
the half-closed tavern, as Gwynplaine, pensive, content,
and dreaming, happy in a haze of divine joy, passed back-
wards and forwards in front of the half-open door.
Of what was he thinking ? Of Dea — of nothing — of every-
thing— of the depths.
He never wandered far from the Green Box, being held,
as by a thread, to Dea. A few steps away from it was far
enough for him.
Then he returned, found the whole Green Box asleep, and
went to bed himself.
CHAPTER IV.
CONTRARIES FRATERNIZE IN HATE.
SUCCESS is hateful, especially to those whom it overthrows.
It is rare that the eaten adore the eaters.
The Laughing Man had decidedly made a hit. The
mountebanks around were indignant. A theatrical success
is a syphon — it pumps in the crowd and creates emptiness
all round. The shop opposite is done for. The increased
3o8 THE LAUGHING MAN.
receipts of the Green Box caused a corresponding decrease
in the receipts of the surrounding shows. Those entertain-
ments, popular up to that time, suddenly collapsed. It was
like a low-water mark, showing inversely, but in perfect
concordance, the rise hei e, the fall there. Theatres experience
the effect of tides: they rise in one only on condition of fall-
ing in another. The swarming foreigners who exhibited
their talents and their trumpetings on the neighbouring
platforms, seeing themselves ruined by the Laughing Man,
were despairing, yet dazzled. All the grimacers, all the
clowns, all the merry-andrews envied Gwynplaine. How
happy he must be with the snout of a wild beast 1 The
buffoon mothers and dancers on the tight-rope, with pretty
children, looked at them in anger, and pointing out Gwyn-
plaine, would say, " What a pity you have not a face like
that! " Some beat their babes savagely for being pretty.
More than one, had she known the secret, would have
fashioned her son's face in the Gwynplaine style. The head
of an angel, which brings no money in, is not as good as that
of a lucrative devil. One day the mother of a little child who
was a marvel of beauty, and who acted a cupid, exclaimed, —
"Our children are failures I They only succeeded with
Gwynplaine." And shaking her fist at her son, she added,
" If I only knew your father, wouldn't he catch itl "
Gwynplaine was the goose with the golden eggsl What
a marvellous phenomenon 1 There was an uproar through
all the caravans. The mountebanks, enthusiastic and
exasperated, looked at Gwynplaine and gnashed their teeth.
Admiring anger is called envy. Then it howls I They tried
to disturb " Chaos Vanquished; " made a cabal, hissed,
scolded, shouted! This was an excuse for Ursus to make
out-of-door harangues to the populace, and for his friend
Tom-Jim-Jack to use his fists to re-establish order. His
pugilistic marks of friendship brought him still more under
the notice and regard of Ursus and Gwynplaine. At a
distance, however, for the group in the Green Box sufficed
to themselves, and held aloof from the rest of the world, and
because Tom- Jim- Jack, this leader of the mob, seemed a
sort of supreme bully, without a tie, without a friend; a
smasher of windows, a manager of men, now here, now gone,
hail-fellow-well-met with every one, companion of none.
This raging envy against Gwynpiaine did not give in for
THE LAUGHING MAN. 399
a few friendly hits from Tom- Jim- Jack. The outcries
having miscarried, the mountebanks of Tarrinzeau Field fell
back on a petition. They addressed to the authorities.
This is the usual course. Against an unpleasant success we
first try to stir up the crowd and then we petition the
magistrate.
With the merry-andrews the reverends allied themselves.
The Laughing Man had inflicted a blow on the preachers.
There were empty places not only in the caravans, but in
the churches. The congregations in the churches of the five
parishes in Southwark had dwindled away. People left
before the sermon to go to Gwynplaine. " Chaos. Van-
quished," the Green Box, the Laughing Man, all the abomi-
nations of Baal, eclipsed the eloquence of the pulpit. The
voice crying in the desert, vox clamantis in deserto, is discon-
tented, and is prono to call for the aid of the authorities.
The clergy of the five parishes complained to the Bishop of
London, who complained to her Majesty.
The complaint of the merry-andrews was based on religion.
They declared it to be insulted. They described Gwynplaine
as a sorcerer, and Ursus as an atheist. The reverend gentle-
men invoked social order. Setting orthodoxy aside they
took action on the fact that Acts of Parliament were violated.
It was clever. Because it was the period of Mr. Locke, who
had died but six months previously — 28th October, 1704 —
and when scepticism, which Bolingbroke had imbibed from
Voltaire, was taking root. Later on Wesley came and
restored the Bible, as Loyola restored the papacy.
Thus the Green Box was battered on both sides; by the
merry-andrews, in the name of the Pentateuch, and by
chaplains in the name of the police. In the name of Heaven
and of the inspectors of nuisances. The Green Box was
denounced by the priests as an obstruction, and by the
jugglers as sacrilegious.
Had they any pretext? Was there any excuse? Yes.
What was the crime? This: there was the wolf, A dog
was allowable; a wolf forbidden. In England the wolf is
an outlaw. England admits the dog which barks, but not
the dog which howls — a shade of difference between the yard
and the woods.
The rectors and vicars of the five parishes of Southwark
called attention in their petitions to numerous parliamentary
3io THE LAUGHING MAN.
and royal statutes putting the wolf beyond the protection
of the law. They moved for something like the imprison-
ment of Gwynplaine and the execution of the wolf, or at any
rate for their banishment. The question was one of public
importance, the danger to persons passing, etc. And on this
point, they appealed to the Faculty. They cited the opinion
of the Eighty physicians of London, a learned body which
dates from Henry VIII., which has a seal like that of the
State, which can raise sick people to the dignity of being amen-
able to their jurisdiction, which has the right to imprison
those who infringe its law and contravene its ordinances, and
which, amongst other useful regulations for the health of
the citizens, put beyond doubt this fact acquired by science;
that if a wolf sees a man first, the man becomes hoarse for
life. Besides, he may be bitten.
Homo, then, was a pretext.
Ursus heard of these designs through the inn-keeper.
He was uneasy. He was afraid of two claws — the police and
the justices. To be afraid of the magistracy, it is sufficient
to be afraid, there is no need to be guilty. Ursus had no
desire for contact with sheriffs, provosts, bailiffs, and
coroners. His eagerness to make their acquaintance
amounted to nil. His curiosity to see the magistrates was
about as great as the hare's to see the greyhound.
He began to regret that he had come to London. " ' Better '
is the enemy of ' good,' " murmured he apart. " I thought
the. proverb was ill-considered. I was wrong. Stupid
truths are true truths."
Against the coalition of powers — merry-andrews taking in
hand the cause of religion, and chaplains, indignant in the
name of medicine — the poor Green Box, suspected of sorcery
in Gwynplaine and of hydrophobia in Homo, had only one
thing in its favour (but a thing of great power in England),
municipal inactivity. It is to the local authorities letting
things take their own course that Englishmen owe their
liberty. Liberty in England behaves very much as the sea
around England. It is a tide. Little by little manners
surmount the law. A cruel system of legislation drowned
under the wave of custom; a savage code of laws still visible
through the transparency of universal liberty: such is
England.
The Laughing Man, " Chaos Vanquished," and Homo
THE LAUGHING MAN. 311
might have mountebanks, preachers, bishops, the House of
Commons, the House of Lords, her Majesty, London, and
the whole of England against them, and remain undisturbed
so long as Southwark permitted.
The Green Box was the favourite amusement of the suburb,
and the local authorities seemed disinclined to interfere. In
England, indifference is protection. So long as the sheriff
of the county of Surrey, to the jurisdiction of which South-
wark belongs, did not move in the matter, Ursus breathed
freely, and Homo could sleep on his wolf's ears.
So long as the hatred which it excited did not occasion
acts of violence, it increased success. The Green Box was
none the worse for it, for the time. On the contrary, hints
were scattered that it contained something mysterious.
Hence the Laughing Man became more and more popular.
The public follow with gusto the scent of anything contra-
band. To be suspected is a recommendation. The people
adopt by instinct that at which the finger is pointed. The
thing which is denounced is like the savour of forbidden
fruit; we rush to eat it. Besides, applause which irritates
some one, especially if that some one is in authority, is sweet.
To perform, whilst passing a pleasant evening, both an act of
kindness to the oppressed and of opposition to the oppressor
is agreeable. You are protecting at the same time that you
are being amused. So the theatrical caravans on the bowling-
green continued to howl and to cabal against the Laughing
Man. Nothing could be better calculated to enhance his
success. The shouts of one's enemies are useful and give
point and vitality to one's triumph. A friend wearies
sooner in praise than an enemy in abuse. To abuse does
not hurt. Enemies are ignorant of this fact. They cannot
help insulting us, and this constitutes their use. They cannot
hold their tongues, and thus keep the public awake.
The crowds which nocked to " Chaos Vanquished "
increased daily.
Ursus kept what Master Nicless had said of intriguers and
complaints in high places to himself, and did not tell Gwyn-
plaine, lest it should trouble the ease of his acting by creating
anxiety. If evil was to come, he would be sure to know it
soon enough.
3i3 THE LAUGHING MAN.
CHAPTER V.
THE WAPENTAKE.
ONCE, however, he thought it his duty to derogate from this
prudence, for prudence* sake, thinking that it might be well
to make Gwynplaine uneasy. It is true that this idea arose
from a circumstance much graver, in the opinion of Ursus,
than the cabals of the fair or of the church.
Gwynplaine, as he picked up a farthing which had fallen
when counting the receipts, had, in the presence of the inn-
keeper, drawn a contrast between the farthing, representing
the misery of the people, and the die, representing, under the
figure of Anne, the parasitical magnificence of the throne —
an ill-sounding speech. This observation was repeated by
Master Nicless, and had such a run that it reached to Ursus
through Fibi and Vinos. It put Ursus into a fever. Sedi-
tious words, 1'ese Majeste. He took Gwynplaine severely to
task. " Watch over your abominable jaws. There is a rule
for the great — to do nothing; and a rule for the small — to
say nothing. The poor man has but one friend, silence. He
should only pronounce one syllable: ' Yes.' To confess and
to consent is all the right he has. ' Yes,1 to the j udge ; ' yes,'
to the king. Great people, if it pleases them to do so, beat
us. I have received blows from them. It is their preroga-
tive ; and they lose nothing of their greatness by breaking our
bones. The ossifrage is a species of eagle. Let us vener-
ate the sceptre, which is the first of staves. Respect is
prudence, and mediocrity is safety. To insult the king is to
put oneself in the same danger as a girl rashly paring the
nails of a lion. They tell me that you have been prattling
about the farthing, which is the same thing as the Hard, and
that you have found fault with the august medallion, for
which they sell us at market the eighth part of a salt herring.
Take care; let us be serious. Consider the existence of
pains and penalties. Suck in these legislative truths. You
are in a country in which the man who cuts down a tree three
years old is quietly taken off to the gallows. As to swearers,
their feet are put into the stocks. The drunkard is shut up
in a barrel with the bottom out, so that he can walk, with a
hole in the top, through which his head is passed, and with
two in the bung for his hands, so that he cannot lie down.
He who strikes auother one in Westminster Hall is imprisoned
THE LAUGHING MAN. 3*3
for life and has his goods confiscated. Whoever strikes any
one in the king's palace has his hand struck off. A fillip on
the nose chances to bleed, and, behold 1 you are maimed for
life. He who is convicted of heresy in the bishop's court is
burnt alive. It was for no great matter that Cuthbert
Simpson was quartered on a turnstile. Three years since, in
1702, which is not long ago, you see, they placed in the pillory
a scoundrel, called Daniel Defoe, who had had the audacity
to print the names of the Members of Parliament who had
spoken on the previous evening. He who commits high
treason is disembowelled alive, and they tear out his heart
and buffet his cheeks with it. Impress on yourself notions
of right and justice. Never allow yourself to speak a word,
and at the first cause of anxiety, run for it. Such is the
bravery which I counsel and which I practise. In the way
of temerity, imitate the birds ; in the way of talking, imitate
the fishes. England has one admirable point in her favour,
that her legislation is very mild."
His admonition over, Ursus remained uneasy for some
time. Gwynplaine not at all. The intrepidity of youth
arises from want of experience. However, it seemed that
Gwynplaine had good reason for his easy mind, for the weeks
flowed on peacefully, and no bad consequences seemed to
have resulted from his observations about the queen.
Ursus, we know, lacked apathy, and, like a roebuck on the
watch, kept a lookout in every direction. One day, a short
time after his sermon to Gwynplaine, as he was looking out
from the window in the wall which commanded the field, he
became suddenly pale0
' Gwynplaine? "
What?'1
Look."
Where? '•
In the field."
Well."
' Do you see that passer-by?
'The man in black?"
Yes."
' Who has a kind of mace in his hand? "
Yes."
Well?"
' Well, Gwynplaiae, that man is a wapentake."
3I4 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" What is a wapentake? "
" He is the bailifE of the hundred."
" What is the bailiff of the hundred? "
" He is the pr&positus hundredi."
" And what is the prcepositus hundredi ? "
" He is a terrible officer."
" What has he got in his hand? "
" The iron weapon."
" What is the iron weapon? "
" A thing made of iron."
" What does he do with that? "
" First of all, he swears upon it. It is for that reason that
he is called the wapentake."
"And then?"
" Then he touches you with it."
"With what?"
" With the iron weapon."
" The wapentake touches you with the iron weapon ? "
"Yes."
" What does that mean? "
" That means, follow me."
" And must you follow? "
" Yes."
"Whither?"
" How should I know? "
" But he tells you where he is going to take you? "
" No."
"How is that?"
" He says nothing, and you say nothing."
" But "
" He touches you with the iron weapon. All is over then.
You must go."
"But where? "
" After him."
"But where?"
" Wherever he likes, Gwynplaine."
"And if you resist? "
" You are hanged."
Ursus looked out of the window again, and drawing a long
breath, said, —
1 ' Thank God ! He has passed. He was not coming here."
Ursus was perhaps unreasonably alarmed about the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 315
indiscreet remark, and the consequences likely to result
from the unconsidered words of Gwynplaine.
Master Nicless, who had heard them, had no interest in
compromising the poor inhabitants of the Green Box. He
was amassing, at the same time as the Laughing Man, a nice
little fortune. " Chaos Vanquished " had succeeded in two
ways. While it made art triumph on the stage, it made
drunkenness prosper in the tavern.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MOUSE EXAMINED BY THE CATS.
URSUS was soon afterwards startled by another alarming cir-
cumstance. This time it was he himself who was concerned.
He was summoned to Bishopsgate before a commission com-
posed of three disagreeable countenances. They belonged to
three doctors, called overseers. One was a Doctor of
Theology, delegated by the Dean of Westminster ; another,
a Doctor of Medicine, delegated by the College of Surgeons ;
the third, a Doctor in History and Civil Law, delegated by
Gresham College. These three experts in omni re scibili had
the censorship of everything said in public throughout the
bounds of the hundred and thirty parishes of London, the
seventy-three of Middlesex, and, by extension, the five of
Southwark.
Such theological jurisdictions still subsist in England, and
do good service. In December, 1868, by sentence of the
Court of Arches, confirmed by the decision of the Privy
Council, the Reverend Mackonochie was censured, besides
being condemned in costs, for having placed lighted candles
on a table. The liturgy allows no jokes.
Ursus, then, one fine day received from the delegated
doctors an order to appear before them, which was, luckily,
given into his own hands, and which he was therefore enabled
to keep secret. Without saying a word, he obeyed the cita-
tion, shuddering at the thought that he might be considered
culpable to the extent of having the appearance of being
suspected of a certain amount of rashness. He who had so
recommended silence to others had here a rough lesson.
Garrule, sana te ipsum.
The three doctors, delegated and appointed overseers, sat
at Bishopsgate, at the end of a room on the ground floor, in
3i6 THE LAUGHING MAN.
three armchairs covered with black leather, with three busts
of Minos, ^Eacus, and Rhadamanthus, in the wall above
their heads, a table before them, and at their feet a form for
the accused.
Ursus, introduced by a tipstaff, of placid but severe
expression, entered, perceived the doctors, and immediately
in his own mind, gave to each of them the name of the judge
of the infernal regions represented by the bust placed above
his head. Minos, the president, the representative of
theology, made him a sign to sit down on the form.
Ursus made a proper bow — that is to say, bowed to the
ground ; and knowing that bears are charmed by honey, and
doctors by Latin, he said, keeping his body still bent respect-
fully,—
" Tres faciunt capitulum ! "
Then, with head inclined (for modesty disarms) he sat
down on the form.
Each of the three doctors had before him a bundle of
papers, of which he was turning the leaves.
Minos began.
You speak in public? "
Yes," replied Ursus.
By what right?"
I am a philosopher."
' That gives no right."
I am also a mountebank," said Ursus.
' That is a different thing."
Ursus breathed again, but with humility.
Minos resumed, —
" As a mountebank, you may speak; as a philosopher,
you must keep silence."
" I will try," said Ursus.
Then he thought to himself.
" I may speak, but I must be silent. How complicated."
He was much alarmed.
The same overseer continued, —
" You say things which do not sound right. You insult
religion. You deny the most evident truths. You pro-
pagate revolting errors. For instance, you have said
that the fact of virginity excludes the possibility of
maternity."
Ursus lifted his eyes meekly, " I did not say that. I said
THE LAUGHING MAN. 317
that the fact of maternity excludes the possibility of
virginity."
Minos was thoughtful, and mumbled, " True, that is the
contrary."
It was really the same thing. But Ursus had parried the
first blow.
Minos, meditating on the answer just given by Ursus, sank
into the depths of his own imbecility, and kept silent.
The overseer of history, or, as Ursus called him, Rhada-
manthus, covered the retreat of Minos by this interpolation,
" Accused! your audacity and your errors are of two sorts.
You have denied that the battle of Pharsalia would have
been lost because Brutus and Cassius had met a negro."
" I said," murmured Ursus " that there was something in
the fact that Caesar was the better captain."
The man of history passed, without transition, to myth-
ology.
" You have excused the infamous acts of Actaeon."
" I think," said Ursus, insinuatingly, " that a man is not
dishonoured by having seen a naked woman."
" Then you are wrong," said the judge severely. Rhada-
manthus returned to history.
" Apropos of the accidents which happened to the cavalry
of Mithridates, you have contested the virtues of herbs and
plants. You have denied that a herb like the securiduca,
could make the shoes of horses fall off."
" Pardon me," replied Ursus. " I said that the power
existed only in the herb sferra cavallo. I never denied the
virtue of any herb," and he added, in a low voice, " nor of
any woman."
By this extraneous addition to his answer Ursus proved to
himself that, anxious as he was, he was not disheartened.
Ursus was a compound of terror and presence of mind.
"To continue," resumed Rhadamanthus ; "you have
declared that it was folly in Scipio, when he wished to open
the gates of Carthage, to use as a key the herb asthiopis,
because the herb aethiopis has not the property of breaking
locks."
" I merely said that he would have done better to have
used the herb lunaria."
" That is a matter of opinion," murmured Rhadamanthus,
touched in his turn. And the man of history was silent.
318 THE LAUGHING MAN.
The theologian, Minos, having returned to consciousness,
questioned Ursus anew. He had had time to consult his
notes.
" You have classed orpiment amongst the products of
arsenic, and you have said that it is a poison. The Bible
denies this."
" The Bible denies, but arsenic affirms it," sighed Ursus.
The man whom Ursus called JEacus, and who' was the envy
of medicine, had not yet spoken, but now looking down on
Ursus, with proudly half-closed eyes, he said, —
" The answer is not without some show of reason."
Ursus thanked him with his most cringing smile. Minos
frowned frightfully. *' I resume," said Minos. " You have
said that it is false that the basilisk is the king of serpents,
under the name of cockatrice."
" Very reverend sir," said Ursus, " so little did I desire to
insult the basilisk thai? I have given out as certain that it
has a man's head."
" Be it so," replied Minos severely; " but you added that
Poerius had seen one with the head of a falcon. €an you
prove it?"
" Not easily," said Ursus.
Here he had lost a little ground.
Minos, seizing the advantage, pushed it.
" You have said that a converted Jew has not a nice smell."
" Yes. But I added that a Christian who becomes a Jew
has a nasty one.'1
Minos lost his eyes over the accusing documents.
11 You have affirmed and propagated things which are
impossible. You have said that Elien had seen an elephant
write sentences."
"Nay, very reverend gentleman! I simply said that
Oppian had heard a hippopotamus discuss a philosophical
problem.-'
" You have declared that it is not true that a dish made of
beech-wood will become covered of itself with all the viands
that one can desire."
" I said, that if it has this virtue, it must be that you
received it from the devil."
"That I received it I"
' Nc, most reverend sir. I, nobody, everybody! "
Aside, Ursus thought, " I don't know what I am saying."
THE LAUGHING MAN. 319
But his outward confusion, though extreme, was not dis-
tinctly visible. Ursus struggled with it.
" All this," Minos began again, " implies a certain belief
in the devil."
Ursus held his own.
" Very reverend sir, I am not an unbeliever with regard to
the devil. Belief in the devil is the reverse side of faith in
God. The one proves the other. He who does not believe
a little in the devil, does not believe much in God. He who
believes in the sun must believe in the shadow. The devil is
the night of God. What is night ? The proof of day."
Ursus here extemporized a fathomless combination of
philosophy and religion. Minos remained pensive, and re-
lapsed into silence.
Ursus breathed afresh.
A sharp onslaught now took place. ^Eacus, the medical
delegate, who had disdainfully protected Ursus against the
theologian, now turned suddenly from auxiliary into assailant
He placed his closed fist on his bundle of papers, which was
large and heavy. Ursus received this apostrophe full in the
breast, —
" It is proved that crystal is sublimated ice, and that the
diamond is sublimated crystal. It is averred that ice be-
comes crystal in a thousand years, and crystal diamond in a
thousand ages. You have denied this."
" Nay," replied Ursus, with sadness, " I only said that in
a thousand years ice had time to melt, and that a thousand
ages were difficult to count."
The examination went on ; questions and answers clashed
like swords.
14 You have denied that plants can talk."
"Not at all. But to do so they must grow under a
gibbet."
' Do you own that the mandragora cries ? "
' No; but it sings."
' You have denied that the fourth finger of the left hand
has a cordial virtue."
I only said that to sneeze to the left was a bad sign."
You have spoken rashly and disrespectfully of the
phoenix."
" Learned judge, I merely said that when he wrote that the
brain of the phoenix was a delicate morsel, but that it pro-
320 THE LAUGHING MAN.
duccd headache, Plutarch was a little out of his reckoning,
inasmuch as the phoenix never existed."
" A detestable speech 1 The cinnamalker which makes its
nest with sticks of cinnamon, the rhintacus that Parysatis
used in the manufacture of his poisons, the manucodiatas
which is the bird of paradise, and the semenda, which has a
threefold beak, have been mistaken for the phoenix; but the
phoenix has existed."
" I do not deny it."
" You are a stupid ass."
" I desire to be thought no better."
" You have confessed that the elder tree cures the quinsy,
but you added that It was not because it has in its root a
fairy excrescence."
" I said it was because Judas hung himself on an elder
tree."
" A plausible opinion," growled the theologian, glad to
strike his little blow at ^Eacus.
Arrogance repulsed soon turns to anger. ^Eacus was
enraged.
" Wandering mountebank 1 you wander as much in mind
as with your feet. Your tendencies are out of the way and
suspicious. You approach the bounds of sorcery. You
have dealings with unknown animals. You speak to the
populace of things that exist but for you alone, and the nature
of which is unknown, such as the hcemorrhous."
" The hcemorrhous is a viper which was seen by Tremel-
lius."
This repartee produced a certain disorder in the irritated
science of Doctor ^Eacus.
Ursus added, " The existence of the hcemorrhous is quite
as true as that of the odoriferous hyena, and of the civet
described by Castellus."
^Eacus got out of the difficulty by charging home.
" Here are your own words, and very diabolical words they
are. Listen."
With his eyes on his notes, ^Eacus read, —
"Two plants, the thalagssigle and the aglaphotis, are
luminous in the evening, flowers by day, stars by night; "
and looking steadily at Ursus, " What have you to say to
that?"
Ursus answered, —
THE LAUGHING MAN. 321
" Every plant is a lamp. Its perfume is its light."
^Eacus turned over other pages.
" You have denied that the vesicles of the otter are equiva-
lent to castoreum."
" I merely said that perhaps it may be necessary to receive
the teaching of ^Etius on this point with some reserve."
^Eacus became furious.
" You practise medicine? "
" I practise medicine," sighed Ursus timidly.
"On living things?"
" Rather than on dead ones," said Ursus.
Ursus defended himself stoutly, but dully; an admirable
mixture, in which meekness predominated. He spoke with
such gentleness that Doctor ^Eacus felt that he must insult
him.
" What are you murmuring there? " said he rudely.
Ursus was amazed, and restricted himself to saying, —
" Murmurings are for the young, and moans for the aged.
Alas, I moanl"
^Eacus replied, —
" Be assured of this — if you attend a sick person, and he
dies, you will be punished by death."
Ursus hazarded a question.
" And if he gets well? "
" In that case," said the doctor, softening his voice, " you
will be punished by death."
" There is little difference," said Ursus.
The doctor replied, —
" If death ensues, we punish gross ignorance; if recovery,
we punish presumption. The gibbet in either case."
" I was ignorant of the circumstance," murmured Ursus.
" I thank you for teaching me. One does not know all the
beauties of the law."
" Take care of yourself."
" Religiously," said Ursus.
" We know what you are about."
" As for me," thought Ursus, " that is more than I always
know myself."
" We could send you to prison."
" I see that perfectly, gentlemen."
" You cannot deny your infractions nor your encroach-
ments."
II
322 THE LAUGHING MAN.
' My philosophy asks pardon."
' Great audacity has been attributed to you."
' That is quite a mistake."
' It is said that you have cured the sick."
' I am the victim of calumny."
The three pairs of eyebrows which were so horribly fixed
on Ursus contracted. The three wise faces "drew near to
each other, and whispered. Ursus had the vision of a vague
fool's cap sketched out above those three empowered heads.
The low and requisite whispering of the trio was of some
minutes' duration, during which time Ursus felt all the ice
and all the scorch of agony. At length Minos, who was
president, turned to him and said angrily, —
" Go away! "
Ursus felt something like Jonas when he was leaving the
belly of the whale.
Minos continued, —
" You are discharged."
Ursus said to himself, —
" They won't catch me at this again. Good-bye, medi-
cine! "
And he added in his innermost heart, —
" From henceforth I will carefully allow them to die."
Bent double, he bowed everywhere; to the doctors, to the
busts, the tables, the walls, and retiring backwards through
the door, disappeared almost as a shadow melting into air.
He left the hall slowly, like an innocent man, and rushed
from the street rapidly, like a guilty one. The officers of
justice are so singular and obscure in their ways that even
when acquitted one flies from them.
As he fled he mumbled, —
" I am well out of it. I am the savant untamed ; they the
savants ^ civilized. Doctors cavil at the learned. False
science is the excrement of the true, and is employed to the
destruction of philosophers. Philosophers, as they produce
sophists, produce their own scourge. Of the dung of the
thrush is born the mistletoe, with which is made birdlime,
with which the thrush is captured. Turdus sibi malum
cacat."
We do not represent Ursus as a refined man. He was im-
prudent enough to use words which expressed his thoughts.
He had no more taste than Voltaire.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 323
When Ursus returned to the Green Box, he told Master
Nicless that he had been delayed by following a pretty
woman, and let not a word escape him concerning his
adventure.
Except in the evening when he said in a low voice to
Homo, —
" See here, I have vanquished the three heads of Cerberus."
CHAPTER VII.
WHY SHOULD A GOLD PIECE LOWER ITSELF BY MIXING WITH
A HEAP OF PENNIES?
AN event happened.
The Tadcaster Inn became more and more a furnace of joy
and laughter. Never was there more resonant gaiety. The
landlord and his boy were become insufficient to draw the
ale, stout, and porter. In the evening in the lower room,
with its windows all aglow, there was not a vacant table.
They sang, they shouted; the great old hearth, vaulted like
an oven, with its iron bars piled with coals, shone out
brightly. It was like a house of fire and noise.
In the yard — that is to say, in the theatre — the crowd was
greater still.
Crowds as great as the suburb of Southwark could supply
so thronged the performances of " Chaos Vanquished " that
directly the curtain was raised — that is to say, the platform
of the Green Box was lowered — every place was filled. The
windows were alive with spectators, the balcony was crammed.
Not a single paving-stone in the paved yard was to be seen.
It seemed paved with faces.
Only the compartment for the nobility remained empty.
There was thus a space in the centre of the balcony, a
black hole, called in metaphorical slang, an oven. No one
there. Crowds everywhere except in that one spot.
One evening it was occupied.
It was on a Saturday, a day on which the English make all
haste to amuse themselves before the ennui of Sunday.
The hall was full.
We say hall. Shakespeare for a long time had to use the
yard of an inn for a theatre, and he called it hall.
Just as the curtain rose on the prologue of " Chaos Van-
quished," with Ursus. Homo, and Gwyiiplaine on the stage.
324 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Ursus, from habit, cast a look at the audience, and felt a
sensation.
The compartment for the nobility was occupied. A lady
was sitting alone in the middle of the box, on the Utrecht
velvet arm-chair. She was alone, and she filled the box.
Certain beings seem to give out light. This lady, like Dea,
had a light in herself, but a light of a different character.
Dea was pale, this lady was pink. Dea was the twilight,
this lady, Aurora. Dea was beautiful, this lady was superb.
Dea was innocence, candour, fairness, alabaster — this woman
was of the purple, and one felt that she did not fear the
blush. Her irradiation overflowed the box, she sat in the
midst of it, immovable, in the spreading majesty of an idol.
Amidst the sordid crowd she shone out grandly, as with
the radiance of a carbuncle. She inundated it with so much
light that she drowned it in shadow, and all the mean faces
in it underwent eclipse. Her splendour blotted out all else.
Every eye was turned towards her.
Tom- Jim- Jack was in the crowd. He was lost like the
rest in the nimbus of this dazzling creature.
The lady at first absorbed the whole attention of the
public, who had crowded to the performance, thus somewhat
diminishing the opening effects of " Chaos Vanquished."
Whatever might be the air of dreamland about her, for
those who were near she was a woman; perchance too much
a woman.
She was tall and amply formed, and showed as much as
possible of her magnificent person. She wore heavy earrings
of pearls, with which were mixed those whimsical jewels
called " keys of England." Her upper dress was of Indian
muslin, embroidered all over with gold — a great luxury,
because those muslin dresses then cost six hundred crowns.
A large diamond brooch closed her chemise, the which she
wore so as to display her shoulders and bosom, in the im-
modest fashion of the time; the chemisette was made of
that lawn of which Anne of Austria had sheets so fine that
they could be passed through a ring. She wore what seemed
like a cuirass of rubies— some uncut, but polished, and
precious stones were sewn all over the body of her dress.
Then, her eyebrows were blackened with Indian ink; and
her arms, elbows, shoulders, chin, and nostrils, with the top
of her eyelids, the lobes of her ears, the palms of her hands,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 3^5
the tips of her fingers, were tinted with a glowing and pro-
voking touch of colour. Above all, she wore an expression
of implacable determination to be beautiful. This reached
the point of ferocity. She was like a panther, with the power
of turning cat at will, and caressing. One of her eyes was
blue, the other black.
Gwynplaine, as well as Ursus, contemplated her.
The Green Box somewhat resembled a phantasmagoria in
its representations. " Chaos Vanquished " was rather a
dream than a piece; it generally produced on the audience
the effect of a vision. Now, this effect was reflected on the
actors. The house took the performers by surprise, and
they were thunderstruck in their turn. It was a rebound
of fascination*
The woman watched them, and they watched her.
At the distance at which they were placed, and in that
luminous mist which is the half-light of a theatre, details
were lost and it was like a hallucination* Of course it was
a woman, but was it not a chimera as well ? The penetration
of her light into their obscurity stupefied them. It was like
the appearance of an unknown planet. It came from a
world of the happy. Her irradiation amplified her figure.
The lady was covered with"nocturnal glitterings, like a milky
way. Her precious stones were stars. The diamond brooch
was perhaps a pleiad. The splendid beauty of her bosom
seemed supernatural. They felt, as they looked upon the
star-like creature, the momentary but thrilling approach
of the regions of felicity. It was out of the heights of a
Paradise that she leant towards their mean-looking Green
Box, and revealed to the gaze of its wretched audience her
expression of inexorable serenity. As she satisfied her
unbounded curiosity, she fed ab the same time the curiosity
of the public.
It was the Zenith permitting the Abyss to look at it.
Ursus. Gwynplaine, Vinos, Fibi, the crowd, every one had
succumbed to her dazzling beauty, except Dea, ignorant in
her darkness.
An apparition was indeed before them; but none of the
ideas usually evoked by the word were realized in the lady's
appearance.
There was nothing about her diaphanous, nothing un-
decided, nothing floating, no mist. She was an apparition;
326 THE LAUGHING MAN.
rose-coloured and fresh, and full of health. Yet, under the
optical condition in which Ursus and Gwynplaine were placed,
she looked like a vision. There are fleshy phantoms, called
vampires. Such a queen as she, though a spirit to the crowd,
consumes twelve hundred thousand a year, to keep her
health.
Behind the lady, in the shadow, her page was to be per-
ceived, el mozo, a little child-like man, fair and pretty, with
a serious face. A very young and very grave servant was the
fashion at that period. This page was dressed from top to
toe in scarlet velvet, and had on his skull-cap, which was
embroidered with gold, a bunch of curled feathers. This was
the sign of a high class of service, and indicated attendance
on a very great lady.
The lackey is part of the lord, and it was impossible not
to remark, in the shadow of his mistress, the train-bearing
page. Memory often takes notes unconsciously; and, with-
out Gwynplaine's suspecting it, the round cheeks, the serious
mien, the embroidered and plumed cap of the lady's page left
some trace on his mind. The page, however, did nothing to
call attention to himself. To do so is to be wanting in respect.
He held himself aloof and passive at the back of the box,
retiring as far as the closed door permitted.
Notwithstanding the presence of her train-bearer, the lady
was not the less alone in the compartment, since a valet
counts for nothing.
However powerful a diversion had been produced by this
person, who produced the effect of a personage, the dSnoue-
ment of "Chaos Vanquished" was more powerful still.
The impression which it made was, as usual, irresistible.
Perhaps, even, there occurred in the hall, on account of the
radiant spectator (for sometimes the spectator is part of the
spectacle), an increase of electricity. The contagion of
Gwynplaine's laugh was more triumphant than ever. The
whole audience fell into an indescribable epilepsy of hilarity,
through which could be distinguished the sonorous and
magisterial ha I hal of Tom- Jim- Jack.
Only the unknown lady looked at the performance with
the immobility of a statue, and with her eyesp like those of a
phantom, she laughed not. A spectre, but sun-born.
The performance over, the piatform drawn up, and the
family reassembled in the Green Box, Ursus opened and
THE LAUGHING MAN. 327
emptied on the supper-table the bag of receipts. From a
heap of pennies there slid suddenly forth a Spanish gold onza.
"Hers I " cried Ursus.
The onza amidst the pence covered with verdigris was a
type of the lady amidst the crowd.
" She has paid an onza for her seat," cried Ursus with
enthusiasm.
Just then, the hotel-keeper entered the Green Box, and,
passing his arm out of the window at the back of it, opened
the loophole in the wall of which we have already spoken,
which gave a view over the field, and which was level with
the window j then he made a silent sign to Ursus to look out.
A carriage, swarming with plumed footmen carrying torches
and magnificently appointed, was driving off at a fast trot.
Ursus took the piece of gold between his forefinger and
thumb respectfully, and, showing it to Master Nicless, said, —
" She is a goddess."
Then his eyes falling on the carriage which was about to
turn the corner of the field, and on the imperial of which the
footmen's torches lighted up a golden coronet, with eight
strawberry leaves, he exclaimed, —
" She is more. She is a duchess."
The carriage disappeared. The rumbling of its wheels
died away in the distance.
Ursus remained some moments in an ecstasy, holding the
gold piece between his finger and thumb, as in a monstrance,
elevating it as the priest elevates the host.
Then he placed it on the table, and, as he contemplated it,
began to talk of " Madam."
I The innkeeper replied, —
" She was a duchess." Yes. They knew her title. But
her name? Of that they were ignorant. Master Nicless
had been close to the carriage, and seen the coat of arms and
the footmen covered with lace. The coachman had a wig on
which might have belonged to a Lord Chancellor. The
carriage was of that rare design called, in Spain, cochetumbon,
a splendid build, with a top like a tomb, which makes a
magnificent support for a coronet. The page was a man in
miniature, so small that he could sit on the step of the
carriage outside the door. The duty of those pretty
creatures was to bear the trains of their mistresses. They
also bore their messages. And did you remark the plumed
32« THE LAUGHING MAN.
cap of the page ? How grand it was I You pay a fine if you
wear those plumes without the right of doing so. Master
Nicless had seen the lady, too, quite close. A kind of queen.
Such wealth gives beauty. The skin is whiter, the eye more
proud, the gait more noble, and grace more insolent. Noth-
ing can equal the elegant impertinence of hands which never
work. Master Nicless told the story of all the magnificence,
of the white skin with the blue veins, the neck, the shoulders,
the arms, the touch of paint everywhere, the pearl earrings,
the head-dress powdered with gold ; the profusion of stones,
the rubies, the diamonds.
" Less brilliant than her eyes," murmured Ursus.
Gwynplaine said nothing.
Dea listened.
" And do you know," said the tavern-keeper, "the most
wonderful thing of all ? "
"What?" said Ursus. '
" I saw her get into her carriage."
"What then?"
" She did not get in alone."
"Nonsense! "
" Some one got in with her."
"Who?"
" Guess."
" The king," said Ursus.
" In the first place," said Master Nicless, " there is no kin£
at present. We areBnot living under a king. Guess who got
into the carriage with the duchess."
" Jupiter," said Ursus.
The hotel-keeper replied, —
"Tom- Jim- Jack! "
Gwynplaine, who had not said a word, broke silence.
" Tom- Jim- Jack 1 " he cried.
There was a pause of astonishment, during which the low
voice of Dea was heard to say,-—
" Cannot this woman be prevented coming."
CHAPTER VIII.
SYMPTOMS OF POISONING.
THB " apparition " did not return. It did not reappear in
the theatre, but it reappeared to the memory of Gwynplaine,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 329
Gwyaplaine was, to a certain degree, troubled. It seemed
to him that for the first time In his life he had seen a woman.
He made that first stumble, a strange dream. We should
beware of the nature of the reveries that fasten on us.
Reverie has in it the mystery and subtlety of an odour. It
is to thought what perfume is to the tuberose. It Is at times
the exudation of a venomous idea, and It penetrates like a
vapour. You may poison yourself with reveries, as with
flowers. An intoxicating suicide, exquisite and malignant.
The suicide of the soul is evil thought. In it is the poison.
Reverie attracts, cajoles, lures, entwines, and then makes
you its accomplice. It makes you bear your half in the
trickeries which it plays on conscience. It charms ; then it
corrupts you,, We may say of reverie as of play, one begins
by being a dupe, and ends by being a cheat.
Gwynplaine dreamed.
He had never before seen Woman. He had seen the
shadow in the women of the populace, and he had seen the
sou) in Dea,
He had just seen the reality.
A warm and living skin, under which one felt the circula-
tion of passionate blood; an outline with the precision of
marble and the undulation of the wave; a high and im-
passive mien, mingling refusal with attraction, and summing
itself up in its own glory ; hair of the colour of the reflection
from a furnace; a gallantry of adornment producing in
herself and in others a tremor of voluptuousness, the half-
revealed nudity betraying a disdainful desire to be coveted
at a distance by the crowd; an ineradicable coquetry; the
charm of impenetrability, temptation seasoned by the
glimpse of perdition, a promise to the senses and a menace
to the mind; a double anxiety, the one desire, the other
fear. He had just seen these things. He had just seen
Woman.
He had seen rnors and less than a woman; he had seen a
female.
And at the same time an Olympian. The female of a god.
The mystery of sex had just been revealed to him.
And where? On inaccessible heights — at an infinite
distance.
O mocking destiny I The soul, that celestial essence, he
possessed ; he hold it in his hand. It was Dea. Sex, that
330 THE LAUGHING MAN.
terrestrial embodiment, he perceived in the heights of
heaven. It was that woman.
A duchess 1
" More than a goddess," Ursus had said.
What a precipice I Even dreams dissolved before such a
perpendicular height to escalade.
Was he going to commit the folly of dreaming about the
unknown beauty ?
He debated with himself.
He recalled all that Ursus had said of high stations which
are almost royal. The philosopher's disquisitions, which
had hitherto seemed so useless, now became landmarks for
his thoughts. A very thin layer of forgetfulness often lies
over our memory, through which at times we catch a glimpse
of all beneath it. His fancy ran on that august world, the
peerage, to which the lady belonged, and which was so
inexorably placed above the inferior world, the common
people, of which he was one.
And was he even one of the people? Was not he, the
mountebank, below the lowest of the low ? For the first time
since he had arrived at the age of reflection, he felt his heart
vaguely contracted by a sense of his baseness, and of that
which we nowadays call abasement. The paintings and
the catalogues of Ursus, his lyrical inventories, his dithy-
rambics of castles, parks, fountains, and colonnades, his
catalogues of riches and of power, revived in the memory of
Gwynplaine in the relief of reality mingled with mist. He
was possessed with the image of this zenith. That a man
should be a lord ! — it seemed chimerical. It was so, however.
Incredible thing 1 There were lords! But were they of
flesh and blood, like ourselves? It seemed doubtful. He
felt that he lay at the bottom of all darkness, encompassed
by a wall, while he could just perceive in the far distance
above his head, through the mouth of the pit, a dazzling
confusion of azure, of figures, and of rays, which was
Olympus. In the midst of this glory the duchess shone out
resplendent.
He felt for this woman a strange, inexpressible longing,
combined with a conviction of the impossibility of attain-
ment. This poignant contradiction returned to his mind
again and again, notwithstanding every effort. He saw near
to him, even within his reach, in close and tangible reality.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 3 3 1
the soul; and in the unattainable — in the depths of the ideal
— the flesh. None of these thoughts attained to certain
shape. They were as a vapour within him, changing every
instant its form, and floating away. But the darkness which
the vapour caused was intense.
He did not form even in his dreams any hope of reaching
the heights where the duchess dwelt. Luckily for him.
The vibration of such ladders of fancy, if ever we put our
foot upon them, may render our brains dizzy for ever.
Intending to scale Olympus, we reach Bedlam ; any distinct
feeling of actual desire would have terrified him. He
entertained none of that nature.
Besides, was he likely ever to see the lady again? Most
probably not. To fall in love with a passing light on the
horizon, madness cannot reach to that pitch. To make
loving eyes at a star even, is not incomprehensible. It is
seen again, it reappears, it is fixed in the sky. But can
any one be enamoured of a flash of lightning ?
Dreams flowed and ebbed within him. The majestic and
gallant idol at the back of the box had cast a light over his
diffused ideas, then faded away. He thought, yet thought
not of it; turned to other things — returned to it. It rocked
about in his brain — nothing more. It broke his sleep for
several nights. Sleeplessness is as full of dreams as sleep.
It is almost impossible to express in their exact limits the
abstract evolutions of the brain. The inconvenience of
words is that they are more marked in form than ideas.
All ideas have indistinct boundary lines, words have not.
A certain diffused phase of the soul ever escapes words.
Expression has its frontiers, thought has none.
The depths of our secret souls are so vast that Gwyn-
plaine's dreams scarcely touched Dea. Dea reigned sacred
in the centre of his soul; nothing could approach her.
Still (for such contradictions make up the soul of man) there
was a conflict within him. Was he conscious of it ? Scarcely.
In his heart of hearts he felt a collision of desires. We all
have our weak points. Its nature would have been clear to
Ursus; but to Gwynplaine it was not,
Two instincts-— one the ideal, the other sexual — were,
struggling within him. Such contests occur between the
angels of light and darkness on the edge of the abyss.
At length the angel of darkness was overthrown. One
3J3- THE LAUGHING MAN.
day Gwynplaine suddenly thought no more of the unknown
woman.
The struggle between two principles — the duel between
his earthly and his heavenly nature — had taken place within
his soul, and at such a depth that he had understood it but
dimly. One thing was certain, that he had never for one
moment ceased to adore Dea.
He had been attacked by a violent disorder, his blood had
been fevered ; but it was over. Dea alone remained.
Gwynplaine would have been much astonished had any one
told him that Dea had eyer been, even for a moment, in
danger; and in a week or two the phantom which had
threatened the hearts of both their souls faded away.
Within Gwynplaine nothing remained but the heart,
which was the hearth, and the love, which was its fire.
Besides, we have just said that " the duchess " did not
return.
Ursus thought it all very natural. " The lady with the
gold piece " is a phenomenon. She enters, pays, and
vanishes. It would be too much joy were she to return.
As to Dea, she made no allusion to the woman who had
come and passed away. She listened, perhaps, and was
sufficiently enlightened by the sighs of Ursus, and now and
then by some significant exclamation, such as, —
" One does not get ounces of gold every day I "
She spoke no more of the " woman." This showed deep
instinct. The soul takes obscure precautions, in the secrets
of which it is not always admitted itself. To keep silence
about any one seems to keep them afar off. One fears that
questions may call them back. We put silence between us,
as if we were shutting a door.
So the incident fell into oblivion.
Was it ever anything? Had it ever occurred? Could it
be said that a shadow had floated between Gwynplaine and
Dea ? Dea did not know of it, nor Gwynplaine either. No ;
nothing had occurred. The duchess herself was blurred in
the distant perspective like an illusion. It had been but a
momentary dream passing over Gwynplaine, out of which he
had awakened.
When it fades away, a reverie, like a mist, leaves no trace
behind; and when the cloud has passed on, love shines out
as brightly in the heart as the sun in the sky.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 533
CHAPTER IX.
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM VOCAT.
ANOTHER face disappeared — Tom- Jim- Jack's. Suddenly he
ceased to frequent the Tadcaster Inn.
Persons so situated as to be able to observe other phases
of fashionable life in London, might have seen that about
this time the Weekly Gazette, between two extracts from par-
ish registers, announced the departure of Lord David Dirry-
Moir, by order of her Majesty, to take command of his frigate
in the white squadron then cruising off the coast of Holland.
Ursus, perceiving that Tom- Jim- Jack did not return, was
troubled by his absence. He had not seen Tom- Jim- Jack
since the day on which he had driven off in the same carriage
with the lady of the gold piece. It was, indeed, an enigma
who this Tom- Jim- Jack could be, who carried off duchesses
under his arm. What an interesting investigation I What
questions to propound I What things to be said. Therefore
Ursus said not a word.
Ursus, who had had experience, knew the smart caused
by rash curiosity. Curiosity ought always to be proportioned
to the curious. By listening, we risk our ear; by watching,
we risk our eye. Prudent people neither hear nor see.
Tom- Jim- Jack had got into a princely carriage. The
tavern-keeper had seen him. It appeared so extraordinary
that the sailor should sit by the lady that it made Ursus
circumspect. The caprices of those in high life ought to be
sacred to the lower orders. The reptiles called the poor had
best squat in their holes when they see anything out of the
way. Quiescence is a power. Shut your eyes, if you have
not the luck to be blind; stop up your ears, if you have not
the good fortune to be deaf; paralyze your tongue, if you
have not the perfection of being mute. The great do what
they like, the little what they can. Let the unknown pass
unnoticed. Do not importune mythology. Do not inter-
rogate appearances. Have a profound respect for idols.
Do not let us direct our gossiping towards the lessenings or
increasings which take place in superior regions, of the
motives of which we are ignorant. Such things are mostly
Optical delusions to us inferior creatures. Metamorphoses
are the business of the gods . the transformations and the
334 THE LAUGHING MAN.
contingent disorders of great persons who float above us are
clouds impossible to comprehend and perilous to study. Too
much attention irritates the Olympians engaged in their gyra-
tions of amusement or fancy; and a thunderbolt may teach
you that the bull you are too curiously examining is Jupiter.
Do not lift the folds of the stone-coloured mantles of those
terrible powers. Indifference is intelligence. Do not stir, and
you will be safe. Feign death, and they will not kill you.
Therein lies the wisdom of the insect. Ursus practised it.
The tavern-keeper, who was puzzled as well, questioned
Ursus one day.
" Do you observe that Tom- Jim- Jack never comes here
now! "
" Indeed! " said Ursus. " I have not remarked it."
Master Nicless made an observation in an undertone, no
doubt touching the intimacy between the ducal carriage and
Tom- Jim- Jack — a remark which, as it might have been
irreverent and dangerous, Ursus took care not to hear.
Still Ursus was too much of an artist not to regret Tom-
Jim-Jack. He felt some disappointment. He told his feel-
ing to Homo, of whose discretion alone he felt certain. He
whispered into the ear of the wolf, " Since Tom-Jim-Jack
ceased to come, I feel a blank as a man, and a chill as a poet."
This pouring out of his heart to a friend relieved Ursus.
His lips were sealed before Gwynplaine, who, however,
made no allusion to Tom- Jim- Jack. The fact was that Tom-
Jim-Jack's presence or absence mattered not to Gwynplaine,
absorbed as he was in Dea.
Forgetfulness fell more and more on Gwynplaine. As for
Dea, she had not even suspected the existence of a vague
trouble. At the same time, no more cabals or complaints
against the Laughing Man were spoken of. Hate seemed to
have let go its hold. All was tranquil in and around the
Green Box. No more opposition from strollers, merry-
andrews, nor priests; no more grumbling outside. Their
success was unclouded. Destiny allows of such sudden
serenity. The brilliant happiness of Gwynplaine and Dea
was for the present absolutely cloudless. Little by little it
had risen to a degree which admitted of no increase. There
is one word which expresses the situation— apogee. Happi-
ness, like the sea, has its high tide. The worst thing for
the perfectly happy is that it recedes.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 335
There are two ways of being inaccessible : being too
high and being too low. At least as much, perhaps, as the
first is the second to be desired. More surely than the eagle
escapes the arrow, the animalcule escapes being crushed.
This security of insignificance, if it had ever existed on earth,
was enjoyed by Gwynplaine and Dea, and never before had
it been so complete. They lived on, daily more and more
ecstatically wrapt in each other. The heart saturates itself
with love as with a divine salt that preserves it, and from
this arises the incorruptible constancy of those who have
loved each other from the dawn of their lives, and the affec-
tion which keeps its freshness in old age. There is such a
thing as the embalmment of the heart. It is of Daphnis and
Chloe that Philemon and Baucis are made. The old age of
which we speak, evening resembling morning, was evidently
reserved for Gwynplaine and Dea. In the meantime they
were young.
Ursus looked on this love as a doctor examines his case.
He had what was in those days termed a hippocratical
expression of face. He fixed his sagacious eyes on Dea,
fragile and pale, and growled out, "It is lucky that she is
happy." At other times he said, " She is lucky for her
health's sake." He shook his head, and at times read at-
tentively a portion treating of heart-disease in Aviccunas,
translated by Vossiscus Fortunatus, Louvain, 1650, an old
worm-eaten book of his.
Dea, when fatigued, suffered from perspirations and
drowsiness, and took a daily siesta, as we have already seen.
One day, while she was lying asleep on the bearskin, Gwyn-
plaine was out, and Ursus bent down softly and applied his
ear to Dea's heart. He seemed to listen for a few minutes,
and then stood up, murmuring, " She must not have any
shock. It would find out the weak place."
The crowd continued to flock to the performance of
" Chaos Vanquished." The success of the Laughing Man
seemed inexhaustible. Every one rushed to see him ; no
longer from Southwark only, but even from other parts of
London. The general public began to mingle with the usual
audience, which no longer consisted of sailors and drivers
only; in the opinion of Master Nicless, who was well ac-
quainted with crowds, there were In the crowd gentlemen
and baronets disguised as common people. Disguise is one
336 THE LAUGHING MAN.
of the pleasures of pride, and was much In fashion at that
period. This mixing of the aristocratic element with the
mob was a good sign, and showed that their popularity was
extending to London. The fame of Gwynplaine has de-
cidedly penetrated into the great world. Such was the fact.
Nothing was talked of but the Laughing Man. He was
talked about even at the Mohawk Club, frequented by
noblemen.
In the Green Box they had no idea of all this. They were
content to be happy. It was intoxication to Dea to feel, as
she did every evening, the crisp and tawny head of Gwyn-
plaine. In love there is nothing like habit. The whole of
life is concentiated in it. The reappearance of the stars is
the custom of the universe. Creation is nothing but a
mistress, and the sun is a lover* Light is a dazzling cary-
atid supporting the world. Each day, for a sublime minute,
the earth, covered by night, rests on the rising sun. Dea,
blind, felt a like return of warmth and hope within her when
she placed her hand on the head of Gwynplaine.
To adore each other in the shadows, to love in the plenitude
of silence; who could not become reconciled to such an
eternity ?
One evening Gwynplaine, feeling within him that overflow
of felicity which, like the intoxication of perfumes, causes a
sort of delicious faintness, was strolling, as he usually did
after the performance, in the meadow some hundred paces
from the Green Box. Sometimes in those high tides of
feeling in our souls we feel that we would fain pour out the
sensations of the overflowing heart. The night was dark
but clear. The stars were shining. The whole fair-ground
was deserted. Sleep and forgetfulness reigned hi the
caravans which were scattered over Tarrinzeau Field.
One light alone was unextinguished. It was the lamp of
the Tadcaster Inn, the door of which was left ajar to admit
Gwynplaine on his return.
^Midnight had just struck in the five parishes of Southwark,
with the breaks and differences of tone of their various bells.
Gwynplaine was dreaming of Dea. Of whom else should he
dream? But that evening, feeling singularly troubled, and
full of a charm which was at the same time a pang, he
thought of Dea as a man thinks of a woman. He reproached
himself for this. It seemed to be falling In respect to her.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 337
The husband's attack was forming dimly within him. Sweet
and imperious impatience 1 He was crossing the invisible
frontier, on this side of which is the virgin, on the other, the
wife. He questioned himself anxiously. A blush, as it
were, overspread his mind. The Gwynplaine of long ago had
been transformed, by degrees, unconsciously in a mysterious
growth. His old modesty was becoming misty and uneasy.
We have an ear of light, into which speaks the spirit; and an
ear of darkness, into which speaks the instinct. Into the
latter strange voices were making their proposals. However
pure-minded may be the youth who dreams of love, a certain
grossness of the flesh eventually comes between his dream
and him. Intentions lose their transparency. The un-
avowed desire implanted by nature enters into his con-
science. Gwynplaine felt an indescribable yearning of the
flesh, which abounds in all temptation, and Dea was scarcely
flesh. In this fever, which he knew to be unhealthy, he
transfigured Dea into a more material aspect, and tried to
exaggerate her seraphic form into feminine loveliness. It
is thou, O woman, that we require.
Love comes not to permit too much of paradise. It re-
quires the fevered skin, the troubled life, the unbound hair,
the kiss electrical and irreparable, the clasp of desire. The
sidereal is embarrassing, the ethereal is heavy. Too much
of the heavenly in love is like too much fuel on a fire: the
flame suffers from it. Gwynplaine fell into an exquisite
nightmare; Dea to be clasped in his arms — Dea clasped in
them I He heard nature in his heart crying out for a woman.
Like a Pygmalion in a dream modelling a Galathea out of the
azure, in the depths of his soul he worked at the chaste
contour of Dea — a contour with too much of heaven, too
little of Eden. For Eden is Eve, and Eve was a female, a
carnal mother, a terrestrial nurse; the sacred womb of
generations; the breast of unfailing milk; the rocker of the
cradle of the newborn world, and wings are incompatible
with the bosom of woman. Virginity is but the hope of
maternity. Still, in Gwynplaine's dreams, Dea, until now,
had been enthroned above flesh. Now, however, he made
wild efforts in thought to draw her downwards by that
thread, sex, which ties every girl to earth. Not one of those
birds is free. Dea, like all the rest, was within this law; and
Gwynplaine, though he scarcely acknowledged It, felt a vague
338 THE LAUGHING MAN.
desire that she should submit to it. This desire possessed
him in spite of himself, and with an ever-recurring relapse.
He pictured Dea as woman. He came to the point of
regai ding her under a hitherto unheard-of form; as a
creature no longer of ecstasy only, but of voluptuousness;
as Dea, with her head resting on the pillow. He was ashamed
of this visionary desecration. It was like an attempt at
profanation. He resisted its assault. He turned from it,
but it returned again. He felt as if he were committing a
criminal assault. To him Dea was encompassed by a cloud.
Cleaving that cloud, he shuddered, as though he were rais-
ing her chemise. It was in April. The spine has its dreams.
He rambled at random with the uncertain step caused by
solitude. To have no one by is a provocative to wander.
Whither flew his thoughts? He would not have dared to
own it to himself. To heaven ? No. To a bed. You were
looking down upon him, O ye stars.
Why talk of a man in love ? Rather say a man possessed.
To be possessed by the devil, is the exception; to be pos-
sessed by a woman, the rule. Every man has to bear this
alienation of himself. What a sorceress is a pretty woman I
The true name of love is captivity.
Man is made prisoner by the soul of a woman ; by her
flesh as well, and sometimes even more by the flesh than by
the soul. The soul is the true love, the flesh, the mistress.
We slander the devil. It was not he who tempted Eve.
It was Eve who tempted him. The woman began. Lucifer
was passing by quietly. He perceived the woman, and
became Satan.
The flesh is the cover of the unknown. It is provocative
(which is strange) by its modesty. Nothing could be more
distracting. It is full of shame, the hussey I
It was the terrible love of the surface which was then
agitating Gwynplaine, and holding him in its power. Fear-
ful the moment in which man covets the nakedness of
woman 1 What dark things lurk beneath the fairness of
Venus !
Something within him was calling Dea aloud, Dea the
maiden, Dea the other half of a man, Dea flesh and blood,
Dea with uncovered bosom. That cry was almost driving
away the angel. Mysterious crisis through which all love
must pass and in which the Ideal is in danger 1 Therein is
THE LAUGHING MAN. 339
the predestination of Creation. Moment of heavenly
corruption! Gwynplaine's love of Dea was becoming
nuptial. Virgin love is but a transition. The moment was
come. Gwynplaine coveted the woman.
He coveted a woman I
Precipice of which one sees but the first gentle slope 1
The indistinct summons of nature is inexorable. The
whole of woman — what an abyss I
Luckily, there was no woman for Gwynplaine but Dea —
the only one he desired, the only one who could desire him.
Gwynplaine felt that vague and mighty shudder which is
the vital claim of infinity. Besides there was the aggrava-
tion of the spring. He was breathing the nameless odours
of the starry darkness. He walked forward in a wild feeling
of delight. The wandering perfumes of the rising sap, the
heady irradiations which float in shadow, the distant
opening of nocturnal flowers, the complicity of little hidden
nests, the murmurs of waters and of leaves, soft sighs rising
from all things, the freshness, the warmth, and the mysteri-
ous awakening of April and May, is the vast diffusion of
sex murmuring, in whispers, their proposals of voluptuous-
ness, till the soul stammers in answer to the giddy provoca-
tion. The ideal no longer knows what it is saying.
Any one observing Gwynplaine walk would have said,
" See! — a drunken man! "
He almost staggered under the weight of his own heart, of
spring, and of the night.
The solitude in the bowling-green was so peaceful that at
times he spoke aloud. The consciousness that there is no
listener induces speech.
He walked with slow steps, his head bent down, his hands
behind him, the left hand in the right, the fingers open*
Suddenly he felt something slipped between his fingers.
He turned round quickly.
In his hand was a paper, and in front of him a man.
It was the man who, coming behind him with the stealth
of a cat, had placed the paper in his fingers.
The paper was a letter.
The man, as he appeared pretty clearly in the starlight,
was small, chubby-cheeked, young, sedate, and dressed in
a scarlet livery, exposed from top to toe through the opening
of a long gray cloak, then called a capenoche, a Spanish word
340 THE LAUGHING MAN.
contracted; In French it was cape-de-nutt. His head was
covered by a crimson cap, like the skull-cap of a cardinal, on
which servitude was indicated by a strip of lace. On this
cap was a plume of tisserin feathers. He stood motionless
before Gwynplaine, like a dark outline in a dream.
Gwynplaine recognized the duchess's page.
Before Gwynplaine could utter an exclamation of surprise,
he heard the thin voice of the page, at once childlike and
feminine in its tone, saying to him, —
" At this hour to-morrow, be at the corner of London
Bridge. I will be there to conduct you "
" Whither? " demanded Gwynplaine.
" Where you are expected."
Gwynplaine dropped his eyes on the letter, which he was
holding mechanically in his hand.
When he looked up the page was no longer with him.
He perceived a vague form lessening rapidly in the distance.
It was the little valet. He turned the corner of the street,
and solitude reigned again.
Gwynplaine saw the page vanish, then looked at the letter.
There are moments in our lives when what happens seems
not to happen. Stupor keeps us for a moment at a distance
from the fact.
Gwynplaine raised the letter to his eyes, as if to read it,
but soon perceived that he could not do so for two reasons —
first, because he had not broken the seal; and, secondly,
because it was too dark.
It was some minutes before he remembered that there was
a lamp at the inn. He took a few steps sideways, as if he
knew not whither he was going.
A somnambulist, to whom a phantom had given a letter,
might walk as he did.
At last he made up his mind. He ran rather than walked
towards the inn, stood in the light which broke through the
half-open door, and by it again examined the closed letter.
There was no design on the seal, and on the envelope was
written, " To Gwynplaine" He broke the seal, tore the
envelope, unfolded the letter, put it directly under the light,
and read as follows: —
" You are hideous; I am beautiful. You are a player; I
am a duchess. I am the highest; you are the lowest. I
desire you 1 I love you 1 Come 1 "
BOOK THE FOURTH.
THE CELL OF TORTURL.
CHAPTER I.
THE TEMPTATION OF ST. GWYNPLAINE.
ONE jet of flame hardly makes a prick in the darkness :
another sets fire to a volcano.
Some sparks are gigantic.
Gwynplaine read the letter, then he read it over again.
Yes, the words were there, " I love you 1 "
Terrors chased each other through his mind.
The first was, that he believed himself to be mad.
He was mad; that was certain. He had just seen what had
no existence. The twilight spectres were making game of
him, poor wretch I The little man in scarlet was the will-o'-
the-wisp of a dream. Sometimes, at night, nothings con-
densed into flame come and laugh at us. Having had his
laugh out, the visionary being had disappeared, and left
Gwynplaine behind him, mad.
Such are the freaks of darkness.
The second terror was, to find out that he was in his right
senses.
A vision? Certainly not. How could that be? Had he
not a letter In his hand ? Did he not see an envelope, a seal,
paper, and writing? Did he not know from whom that
came ? It was all clear enough. Some one took a pen and
ink, and wrote. Some one lighted a taper, and sealed it with
wax. Was not his name written on the letter — " To Gwyn-
blaine t " The paper was scented. All was clear.
342 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Gwynplaine knew the little man. The dwarf was a page.
The gleam was a livery. The page had given him a rendez-
vous for the same hour on the morrow, at the corner of
London Bridge.
Was London Bridge an illusion?
No, no. All was clear. There was no delirium. All was
reality. Gwynplaine was perfectly clear in his intellect. It
was not a phantasmagoria, suddenly dissolving above his
head, and fading into nothingness. It was something which
had really happened to him. • No, Gwynplaine was not mad,
nor was he dreaming. Again he read the letter;
Well, yes I But then?
That then was terror-striking.
There was a woman who desired himl If so, let no one
ever again pronounce the word incredible 1 A woman desire
him 1 A woman who had seen his face 1 A woman who was
not blind 1 And who was this woman ? An ugly one ? No ;
a beauty. A gipsy? No; a duchess 1
What was it all about, and what could it all mean?
What peril in such a triumph 1 And how was he to help
plunging into it headlong ?
Whatl that woman 1 The siren, the apparition, the lady
in the visionary box, the light in the darkness 1 It was she !
Yes; it was shel
The crackling of the fire burst out in every part of his
frame. It was the strange, unknown lady, she who had
previously so troubled his thoughts ; and his first tumultuous
feelings about this woman returned, heated by the evil fire.
Forgetf illness is nothing but a palimpsest : an incident
happens unexpectedly, and all that was effaced revives in
the blanks of wondering memory.
Gwynplaine thought that he had dismissed that image
from his remembrance, and he found that it was still there;
and she had put her mark in his brain, unconsciously guilty
of a dream. Without his suspecting it, the lines of the en-
graving had been bitten deep by reverie. And now a certain
amount of evil had been done, and this train of thought,
thenceforth, perhaps, irreparable, he took up again eagerly.
What! she desired him! Whatl the princess descend from
her throne, the idol from its shrine, the statue from its
pedestal, the phantom from its cloud! What! from the
depths of the impossible had this chimera come! This
THE LAUGHING MAN. 343
deity of the sky 1 This Irradiation 1 This nereid all glisten-
ing with jewels I This proud and unattainable beauty, from
the height of her radiant throne, was bending down to Gwyn-
plaine I What 1 had she drawn up her chariot of the dawn,
with its yoke of turtle-doves and dragons, before Gwynplaine,
and said to him, "Cornel" What I this terrible glory of
being the object of such abasement from the empyrean, for
Gwynplaine I This woman, if he could give that name to a
form so starlike and majestic, this woman proposed herself,
gave herself, delivered herself up to him I Wonder of
wonders ! A goddess prostituting herself for him 1 The
arms of a courtesan opening in a cloud to clasp him to the
bosom of a goddess, and that without degradation! Such
majestic creatures cannot be sullied. The gods bathe them-
selves pure in light; and this goddess who came to him knew
what she was doing. She was not ignorant of the incarnate
hideousness of Gwynplaine. She had seen the mask which
was his face; and that mask had not caused her to draw
back. Gwynplaine was loved notwithstanding it!
Here was a thing surpassing all the extravagance of
dreams. He was loved in consequence of his mask. Far
from repulsing the goddess, the mask attracted her. Gwyn-
plaine was not only loved; he was desired. He was more
than accepted; he was chosen. He, chosen!
What ! there, where this woman dwelt, in the regal region
of irresponsible splendour, and in the power of full, free will ;
where there were princes, and she could take a prince ; nobles,
and she could take a noble ; where there were men handsome,
charming, magnificent, and she could take an Adonis : whom
did she take ? Gnafron I She could choose from the midst
of meteors and thunders, the mighty six-winged seraphim,
and she chose the larva crawling in the slime. On one side
were highnesses and peers, all grandeur, all opulence, all
glory; on the other, a mountebank. The mountebank car-
ried it I What kind of scales could there be in the heart of
this woman? By what measure did she weigh her love?
She took off her ducal coronet, and flung it on the platform
of a clown ! She took from her brow the Olympian aureola,
and placed it on the bristly head of a gnome I The world had
turned topsy-turvy. The insects swarmed on high, the stars
were scattered below, whilst the wonder-stricken Gwynplaine,
overwhelmed by a falling rain of light, and lying in the dust,
344 THE LAUGHING MAN.
was enshrined in a glory. One all-powerful, revolting
against beauty and splendour, gave herself to the damned
of night? preferred Gwynplaine to Antinous; excited by
curiosity, she entered the shadows, and descending within
them, and from this abdication of goddess-ship was rising,
crowned and prodigious, the royalty of the wretched- !* You
are hideous. I love you/1 These words touched Gwynplaine
in the ugly spot of pride. Pride is the heel in which all
heroes are vulnerable. Gwynplaine was nattered in his
vanity as a monster. He was loved for his deformity. He,
too, was the exception, as much and perhaps more than the
Jupiters and the Apollos. He felt superhuman, and so much
a monster as to be a god. Fearful bewilderment 1
Now, who was this woman? What did he know about
her? Everything and nothing, ghe was a duchess, that he
knew; he knew, also, that she was beautiful an4 rich; that
she had liveries, lackeys, pages, and footmen running with
torches by the side of her coroneted carriage. He knew that
she was in love with him ; at least she said so. Of everything
else he was ignorant. He knew her title, but not her name.
He knew her thought ; he knew not her life. Was she married,
widow, maiden ? Was she free ? Of what family was she ?
Were there snares, traps, dangers about her ? Of the gallantry
existing on the idle heights of society; the caves on those
summits, in which savage charmers dream amid the scattered
skeletons of the loves which they have already preyed on;
of the extent of tragic cynicism to which the experiments of
a woman may attain who believes herself to be beyond the
reach of man — of things such as these Gwynplaine had no
idea. Nor had he even in his mind materials out of which
to build up a conjecture, information concerning such things
being very scanty in the social depths in which he lived.
Still he detected a shadow; he felt that a mist hung over all
this brightness. Did he understand it? No. Could he
guess at it? Still less. What was there behind that letter ?
One pair of folding doors opening before him, another closing
on him, and causing him a vague anxiety. On the one side
an avowal ; on the other an enigma — avowal and enigma,
which, like two mouths, one tempting, the other threatening,
pronounce the same word, Dare 1
Never had perfidious chance taken its measures better, nor
timed more fitly the moment of temptation. Gwynplaine,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 345
stirred by spring, and by the sap rising in all things, was
prompt to dream the dream of the flesh. The old man who
is not to be stamped out, and over whom none of us can
triumph, was awaking in that backward youth, still a boy at
twenty-four.
It was just then, at the most stormy moment of the crisis,
that the offer was made him, and the naked bosom of the
Sphinx appeared before his dazzled eyes. Youth is an
inclined plane. Gwynplaine was stooping, and something
pushed him forward. What? the season, and the night.
Who ? the woman.
Were there no month of April, man would be a great deal
more virtuous. The budding plants are a set of accomplices 1
Love is the thief, Spring the receiver.
Gwynplaine was shaken.
There is a kind of smoke of evil, preceding sin, in which
the conscience cannot breathe. The obscure nausea of hell
comes over virtue in temptation. The yawning abyss dis-
charges an exhalation which warns the strong and turns
the weak giddy, Gwynplaine was suffering its mysterious
attack.
Dilemmas, transient and at the same time stubborn, were
floating before him. Sin, presenting itself obstinately again
and again to his mind, was taking form, The morrow,
midnight? London Bridge, the page? Should he go?
" Yes," cried the flesh; "No," cried the soul.
Nevertheless, we must remark that, strange as it may
appear at first sight, he never once put himself the question,
" Should he go ? " quite distinctly. Reprehensible actions
are like over-strong brandies — you cannot swallow them at
a draught You put down your glass ; you will see to it
presently; there is a strange taste even about that first drop.
One thing is certain ; he felt something behind him pushing
him forward towards the unknown. And he trembled.
He could catch a glimpse of a crumbling precipice, and
he drew back, stricken by the terror encircling him.
He closed his eyes. He tried hard to deny to himself that
the adventure had ever occurred, and to persuade himself
into doubting his reason. This was evidently his best plan;
the wisest thing he eculd dc was to believe himself mad.
Fatal fever. Every man, surprised by the unexpected,
has at times fait the throb of such tragic pulsations. The
346 THE LAUGHING MAN.
observer ever listens with anxiety to the echoes resounding
from the dull strokes of the battering-ram of destiny striking
against a conscience.
Alas I Gwynplaine put himself questions. Where duty
is clear, to put oneself questions is to suffer defeat.
There are invasions which the mind may have to suffer.
There are the Vandals of the soul — evil thoughts coming to
devastate our virtue. A thousand contrary ideas rushed
into Gwynplaine's brain, now following each other singly,
now crowding together. Then silence reigned again, and
he would lean his head on his hands, in a kind "of mournful
attention, as of one who contemplates a landscape by night.
Suddenly he felt that he was no longer thinking. His
reverie had reached that point of utter darkness in which
all things disappear.
He remembered, too, that he had not entered the inn. It
might be about two o'clock in the morning.
He placed the letter which the page had brought him in
his side-pocket; but perceiving that it was next his heart, he
drew it out again, crumpled it up, and placed it in a pocket
of his hose. He then directed his steps towards the inn,
which he entered stealthily, and without awaking little
Govicum, who, while waiting up for him, had fallen asleep
on the table, with his arms for a pillow. He closed the door,
lighted a candle at the lamp, fastened the bolt, turned the
key in the lock, taking, mechanically, all the precautions
usual to a man returning home late, ascended the staircase of
the Green Box, slipped into the old hovel which he used as a
bedroom, looked at Ursus who was asleep, blew out his candle,
and did not go to bed.
Thus an hour passed away. Weary, at length, and fancy-
ing that bed and sleep were one, he laid his head upon the
pillow without undressing, making darkness the concession
of closing his eyes. But the storm of emotions which assailed
him had not waned for an instant. Sleeplessness is a cruelty
which night inflicts on man. Gwynplaine suffered greatly.
For the first time in his life, he was not pleased with himself.
Ache of heart mingled with gratified vanity. What was he
to do ? Day broke at last ; he heard Ursus get up, but did not
raise his eyelids. No truce for him, however. The letter
was ever in his mind. Every word of it came back to him in
a kind of chaos. In certain violent storms within the soul
THE LAUGHING MAN. 347
thought becomes a liquid. It Is convulsed, it heaves, and
something rises from it, like the dull roaring of the waves.
Flood and flow, sudden shocks and whirls, the hesitation of
the wave before the rock; hail and rain clouds with the light
shining through their breaks ; the petty flights of useless foam ;
wild swell broken in an instant; great efforts lost; wreck
appearing all around; darkness and universal dispersion —
as these things are of the sea, so are they of man. Gwyn-
plaine was a prey to such a storm.
At the acme of his agony, his eyes still closed, he heard
an exquisite voice saying, " Are you asleep, Gwynplaine? "
He opened his eyes with a start, and sat up. Dea was
standing in the half -open doorway. Her ineffable smile was
in her eyes and on her lips. She was standing there, charm-
ing in the unconscious serenity of her radiance. Then came,
as it were, a sacred moment. Gwynplaine watched her,
startled, dazzled, awakened. Awakened from what? — from
sleep? no, from sleeplessness. It was she, it was Dea; and
suddenly he felt in the depths of his being the indescribable
wane of the storm and the sublime descent of good over evil ;
the miracle of the look from on high was accomplished; the
blind girl, the sweet light-bearer, with no effort beyond her
mere presence, dissipated all the darkness within him; the
curtain of cloud was dispersed from the soul as if drawn by
an invisible hand, and a sky of azure, as though by celestial
enchantment, again spread over Gwynplaine's conscience.
In a moment he became by the virtue of that angel, the great
and good Gwynplaine, the innocent man. Such mysterious
confrontations occur to the soul as they do to creation.
Both were silent — she, who was the light; he, who was the
abyss; she, who was divine; he, who was appeased; and
over Gwynplaine's stormy heart Dea shone with the inde-
scribable effect of a star shining on the sea.
CHAPTER II.
FROM GAY TO GRAVE.
How simple is a miracle I It was breakfast hour in the
Green Box, and Dea had merely come to see why Gwynplaine
had not joined their little breakfast table.
" It is you I " exclaimed Gwynplaine; and he had said
everything. There was no other horizon, no vision for him
348 THE LAUGHING MAN.
now but the heavens where Dea was. His mind was appeased
— appeased in such a manner as he alone can understand
who has seen the smile spread swiftly over the sea when the
hurricane had passed away. Over nothing does the calm
come so quickly as over the whirlpool. This results from
its power of absorption. And so it is with the human heart.
Not always, however.
Dea had but to show herself, and all the light that was in
Gwynplaine left him and went to her, and behind the dazzled
Gwynplaine there was but a flight of phantoms. What a
peacemaker is adoration I A few minutes afterwards they
were sitting opposite each other, Ursus between them, Homo
at their feet. The teapot, hung over a little lamp, was on
the table. Fibi and Vinos were outside, waiting.
They breakfasted as they supped, in the centre compart-
ment. From the position in which the narrow table was
placed, Dea's back was turned towards the aperture in the par-
tition which was opposite the entrance door of the Green Box.
Their knees were touching. Gwynplaine was pouring out
tea for Dea. Dea blew gracefully on her cup. Suddenly
she sneezed. Just at that moment a thin smoke rose above
the flame of the lamp, and something like a piece of paper
fell into ashes. It was the smoke which had caused Dea to
sneeze.
" What was that? " she asked.
" Nothing," replied Gwynplaine.
And he smiled. He had just burnt the duchess's letter.
The conscience of the man who loves is the guardian angel
of the woman whom he loves.
Unburdened of the letter, his relief was wondrous, and
Gwynplaine felt his integrity as the eagle feels its wings.
It seemed to him as if his temptation had evaporated with
the smoke, and as if the duchess had crumbled into ashes with
the paper.
Taking up their cups at random, and drinking one after the
other from the same one, they talked. A babble of lovers, a
chattering of sparrows! Child's talk, worthy of Mother
Goose or of Homer I With two loving hearts, go no further
lor poetry; with two kisses for dialogue, go no further for
music.
" Do you know something? "
" No."
THE LAUGHING MAN. 349
" Gwynplaine, I dreamt that we were animals, and had
wings."
" Wings; that means birds," murmured Gwynplaine.
" Fools! it means angels," growled Ursus.
And their talk went on.
"If you did not exist, Gwynplaine? "
"What then?"
" It could only be because there was no God."
" The tea is too hot; you will burn yourself, Dea."
" Blow on my cup."
" How beautiful you are this morning 1 "
" Do you know that I have a great many things to say
to you? "
" Say them."
" I love you."
" I adore you."
And Ursus said aside, " By heaven, they are polite I "
Exquisite to lovers are their moments of silence! In
them they gather, as it were, masses of love, which afterwards
explode into sweet fragments.
" Do you know ! In the evening, when we are playing our
parts, at the moment when my hand touches your forehead —
oh, what a noble head is yours, Gwynplaine ! — at the moment
when I feel your hair under my fingers, I shiver ; a heavenly
joy comes over me, and I say to myself, In all this world of
darkness which encompasses me, in this universe of solitude,
in this great obscurity of ruin in which I am, in this quaking
fear of myself and of everything, I have one prop ; and he is
there. It is he — it is you."
" Oh I you love me," said Gwynplaine. " I, too, have but
you on earth. You are all in all to me. Dea, what would
you have me do? What do you desire? What do you
want? "
Dea answered, —
" I do not know. I am happy."
" Oh," replied Gwynplaine, " we are happy."
Ursus raised his voice severely, —
" Oh, you are happy, are you? That's a crime. I have
warned you already. You are happy 1 Then take care you
aren't seen. Take up as little room as you can. Happiness
ought to stufi itself into a hole. Make yourselves still less
than you are, if that can be. God measures the greatness of
35o THE LAUGHING MAN.
happiness by the littleness of the happy. The happy should
conceal themselves like malefactors. Oh, only shine out like
the wretched glowworms that you are, and you'll be trodden
on; and quite right tool What do you mean by all that
love-making nonsense? I'm no duenna, whose business it
is to watch lovers billing and cooing. I'm tired of it all, I
tell you; and you may both go to the devil."
And feeling that his harsh tones were melting into tender-
ness, he drowned his emotion in a loud grumble.
" Father," said Dea, " how roughly you scold I "
" It's because I don't like to see people too happy."
Here Homo re-echoed Ursus. His growl was heard from
beneath the lovers' feet
Ursus stooped down, and placed his hand on Homo's head.
" That's right; you're in bad humour, too. You growl.
The bristles are all on end on your wolf's pate. You don't
like all this love-making. That's because you are wise.
Hold your tongue, all the same. You have had your say and
given your opinion ; be it so. Now be silent."
The wolf growled again. Ursus looked under the table
at him.
"Be still, Homol Come, don't dwell on it, you phi-
losopher 1 "
But the wolf sat up, and looked towards the door, showing
his teeth.
" What's wrong with you now? " said Ursus. And he
caught hold of Homo by the skin of the neck.
Heedless of the wolf's growls, and wholly wrapped up in
her own thoughts and in the sound of Gwynplaine's voice,
which left its after-taste within her, Dea was silent, and
absorbed by that kind of esctasy peculiar to the blind,
which seems at times to give them a song to listen to in their
souls, and to make up to them for the light which they lack
by some strain of ideal music. Blindness is a cavern, to
which reaches the deep harmony of the Eternal.
While Ursus, addressing Homo, was looking down, Gwyn-
plaine had raised his eyes. He was about to drink a cup of
tea, but did not drink it. He placed it on the table with the
slow movement of a spring drawn back; his fingers remained
open, his eyes fixed. He scarcely breathed.
A man was standing In the doorway, behind Dea. He was
clad ID black, with a hood. He wore a wig down to his eye-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 351
brows, and held In his hand an Iron staff with a crown at each
end. His staff was short and massive. He was like Medusa
thrusting her head between two branches in Paradise.
Ursus, who had heard some one enter and raised his head
without loosing his hold of Homo, recognized the terrible
personage. He shook from head to foot, and whispered to
Gwynplaine, —
" It's the wapentake."
Gwynplaine recollected. An exclamation of surprise was
about to escape him, but he restrained it. The iron staff,
with the crown at each end, was called the iron weapon. It
was from this iron weapon, upon which the city officers of
justice took the oath when they entered on their duties, that
the old wapentakes cf the English police derived their
qualification.
Behind the man in the wig, the frightened landlord could
just be perceived in the shadow.
Without saying a word, a personification of the Muta
Therms of the old charters, the man stretched his right arm
over the radiant Dea, and touched Gwynplaine on the
shoulder with the iron staff, at the same time pointing with
hia left thumb to the door of the Green Box behind him.
These gestures, all the more Imperious for their silence,
meant, " Follow me."
Pro signo exeundi, surswn trahe, says the old Norman
record.
He who was touched by the iron weapon had no right but
the right of obedience. To that mute order there was no
reply. The harsh penalties of the English law threatened
the refractory. Gwynplaine felt a shock under the rigid
touch of the law; then he sat as though petrified.
If, instead of having been merely grazed on the shoulder,
he had been struck a violent blow on the head with the iron
staff, he^could not have been more stunned. He knew that
the police-officer summoned him to follow; but why? That
he could not understand.
On his part Ursus, too, was thrown into the most painful
agitation, but he saw through matters pretty distinctly.
His thoughts ran on the jugglers and preachers, his com-
petitors, on informations laid against the Green Box, on that
delinquent the wolf, on his own affair with the three Bishops-
commissioners, and who knows? — perhaps — but that
352 THE LAUGHING MAN.
would be too fearful — Gwynplaine's unbecoming and fac-
tious speeches touching the royal authority.
He trembled violently.
Dea was smiling.
Neither Gwynplaine nor Ursus pronounced a word. They
had both the same thought — not to frighten Dea. It may
have struck the wolf as well, for he ceased growling. True,
Ursus did not loose him.
Homo, however, was a prudent wolf when occasion
required. Who is there who has not remarked a, kind of in-
telligent anxiety in animals ? It may be that to the extent
to which a wolf can understand mankind he felt that he was
an outlaw.
Gwynplaine rose.
Resistance was impracticable, as Gwynplaine knew. He
remembered Ursus's words, and there was no question
possible. He remained standing in front of the wapentake.
The latter raised the iron staff from Gwynplaine's shoulder,
and drawing it back, held it out straight in an attitude of
command — a constable's attitude which was well understood
in those days by the whole people, and which expressed the
following order: " Let this man, and no other, follow me.
The rest remain where they are. Silence I "
No curious followers were allowed. In all times the police
have had a taste for arrests of the kind. This description
of seizure was termed sequestration of the person.
The wapentake turned round in one motion, like a piece
of mechanism revolving on its own pivot, and with grave and
magisterial step proceeded towards the door of the Green Box.
• Gwynplaine looked at Ursus. The latter went through a
pantomime composed as follows: he shrugged his shoulders,
placed both elbows close to his hips, with his hands out, and
knitted his brows into chevrons — all which signifies, " We
must submit to the unknown."
Gwynplaine looked at Dea. She was in her dream. She
was still smiling. He put the ends of his fingers to his lips,
and sent her an unutterable kiss.
Ursus, relieved of some portion of his terror now that the
wapentake's back was turned, seized the moment to whisper
in Gwynplaine's ear, —
" On your life, do not speak until you are questioned."
Gwynplaine, with the same care to make no noise as he
THE LAUGHING MAN. 353
would have taken in a sickroom, took his hat and cloak from
the hook on the partition, wrapped himself up to the eyes in
the cloak, and pushed his hat over his forehead. Not having
been to bed, he had his working clothes still on, and his
leather esclavin round his neck. Once more he looked at
Dea. Having reached the door, the wapentake raised his
staff and began to descend the steps; then Gwynplaine set
out as if the man was dragging him by an invisible chain.
Ursus watched Gwynplaine leave the Green Box. At that
moment the wolf gave a low growl ; but Ursus silenced him,
and whispered, " He is coming back."
In the yard, Master Nicless was stemming, with servile and
imperious gestures, the cries of terror raised by Vinos and
Fibi, as in great distress they watched Gwynplaine led away,
and the mourning-coloured garb and the iron staff of the
wapentake.
The two girls were like petrifactions: they were in the
attitude of stalactites. Govicum, stunned, was looking open-
mouthed out of a window.
The wapentake preceded Gwynplaine by a few steps, never
turning round or looking at him, in that icy ease which is
given by the knowledge that one is the law.
In death-like silence they both crossed the yard, went
through the dark taproom, and reached the* treet. A few
passers-by had collected about the inn door, and the justice
of the quorum was there at the head of a squad of police.
The idlers, stupefied, and without breathing a word, opened
out and stood aside, with English discipline, at the sight of
the constable's staff. The wapentake moved off in the
direction of the narrow street then called the Little Strand,
running by the Thames; and Gwynplaine, with the justice
of the quorum's men in ranks on each side, like a double
hedge, pale, without a motion except that of his steps,
wrapped in his cloak as in a shroud, was leaving the inn
farther and farther behind him as he followed the silent man,
like a statue following a spectre.
CHAPTER III.
LEX, REX, FEX.
UNEXPLAINED arrest, which would greatly astonish an
Englishman nowadays, was then a very usual proceeding
354 THE LAUGHING MAN.
of the police. Recourse was had to it, notwithstanding the
Habeas Corpus Act, up to George II. 's time, especially in
such delicate cases as were provided for by lettres de cachet in
France; and one of the accusations against which Walpole
had to defend himself was that he had caused or allowed
Neuhoff to be arrested in that manner. The accusation was
probably without foundation, for Neuhoff, King of Corsica,
was put in prison by his creditors.
These silent captures of the person, very usual with the
Holy Vaehme in Germany, were admitted by German custom,
which rules one half of the old English laws, and recom-
mended in certain cases by Norman custom, which rules the
other half. Justinian's chief of the palace police was called
" silentiarius imperialist The English magistrates who
practised the captures in question relied upon numerous
Norman texts: — -Canes latrant, sergentes silent. Sergenter
agere, id est tacere. They quoted Lundulphus Sagax, para-
graph 16: Facit imperator silentium. They quoted the
charter of King Philip in 1307: Multos tenebimus bastonerios
qui, obmutescentes, sergentare valeant. They quoted the
statutes of Henry I. of England, cap. 53: Surge signo jussus.
Taciturnior esto. Hoc cst esse in captione regis. They took
advantage especially of the following description, held to
justicier vertueusement a 1'espee tous ceux qui
suient malveses compagnies, gens diffamez d'aucuns crimes, et
gens fuites et forbannis . . . . et les doivent si vigoureuse-
ment et discretement apprehender, que la bonne gent qui
sont paisibles soient gardez paisiblement et que les malf eteurs
soient espoantes." To be thus arrested was to be seized " a
le glaive de 1'espee." (Vetus Consuetude Normannice, MS.
part i, sect, i, ch. u.) The jurisconsults referred besides " in
Charta Ludovici Hutum pro Normannis, chapter Servientes
spathce." Servientes spatha, in the gradual approach of base
Latin to our idioms, became sergentes spades.
These silent arrests were the contrary of the Clameur de
Haro, and gave warning that it was advisable to hold one's
tongue until such time as light should be thrown upon certain
matters still in the dark. They signified questions reserved,
and showed in the operation of the -police a certain amount
of raison d'etat.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 355
The legal term " private " was applied to arrests of this
description. It was thus that Edward III., according to
some chroniclers, caused Mortimer to be seized in the bed of
his mother, Isabella of France. This, again, we may take
leave to doubt; for Mortimer sustained a siege in his town
before being captured.
Warwick, the king-maker, delighted in practising this
mode of " attaching people." Cromwell made use of it,
especially in Connaught; and it was with this precaution of
silence that Trailie Arcklo, a relation of the Earl of Ormond,
was arrested at Kilmacaugh.
These captures of the body by the mere motion of justice
represented rather the mandat de comparution than the
warrant of arrest. Sometimes they were but processes of
inquiry, and even argued, by the silence imposed upon all,
a certain consideration for the person seized. For the mass
of the people, little versed as they were in the estimate of
such shades of difference, they had peculiar terrors.
It must not be forgotten that in 1705, and even much later,
England was far from being what she is to-day. The general
features of its constitution were confused and at times very
oppressive. Daniel Defoe, who had himself had a taste of
the pillory, characterizes the social order of England, some-
where in his writings, as the " iron hands of the law." There
was not only the law ; there was its arbitrary administration.
We have but to recall Steele, ejected from Parliament; Locke,
driven from his chair; Hobbes and Gibbon, compelled to
flight; Charles Churchill, Hume, and Priestley, persecuted;
John Wilkes sent to the Tower. The task would be a long
one, were we to count over the victims of the statute against
seditious libel. The Inquisition had, to some extent, spread
its arrangements throughout Europe, and its police practice
was taken as a guide. A monstrous attempt against all
rights was possible in England. We have only to recall the
Gazetier Cuirassk. In the midst of the eighteenth century,
Louis XV. had writers, whose works displeased him, arrested
in Piccadilly. It is true that George II. laid his hands on
the Pretender in France, right in the middle of the hall at
the opera. Those were two long arms — that of the King of
France reaching London; that of the King of England, Paris I
Such was the liberty of the period.
356 THE LAUGHING MAN
CHAPTER IV.
URSUS SPIES THE POLICE.
As we have already said, according to the very severe laws
of the police of those days, the summons to follow the
wapentake, addressed to an individual, implied to all other
persons present the command not to stir.
Some curious idlers, however, were stubborn, and followed
from afar off the cortege which had taken Gwynplaine into
custody.
Ursus was of them. He had been as nearly petrified as any
one has a right to be. But Ursus, so often assailed by the
surprises incident to a wandering life, and by the malice of
chance, was, like a ship-of-war, prepared for action, and could
call to the post of danger the whole crew — that is to say, the
aid of all his intelligence.
He flung off his stupor and began to think. He strove not
to give way to emotion, but to stand face to face with cir-
cumstances.
To look fortune in the face is the duty of every one not an
idiot; to seek not to understand, but to act.
Presently he asked himself, What could he do ?
Gwynplaine being taken, Ursus was placed between two
terrors — a fear for Gwynplaine, which instigated him to
follow; and a fear for himself, which urged him to remain
where he was.
Ursus had the intrepidity of a fly and the impassibility of
a sensitive plant. His agitation was not to be described.
However, he took his resolution heroically, and decided to
brave the law, and to follow the wapentake, so anxious was
he concerning the fate of Gwynplaine.
His terror must have been great to prompt so much
courage.
To what valiant acts will not fear drive a hare I
The chamois in despair jumps a precipice. To be terrified
into imprudence is one of the forms of fear.
Gwynplaine had been carried off rather than arrested.
The operation of the police had been executed so rapidly that
the Fair field, generally little frequented at that hour of the
morning, had scarcely taken cognizance of the circumstance.
Scarcely any one in the caravans had any idea that the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 357
wapentake had come to take Gwynplaine. Hence the
smallness of the crowd.
Gwynplaine, thanks to his cloak and his hat, which
nearly concealed his face, could not be recognized by the
passers-by*
Before he went out to follow Gwynplaine, Ursus took a
precaution. He spoke to Master Nicless, to the boy Govicum,
and to Fibi and Vinos, and insisted on their keeping ab-
solute silence before Dea, who was ignorant of everything.
That they should not utter a syllable that could make her
suspect what had occurred ; that they should make her under-
stand that the cares of the management of the Green Box
necessitated the absence of Gwynplaine and Ursus; that,
besides, it would soon be the time of her daily siesta, and that
before she awoke he and Gwynplaine would have returned;
that all that had taken place had arisen from a mistake ; that
it would be very easy for Gwynplaine and himself to clear
themselves before the magistrate and police; that a touch
of the finger would put the matter straight, after which they
should both return ; above all, that no one should say a word
on the subject to Dea. Having given these directions he
departed.
Ursus was able to follow Gwynplaine without being re-
marked. Though he kept at the greatest possible distance,
he so managed as not to lose sight of him. Boldness in
ambuscade is the bravery of the timid.
After all, notwithstanding the solemnity of the attendant
circumstances, Gwynplaine might have been summoned
before the magistrate for some unimportant infraction of
the law.
Ursus assured himself that the question would be decided
at once.
The solution of the mystery would be made under his very
eyes by the direction taken by the cortege which took Gwyn-
plaine from Tarrinzeau Field when it reached the entrance
of the lanes of the Little Strand.
If it turned to the left, it would conduct Gwynplaine to
the justice hall in Southwark. In that case there would be
little to fear, some trifling municipal offence, an admonition
from the magistrate, two or three shillings to pay, and Gwyn-
plaine would be set at liberty, and the representation of
" Chaos Vanquished " would take place in the evening as
358 THE LAUGHING MAN.
usual. In that case no one would know that anything un-
usual had happened.
If the cortege turned to the right, matters would be serious.
There were frightful places in that direction.
When the wapentake, leading the file of soldiers between
whom Gwynplaine walked, arrived at the small streets, Ursus
watched them breathlessly. There are moments in which
a man's whole being passes into his eyes.
Which way were they going to turn ?
They turned to the right.
Ursus, staggering with terror, leant against a wall that he
might not fall.
There is no hypocrisy so great as the words which we say
to ourselves, " I wish to know the worst/ " At heart we do
not wish it at all. We have a dreadful fear of knowing it.
Agony is mingled with a dim effort not to see the end. We
do not own it to ourselves, but we would draw back if we
dared ; and when we have advanced, we reproach ourselves
for having done so.
Thus did Ursus. He shuddered as he thought,—
" Here are things going wrong. I should have found it
out soon enough. What business had I to follow Gwyn-
plaine? "
Having made this reflection, man being but self-contra-
diction, he increased his pace, and, mastering his anxiety,
hastened to get nearer the cortege, so as not to break, in the
maze of small streets, the thread between Gwynplaine and
himself.
The cortege of police could not move quickly, on account
of its solemnity.
The wapentake led it.
The justice of the quorum closed it.
This order compelled a certain deliberation of movement.
All the majesty possible in an official shone in the justice
of the quorum. His costume held a middle place between
the splendid robe of a doctor of music of Oxford and the
sober black habiliments of a doctor of divinity of Cambridge.
He wore the dress of a gentleman under a long godebert,
which is a mantle trimmed with the fur of the Norwegian hare.
He was half Gothic and half modern, wearing a wig like
Lamoignon, and sleeves like Tristan 1'Hermite. His great
round eye watched Gwynplaine with the fixedness of an owl's.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 359
He walked with a cadence. Never did honest man look
fiercer.
Ursus, for a moment thrown out of his way in the tangled
skein of streets, overtook, close to Saint Mary Overy, the
cortege, which had fortunately been retarded in the church-
1 yard by a fight between children and dogs — a common inci-
dent in the streets in those days. " Dogs and boys," say the
old registers of police, placing the dogs before the boys.
A man being taken before a magistrate by the police was,
after all, an everyday affair, and each one having his own
business to attend to, the few who had followed soon dis-
persed. There remained but Ursus on the track of Gwynplaine.
They passed before two chapels opposite to each other,
belonging the one to the Recreative Religionists, the other
to the Hallelujah League — sects which flourished then, and
which exist to the present day.
Then the cortege wound from street to street, making a
zigzag, choosing by preference lanes not yet built on, roads
where the grass grew, and deserted alleys.
At length it stopped.
It was in a little lane with no houses except two or three
hovels. This narrow alley was composed of two walls — one
on the left, low; the other on the right, high. The high waU
was black, and built in the Saxon style with narrow holes,
scorpions, and large square gratings over narrow loopholes.
There was no window on it, but here and there slits, old em-
brasures of pierriers and archegayes. At the foot of this
high wall was seen, like the hole at the bottom of a rat-trap,
a little wicket gate, very elliptical in its arch.
This small door, encased in a full, heavy girding of stone,
had a grated peephole, a heavy knocker, a large lock, hinges
thick and knotted, a bristling of nails, an armour of plates,
and hinges, so that altogether it was more of iron than of
wood.
There was no one in the lane — no shops, no passengers;
but in It there was heard a continual noise, as if the lane ran
parallel to a torrent. There was a tumult of voices and of
carriages. It seemed as if on the other side of the black
edifice there must be a great street, doubtless the principal
street of Southwark, one end of which ran into the Canter-
bury road, and the other on to London Bridge.
All the length of the lane, except the cortege which sur-
360 THE LAUGHING MAN.
rounded Gwynplaine, a watcher would have seen no other
human face than the pale profile of Ursus, hazarding a half
advance from the shadow of the corner of the wall — looking,
yet fearing to see. He had posted himself behind the wall
at a turn of the lane.
The constables grouped themselves before the wicket.'
Gwynplaine was in the centre, the wapentake and his baton
of iron being now behind him.
The justice of the quorum raised the knocker, and struck
the door three times. The loophole opened.
The justice of the quorum said, —
" By order of her Majesty."
The heavy door of oak and iron turned on its hinges, mak-
ing a chilly opening, like the mouth of a cavern. A hideous
depth yawned in the shadow.
Ursus saw Gwynplaine disappear within, it.
CHAPTER V.
A FEARFUL PLACE.
THE wapentake entered behind Gwynplaine.
Then the justice of the quorum.
Then the constables.
The wicket was closed.
The heavy door swung to, closing hermetically on the
stone sills, without any one seeing who had opened orrshut
it. It seemed as if the bolts re-entered their sockets of their
own act. Some of these mechanisms, the inventions of
ancient intimidation, still exist in old prisons — doors of
which you saw no doorkeeper. With them the entrance to
a prison becomes like the entrance to a tomb.
This wicket was the lower door of Southwark Jail.
There was nothing in the harsh and worm-eaten aspect of
this prison to soften its appropriate air of rigour.
Originally a pagan temple, built by the Catieuchlans for
the Mogons, ancient English gods, it became a palace for
tthelwolf and a fortress for Edward the Confessor; then it
was elevated to the dignity of a prison, in 1199, by John
Lackland. Such was Southwark Jail. This jail, at first
intersected by a street, like Chenonceaux by a river, had been
for a century or two a gate— that is to say, the gate of the
suburb; the passage had then been walled up, There re-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 361
main in England some prisons of this nature. In London,
Newgate | at Canterbury, Westgate; at Edinburgh, Canon-
gate. In France the Bastile was originally a gate.
Almost all the jails of England present the same appear-
ance— a high wall without and a hive of cells within. Noth-
ing could be more funereal than the appearance of those
prisons, where spiders and justice spread their webs, and
where John Howard, that ray of light, had not yet pene-
trated. Like the old Gehenna of Brussels, they might well
have been designated Treurenberg — the house of tears.
Men felt before such buildings, at once so savage and
inhospitable, the same distress that the ancient navigators
suffered before the hell of slaves mentioned by Plautus,
islands of creaking chains, ferricrepidita insulcey when they
passed near enough to hear the clank of the fetters.
Southwark Jail, an old place of exorcisms and torture,
was*originally used solely for the imprisonment of sorcerers,
as was proved by two verses engraved on a defaced stone at
the foot of the wicket, —
Sunt arreptitii, vexati daemone multo
Est energumenus, quern daemon possidet unus.
Lines which draw a subtle delicate distinction between the
demoniac and man possessed by a devil.
At the bottom of this inscription, nailed flat against the
wall, was a stone ladder, which had been originally of wood,
but which had been changed into stone by being buried in
earth of petrifying quality at a place called Apsley Gowis,
near Woburn Abbey.
The prison of Southwark, now demolished, opened on two
streets, between which, as a gate, it formerly served as means
of communication. It had two doors. In the large street
a door, apparently used by the authorities ; and in the lane
the door of punishment, used by the rest of the living and by
the dead also, because when a prisoner in the jail died it was
by that issue that his corpse was carried out. A liberation
not to be despised. Death is release into infinity.
It was by the gate of punishment that Gwynplaine had
been taken into prison. The lane, as we have said, was
nothing but a little passage, paved with flints, confined
between two opposite walls. There is one of the same kind
at Brussels called Rue d'une Personne. The walls were
362 THE LAUGHING MAN.
unequal in height. The high one was the prison; the low
one, the cemetery — the enclosure for the mortuary remains
of the jail — was not higher than the ordinary stature of a
man. In it was a gate almost opposite the prison wicket.
The dead had only to cross the street; the cemetery was but
twenty paces from the jail. On the high wall was affixed a
gallows; on the low one was sculptured a Death's head.
Neither of these walls made its opposite neighbour more
cheerful.
CHAPTER VI.
THE KIND OF MAGISTRACY UNDER THE WIGS OF FORMER
DAYS.
ANY one observing at that moment the other side of the
prison — its fa9ade — would have perceived the high street of
Southwark, and might have remarked, stationed before the
monumental and official entrance to the jail, a travelling
carriage, recognized as such by its imperial. A few idlers
surrounded the carriage. On it was a coat of arms, and a
personage had been seen to descend from it and enter the
prison. " Probably a magistrate," conjectured the crowd.
Many of the English magistrates were noble, and almost all
had the right of bearing arms. In France blazon and robe
were almost contradictory terms. The Duke Saint-Simon
says, in speaking of magistrates, "people of that class." In
England a gentleman was not despised for being a judge.
There are travelling magistrates in England; they are
called judges of circuit, and nothing was easier than to
recognize the carriage as the vehicle of a judge on circuit.
That which was less comprehensible was, that the supposed
magistrate got down, not from the carriage itself, but from
the box, a place which is not habitually occupied by the
owner. Another unusual thing. People travelled at that
period in England in two ways — by coach, at the rate of a
shilling for five miles ; and by post, paying three half-pence
per mile, and twopence to the postillion after each stage.
A private carriage, whose owner desired to travel by relays,
paid as many shillings per horse per mile as the horseman
paid pence. The carriage drawn up before the jail in South-
wark had four horses and two postillions, which displayed
princely state. Finally, that which excited and disconcerted
conjectures to the utmost was the circumstance that the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 363
carriage was sedulously shut up. The blinds of the windows
were closed up. The glasses in front were darkened by
blinds; every opening by which the eye might have pene-
trated was masked. From without, nothing within could be
seen, and most likely from within, nothing could be seen
outside. However, it did not seem probable that there was
any one in the carriage.
Southwark being in Surrey, the prison was within the
jurisdiction of the sheriff of the county.
Such distinct jurisdictions were very frequent in England.
Thus, for example, the Tower of London was not supposed
to be situated in any county ; that is to say, that legally it
was considered to be in air. The Tower recognized no
authority of jurisdiction except in its own constable, who
was qualified as custos turris. The Tower had its jurisdiction,
its church, its court of justice, and its government apart.
The authority of its custos, or constable, extended, beyond
London, over twenty-one hamlets. As in Great Britain
legal singularities engraft one upon another the office of
the master gunner of England was derived from the Tower
of London. Other legal customs seem still more whimsical.
Thus, the English Court of Admiralty consults and applies
the laws of Rhodes and of Oleron, a French island which was
once English.
The sheriff of a county was a person of high consideration.
He was always an esquire, and sometimes a knight. He was
called spectabilis in the old deeds, " a man to be looked at " —
a kind of intermediate title between illustris and clarissimus ;
less than the first, more than the second. Long ago the
sheriffs of the counties were chosen by the people; but
Edward II., and after him Henry VI., having claimed their
nomination for the crown, the office of sheriff became a royal
emanation.
They all received their commissions from majesty, except
the sheriff of Westmoreland, whose office was hereditary, and
the sheriffs of London and Middlesex, who were elected by
the livery in the common hall. Sheriffs of Wales and
Chester possessed certain fiscal prerogatives. These ap-
pointments are all still in existence in England, but, sub-
jected little by little to the friction of manners and ideas, they
have lost their old aspects. It was the duty of the sheriff of
the county to escort and protect the judges on circuit. As
364 THE LAUGHING MAN.
we have two arms, he had two officers; his right arm the
under-sheriff, his left arm the justice of the quorum. The
justice of the quorum, assisted by the bailiff of the hundred,
termed the wapentake, apprehended, examined, and, under
the responsibility of the sheriff, imprisoned, for trial by the
judges of circuit, thieves, murderers, rebels, vagabonds, and
all sorts of felons.
The shade of difference between the under-sheriff and the
justice of the quorum, in their hierarchical service towards
the sheriff, was that the under-sheriff accompanied and the
justice of the quorum assisted.
The sheriff held two courts — one fixed and central, the
county court ; and a movable court, the sheriff's turn. He
thus represented both unity and ubiquity. He might as
judge be aided and informed on legal questions by the
serjeant of the coif, called sergens coifce, who is a serjeant-at-
law, and who wears under his black skull-cap a fillet of white
Cambray lawn.
The sheriff delivered the jails. When he arrived at a town
in his province, he had the right of summary trial of the
prisoners, of which he might cause either their release or the
execution. This was called a jail delivery. The sheriff
presented bills of indictment to the twenty-four members of
the grand jury. If they approved, they wrote above, billa
vera; if the contrary, they wrote ignoramus. In the latter
case the accusation was annulled, and the sheriff had the
privilege of tearing up the bill. If during the deliberation a
juror died, this legally acquitted the prisoner and made him
innocent, and the sheriff, who had the privilege of arresting
the accused, had also that of setting him at liberty.
That which made the sheriff singularly feared and re-
spected was that he had the charge of executing all the orders
of her Majesty — a fearful latitude. An arbitrary power
lodges in such commissions.
The officers termed vergers, the coroners making part of
the sheriff's cortege, and the clerks of the market as escort,
with gentlemen on horseback and their servants in livery,
made a handsome suite. The sheriff, says Chamberlayne,
is the " life of justice, of law, and of the country."
In England an insensible demolition constantly pulverizes
and dissevers laws and customs. You must understand In
our day that neither the sheriff, the wapentake, nor the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 365
justice of the quorum could exercise their functions as they
did then. There was in the England of the past a certain
confusion of powers, whose ill-defined attributes resulted in
their overstepping their real bounds at times — a thing which
would be impossible in the present day. The usurpation of
power by police and justices has ceased. We believe that
even the word " wapentake " has changed its meaning. It
implied a magisterial function ; now it signifies a territorial
division: it specified the centurion; it now specifies the
hundred (centum).
Moreover, in those days the sheriff of the county combined
with something more and something less, and condensed in
his own authority, which was at once royal and municipal,
the two magistrates formerly called in France the eivil
lieutenant of Paris and the lieutenant of police. The civil
lieutenant of Paris, Monsieur, is pretty well described in an
old police note: "The civil lieutenant has no dislike to
domestic quarrels, because he always has the pickings "
(22nd July 1704). As to the lieutenant of police, he was a
redoubtable person, multiple and vague. The best personi-
fication of him was Rene d'Argenson, who, as was said by
Saint- Simon, displayed in his face the three judges of hell
united.
The three judges of hell sat, as has already been seen,
at Bishopsgate, London.
CHAPTER VII.
SHUDDERING.
WHEN Gwynplaine heard the wicket shut, creaking in all its
bolts, he trembled. It seemed to him that the door which
had just closed was the communication between light and
darkness — opening on one side on the living, human crowd,
and on the other on a dead world ; and now that everything
illumined by the sun was behind him, that he had stepped
over the boundary of life and was standing without it, his
heart contracted. What were they going to do with him?
What did it all mean? Where was he?
He saw nothing around him; he found himself in perfect
darkness. The shutting of the door had momentarily
blinded him. The window in the door had been closed as
well. No loophole, no lamp. Such were the precautions of
366 THE LAUGHING MAN.
old times. It was forbidden to light the entrance to the
jails, so that the newcomers should take no observations.
Gwynplaine extended his arms, and touched the wall on
the right side and on the left. He was in a passage. Little
by little a cavernous daylight exuding, no one knows whence,
and which floats about dark places, and to which the dilata-
tion of the pupil adjusts itself slowly, enabled him to dis-
tinguish a feature here and there, and the corridor was
vaguely sketched out before him.
Gwynplaine, who had never had a glimpse of penal
severities, save in the exaggerations of Ursus, felt as though'
seized by a sort of vague gigantic hand. To be caught in the
mysterious toils of the law is frightful. He who is brave in
all other dangers is disconcerted in the presence of justice.
Why? Is it that the justice of man works in twilight, and
the judge gropes his way? Gwynplaine remembered what
Ursus had told him of the necessity for silence. He wished
to see Dea again: he felt some discretionary instinct, which
urged him not to irritate. Sometimes to wish to be en-
lightened is to make matters worse; on the other hand,
however, the weight of the adventure was so overwhelming
that he gave way at length, and could not restrain a question.
" Gentlemen," said he, " whither are you taking me? "
They made no answer.
It was the law of silent capture, and the Norman text is
formal: A silenliariis ostio, prcepositis introducti sunt,
This silence froze Gwynplaine. Up to that moment he
had believed himself to be firm: he was self-sufficing. To
be self-sufficing is to be powerful. He had lived isolated
from the world, and imagined that being alone he was un-
assailable; and now all at once he felt himself under the
pressure of a hideous collective force. How was he to
combat that horrible anonyma, the law ? He felt faint under
the perplexity; a fear of an unknown character had found
a fissure in his armour; besides, he had not slept, he had not
eaten, he had scarcely moistened his lips with a cup of tea.
The whole night had been passed in a kind of delirium, and
the fever was still on him. He was thirsty; perhaps hungry.
The craving of the stomach disorders everything. Since the
previous evening all kinds of incidents had assailed him.
The emotions which had tormented had sustained him.
Without the storm a sail would be a rag. But his was the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 367
excessive feebleness of the rag, which the wind inflates till it
tears it. He felt himself sinking. Was he about to fall
without consciousness on the pavement? To faint is the
resource of a woman, and the humiliation of a man. He
hardened himself, but he trembled. He felt as one losing
his footing.
CHAPTER VIII.
LAMENTATION.
THEY began to move forward.
They advanced through the passage.
There was no preliminary registry, no place of record.
The prisons in those times were not overburdened with
documents. They were content to close round you without
knowing why. To be a prison, and to hold prisoners,
sufficed.
The procession was obliged to lengthen itself out, taking
the form of the corridor. They walked almost in single file;
first the wapentake, then Gwynplaine, then the justice of the
quorum, then the constables, advancing in a group, and
blocking up the passage behind Gwynplaine as with a bung.
The passage narrowed. Now Gwynplaine touched the walls
with both his elbows. In the roof, which was made of flints,
dashed with cement, was a succession of granite arches jutting
out, and still more contracting the passage. He had to
stoop to pass under them. No speed was possible in that
corridor. Any one trying to escape through it would have
been compelled to move slowly. The passage twisted. All
entrails are tortuous ; those of a prison as well as those of a
man. Here and there, sometimes to the right and sometimes
to the left, spaces in the wall, square and closed by large iron
gratings, gave glimpses of flights of stairs, some descending
and some ascending.
They reached a closed door; it opened. They passed
through, and it closed again. Then they came to a second
door, which admitted them; then to a third, which also turned
on its hinges. These doors seemed to open and shut of them-
selves. No one was to be seen. While the corridor contracted,
the roof grew lower, until at length it was impossible to
stand upright. Moisture exuded from the wall. Drops of
water fell from the vault. The slabs that paved the corri-
dor were clammy as an intestine. The diffused pallor that
368 THE LAUGHING MAtf.
served as light became more and more a pall. Air was
deficient, and, what was singularly ominous, the passage was
a descent.
Close observation was necessary to perceive that there was
such a descent. In darkness a gentle declivity is portentous.
Nothing is more fearful than the vague evils to which we are
led by imperceptible degrees.
It is awful to descend into unknown depths.
How long had they proceeded thus? Gwynplaine could
not tell.
Moments passed under such crushing agony seem im-
measurably prolonged.
Suddenly they halted.
The darkness was intense.
The corridor widened somewhat. Gwynplaine heard close
to him a noise of which only a Chinese gong could give an
idea; something like a blow struck against the diaphragm
of the abyss. It was the wapentake striking his wand against
a sheet of iron.
That sheet of iron was a door.
Not a door on hinges, but a door which was raised and let
down.
Something like a portcullis.
There was a sound of creaking in a groove, and Gwynplaine
was suddenly face to face with a bit of square light. The
sheet of metal had just been raised into a slit in the vault,
like the door of a mouse-trap.
An opening had appeared.
The light was not daylight, but glimmer; but on the
dilated eyeballs of Gwynplaine the pale and sudden ray
struck like a flash of lightning.
It was some time before he could see anything. To see
with dazzled eyes is as difficult as to see in darkness.
At length, by degrees, the pupil of his eye . became propor-
tioned to the light, just as it had been proportioned to the
darkness, and he was able to distinguish objects. The light,
which at first had seemed too bright, settled into its proper
hue and became livid. He cast a glance into the yawning
space before him, and what he saw was terrible.
At his feet were about twenty steps, steep, narrow, worn,
almost perpendicular, without balustrade on either side, a
sort of stone ridge cut out from the side of a wall into stairs,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 369
entering and leading into a very deep cell. They reached to
the bottom.
The cell was round, roofed by an ogee vault with a low
arch, from the fault of level in the top stone of the frieze, a
displacement common to cells under heavy edifices.
The kind of hole acting as a door, which the sheet of iron
had just revealed, and on which the stairs abutted, was
formed in the vault, so that the eye looked down from it as
into a well.
The cell was large, and if it was the bottom of a well, it
must have been a cyclopean one. The idea that the old word
" cul-de-basse-fosse " awakens in the mind can only be applied
to it if it were a lair of wild beasts.
The cell was neither flagged nor paved. The bottom was
of that cold, moist earth peculiar to deep places.
In the midst of the cell, four low and disproportioned
columns sustained a porch heavily ogival, of which the four
mouldings united in the interior of the porch, something like
the inside of a mitre. This porch, similar to the pinnacles
under which sarcophagi were formerly placed, rose nearly to
the top of the vault, and made a sort of central chamber in
the cavern, if that could be called a chamber which had only
pillars in place of walls.
From the key of the arch hung a brass lamp, round and
barred like the window of a prison. This lamp threw around
it — on the pillars, on the vault, on the circular wall which
was seen dimly behind the pillars — a wan ligh^, cut by bars
of shadow.
This was the light which had at first dazzled Gwynplaine;
now it threw out only a confused redness.
There was no other light in the cell — neither window, nor
door, nor loophole.
Between the four pillars, exactly below the lamp, in the
spot where there was most light, a pale and terrible form lay
on the ground.
It was lying on its back; a head was visible, of which the
eyes were shut; a body, of which the chest was a shapeless
mass ; four limbs belonging to the body, in the position of the
cross of Saint Andrew, were drawn towards the four pillars by
four chains fastened to each foot and each hand.
These chains were fastened to an Iron ring at the base of
each column. The form was held immovable, in the horrible
370 THE LAUGHING MAN.
position of being quartered, and had the icy look of a livid
corpse.
It was naked. It was a man.
Gwynplaine, as if petrified, stood at the top of the stairs,
looking down. Suddenly he heard a rattle in the throat.
The corpse was alive.
Close to the spectre, in one of the ogives of the door, on
each side of a great seat, which stood on a large flat
stone, stood two men swathed in long black "cloaks; and
on the seat an old man was sitting, dressed in a red robe —
wan, motionless, and ominous, holding a bunch of roses in his
hand.
The bunch of roses would have enlightened any one less
ignorant that Gwynplaine. The right of judging with a nose-
gay in his hand implied the holder to be a magistrate, at once
royal and municipal. The Lord Mayor of London still keeps
up the custom. To assist the deliberations of the judges
was the function of the earliest roses of the season.
The old man seated on the bench was the sheriff of the
county of Surrey.
His was the majestic rigidity of a Roman dignitary.
The bench was the only seat in the cell.
By the side of it was a table covered with papers and books,
on which lay the long, white wand of the sheriff. The men
standing by the side of the sheriff were two doctors, one of
medicine, the other of law; the latter recognizable by the
Serjeant's coif over his wig. Both wore black robes — one of
the shape worn by judges, the other by doctors.
Men of these kinds wear mourning for the deaths of which
they are the cause.
Behind the sheriff, at the edge of the flat stone under the
seat, was crouched — with a writing-table near to him, a
bundle of papers on his knees, and a sheet of parchment on
the bundle — a secretary, in a round wig, with a pen in his
hand, in the attitude of a man ready to write.
This secretary was of the class called keeper of the bag, as
was shown by a bag at his feet.
These bags, in former times employed in law processes,
were termed bags of justice.
With folded arms, leaning against a pillar, was a man
entirely dressed In leather, the hangman's assistant.
These men seemed as if they had been nxed by enchant-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 371
ment In their funereal postures round the chained man.
None of them spoke or moved.
There brooded over all a fearful calm.
What Gwynplaine saw was a torture chamber. There
were many such in England.
The crypt of Beauchamp Tower long served this purpose,
as did also the cell in the Lollards' prison. A place of this
nature is still to be seen in London, called " the Vaults of
Lady Place." In this last-mentioned chamber there is a
grate for the purpose of heating the irons.
All the prisons of King John's time (and Southwark Jail
was one) had their chambers of torture.
The scene which is about to follow was in those days a
frequent one in England, and might even, by criminal process,
be carried out to-day, since the same laws are still unrepealed.
England offers the curious sight of a barbarous code living
on the best terms with liberty. We confess that they make
an excellent family party.
Some distrust, however, might not be undesirable. In the
case of a crisis, a return to the penal code would not be im-
possible. English legislation is a tamed tiger with a velvet
paw, but the claws are still there. Cut the claws of the law,
and you will do well. Law almost ignores right. On one
side is penalty, on the other humanity. Philosophers protest;
but it will take some time yet before the justice of man is
assimilated to the justice of God.
Respect for the law : that is the English phrase. In Eng<
land they venerate so many laws, that they never repeal any.
They save themselves from the consequences of their venera-
tion by never putting them into execution. An old law falls
into disuse like an old woman, and they never think of killing
either one or the other. They cease to make use of them;
that is all. Both are at liberty to consider themselves still
young and beautiful. They may fancy that they are as they
were. This politeness is called respect.
Norman custom is very wrinkled. That does not prevent
many an English judge casting sheep's eyes at her. They
stick amorously to an antiquated atrocity, so long as it is
Norman. What can be more savage than the gibbet? In
1867 a man was sentenced to be cut into four quarters and
offered to a woman — the Queen.*
* The Fenian, Burke.
372 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Still, torture was never practised In England. History
asserts this as a fact. The assurance of history is wonderful.
Matthew of Westminster mentions that the " Saxon law,
very clement and kind," did not punish criminals by death;
and adds that " it limited itself to cutting off the nose and
scooping out the eyes." That was all I
Gwynplaine, scared and haggard, stood at the top of the
steps, trembling in every limb. He shuddered from head
to foot. He tried to remember what crime he had committed.
To the silence of the wapentake had succeeded the vision of
torture to be endured. It was a step, indeed, forward ; but a
tragic one. He saw the dark enigma of the law under the
power of which he felt himself increasing in obscurity.
The human form lying on the earth rattled in its throat
again.
Gwynplaine felt some one touching him gently on his
shoulder.
It was the wapentake.
Gwynplaine knew that meant that he was to descend.
He obeyed.
He descended the stairs step by step. They were very
narrow, each eight or nine inches in height. There was no
hand-rail. The descent required caution. Two steps be-
hind Gwynplaine followed the wapentake, holding up his
iron weapon ; and at the same interval behind the wapentake,
the justice of the quorum.
As he descended the steps, Gwynplaine felt an indescrib-
able extinction of hope. There was death in each step. In
each one that he descended there died a ray of the light
within him. Growing paler and paler, he reached the bottom
of the stairs.
The larva lying chained to the four pillars still rattled in
its throat.
A voice in the shadow said, —
" Approach I "
It was the sheriff addressing Gwynplaine.
Gwynplaine took a step forward.
" Closer," said the sheriff.
The justice of the quorum murmured in the ear of Gwyn-
plaine, so gravely that there was solemnity in the whisper,
" You are before the sheriff of the county of Surrey."
Gwynplaine advanced towards the victim extended in the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 373
centre of the cell. The wapentake and the justice of the
quorum remained where they were, allowing Gwynplaine to
advance alone.
When Gwynplaine reached the spot under the porch, close
to that miserable thing which he had hitherto perceived only
from a distance, but which was a living man, his fear rose to
terror. The man who was chained there was quite naked,
except for that rag so hideously modest, which might be
called the vineleaf of punishment, the succingulum of the
Romans, and the christipannus of the Goths, of which the old
Gallic jargon made cripagne. Christ wore but that shred on
the cross.
The terror-stricken sufferer whom Gwynplaine now saw
seemed a man of about fifty or sixty years of age. He was
bald. Grizzly hairs of beard bristled on his chin. His eyes
were closed, his mouth open. Every tooth was to be seen.
His thin and bony face was like a death's-head. His arms
and legs were fastened by chains to the four stone pillars in
the shape of the letter X. He had on his breast and belly
a plate of iron, and on this iron five or six large stones were
laid. His rattle was at times a sigh, at times a roar.
The sheriff, still holding his bunch of roses, took from the
table with the hand which was free his white wand, and
standing up said, " Obedience to her Majesty."
Then he replaced the wand upon the table.
Then in words long-drawn as a knell, without a gesture,
and immovable as the sufferer, the sheriff, raising his voice,
said, —
" Man, who liest here bound in chains, listen for the last
time to the voice of justice; you have been taken from your
dungeon and brought to this jail. Legally summoned in the
usual forms, for mains verbis pressus ; not regarding to
lectures and communications which have been made, and
which will now be repeated, to you; inspired by a bad and
perverse spirit of tenacity, you have preserved silence, and
refused to answer the judge. This is a detestable licence,
which constitutes, among deeds punishable by cashlit, the
crime and misdemeanour of overseness."
The serjeant of the coif on the right of the sheriff inter-
rupted him, and said, with an indifference indescribably
lugubrious in its effect, " Overhernessa. Laws of Alfred anrl
of Godrun, chapter the sixth,"
374 THE LAUGHING MAN.
The sheriff resumed.
" The law is respected by all except by scoundrels who
infest the woods where the hinds bear young."
Like one clock striking after another, the serjeant said, —
" Qui f^iunt vastum in foresta ubi damce solent founinare."
"He who refuses to answer the magistrate," said the
sheriff, " is suspected of every vice. He is reputed capable
of every evil."
The serjeant interposed.
" Prodigus, devorator, profusus, salax, ruffianus, ebriosus,
luxuriosus, simulator, consumptor patrimonii, elluo, ambro,
et gluto."
" Every vice," said the sheriff, " means every crime. He
who confesses nothing, confesses everything. He who holds
his peace before the questions of the judge is in fact a liar
and a parricide."
" Mendax et parricida" said the serjeant.
The sheriff said,—
" Man, it is not permitted to absent oneself by silence. To
pretend contumaciousness is a wound given to the law. It
is like Diomede wounding a goddess. Taciturnity before a
judge is a form of rebellion. Treason to justice is high
treason. Nothing is more hateful or rash. He who resists
interrogation steals truth. The law has provided for this.
For such cases., the English have always enjoyed the right of
the foss, the fork, and chains."
" Anglica Charta, year 1088," said the serjeant. Then
with the same mechanical gravity he added, " Ferrum, et
foss am, et f ureas cum aliis libertatibus."
The sheriff continued, —
" Man! Forasmuch as you have not chosen to break
silence, though of sound mind and having full knowledge in
respect of the subject concerning which justice demands an
answer, and forasmuch as you are diabolically refractory,
you have necessarily been put to torture, and you have been,
by the terms of the criminal statutes, tried by the ' Peine
forte et dure.' This is what has been done to you, for the law
requires that I should fully Inform you. You have been
brought to this dungeon. You have been stripped of your
clothes. You have been laid on your back naked on the
ground, your limbs have been stretched and tied to the four
pillars of the law; a sheet of Iron has been placed on your
THE LAUGHING MAN. 375
chest, and as many stones as you can bear have been heaped
on your belly, ' and more/ says the law."
" Plusque," affirmed the Serjeant.
The sheriff continued, —
" In this situation, and before prolonging the torture, a
second summons to answer and to speak has been made you
by me, sheriff of the county of Surrey, and you have satanic-
ally kept silent, though under torture, chains, shackles,
fetters, and irons."
" Attachiamenta leg alia," said the Serjeant.
" On your refusal and contumacy," said the sheriff, " it
being right that the obstinacy of the law should equal the
obstinacy of the criminal, the proof has been continued
according to the edicts and texts. The first day you were
given nothing to eat or drink."
" Hoc est superfefunare," said the Serjeant.
There was silence, the awful hiss of the man's breathing
was heard from under the heap of stones,,
The serjeant-at-law completed his quotation.
" Adde augmentum abstinent! & ciborum diminutione.
Consuetude brittanica, art. 504."
The two men, the sheriff and the serjeant, alternated.
Nothing could be more dreary than their imperturbable
monotony. The mournful voice responded to the ominous
voice; it might be said that the priest and the deacon of
punishment were celebrating the savage mass of the law.
The sheriff resumed, —
" On the first day you were given nothing to eat or drink.
On the second day you were given food, but nothing to drink.
Between your teeth were thrust three mouthfuls of barley
bread. On the third day they gave you to drink, but nothing
to eat. They poured into your mouth at three different
times, and in three different glasses, a pint of water taken
from the common sewer of the prison. The fourth day is
come. It is to-day. Now, if you do not answer, you will be
left here till you die. Justice wills it."
The serjeant, ready with his reply, appeared.
" Mors rei homagium est bonce legi."
" And while you feel yourself dying miserably," resumed
the sheriff, " no one will attend to you, even when the blood
rushes from your throat, your chin, and your armpits, and
every pore, from the mouth to the loins."
376 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" A throtabolla," said the Serjeant, " et pabu ct subhircis et
a grugno usque ad crupponum."
The sheriff continued, —
" Man, attend to me, because the consequences concern
you. If you renounce your execrable silence, and if you
confess, you will only be hanged, and you will have a right to
the meldefeoh, which is a sum of money."
" Damnum confitens," said the serjeant, " habeat le melde-
feoh. Leges Ina, chapter the twentieth."
" Which sum," insisted the sheriff, " shaU be paid in
doitkins, suskins, and galihalpens, the only case in which
this money is to pass, according to the terms of the statute
of abolition, in the third of Henry V., and you will have the
right and enjoyment of scortum ante mortem, and then be
hanged on the gibbet. Such are the advantages of confes-
sion. Does it please you to answer to justice? "
The sheriff ceased and waited.
The prisoner lay motionless*
The sheriff resumed, —
" Man, silence is a refuge in which there is more risk than
safety. The obstinate man is damnable and vicious. He
who is silent before justice is a felon to the crown. Do not
persist in this unfilial disobedience. Think of her Majesty.
Do not oppose our gracious queen. When I speak to you,
answer her; be a loyal subject."
The patient rattled in the throat.
The sheriff continued, —
" So, after the seventy- two hours of the proof, here we are
at the fourth day. Man, this is the decisive day. The
fourth day has been fixed by the law for the confrontation."
" Quarta die, frontem ad frontem adduce," growled the
serjeant.
" The wisdom of the law," continued the sheriff, " has
chosen this last hour to hold what our ancestors called
' judgment by mortal cold, seeing that it is the moment when
men are believed on their yes or their no."
The serjeant on the right confirmed his words.
" Judicium pro frodmortell, quod homines credendi sint per
suum ya et per suum no. Charter of King Adelstan, volume
the first, page one hundred and sixty-three."
There was a moment's pause; then the sheriff bent his
item iacd towards the prisoner.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 37?
" Man, who art lying there on the ground "
He paused.
" Man," he cried, " do you hear me? "
The man did not move.
" In the name of the law," said the sheriff, "open your
eyes."
The man's lids remained closed.
The sheriff turned to the doctor, who was standing on his
left.
" Doctor, give your diagnostic."
" Probe , da diagnosticum," said the serjeant.
The doctor came down with magisterial stiffness, ap-
proached the man, leant over him, put his ear close to the
mouth of the sufferer, felt the pulse at the wrist, the armpit,
and the thigh, then rose again.
" Well? " said the sheriff.
" He can still hear," said the doctor.
" Can he see? " inquired the sheriff.
The doctor answered, " He can see."
On a sign from the sheriff, the justice of the quorum and
the wapentake advanced. The wapentake placed himself
near the head of the patient. The justice of the quorum
stood behind Gwynplaine.
The doctor retired a step behind the pillars.
Then the sheriff, raising the bunch of roses as a priest about
to sprinkle holy water, called to the prisoner in a loud voice,
and became awful.
" O wretched man, speak 1 The law supplicates before
she exterminates you. You, who feign to be mute, remember
how mute is the tomb. You, who appear deaf, remember
that damnation is more deaf. Think of the death which is
worse than your present state. Repent I You are about to
be left alone in this cell. Listen ! you who are my likeness ;
for I am a man! Listen, my brother, because I am a
Christian 1 Listen, my son, because I am an old manl
Look at me; for I am the master of your sufferings, and I
am about to become terrible. The terrors of the law make
up the majesty of the judge. Believe that I myself tremble
before myself. My own power alarms me. Do not drive me
to extremities. I am filled by the holy malice of chastise-
ment. Feel, then, wretched man, the salutary and honest
fear of justice, and obey me. The hour of confrontation is
3;8 THE LAUGHING MAN.
come, and you must answer. Do not harden yourself in
resistance. Do not that which will be irrevocable. Think
that your end belongs to me. Half man, half corpse, listen 1
At least, let it not be your determination to expire here,
exhausted for hours, days, and weeks, by frightful agonies of
hunger and foulness, under the weight of those stones, alone
in this cell, deserted, forgotten, annihilated, left as food for
the rats and the weasels, gnawed by creatures of darkness
while the world comes and goes, buys and sells, whilst
carriages roll in the streets above your head. Unless you
would continue to draw painful breath without remission in
the depths of this despair — grinding your teeth, weeping,
blaspheming — without a doctor to appease the anguish of
your wounds, without a priest to offer a divine draught of
water to your soul. Ohl if only that you may not feel the
frightful froth of the sepulchre ooze slowly from your lips, I
adjure and conjure you to hear me. I call you to your own
aid. Have pity on yourself. Do what is asked of you.
Give way to justice. Open your eyes, and see if you recog-
nize this manl "
The prisoner neither turned his head nor lifted his eyelids.
The sheriff cast a glance first at the justice of the quorum
and then at the wapentake.
The justice of the quorum, taking Gwynplaine's hat and
mantle, put his hands on his shoulders and placed him in the
light by the side of the chained man. The face of Gwyn-
plaine stood out clearly from the surrounding shadow in its
strange relief.
At the same time, the wapentake bent down, took the
man's temples between his hands, turned the inert head
towards Gwynplaine, and with his thumbs and his first
fingers lifted the closed eyelids.
The prisoner saw Gwynplaine. Then, raising his head
voluntarily, and opening his eyes wide, he looked at him.
He quivered as much as a man can quiver with a mountain
on his breast, and then cried out, —
"Tishel Yes; 'tis he 1 "
And he burst into a horrible laugh.
^'Tis he I "he repeated.
Then his head fell back on the ground, and he closed his
eyes again.
" Registrar, take that down," said the justice.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 379
Gwynplaine, though terrified, had, up to that moment,
E reserved a calm exterior. The cry of the prisoner, " 'Tis
el " overwhelmed him completely. The words, " Registrar,
take that down! " froze him. It seemed to him that a
scoundrel had dragged him to his fate without his being able
to guess why, and that the man's unintelligible confession
was closing round him like the clasp of an iron collar. He
fancied himself side by side with him in the posts of the same
pillory. Gwynplaine lost his footing in his terror, and pro-
tested. He began to stammer incoherent words in the deep
distress of an innocent man, and quivering, terrified, lost,
uttered the first random outcries that rose to his mind, and
words of agony like aimless projectiles.
*' It is not true. It was not me. I do not know the man.
He cannot know me, since I do not know him. I have my
part to play this eveningo What do you want of me? I
demand my liberty. Nor is that all. Why have I been
brought into this dungeon ? Are there laws no longer ? You
may as well say at once that there are no laws. My Lord
Judge, I repeat that it is not I. I am innocent of all that can
be said. I know I am. I wish to go away. This is not
justice. There is nothing between this man and me. You
can find out. My life is not hidden up. They came and took
me away like a thief. Why did they come like that ? How
could I know the man ? I am a travelling mountebank, who
plays farces at fairs and markets. I am the Laughing Man.
Plenty of people have been to see me. We are staying in
Tarrinzeau Field. I have been earning an honest livelihood
these fifteen years. I am five-and-twenty. I lodge at the
Tadcaster Inn. I am called Gwynplaine. My lord, let me
out. You should not take advantage of the low estate of
the unfortunate. Have compassion on a man who has done
no harm, who is without protection and without defence.
You have before you a poor mountebank."
" I have before me," said the sheriff, " Lord Fermain Clan-
charlie, Baron Clancharlie and Hunkerville, Marquis of
Corleone in Sicily, and a peer of England."
Rising, and offering his chair to Gwynplaine, the sheriff
added, —
" My lord, will]your lordship deign to seat yourself? "
BOOK THE FIFTH.
THE SEA AND FATE ARE MOVED BY
THE SAME BREATH.
CHAPTER I.
THE DURABILITY OF FRAGILE THINGS.
DESTINY sometimes proffers us a glass of madness to drink.
A hand is thrust out of the mist, and suddenly hands us the
mysterious cup in which is contained the latent intoxication.
Gwynplaine did not understand.
He looked behind him to see who it was who had been
addressed.
A sound may t>e too sharp to be perceptible to the ear ; an
emotion too acute conveys no meaning to the mind. There
is a limit to comprehension as well as to hearing.
The wapentake and the justice of the quorum approached
Gwynplaine and took him by the arms. He felt himself
placed in the chair which the sheriff had just vacated. He
let it be done, without seeking an explanation.
When Gwynplaine was seated, the justice of the quorum
and the wapentake retired a few steps, and stood upright and
motionless, behind the seat.
Then the sheriff placed his bunch of roses on the stone
table, put on spectacles which the secretary gave him, drew
from the bundles of papers which covered the table a sheet of
parchment, yellow, green, torn, and jagged in places, which
seemed to have been folded in very small folds, and of which
one side was covered with writing; standing under the light
THE LAUGHING MAN. 381
of the lamp, he held the sheet close to his eyes, and in. his
most solemn, tone read as follows : —
" In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
" This present day, the twenty-ninth of January, one
thousand six hundred and ninetieth year of our Lord.
" Has been wickedly deserted on the desert coast of Port-
land, with the intention of allowing him to perish of hunger,
of cold, and of solitude, a child ten years old.
" That child was sold at the age of two years, by order of
his most gracious Majesty, King James the Second.
" That child is Lord Fermain Clancharlie, the only legiti-
mate son of Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie, Baron Clancharlie and
Hunkerville, Marquis of Corleone in Sicily, a peer of England,
and of Ann Bradshaw, his wife, both deceased. That child
is the inheritor of the estates and titles of his father. For
this reason he was sold, mutilated, disfigured, and put out of
the way by desire of his most gracious Majesty.
" That child was brought up, and trained to be a mounte-
bank at markets and fairs.
" He was sold at the age of two, after the death of the peer,
his father, and ten pounds sterling were given to the king as
his purchase-money, as well as for divers concessions, tolera-
tions, and immunities.
" Lord Fermain Clancharlie, at the age of two years, was
bought by me, the undersigned, who write these lines, and
mutilated and disfigured by a Fleming of Flanders, called
Hardquanonne, who alone is acquainted with the secrets and
modes of treatment of Doctor Conquest.
" The child was destined by us to be a laughing mask
(masca ridens).
" With this intention Hardquanonne performed on him
the operation, Bucca fissa usque ad aures, which stamps an
everlasting laugh upon the face.
" The child, by means known only to Hardquanonne, was
put to sleep and made insensible during its performance,
knowing nothing of the operation which he underwent.
" He does not know that he is Lord Clancharlie.
" He answers to the name of Gwynplaine.
" This fact is the result of his youth, and the slight powers
of memory he could have had when he was bought and sold,
being then barely two years old.
" Hardquanoune is the only person who knows how to per-
382 THE LAUGHING MAN.
form the operation Bucca fissa, and the said child is the only
living subject upon which it has been essayed.
" The operation is so unique and singular that though
after long years this child should have come to be an
old man instead of a child, and his black locks should have
turned white, he would be immediately recognized by Hard-
quanonne.
" At the time that I am writing this, Hardqnanonne, who
has perfect knowledge of all the facts, and participated as
principal therein, is detained in the prisons of his highness
the Prince of Orange, commonly called King William III.
Hardquanonne was apprehended and seized as being one
of the band of Comprachicos or Cheylas. He is imprisoned
in the dungeon of Chatham.
" It was in Switzerland, near the Lake of Geneva, between
Lausanne and Vevey, in the very house in which his father
and mother died, that the child was, in obedience with the
orders of the king, sold and given up by the last servant of the
deceased Lord Linnaeus, which servant died soon after his
master, so that this secret and delicate matter is now unknown
to any one on earth, excepting Hardquanonne, who is in the
dungeon of Chatham, and ourselves, now about to perish.
" We, the undersigned, brought up and kept, for eight
years, for professional purposes, the little lord bought by us
of the king.
" To-day, flying from England to avoid Hardquanonne's
ill-fortune, our fear of the penal indictments, prohibitions,
and fulminations of Parliament has induced us to desert, at
night-fall, on the coastof Portland, the said child Gwynplaine,
who is Lord Fermain Clancharlie.
" Now, we have sworn secrecy to the king, but not to God.
" To-night, at sea, overtaken by a violent tempest by the
will of Providence, full of despair and distress, kneeling before
Him who could save our lives, and may, perhaps, be willing
to save our souls, having nothing more to hope from men, but
everything to fear from God, having for only anchor and
resource repentance of our bad actions, resigned to death,
and content if Divine justice be satisfied, humble, penitent,
and beating our breasts, we make this declaration, and con-
fide and deliver it to the furious ocean to use as it best may
according to the will of God. And may the Holy Virgin
aid us, Amen. And we attach our signatures."
THE LAUGHING MAN. 383
The sheriff Interrupted, saying, —
" Here are the signatures. All in different handwritings."
And he resumed, —
" Doctor Gernardus Geestemunde. — Asuncion. — A cross,
and at the side of it, Barbara Fermoy, from Tyrryf Isle,
in the Hebrides; Gaizdorra, Captain; Giangirate; Jacques
Quartourze, alias le Narbonnais; Luc-Pierre Capgaroupe,
from the galleys of Mahon."
The sheriff, after a pause, resumed, a " note written in the
same hand as the text and the first signature," and he
read, —
" Of the three men comprising the crew, the skipper having
been swept off by a wave, there remain but two, and we
have signed, Galdeazun; Ave Maria, Thief."
The sheriff, interspersing his reading with his own observa-
tions, continued, " At the bottom of the sheet is written, —
" ' At sea, on board of the Matutina, Biscay hooker, from
the Gulf de Pasages.' This sheet," added the sheriff, " is
alegal document, bearing the mark of King James the Second.
On the margin of the declaration, and in the same hand-
writing there is this note, ' The present declaration is
written by us on the back of the royal order, which was given
us as our receipt when we bought the child. Turn the leaf
and the order will be seen.' "
The sheriff turned the parchment, and raised it in his right
hand, to expose it to the light.
A blank page was seen, if the word blank can be applied to
a thing so mouldy, and in the middle of the page three words
were written, two Latin words, Jussu regis, and a signature,
Jeffreys.
"Jussu regis, Jeffreys," said the sheriff, passing from a
grave voice to a clear one.
Gwynplaine was as a man on whose head a tile falls from
the palace of dreams.
He began to speak, like one who speaks unconsciously.
" Gernardus, yes, the doctor. An old, sad-looking man.
I was afraid of him. Gaizdorra, Captain, that means chief.
There were women, Asuncion, and the other. And then the
Provengal. His name was Capgaroupe. He used to drink
out of a flat bottle on which there was a name written in
red."
" Behold it," said the sheriff.
584 THE LAUGHING MAN.
He placed on the table something which the secretary had
just taken out of the bag. It was a gourd, with handles like
ears, covered with wicker. This bottle had evidently seen
service, and had sojourned in the water. Shells and seaweed
adhered to it. It was encrusted and damascened over with
the rust of ocean. There was a ring of tar round its neck,
showing that it had been hermetically sealed. Now it was
unsealed and open. They had, however, replaced in the
flask a sort of bung made of tarred oakum, which had been
used to cork it.
" It was in this bottle," said the sheriff, " that the men
about to perish placed the declaration which I have just read.
This message addressed to justice has been faithfully delivered
by the sea."
The sheriff increased the majesty of his tones, and con-
tinued,—
" In the same way that Harrow Hill produces excellent
wheat, which is turned into fine flour for the royal table, so
the sea renders every service in its power to England, and
when a nobleman is lost finds and restores him."
Then he resumed, —
" On this flask, as you say, there is a name written in red."
He raised his voice, turning to the motionless prisoner, —
" Your name, malefactor, is here. Such are the hidden
channels by which truth, swallowed up in the gulf of human
actions, floats to the surface0"
The sheriff took the gourd, and turned to the light one of
its sides, which had, no doubt, been cleaned for the ends of
justice. Between the interstices of wicker was a narrow line
of red reed, blackened here and there by the action of water
and of time.
The reed, notwithstanding some breakages, traced dis-
tinctly in the wicker-work these twelve letters — Hardqua-
nonne.
Then the sheriff, resuming that monotonous tone of voice
which resembles nothing else, and which may be termed a
judicial accent, turned towards the sufferer.
" Hardquanonne! when by us, the sheriff, this bottle, on
which is your name, was for the first time shown, exhibited,
and presented to you, you at once, and willingly, recognized
it as having belonged to you. Then, the parchment being
read to you which was contained, folded and enclosed within
THE LAUGHING MAN, 385
It, you would say no more; and In the hope, doubtless, that
the lost child would never be recovered, and that you would
escape punishment, you refuse to answer. As the result of
your refusal, you have had applied to you the peine forte et
dure; and the second reading of the said parchment, on
which is written the declaration and confession of your accom-
plices, was made to you, but in vain.
" This is the fourth day, and that which is legally set apart
for the confrontation, and he who was deserted on the twenty-
ninth of January, one thousand six hundred and ninety,
having been brought into your presence, your devilish hope
has vanished, you have broken silence, and recognized your
victim."
The prisoner opened his eyes, lifted his head, and, with a
voice strangely resonant of agony, but which had still an
indescribable calm mingled with its hoarseness, pronounced
in excruciating accents, from under the mass of stones, words
to pronounce each of which he had to lift that which was like
the slab of a tomb placed upon him. He spoke, —
" I swore to keep the secret. I have kept it as long as I
could. Men of dark lives are faithful, and hell has its honour.
Now silence is useless. So be it! For this reason I speak.
Well — yes ; 'tis he 1 We did it between us — the king and I :
the king, by his will; I, by my art 1 "
And looking at Gwynplaine, —
" Now laugh for ever I "
And he himself began to laugh.
This second laugh, wilder yet than the first, might have
been taken for a sob.
The laughed ceased, and the man lay back. His eyelids
closed.
The sheriff, who had allowed the prisoner to speak, re-
sumed,—
" All which is placed on record.'*
He gave the secretary time to write, and then said, —
" Hardquanonne, by the terms of the law, after confronta-
tion followed by identification, after the third reading of the
declarations of your accomplices, since confirmed by your
recognition and confession, and after your renewed avowal,
you are about to be relieved from these irons, and placed at
the good pleasure of her Majesty to be hung as plagiary."
" Plagiary," aa^id the serjeant of the coif. " That is to say, a
13
386 THE LAUGHING MAN.
buyer and seller of children. Law of the Visigoths, seventh
book, third section, paragraph Usurpaverit, and Salic law,
section the forty-first, paragraph the second, and law of the
Prisons, section the twenty-first, Deplagio; and Alexander
Nequam says, —
" ' Qui pueros vendis, plagiarius est tibi nomen.' '
The sheriff placed the parchment on the table, laid down
his spectacles, took up the nosegay, and said, —
" End of la peine forte et dure. Hardquanonne, thank her
Majesty."
By a sign the justice of the quorum set in motion the man
dressed in leather.
This man, who was the executioner's assistant, " groom of
the gibbet," the old charters call him, went to the prisoner,
took off the stones, one by one, from his chest, and lifted the
plate of iron up, exposing the wretch's crushed sides. Then
he freed his wrists and ankle-bones from the four chains that
fastened him to the pillars.
The prisoner, released alike from stones and chains, lay flat
on the ground, his eyes closed, his arms and legs apart, like a
crucified man taken down from a cross.
" Hardquanonne," said the sheriff, " arise! "
The prisoner did not move.
The groom of the gibbet took up a hand and let it go; the
hand fell back. The other hand, being raised, fell back
likewise.
The groom of the gibbet seized one foot and then the other,
and the heels fell back on the ground.
The fingers remained inert, and the toes motionless. The
naked feet of an extended corpse seem, as it were, to bristle.
The doctor approached, and drawing from the pocket of
his robe a little mirror of steel, put it to the open mouth of
Hardquanonne. Then with his fingers he opened the eyelids.
They did not close again ; the glassy eyeballs remained
fixed.
The doctor rose up and said,— •
" He is dead."
And he added, —
" He laughed; that killed him."
' Tis of little consequence," said the sheriff. " After
confession, life or death is a mere formality."
Then pointing to Hardquanonne by a gesture with the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 387
nosegay of roses, the sheriff gave the order to the wapen-
take, —
" A corpse to be carried away to-night."
The wapentake acquiesced by a nod.
And the sheriff added, —
" The cemetery of the jail is opposite."
The wapentake nodded again.
The sheriff, holding in his left hand the nosegay and in his
right the white wand, placed himself opposite Gwynplaine,
who was still seated, and made him a low bow; then assum-
ing another solemn attitude, he turned his head over his
shoulder, and looking Gwynplaine in the face, said, —
" To you here present, we Philip Denzill Parsons, knight,
sheriff of the county of Surrey, assisted by Aubrey Dominick,
Esq., our clerk and registrar, and by our usual officers, duly
provided by the direct and special commands of her Majesty,
in virtue of our commission, and the rights and duties of our
charge, and with authority from the Lord Chancellor of
England, the affidavits having been drawn up and recorded,
regard being had to the documents communicated by the
Admiralty, after verification of attestations and signatures,
after declarations read and heard, after confrontation made,
all the statements and legal information having been com-
pleted, exhausted, and brought to a good and just issue — we
signify and declare to you, in order that right may be done,
that you are Fermain Clancharlie, Baron Clancharlie and
Hunkerville, Marquis de Corleone in Sicily, and a peer of
England; and God keep your lordship! "
And he bowed to him.
The serjeant on the right, the doctor, the justice of the
quorum, the wapentake, the secretary, all the attendants
except the executioner, repeated his salutation still more
respectfully, and bowed to the ground before Gwynplaine.
" Ah," said Gwynplaine, " awake me! "
And he stood up, pale as death.
" I come to awake you indeed," said a voice which had not
yet been heard.
A man came out from behind the pillars. As no one had
entered the cell since the sheet of iron had given passage to
the cortige of police, it was clear that this man had been there
in the shadow before Gwynplaine had entered, that he had a
regular right of attendance, and had been present by ap-
388 THE LAUGHING MAN,
pointment and mission. The man was fat and pursy, and
wore a court wig and a travelling cloak.
He was rather old than young, and very precise.
He saluted Gwynplaine with ease and respect — with the
ease of a gentleman-in-waiting, and without the awkward-
ness of a judge.
" Yes," he said; " I have come to awaken you. For
twenty-five years you have slept. You have been dreaming.
It is time to awake. You believe yourself to be Gwynplaine ;
you are Clancharlie. You believe yourself to be one of the
people ; you belong to the peerage. You believe yourself to
be of the lowest rank; you are of the highest. You believe
yourself a player; you are a senator. You believe yourself
poor; you are wealthy. You believe yourself to be of no
account; you are important. Awake, my lord I "
Gwynplaine, in a low voice, in which a tremor of fear was
to be distinguished, murmured, —
" What does it all mean? "
" It means, my lord," said the fat man, " that I am called
Barkilphedro; that I am an officer of the Admiralty; that
this waif, the flask of Hardquanonne, was found on the
beach, and was brought to be unsealed by me, according to
the duty and prerogative of my office ; that I opened it in the
presence of two sworn jurors of the Jetsam Office, both
members of Parliament, William Brathwait, for the city of
Bath, and Thomas Jervois, for Southampton; that the two
jurors deciphered and attested the contents of the flask, and
signed the necessary affidavit conjointly with me; that I
made my report to her Majesty, and by order of the queen all
necessary and legal formalities were carried out with the
discretion necessary in a matter so delicate; that the last
form, the confrontation, has just been carried out; that you
have £40,000 a year; that you are a peer of the United King-
dom of Great Britain, a legislator and a judge, a supreme
judge, a sovereign legislator, dressed in purple and ermine,
equal to princes, like unto emperors; that you have on your
brow the coronet of a peer, and that you are about to wed a
duchess, the daughter of a king."
Under this transfiguration, overwhelming him like a series
of thunderbolts, Gwynplaine fainted.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 389
CHAPTER IX.
THE WAIF KNOWS ITS OWN COURSE.
ALL this had occurred owing to the circumstance of a soldier
having found a bottle on the beach. We will relate the facts.
In all facts there are wheels within wheels.
One day one of the four gunners composing the garrison of
Castle Calshor picked up on the sand at low water a flask
covered with wicker, which had been cast up by the tide.
This flask, covered with mould, was corked by a tarred bung.
The soldier carried the waif to the colonel of the castle, and
the colonel sent it to the High Admiral of England. The
Admiral meant the Admiralty; with waifs, the Admiralty
meant Barkilphedro.
Barkilphedro, having uncorked and emptied the bottle,
carried it to the queen. The queen immediately took the
matter into consideration.
Two weighty counsellors were instructed and consulted —
namely, the Lord Chancellor, who is by law the guardian of
the king's conscience; and the Lord Marshal, who is referee
in Heraldry and in the pedigrees of the nobility. Thomas
Howard, Duke of Norfolk, a Catholic peer, who is hereditary
Earl Marshal of England, had sent word by his deputy Earl
Marshal, Henry Howard, Earl Bindon, that he would agree
with the Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chancellor was
William Cowper. We must not confound this chancellor
with his namesake and contemporary William Cowper, the
anatomist and commentator on Bidloo, who published a
treatise on muscles, in England, at the very time that
Etienne Abeille published a history of bones, in France. A
surgeon is a very,different thing from a lord. Lord William
Cowper is celebrated for having, with reference to the affair
of Talbot Yelverton, Viscount Longueville, propounded this
opinion: That in the English constitution the restoration
of a peer is more important than the restoration of a king.
The flask found at Calshor had awakened his interest in the
highest degree. The author of a maxim delights in oppor-
tunities to which it may be applied. Here was a case of the
restoration of a peer. Search was made. Gwynplaine, by
the inscription over his door, was soon found. Neither was
390 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Hardquanonne dead. A prison rots a man, but preserves
him — if to keep is to preserve. People placed in Bastiles
were rarely removed. There Is little more change in the
dungeon than in the tomb. Hardquanonne was still in
prison at Chatham. They had only to put their hands on
him. He was transferred from Chatham to London. In
the meantime information was sought in Switzerland. The
facts were found to be correct. They obtained from the
local archives at Vevey, at Lausanne, the certificate of Lord
Linnaeus's marriage in exile, the certificate of his child's
birth, the certificate of the decease of the father and mother;
and they had duplicates, duly authenticated, made to answer
all necessary requirements.
All this was done with the most rigid secrecy, with what is
called royal promptitude, and with that mole-like silence
recommended and practised by Bacon, and later on made
law by Blackstone, for affairs connected with the Chancellor-
ship and the state, and in matters termed parliamentary.
The jussu regis and the signature Jeffreys were authenticated.
To those who have studied pathologically the cases of caprice
called " our good will and pleasure," this jussu regis is very
simple. Why should James II., whose credit required the
concealment of such acts, have allowed that to be written
which endangered their success ? The answer is, cynicism—
haughty indifference. Oh I you believe that effrontery is
confined to abandoned women ? The raison d'etat is equally
abandoned. Et se cupit ante videri. To commit a crime and
emblazon it, there is the sum total of history. The king
tattooes himself like the convict. Often when it would be to
a man's greatest advantage to escape from the hands of the
police or the records of history, he would seem to regret the
escape so great is the love of notoriety. Look at my arm I
Observe the design 1 / am Lacenaire ! See,, a temple of love
and a burning heart pierced through with an arrow! Jussu
regis. It is I, James the Second. A man commits a bad
action, and places his mark upon it. To fill up the measure of
crime by effrontery, to denounce himself, to cling to his mis-
deeds, is the insolent bravado of the criminal. Christina seized
Monaldeschi, had him confessed and assassinated, and said, —
" I am the Queen of Sweden, in the palace of the King of
France."
There is the tyrant who conceals himself, like Tiberius;
THE LAUGHING MAN. 391
and the tyrant who displays himself, like Philip II. One has
the attributes of the scorpion, the other those rather of the
leopard. James II. was of this latter variety. He had,
we know, a gay and open countenance, differing so far
from Philip. Philip was sullen, James jovial. Both were
equally ferocious. James II. was an easy-minded tiger;
like Philip II., his crimes lay light upon his conscience. He
was a monster by the grace of God. Therefore he had noth-
ing to dissimulate nor to extenuate, and his assassinations
were by divine right. He, too, would not have minded
leaving behind him those archives of Simancas, with all his
misdeeds dated, classified, labelled, and put in order, each in
its compartment, like poisons in the cabinet of a chemist.
To set the sign-manual to crimes is right royal.
Every deed done is a draft drawn on the great invisible
paymaster. A bill had just come due with the ominous
endorsement, Jussu regis.
Queen Anne, in one particular unfeminine, seeing that she
could keep a secret, demanded a confidential report of so
grave a matter from the Lord Chancellor — one of the kind
specified as " report to the royal ear." Reports of this kind
have been common in all monarchies. At Vienna there was
" a counsellor of the ear " — an aulic dignitary. It was an
ancient Carlovingian office — the auricularius of the old
palatine deeds. He who whispers to the emperor.
William, Baron Cowper, Chancellor of England, whom the
queen believed in because he was short-sighted like herself,
or even more so, had committed to writing a memorandum
commencing thus: " Two birds were subject to Solomon — a
lapwing, the hudbud, who could speak all languages ; and an
eagle, the simourganka, who covered with the shadow of his
wings a caravan of twenty thousand men. Thus, under
another form, Providence," etc. The Lord Chancellor
proved the fact that the heir to a peerage had been carried
off, mutilated, and then restored. He did not blame James
II. , who was, after all, the queen's father. He even went so
far as to justify him. First, there are ancient monarchical
maxims. E senioratu eripimus. In roturagio cadat.
Secondly, there is a royal right of mutilation. Chamberlayne
asserts the fact.* Corpora et bona nostrorum subjectorum
* The life and the limbs of subjects depend on the king. Chamber-
layne, Part 2, chap, iv., p. 76.
392 THE LAUGHING MAN.
no sir a sunt, said James I., of glorious and learned memory.
The eyes of dukes of the blood royal have been plucked out
for the good of the kingdom. Certain princes, too near to
the throne, have been conveniently stifled between mat-
tresses, the cause of death being given out as apoplexy. Now
to stifle is worse than to mutilate. The King -of Tunis tore
out the eyes of his father, Muley Assem, and his ambassadors
have not been the less favourably received by the emperor.
Hence the king may order the suppression of a limb like the
suppression of a state, etc. It is legal. But one law does
not destroy another. " If a drowned man is cast up by the
water, and is not dead, it is an act of God readjusting one of
the king. If the heir be found, let the coronet be given back
to him. Thus was it done for Lord Alia, King of North-
umberland, who was also a mountebank. Thus should be
done to Gwynplaine, who is also a king, seeing that he is a
peer. The lowness of the occupation which he has been
obliged to follow, under constraint of superior power, does
not tarnish the blazon : as in the case of Abdolmumen, who
was a king, although he had been a gardener; that of Joseph,
who was a saint, although he had been a carpenter; that of
Apollo, who was a god, although he had been a shepherd."
In short, the learned chancellor concluded by advising the
reinstatement, in all his estates and dignities, of Lord Fermain
Clancharlie, miscalled Gwynplaine, on the sole condition that
he should be confronted with the criminal Hardquanonne,
and identified by the same. And on this point the chan-
cellor, as constitutional keeper of the royal conscience, based
the royal decision. The Lord Chancellor added in a postscript
that if Hardquanonne refused to answer he should be sub-
jected to the peine forte et dure, until the period called the
frodmortell, according to the statute of King Athelstane,
which orders the confrontation to take place on the fourth
day. In this there is a certain inconvenience, for if the
prisoner dies on the second or third day the confrontation
becomes difficult; still the law must be obeyed. The incon-
venience of the law makes part and parcel of it. In the mind
of the Lord Chancellor, however, the recognition of Gwyn-
plaine by Hardquanonne was indubitable.
Anne, having been made aware of the deformity of Gwyn-
plaine, and not wishing to wrong her sister, on whom had
been bestowed the estates of Clancharlie, graciously decided
THE LAUGHING MAN. 393
that the Duchess Josiana should be espoused by the new
lord — that is to say, by Gwynplaine.
The reinstatement of Lord Fermain Clancharlie was, more-
over, a very simple affair, the heir being legitimate, and in
the direct line.
In cases of doubtful descent, and of peerages in abeyance
claimed by collaterals, the House of Lords must be con-
sulted. This (to go no further back) was done in 1782, in
the case of the barony of Sydney, claimed by Elizabeth
Perry; in 1798, In that of the barony of Beaumont,
claimed by Thomas Stapleton; in 1803, in that of the
barony of Stapleton; in 1803, in that of the barony of
Chandos, claimed by the Reverend Tymewell Brydges ; in
1813, in that of the earldom of Banbury, claimed by General
Knollys, etc., etc. But the present was no similar case. Here
there was no pretence for litigation; the legitimacy was
undoubted, the right clear and certain. There was no point
to submit to the House, and the Queen, assisted by the Lord
Chancellor, had power to recognize and admit the new peer.
Barkilphedro managed everything.
The affair, thanks to him, was kept so close, the secret was
so hermetically sealed, that neither Josiana nor Lord David
caught sight of the fearful abyss which was being dug under
them. It was easy to deceive Josiana, entrenched as
she was behind a rampart of pride. She was self-isolated.
As to Lord David, they sent him to sea, off the coast of
Flanders. He was going to lose his peerage, and had no
suspicion of it. One circumstance is noteworthy.
It happened that at six leagues from the anchorage of
the naval station commanded by Lord David, a captain
called Halyburton broke through the French fleet. The Earl
of Pembroke, President of the Council, proposed that this
Captain Halyburton should be made vice-admiral. Anne
struck out Halyburton's name, and put Lord David Dirry-
Moir's in its place, that he might, when no longer a peer, have
the satisfaction of being a vice-admiral.
Anne was well pleased. A hideous husband for her sister,
and a fine step for Lord David. Mischief and kindness
combined.
Her Majesty was going to enjoy a comedy. Besides, she
argued to herself that she was repairing an abuse of power
committed by her august father. She was reinstating a
394 THE LAUGHING MAN.
member of the peerage. She was acting like a great queen ;
she was protecting innocence according to the will of God;
that Providence in its holy and impenetrable ways, etc., etc.
It is very sweet to do a just action which is disagreeable to
those whom we do not like.
To know that the future husband of her sister was de-
formed, sufficed the queen. In what manner Gwynplaine
was deformed, and by what kind of ugliness, Barkilphedro
had not communicated to the queen, and Anne had not
deigned to inquire. She was proudly and royally disdainful.
Besides, what could it matter? The House of Lords could
not but be grateful. The Lord Chancellor, its oracle, had ap-
proved. To restore a peer is to restore the peerage. Royalty
on this occasion had shown itself a good and scrupulous
guardian of the privileges of the peerage. Whatever might
be the face of the new lord, a face cannot be urged in ob-
jection to a right. Anne said all this to herself, or something
like it, and went straight to her object, an object at once
grand, womanlike, and regal — namely, to give herself a
pleasure.
The queen was then at Windsor — a circumstance which
placed a certain distance between the intrigues of the court
and the public. Only such persons as were absolutely neces-
sary to the plan were in the secret of what was taking place.
As to Barkilphedro, he was joyful — a circumstance which gave
a lugubrious expression to his face. If there be one thing in
the world which can be more hideous than another, 'tis joy.
He had had the delight of being the first to taste the con-
tents of Hardquanonne's flask. He seemed but little sur-
prised, for astonishment is the attribute of a little mind.
Besides, was it not all due to him, who had waited so long on
duty at the gate of chance ? Knowing how to wait, he had
fairly won his reward.
This nil admirari was an expression of face. At heart we
may admit that he was very much astonished. Any one
who could have lifted the mask with which he covered his
inmost heart even before God would have discovered this:
that at the very time Barkilphedro had begun to feel finally
convinced that it would be impossible — even to him, the
intimate and most infinitesimal enemy of Josiana — to find
a vulnerable point in her lofty life. Hence an access of
savage animosity lurked in his mind. He had reached tho
THE LAUGHING MAN. 395
paroxysm which is called discouragement. He was all the
more furious, because despairing. To gnaw one's chain —
how tragic and appropriate the expression 1 A villain gnaw-
ing at his own powerlessness 1
Barkilphedro was perhaps just on the point of renouncing
not his desire to do evil to Josiana, but his hope of doing it;
not the rage, but the effort. But how degrading to be thus
baffled 1 To keep hate thenceforth in a case, like a dagger in
a museum 1 How bitter the humiliation I
All at once to a certain goal — Chance, immense and uni-
versal, loves to bring such coincidences about — the flask of
Hardquanonne came, driven from wave to wave, into
Barkilphedro's hands. There is in the unknown an inde-
scribable fealty which seems to be at the beck and call of
evil. Barkilphedro, assisted by two chance witnesses, dis-
interested jurors of the Admiralty, uncorked the flask, found
the parchment, unfolded, read it. What words could express
his devilish delight I
It is strange to think that the sea, the wind, space, the ebb
and flow of the tide, storms, calms, breezes, should have given
themselves so muchtroubletobestowhappine^sonascoundreL
That co-operation had continued for fifteen years. Mysterious
efforts 1 During fifteen years the ocean had never for an
instant ceased from its labours. The waves transmitted
from one to another the floating bottle. The shelving rocks
had shunned the brittle glass; no crack had yawned in the
flask; no friction had displaced the cork; the sea- weeds had
not rotted the osier; the shells had not eaten out the word
" Hardquanonne; " the water had not penetrated into the
waif; the mould had not rotted the parchment; the wet had
not effaced the writing. What trouble the abyss must have
taken I Thus that which Gernardus had flung into darkness,
darkness had handed back to Barkilphedro. The message
sent to God had reached the devil. Space had committed
an abuse of confidence, and a lurking sarcasm which mingles
with events had so arranged that it had complicated the loyal
triumph of the lost child's becoming Lord Clancharlie with a
venomous victory: in doing a good action, it had mischiev-
ously placed justice at the service of iniquity. To save
the victim of James II. was to give a prey to Barkilphedro.
To reinstate Gwynplaine was to crush Josiana. Barkilphedro
had succeeded, and it was for this that for so many years the
396 THE LAUGHING MAN.
waves, the surge, the squalls had buffeted, shaken, thrown,
pushed, tormented, and respected this bubble of glass, which
bore within it so many commingled fates. It was for this
that there had been a cordial co-operation between the winds,
the tides, and the tempests — a vast agitation of all prodigies
for the pleasure of a scoundrel; the infinite co-operating with
an earthworm I Destiny is subject to such grim caprices.
Barkilphredo was struck by a flash of Titanic pride. He
said to himself that it had all been done to fulfil his intentions.
He felt that he was the object and the instrument.
But he was wrong. Let us clear the character of chance.
Such was not the real meaning of the remarkable circum-
stance of which the hatred of Barkilphedro was to profit.
Ocean had made itself father and mother to an orphan, had
sent the hurricane against his executioners, had wrecked the
vessel which had repulsed the child, had swallowed up the
clasped hands of the storm-beaten sailors, refusing their
supplications and accepting only their repentance ; the
tempest received a deposit from the hands of death. The
strong vessel containing the crime was replaced by the fragile
phial containing the reparation. The sea changed its char-
acter, and, like a panther turning nurse, began to rock the
cradle, not of the child, but of his destiny, whilst he grew up
ignorant of all that the depths of ocean were doing for him.
The waves to which this flask had been flung watching over
that past which contained a future; the whirlwind breathing
kindly on it; the currents directing the frail waif across the
fathomless wastes of water; the caution exercised by sea-
weed, the swells, the rocks; the vast froth of the abyss, taking
under its protection an innocent child ; the wave imperturb-
able as a conscience; chaos re-establishing order; the world-
wide shadows ending in radiance; darkness employed to
bring to light the star of truth ; the exile consoled in his tomb ;
the heir given back to his inheritance ; the crime of the king
repaired; divine premeditation obeyed; the little, the weak,
the deserted child with infinity for a guardian — all this
Barkilphedro might have seen in the event on which he
triumphed. This is what he did not see. He did not believe
that it had all been done for Gwynplaine. He fancied that it
had been effected for Barkilphedro, and that he was well
worth the trouble. Thus it is ever with Satan.
Moreover, ere we feel astonished that 9 waif so fragile
THE LAUGHING MAN. 397
should have floated for fifteen years undamaged, we should
seek to understand the tender care of the ocean. Fifteen
years is nothing. On the 4th of October 1867, on the coast
of Morbihan, between the Isle de Croix, the extremity of the
peninsula de Gavres, and the Rocher des Errants, the fisher-
men of Port Louis found a Roman amphora of the fourth
century, covered with arabesques by the incrustations of the
sea. That amphora had been floating fifteen hundred years.
Whatever appearance of indifference Barkilphedro tried to
exhibit, his wonder had equalled his joy. Everything he
could desire was there to his hand. All seemed ready made.
The fragments of the event which was to satisfy his hate were
spread out within his reach. He had nothing to do but to
pick them up and fit them together — a repair which it was an
amusement to execute. He was the artificer.
Gwynplainel He knew the name. Masca ridens. Like
every one else, he had been to see the Laughing Man. He
had read the sign nailed up against the Tadcaster Inn as one
reads a play-bill that attracts a crowd. He had noted it.
He remembered it directly in its most minute details ; and, in
any case, it was easy to compare them with the original. That
notice, in the electrical summons which arose in his memory,
appeared in the depths of his mind, and placed itself by the
side of the parchment signed by the shipwrecked crew, like
an answer following a question, like the solution following
an enigma; and the lines — " Here is to be seen Gwynplaine,
deserted at the age of ten, on the 29th of January, 1690, on
the coast at Portland " — suddenly appeared to his eyes in
the splendour of an apocalypse. His vision was the light
of Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, outside a booth. Here was the
destruction of the edifice which made the existence of Josiana.
A sudden earthquake. The lost child was found. There
was a Lord Clancharlie; David Dirry-Moir was nobody.
Peerage, riches, power, rank — all these things left Lord David
and entered Gwynplaine. All the castles, parks, forests,
town houses, palaces, domains, Josiana included, belonged
to Gwynplaine. And what a climax for Josiana ! What had
she now before her? Illustrious and haughty, a player;
beautiful, a monster. Who could have hoped for this ? The
truth was that the joy of Barkilphedro had become enthusi-
astic. The most hateful combinations are surpassed by the
infernal munificence of the unforeseen. When reality likes,
398 THE LAUGHING MAN.
it works masterpieces. Barkilphed.ro found that all his
dreams had been nonsense; reality were better.
The change he was about to work would not have seemed
less desirable had it been detrimental to him. Insects exist
which are so savagely disinterested that they sting, knowing
that to sting is to die. Barkilphedro was like such vermin.
But this time he had not the merit of being disinterested.
Lord David Dirry-Moir owed him nothing, and Lord Fermain
Clancharlie was about to owe him everything. From being
a protigb Barkilphedro was about to become a protector.
Protector of whom ? Of a peer of England. He was going
to have a lord of his own, and a lord who would be his creature.
Barkilphedro counted on giving him his first impressions.
His peer would be the morganatic brother-in-law of the queen.
His ugliness would please the queen in the same proportion as
it displeased Josiana. Advancing by such favour, and assum-
ing grave and modest airs, Barkilphedro might become a
somebody. He had always been destined for the church.
He had a vague longing to be a bishop.
Meanwhile he was happy.
Oh, what a great success ! and what a deal of useful work
had chance accomplished for him I His vengeance — for he
called it his vengeance — had been softly brought to him by
the waves. He had not lain in ambush in vain.
He was the rock, Josiana was the waif. Josiana was about
to be dashed against Barkilphedro, to his intense villainous
ecstasy.
He was clever in the art of suggestion, which consists in
making in the minds of others a little incision into which you
put an idea of your own. Holding himself aloof, and without
appearing to mix himself up in the matter, it was he who
arranged that Josiana should go to the Green Box and see
Gwynplaine. It could do no harm. The appearance of the
mountebank, in his low estate, would be a good ingredient in
the combination; later on it would season it.
He had quietly prepared everything beforehand. What
he most desired was something unspeakably abrupt. The
work on which he was engaged could only be expressed in
these strange words — the construction of a thunderbolt.
All preliminaries being complete, he had watched till all
the necessary legal formalities had been accomplished. The
secret had not oozed out, silence being an element of law.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 399
The confrontation of Hardquanonne with Gwynplaine had
taken place. Barkilphedro had been present. We have
seen the result.
The same day a post-chaise belonging to the royal house-
hold was suddenly sent by her Majesty to fetch Lady Josiana
from London to Windsor, where the queen was at the time
residing.
Josiana, for reasons of her own, would have been very glad
to disobey, or at least to delay obedience, and put off her
departure till next day; but court life does not permit of
these objections. She was obliged to set out at once, and to
leave her residence in London, Hunkerville House, for her
residence at Windsor, Corleone Lodge.
The Duchess Josiana left London at the very moment that
the wapentake appeared at the Tadcaster Inn to arrest
Gwynplaine and take him to the torture cell of South wark.
When she arrived at Windsor, the Usher of the Black Rod,
who guards the door of the presence chamber, informed her
that her Majesty was in audience with the Lord Chancellor,
and could not receive her until the next day; that, con-
sequently, she was to remain at Corleone Lodge, at the orders
of her Majesty; and that she should receive the queen's
commands direct, when her Majesty awoke the next morning.
Josiana entered her house feeling very spiteful, supped in a
bad humour, had the spleen, dismissed every one except her
page, then dismissed him, and went to bed while it was yet
daylight.
When she arrived she had learned that Lord David Dirry-
Moir was expected at Windsor the next day, owing to his
having, whilst at sea, received orders to return immediately
and receive her Majesty's commands.
CHAPTER III.
AN AWAKENING.
'•No man could pass suddenly from Siberia into Senegal without
losing consciousness." — HUMBOLDT.
THE swoon of a man, even of one the most firm and
energetic, under the sudden shock of an unexpected stroke of
good fortune, is nothing wonderful. A man is knocked down
by the uuf oreseeu blow, like an ox by the poleaxe. Francis
4oo THE LAUGHING MAN.
d'Albescola, he who tore from the Turkish ports their iroa
chains, remained a whole day without consciousness when
they made him pope. Now the stride from a cardinal to
a pope is less than tha'! from a mountebank to a peer of
England.
No shock is so violent as a loss of equilibrium.
When Gwynplaine came to himself and opened his eyes it
was night. He was in an armchair, in the midst of a large
chamber lined throughout with purple velvet, over walls,
ceiling, and floor. The carpet was velvet. Standing near
him, with uncovered head, was the fat man in the travelling
cloak, who had emerged from behind the pillar in the cell
at Southwark. Gwynplaine was alone in the chamber with
him. From the chair, by extending his arms, he could reach
two tables, each bearing a branch of six lighted wax candles.
On one of these tables there were papers and a casket, on the
other refreshments; a cold fowl, wine, and brandy, served
on a silver-gilt salver.
Through the panes of a high window, reaching from the
ceiling to the floor, a semicircle of pillars was to be seen, in
the clear April night, encircling a courtyard with three gates,
one very wide, and the other two low. The carriage gate,
of great size, was in the middle ; on the right, that for eques-
trians, smaller; on the left, that for foot passengers, still less.
These gates were formed of iron railings, with glittering
points. A tall piece of sculpture surmounted the central one.
The columns were probably in white marble, as well as the
pavement of the court, thus producing an effect like snow;
and framed in its sheet of flat flags was a mosaic, the pattern
of which was vaguely marked in the shadow. This mosaic,
when seen by daylight, would no doubt have disclosed to the
sight, with much emblazonry and many colours, a gigantic
coat-of-arms, in the Florentine fashion. Zigzags of balus-
trades rose and fell, indicating stairs of terraces. Over the
court frowned an immense pile of architecture, now shadowy
and vague in the starlight. Intervals of sky, full of stars,
marked out clearly the outline of the palace. An enormous
roof could be seen, with the gable ends vaulted; garret
windows, roofed over like visors ; chimneys like towers ; and
entablatures covered with motionless gods and goddesses.
Beyond the colonnade there played in the shadow one of
those fairy fountains in which, as the water falls from basin
THE LAUGHING MAN. 401
to basin, it combines the beauty of rain with that of the
cascade, and as if scattering the contents of a jewel box, flings
to the wind its diamonds and its pearls as though to divert
the statues around. Long rows of windows ranged away,
separated by panoplies, in relievo, and by busts on small
pedestals. On the pinnacles, trophies and morions with
plumes cut in stone alternated with statues of heathen
deities.
In the chamber where Gwynplaine was, on the side opposite
the window, was a fireplace as high as the ceiling, and on
another, under a dais, one of those old spacious feudal beds
which were reached by a ladder, and where you might sleep
lying across; the joint-stool of the bed was at its side; a row
of armchairs by the walls, and a row of ordinary chairs, in
front of them, completed the furniture. The ceiling was
domed. A great wood fire in the French fashion blazed in
the fireplace; by the richness of the flames, variegated of
rose colour and green, a judge of such things would have seen
that the wood was ash — a great luxury. The room was so
large that the branches of candles failed to light it up. Here
and there curtains over doors, falling and swaying, indicated
communications with other rooms. The style of the room
was altogether that of the reign of James I. — a style square
and massive, antiquated and magnificent. Like the carpet
and the lining of the chamber, the dais, the baldaquin, the
bed, the stool, the curtains, the mantelpiece, the coverings
of the table, the sofas, the chairs, were all of purple velvet.
There was no gilding, except on the ceiling. Laid on it, at
equal distance from the four angles, was a huge round shield
of embossed metal, on which sparkled, in dazzling relief,
various coats of arms. Amongst the devices, on two blazons,
side by side, were to be distinguished the cap of a baron and
the coronet of a marquis. Were they of brass or of silver-gilt ?
You could not tell. They seemed to be of gold. And in the
centre of this lordly ceiling, like a gloomy and magnificent
sky, the gleaming escutcheon was as the dark splendour of a
sun shining in the night.
The savage, in whom is embodied the free man, is nearly
as restless in a palace as in a prison. This magnificent
chamber was depressing. So much splendour produces fear.
Who could be the inhabitant of this stately palace? To
what colossus did all this grandeur appertain ? Of what lion
402 THE LAUGHING MAN.
is this the lair? Gwynplaine, as yet but half awake, was
heavy at heart.
"Where am I? "he said.
The man who was standing before him answered, —
" You are in your own house, my lord."
CHAPTER IV.
FASCINATION.
IT takes time to rise to the surface. And Gwynplaine had
been thrown into an abyss of stupefaction.
We do not gain our footing at once in unknown depths.
There are routs of ideas, as there are routs of armies. The
rally is not immediate.
We feel as it were scattered — as though some strange
evaporation of self were taking place.
God is the arm, chance is the sling, man is the pebble.
How are you to resist, once flung ?
Gwynplaine, if we may coin the expression, ricocheted
from one surprise to another. After the love letter of the
duchess came the revelation in the Southwark dungeon.
In destiny, when wonders begin, prepare yourself for blow
upon blow. The gloomy portals once open, prodigies pour
in. A breach once made in the wall, and events rush upon
us pell-mell. The marvellous never comes singly.
The marvellous is an obscurity. The shadow of this ob-
scurity was over Gwynplaine. What was happening to him
seemed unintelligible. He saw everything through the mist
which a deep commotion leaves in the mind, like the dust
caused by a falling ruin. The shock had been from top to
bottom. Nothing was clear to him. However, light always
returns by degrees. The dust settles. Moment by moment
the density of astonishment decreases. Gwynplaine was like
a man with his eyes open and fixed in a dream, as if trying to
see what may be within it. He dispersed the mist. Then
he reshaped it. He had intermittances of wandering. He
underwent that oscillation of the mind in the unforeseen
which alternately pushes us in the direction in which we
understand, and then throws us back in that which is incom-
prehensible. Who has not at some time felt this pendulum
in his brain ?
THE LAUGHING MAN. 403
By degrees his thoughts dilated in the darkness of the
event, as the pupil of his eye had done in the underground
shadows at Southwark. The difficulty was to succeed in
putting a certain space between accumulated sensations.
Before that combustion of hazy ideas called comprehension
can take place, air must be admitted between the emotions.
There air was wanting. The event, so to speak, could not be
breathed.
In entering that terrible cell at Southwark, Gwynplaine
had expected the iron collar of a felon; they had placed on
his head the coronet of a peer. How could this be ? There
had not been space of time enough between what Gwynplaine
had feared and what had really occurred; it had succeeded
too quickly — his terror changing into other feelings too
abruptly for comprehension. The contrasts were too tightly
packed one against the other. Gwynplaine made an effort
to withdraw his mind from the vice.
He was silent. This is the instinct of great stupefaction,
which is more on the defensive than it is thought to be. Who
says nothing is prepared for everything. A word of yours
allowed to drop may be seized in some unknown system of
wheels, and your utter destruction be compassed in its com-
plex machinery.
The poor and weak live in terror of being crushed. The
crowd ever expect to be trodden down. Gwynplaine had
long been one of the crowd.
A singular state of human uneasiness can be expressed by
the words: Let us see what will happen. Gwynplaine was
in this state. You feel that you have not gained your equi-
librium when an unexpected situation surges up under your
feet. You watch for something which must produce a result.
You are vaguely attentive. We will see what happens.
What ? You do not know. Whom ? You watch.
The man with the paunch repeated, " You are in your own
house, my lord."
Gwynplaine felt himself. In surprises, we first look to
make sure that things exist; then we feel ourselves, to make
sure that we exist ourselves. It was certainly to him that the
words were spoken ; but he himself was somebody else. He
no longer had his jacket on, or his esclavine of leather. He
had a waistcoat of cloth of silver; and a satin coat, which he
touched and found to be embroidered. He felt a heavy
404 THE LAUGHING MAN.
purse In his waistcoat pocket. A pair of velvet trunk hose
covered his clown's tights. He wore shoes with high red
heels. As they had brought him to this palace, so had they
changed his dress.
The man resumed, —
" Will your lordship deign to remember this: I am called
Barkilphedro ; I am clerk to the Admiralty. It was I who
opened Hardquanonne's flask and drew your destiny out of
it. Thus, in the 'Arabian Nights ' a fisherman releases a
giant from a bottle."
Gwynplaine fixed his eyes on the smiling- face of the
speaker.
Barkilphedro continued : —
" Besides this palace, my lord, Hunkerville House, which
is larger, is yours. You own Clancharlie Castle, from which
you take your title, and which was a fortress in the time of
Edward the Elder. You have nineteen bailivricks belonging
to you, with their villages and their inhabitant. This puts
under your banner, as a landlord and a nobleman, about
eighty thousand vassals and tenants. At Clancharlie you
are a judge — judge of all, both of goods and of persons — and
you hold your baron's court. The king has no right which
you have not, except the privilege of coining money. The
king, designated by the Norman law as chief signer, has
justice, court, and coin. Coin is money. So that you,
excepting in this last, are as much a king in your lordship as
he is in his kingdom. You have the right, as a baron, to a
gibbet with four pillars in England ; and, as a marquis, to a
scaffold with seven posts in Sicily: that of the mere lord
having two pillars ; that of a lord of the manor, three ; and
that of a duke, eight. You are styled prince in the ancient
charters of Northumberland. You are related to the Vis-
counts Valentia in Ireland, whose name is Power; and to the
Earls of Umfraville in Scotland, whose name is Angus.
You are chief of a clan, like Campbell, Ardmannach, and
Macallummore. You have eight barons' courts — Reculver,
Baston, Hell-Kerters, Homble, Moricambe, Grundraith,
Trenwardraith, and others. You have a right over the turf-
cutting of Pillinmore, and over the alabaster quarries near
Trent. Moreover, you own all the country of Penneth Chase ;
and you have a mountain with an ancient town on it. The
town is called Vinecaunton; the mountain ia called Moil-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 405
enlli. All which gives you an. income of forty thousand pounds
a year. That is to say, forty times the five-and-twenty
thousand francs with which a Frenchman, is satisfied."
Whilst Barkilphedro spoke, Gwynplaine, in a crescendo of
stupor, remembered the past. Memory is a gulf that a word
can. move to its lowest depths. Gwynplaine knew all the
words pronounced by Barkilphedro. They were written in
the last lines of the two scrolls which lined the van in which
his childhood had been passed, and, from so often letting his
eyes wander over them mechanically, he knew them by heart.
On reaching, a forsaken orphan, the travelling caravan at
Weymouth, he had found the inventory of the inheritance
which awaited him ; and in the morning, when the poor little
boy awoke, the first thing spelt by his careless and uncon-
scious eyes was his own title and its possessions. It was a
strange detail added to all his other surprises, that, during
fifteen years, rolling from highway to highway, the clown of
a travelling theatre, earning his bread day by day, picking
up farthings, and living on crumbs, he should have travelled
with the inventory of his fortune placarded over his misery.
Barkilphedro touched the casket on the table with his fore-
finger.
" My lord, this casket contains two thousand guineas which
her gracious Majesty the Queen has sent you for your present
wants."
Gwynplaine made a movement.
" That shall be for my Father Ursus," he said.
" So be it, my lord," said Barkilphedro. " Ursus, at the
Tadcaster Inn. The Serjeant of the Coif, who accompanied
us hither, and is about to return immediately, will carry them
to him. Perhaps I may go to London myself. In that case
I will take charge of it."
" I shall take them to him myself," said Gwynplaine.
Barkilphedro's smile disappeared, and he said, —
" Impossible! "
There is an impressive inflection of voice which, as it were,
underlines the words. Barkilphedro's tone was thus em-
phasized ; he paused, so as to put a full stop after the word
he had just uttered. Then he continued, with the peculiar
and respectful tone of a servant who feels that he is
master, —
" My lord, you are twenty-three miles from London, at
4o6 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Corleone Lodge, your court residence, contiguous to the
Royal Castle of Windsor. You are here unknown to any one.
You were brought here in a close carriage, which was await-
ing you at the gate of the jail at Southwark. The servants
who introduced you into this palace are ignorant who you
are; but they know me, and that is sufficient. You may
possibly have been brought to these apartments by means of
a private key which is in my possession. There are people
in the house asleep, and it is not an hour to awaken them.
Hence we have time for an explanation, which, neverthe-
less, will be short. I have been commissioned by her
Majesty "
As he spoke, Barkilphedro began to turn over the leaves
of some bundles of papers which were lying near the
casket.
" My lord, here is your patent of peerage. Here is that of
your Sicilian marquisate. These are the parchments and
title-deeds of your eight baronies, with the seals of eleven
kings, from Baldret, King of Kent, to James the Sixth of
Scotland, and first of England and Scotland united. Here
are your letters of precedence. Here are your rent-rolls, and
titles and descriptions of your fiefs, freeholds, dependencies,
lands, and domains. That which you see above your head
in the emblazonment on the ceiling are your two coronets:
the circlet with pearls for the baron, and the circlet with
strawberry leaves for the marquis.
" Here, in the wardrobe, is your peer's robe of red velvet,
bordered with ermine. To-day, only a few hours since, the
Lord Chancellor and the Deputy Earl Marshal of England,
informed of the result of your confrontation with the Com-
prachico Hardquanonne, have taken her Majesty's com-
mands. Her Majesty has signed them, according to her
royal will, which is the same as the law. All formalities have
been complied with. To-morrow, and no later than to-
morrow, you will take your seat in the House of Lords, where
they have for some days been deliberating on a bill, presented
by the crown, having for its object the augmentation, by a
hundred thousand pounds sterling yearly, of the annual
allowance to the Duke of Cumberland, husband of the queen.
You will be able to take part in the debate."
Barkilphedro paused, breathed slowly, and resumed.
' ' However, nothing is yet settled. A man cannot be made
THE LAUGHING MAN. 407
a peer of England without his own consent. All can be
annulled and disappear, unless you acquiesce. An event
nipped in the bud ere it ripens often occurs in state policy.
My lord, up to this time silence has been preserved on what
has occurred. The House of Lords will not be informed of
the facts until to-morrow. Secrecy has been kept about the
whole matter for reasons of state, which are of such impor-
tance that the influential persons who alone are at this
moment cognizant of your existence, and of your rights, will
forget them immediately should reasons of state command
their being forgotten. That which is in darkness may re-
main in darkness. It is easy to wipe you out; the more so
as you have a brother, the natural son of your father and of
a woman who afterwards, during the exile of your father,
became mistress to King Charles II., which accounts for your
brother's high position at court; for it is to this brother,
bastard though he be, that your peerage would revert. Do
you wish this? I cannot think so. Well, all depends on
you. The queen must be obeyed. You will not quit the
house till to-morrow in a royal carriage, and to go to the
House of Lords. My lord, will you be a peer of England;
yes 'or no ? The queen has designs for you. She destines
you for an alliance almost royal. Lord Fermain Clancharlie,
this is the decisive moment. Destiny never opens one door
without shutting another. After a certain step in advance,
to step back is impossible. Whoso enters into transfigura-
tion, leaves behind him evanescence. My lord, Gwynplaine
is dead. Do you understand? "
Gwynplaine trembled from head to foot.
Then he recovered himself.
" Yes," he said.
Barkilphedro, smiling, bowed, placed the casket under his
cloak, and left the room.
CHAPTER V.
WE THINK WE REMEMBER; WE FORGET.
WHENCE arise those strange, visible changes which occur in
the soul of man ?
Gwynplaine had been at the same moment raised to a
summit and cast into an abyss.
4o8 THE LAUGHING MAN.
His head swam with double giddiness — the giddiness of
ascent and descent. A fatal combination.
He felt himself ascend, and felt not his fall.
It is appalling to see a new horizon.
A perspective affords suggestions, — not always good ones.
He had before him the fairy glade, a snare perhaps, seen
through opening clouds, and showing the blue depths of sky;
so deep, that they are obscure.
He was on the mountain, whence he could see all the king-
doms of the earth. A mountain all the more terrible that it
is a visionary one. Those who are on its apex ate in a dream.
Palaces, castles, power, opulence, all human happiness
extending as far as eye could reach; a map of enjoyments
spread out to the horizon; a sort of radiant geography of
which he was the centre. A perilous mirage 1
Imagine what must have been the haze of such a vision,
not led up to, not attained to as by the gradual steps of a
ladder, but reached without transition and without previous
warning.
A man going to sleep in a mole's burrow, and awaking on
the top of the Strasbourg steeple; such was the state of
Gwynplaine.
Giddiness is a dangerous kind of glare, particularly that
which bears you at once towards the day and towards the
night, forming two whirlwinds, one opposed to the other.
He saw too much, and not enough.
He saw all, and nothing.
His state was what the author of this book has somewhere
expressed as the blind man dazzled.
Gwynplaine, left by himself, began to walk with long
strides. A bubbling precedes an explosion.
Notwithstanding his agitation, in this impossibility of
keeping still, he meditated. His mind liquefied as it boiled.
He began to recall things to his memory. It is surprising
how we find that we have heard so clearly that to which we
scarcely listened. The declaration of the shipwrecked men,
read by the sheriff in the Southwark cell, came back to him
clearly and intelligibly. He recalled every word, he saw
under it his whole infancy.
Suddenly he stopped, his hands clasped behind his back,
looking up to the ceiling — the sky — no matter what — what-
ever was above him.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 409
"Quits! " he cried.
He felt like one whose head rises out of the water. It
seemed to him that he saw everything — the past, the future,
the present — in the accession of a sudden flash of light.
" Oh 1 " he cried, for there are cries in the depths of thought.
" Oh I it was so, was it! I was a lord. All is discovered.
They stole, betrayed, destroyed, abandoned, disinherited,
murdered me! The corpse of my destiny floated fifteen
years on the sea; all at once it touched the earth, and it
started up, erect and living. I am reborn. I am born. I
felt under my rags that the breast there palpitating was not
that of a wretch; and when I looked on crowds of men, I felt
that they were the flocks, and that I was not the dog, but the
shepherd 1 Shepherds of the people, leaders of men, guides
and masters, such were my fathers; and what they were I
am I I am a gentleman, and I have a sword ; I am a baron,
and I have a casque; I am a marquis, and I have a plume; I
am a peer, and I have a coronet. Lo I they deprived me of
all this. I dwelt in light, they flung me .into darkness.
Those who proscribed the father, sold the son. When my
father was dead, they took from beneath his head the stone
of exile which he had placed for his pillow, and, tying it to my
neck, they flung me into a sewer. Oh 1 those scoundrels who
tortured my infancy 1 Yes, they rise and move in the depths
of my memory. Yes ; I see them again. I was that morsel
of flesh pecked to pieces on a tomb by a flight of crows. I
bled and cried under all those horrible shadows. Lo I it was
there that they precipitated me, under the crush of those who
come and go, under the trampling feet of men, under the
undermost of the human race, lower than the serf, baser than
the serving man, lower than the felon, lower than the slave,
at the spot where Chaos becomes a sewer, in which I was
engulfed. It is from thence that I come ; it is from this that
I rise; it is from this that I am risen. And here I am now.
Quits I "
He sat down, he rose, clasped his head with his hands,
began to pace the room again, and his tempestuous monologue
continued within him.
" Where am I ? — on the summit? Where is it that I have
just alighted ?— on the highest peak? This pinnacle, this
grandeur, this dome of the world, this great power, is my
home. This temple is in air. I am one of the gods. I live
4io THE LAUGHING MAN.
in inaccessible heights. This supremacy, which I looked up
to from below, and from whence emanated such rays of glory
that I shut my eyes ; this ineffaceable peerage ; this impreg-
nable fortress of the fortunate, I enter. I am in it. I am of
it. Ah, what a decisive turn of the wheel ! I was below, I
am on high — on high for ever! Behold me a lord! I shall
have a scarlet robe. I shall have an earl's coronet on my
head. I shall assist at the coronation of kings. They will
take the oath from my hands. I shall judge princes and
ministers. I shall exist. From the depths into which I was
thrown, I have rebounded to the zenith. I have palaces in
town and country: houses, gardens, chases, forests, carriages,
millions. I will give fetes. I will make laws. I shall have
the choice of joys and pleasures. And the vagabond Gwyn-
plaine, who had not the right to gather a flower in the grass,
may pluck the stars from heaven! "
Melancholy overshadowing of a soul's brightness! Thus
it was that in Gwynplaine, who had been a hero, and per-
haps had not ceased to be one, moral greatness gave way
to material splendour. A lamentable transition! Virtue
broken down by a troop of passing demons. A surprise made
on the weak side of man's fortress. All the inferior circum-
stances called by men superior, ambition, the purblind
desires of instinct, passions, covetousness, driven far from
Gwynplaine by the wholesome restraints of misfortune, took
tumultuous possession of his generous heart. And from
what had this arisen ? From the discovery of a parchment
in a waif drifted by the sea. Conscience may be violated by
a chance attack.
Gwynplaine drank in great draughts of pride, and it dulled
his soul. Such is the poison of that fatal wine.
Giddiness invaded him. He more than consented to its
approach. He welcomed it. This was the effect of previous
and long-continued thirst. Are we an accomplice of the cup
which deprives us of reason ? He had always vaguely desired
this. His eyes had always turned towards the great. To watch
is to wish. The eaglet is not born in the eyrie for nothing.
Now, however, at moments, it seemed to him the simplest
thing in the world that he should be a lord. A few hours only
had passed, and yet the past of yesterday seemed so far off I
Gwynplaine had fallen into the ambuscade of Better, who is
the enemy of Good.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 411
Unhappy Is he of whom we say, how lucky he Is 1 Adver-
sity is more easily resisted than prosperity. We rise more
perfect from ill fortune than from good. There is a Charybdis
in poverty, and a Scylla in riches. Those who remain erect
under the thunderbolt are prostrated by the flash. Thou
who standest without shrinking on the verge of a precipice,
fear lest thou be carried up on the innumerable wings of
mists and dreams. The ascent which elevates will dwarf
thee. An apotheosis has a sinister power of degradation.
It is not easy to understand what is good luck. Chance is
nothing but a disguise. Nothing deceives so much as the
face of fortune. Is she Providence? Is she Fatality?
A brightness may not be a brightness, because light is
truth, and a gleam may be a deceit. You believe that it
lights you; but no, it sets you on fire.
At night, a candle made of mean tallow becomes a star if
placed in an opening in the darkness. The moth flies to it.
In what measure is the moth responsible?
The sight of the candle fascinates the moth as the eye of
the serpent fascinates the bird.
Is it possible that the bird and the moth should resist
the attraction ? Is it possible that the leaf should resist the
wind? Is it possible that the stone should refuse obedience
to the laws of gravitation ?
These are material questions, which are moral questions
as well.
After he had received the letter of the duchess, Gwynplaine
had recovered himself. The deep love in his nature had
resisted it. But the storm having wearied itself on one side
of the horizon, burst out on the other; for in destiny, as in
nature, there are successive convulsions. The first shock
loosens, the second uproots.
Alas 1 how do the oaks fall ?
Thus he who, when a child of ten, stood alone on the shore
of Portland, ready to give battle, who had looked steadfastly
at all the combatants whom he had to encounter, the blast
which bore away the vessel in which he had expected to
embark, the gulf which had swallowed up the plank, the
yawning abyss, of which the menace was its retrocession, the
earth which refused him a shelter, the sky which refused him
a star, solitude without pity, obscurity without notice, ocean,
sky, all the violence of one infinite space, and all the mysterious
4i2 THE LAUGHING MAN.
enigmas of another ; he who had neither trembled nor fainted
before the mighty hostility of the unknown; he who, still so
young, had held his own with night, as Hercules of old had
held his own with death; he who in the unequal struggle had
thrown down this dehance, that he, a child, adopted a child,
that he encumbered himself with a load, when tired and ex-
hausted, thus rendering himself an easier prey to the attacks
on his weakness, and, as It were, himself unmuzzling the
shadowy monsters in ambush around him; he who, a pre-
cocious warrior, had immediately, and from his first steps out
of the cradle, struggled breast to breast with. destiny; he,
whose disproportion with strife had not discouraged from
striving; he who, perceiving in everything around him a
frightful occultation of the human race, had accepted that
eclipse, and proudly continued his journey; he who had
known how to endure cold, thirst, hunger, valiantly; he who,
a pigmy in stature, had been a colossus in soul: this Gwyn-
plaine, who had conquered the great terror of the abyss under
its double form, Tempest and Misery, staggered under a
breath — Vanity.
Thus, when she has exhausted distress, nakedness, storms,
catastrophes, agonies on an unflinching man, Fatality begins
to smile, and her victim, suddenly intoxicated, staggers.
The smile of Fatality I Can anything more terrible be
imagined ? It is the last resource of the pitiless trier of souls
in his proof of man. The tiger, lurking in destiny, caresses
man with a velvet paw. Sinister preparation, hideous gentle-
ness in the monster I
Every self-observer has detected within himself mental
weakness coincident with aggrandisement. A sudden growth
disturbs the system, and produces fever.
In Gwynplaine's brain was the giddy whirlwind of a crowd
of new circumstances; all the light and shade of a meta-
morphosis; inexpressibly strange confrontations; the shock
of the past against the future. Two Gwynplaines, himself
doubled; behind, an infant in rags crawling through night —
wandering, shivering, hungry, provoking laughter; in front,
a brilliant nobleman — luxurious, proud, dazzling all London.
He was casting off one form, and amalgamating himself with
the other. He was casting the mountebank, and becoming
the peer. Change of skin is sometimes change of soul. Now
and then the past seemed like a dream. It was complex;
THE LAUGHING MATT. 413
bad and good. He thought of his father. It was a poignant
anguish never to have known his father. He tried to
picture him to himself. He thought of his brother, of whom
he had j ust heard. Then he had a family 1 He, Gwynplaine 1
He lost himself in fantastic dreams. He saw visions of
magnificence; unknown forms of solemn grandeur moved in
mist before him. He heard nourishes of trumpets.
" And then," he said, " I shall be eloquent."
He pictured to himself a splendid entrance into the House
of Lords. He should arrive full to the brim with new facts
and ideas. What could he not tell them? What subjects
he had accumulated! What an advantage to be in the
midst of them, a man who had seen, touched, undergone, and
suffered; who could cry aloud to them, " I have been near
to everything, from which you are so far removed." He
would hurl reality in the face of those patricians, crammed
with illusions. They should tremble, for it would be the
truth. They would applaud, for it would be grand. He
would arise amongst those powerful men, more powerful
than they. " I shall appear as a torch-bearer, to show them
truth ; and as a sword-bearer, to show them justice I " What
a triumph 1
And, building up these fantasies in his mind, clear and
confused at the same time, he had attacks of delirium, —
sinking on the first seat he came to; sometimes drowsy,
sometimes starting up. He came and went, looked at the
ceiling, examined the coronets, studied vaguely the hierogly-
phics of the emblazonment, felt the velvet of the walls, moved
the chairs, turned over the parchments, read the names,
spelt out the titles, Buxton, Homble, Grundraith, Hunker-
ville, Clancharlie; compared the wax, the impression, felt
the twist of silk appended to the royal privy seal, approached
the window, listened to the splash of the fountain, contem-
plated the statues, counted, with the patience of a somnam-
bulist, the columns of marble, and said,—
" It is real."
Then he touched his satin clothes, and asked himself, —
"Is it I? Yes."
He was torn by an inward tempest.
In this whirlwind, did he feel f aintness and fatigue ? Did
he drink, eat, sleep ? If he did so, he was unconscious of the
fact. In certain violent situations instinct satisfies itself.
4I4 THE LAUGHING MAN.
according lo its requirements, unconsciously. Besides, his
thoughts were less thoughts than mists. At the moment that
the black flame of an irruption disgorges itself from depths
full of boiling lava, has the crater any consciousness of the
flocks which crop the grass at the foot of the mountain ?
The hours passed.
The dawn appeared and brought the day. A bright ray
penetrated the chamber, and at the same instant broke on
the soul of Gwynplaine.
And Dea ! said the light.
BOOK THE SIXTH.
URSUS UNDER DIFFERENT ASPECTS.
CHAPTER I.
WHAT THE MISANTHROPE SAID.
AFTER Ursus had seen Gwynplaine thrust within the gates
of South wark Jail, he remained, haggard, in the corner from
which he was watching. For a long time his ears were
haunted by the grinding of the bolts and bars, which was like
a howl of joy that one wretch more should be enclosed within
them.
He waited. What for? He watched. What for? Such
inexorable doors, once shut, do not re-open so soon. They
are tongue-tied by their stagnation in darkness, and move
with difficulty, especially when they have to give up a prisoner.
Entrance is permitted. Exit is quite a different matter.
Ursus knew this. But waiting is a thing which we have not
the power to give up at our own will. We wait in our own
despite. What we do disengages an acquired force, which
maintains its action when its object has ceased, which keeps
possession of us and holds us, and obliges us for some time
longer to continue that which has already lost its motive.
Hence the useless watch, the inert position that we have
all held at times, the loss of time which every thoughtful
man gives mechanically to that which has disappeared.
None escapes this law. We become stubborn in a sort of
vague fury. We know not why we are in the place, but we
remain there. That which we have begun actively we con-
416 THE LAUGHING MAN.
tinue passively, with an exhausting tenacity from which ws
emerge overwhelmed. Ursus, though differing from other
men, was, as any other might have been, nailed to his post
by that species of conscious reverie into which we are plunged
by events all important to us, and in which we are impotent.
He scrutinized by turns those two black walls, now the high
one, then the low; sometimes the door near which the ladder
to the gibbet stood, then that surmounted by a death's head.
It was as if he were caught in a vice, composed of a prison
and a cemetery. This shunned and unpopular street was
so deserted that he was unobserved.
At length he left the arch under which he had taken shelter,
a kind of chance sentry-box, in which he had acted the watch-
man, and departed with slow steps. The day was declining,
for his guard had been long. From time to time he turned his
head and looked at the fearful wicket through which Gwyn-
plaine had disappeared. His eyes were glassy and dull. He
reached the end of the alley, entered another, then another,
retracing almost unconsciously the road which he had taken
some hours before. At intervals he turned, as if he could
still see the door of the prison, though he was no longer in the
street in which the jail was situated. Step by step he was
approaching Tarrinzeau Field. The lanes in the neighbour-
hood of the fair-ground were deserted pathways between
enclosed gardens. He walked along, his head bent down, by
the hedges and ditches. All at once he halted, and drawing
himself up, exclaimed, " So much the better I "
At the same time he struck his fist twice on his head and
twice on his thigh, thus proving himself to be a sensible fellow,
who saw things in their right light; and then he began to
growl inwardly, yet now and then raising his voice.
It is all right! Oh, the scoundrel! the thief! the vaga-
bond! the worthless fellow! the seditious scampi It is his
speeches about the government that have sent him there.
He is a rebel. I was harbouring a rebel. I am free of him,
and lucky for me; he was compromising us. Thrust into
prison! Oh, so much the better! What excellent laws!
Ungrateful boy! I who brought him up! To give oneself
so much trouble for this ! Why should he want to speak and
to reason? He mixed himself up in politics. The ass! As
he handled pennies he babbled about the taxes, about the
poor, about the people, about what was no busiaese of hit,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 417
He permitted himself to make reflections on pennies. He
commented wickedly and maliciously on the copper money
of the kingdom. He insulted the farthings of her Majesty.
A farthing 1 Why, 'tis the same as the queen. A sacred
effigy 1 Devil take it 1 a sacred effigy I Have we a queen —
yes or no ? Then respect her verdigris 1 Everything depends
on the government; one ought to know that. I have experi-
ence, I have. I know something. They may say to me, " But
you give up politics, then?" Politics, my friends! Icareasmuch
for them as for the rough hide of an ass. I received, one day, a
blew from a baronet's cane. I said to myself, That is enough:
I understand politics. The people have but a farthing, they
give it,' the queen takes it, the people thank her. Nothing
can be more natural. It is for the peers to arrange the rest;
their lordships, the lords spiritual and temporal. Oh I so
Gwynplaine is locked up I So he is in prison. That is just
as it should be. It is equitable, excellent, well-merited, and
legitimate. It is his own fault. To criticize is forbidden.
Are you a lord, you idiot? The constable has seized him,
the justice of the quorum has carried him off, the sheriff has
him in custody. At this moment he is probably being ex-
amined by a ser j eant of the coif. They pluck out your crimes,
those clever fellows 1 Imprisoned, my wag! So much the
worse for him, so much the better for mel Faith, I am
satisfied. I own frankly that fortune favours me. Of what
folly was I guilty when I picked up that little boy and girl!
We were so quiet before, Homo and 1 1 What had they to do
in my caravan, the little blackguards ? Didn't I brood over
them when they were young 1 Didn't I draw them along
with my harness I Pretty foundlings, indeed; he as ugly as
sin, and she blind of both eyes! Where was the use of de-
priving myself of everything for their sakes? The beggars
grow up, forsooth, and make love to each other. The flirta-
tions of the deformed ! It was to that we had come. The
toad and the mole; quite an idyl! That was what went on
in my household. All which was sure to end by going before
the justice. The toad talked politics! But now I am
free of him. When the wapentake came I was at first a fool;
one always doubts one's own good luck. I believed that I did
not see what I did see ; that it was impossible, that it was a
nightmare, that a day-dream was playing me a trick. But
no! Nothing could be truer. It is all clear, Gwynplaine
14
4i8 THE LAUGHING MAN.
is really in prison. It is a stroke of Providence. Praise be
to itl He was the monster who, with the row he made, drew
attention to my establishment and denounced my poor wolf.
Be off, Gwynplaine; and, see, I am rid of bothl Two birds
killed with one stone. Because Dea will die, now that she
can no longer see Gwynplaine. For she sees him, the idiot 1
She will have no object in life. She will say, ' What am
I to do in the world?' Good-bye! To the devil with
both of them. I always hated the creatures I Die, Dea I
Oh, I am quite comfortable 1 "
CHAPTER II.
WHAT HE DID.
HE returned to the Tadcaster Inn.
It struck half -past six. It was a little before twilight.
Master Nicless stood on his doorstep.
He had not succeeded, since the morning, in extinguishing
the terror which still showed on his scared face.
He perceived Ursus from afar.
" Well 1" he cried.
"Well! what?"
"Is Gwynplaine coming back? It is full time. The
public will soon be coming. Shall we have the performance
of ' The Laughing Man ' this evening? "
" I am the laughing man," said Ursus.
And he looked at the tavern-keeper with a loud chuckle.
Then he went up to the first floor, opened the window next
to the sign of the inn, leant over towards the placard about
Gwynplaine, the laughing man, and the bill of " Chaos
Vanquished;" unnailed the one, tore down the other, put
both under his arm, and descended.
Master Nicless followed him with his eyes.
" Why do you unhook that? "
Ursus burst into a second fit of laughter.
" Why do you laugh? " said the tavern-keeper.
" I am re-entering private life."
Master Nicless understood, and gave an order to his
lieutenant, the boy Govicum, to announce to every one who
should come that there would be no performance that even-
ing. He took from the dx>or the box made out of a cask,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 419
where they received the entrance money, and rolled it into a
corner of the lower sitting-room.
A moment after, Ursus entered the Green Box.
He put the two signs away in a corner, and entered what
he called the woman's wing.
Dea was asleep.
She was on her bed, dressed as usual, excepting that the
body of her gown was loosened, as when she was taking her
siesta.
Near her Vinos and Fibl were sitting — one on a stool, the
other on the ground — musing. Notwithstanding the late-
ness of the hour, they had not dressed themselves in their
goddesses' gauze, which was a sign of deep discouragement.
They had remained in their drugget petticoats and their
dress of coarse cloth.
Ursus looked at Dea.
" She is rehearsing for a longer sleep," murmured he.
Then, addressing Fibi and Vinos, —
" You both know all. The music is over. You may put
your trumpets into the drawer. You did well not to equip
yourselves as deities. You look ugly enough as you are, but
you were quite right. Keep on your petticoats. No perform-
ance to-night, nor to-morrow, nor the day after to-morrow.
No Gwynplaine. Gwynplaine is clean gone."
Then he looked at Dea again.
" What a blow to her this will be! It will be like blowing
out a candle."
He inflated his cheeks.
' ' Puff 1 nothing more. ' '
Then, with a little dry laugh,—
" Losing Gwynplaine, she loses all. It would be just as if
I were to lose Homo. It will be worse. She will feel more
lonely than any one else could. The blind wade through
more sorrow than we do."
He looked out of the window at the end of the room.
" How the days lengthen I It is not dark at seven o'clock.
Nevertheless we will light up."
He struck the steel and lighted the lamp which hung from
the ceiling of the Green Box.
Then he leaned over Dea.
" She will catch cold ; you have unlaced her bodice too low.
There is a proverb, —
420 THE LAUGHING MAN.
• Though April skies be bright,
Keep all your wrappers tight.' "
Seeing a pin shining on the floor, he picked it up and
pinned up her sleeve. Then he paced the Green Box,
gesticulating.
" I am in full possession of my faculties. I am lucid, quite
lucid. I consider this occurrence quite proper, and I approve
of what has happened. When she awakes I will explain
everything to her clearly. The catastrophe will not be
long in coming. No more Gwynplaine. Good-night, Dea.
How well all has been arranged! Gwynplaine in prison,
Dea in the cemetery, they will be vis-h-vis! A dance of
death I Two destinies going off the stage at once. Pack up
the dresses. Fasten the valise. For valise, read coffin. It
was just what was best for them both. Dea without eyes,
Gwynplaine without a face. On high the Almighty will
restore sight to Dea and beauty to Gwynplaine. Death puts
things to rights. All will be well. Fibi, Vinos, hang up your
tambourines on the nail. Your talents for noise will go to
rust, my beauties; no more playing, no more trumpeting.
' Chaos Vanquished ' is vanquished. ' The Laughing Man '
is done for. ' Taratantara ' is dead. Dea sleeps on. She
does well. If I were she I would never awake. Oh I she
will soon fall asleep again. A skylark like her takes very
little killing. This comes of meddling with politics. What
a lesson! Governments are right. Gwynplaine to the
sheriff. Dea to the grave-digger. Parallel cases! In-
structive symmetry! I hope the tavern-keeper has barred
the door. We are going to die to-night quietly at home,
between ourselves — not I, nor Homo, but Dea. As for me,
I shall continue to roll on in the caravan. I belong to the
meanderings of vagabond life. I shall dismiss these two
women. I shall not keep even one of them. I have a
tendency to become an old scoundrel. A maidservant in
the house of a libertine is like a loaf of bread on the shelf. I
decline the temptation. It is not becoming at my age.
Turpe senilis amor. I will follow my way alone with Homo.
How astonished Homo will be! Where is Gwynplaine?
Where is Dea? Old comrade, here we are once more alone
together. Plague take it! I'm delighted. Their bucolics
were an encumbrance. Oh! that scamp Gwynplaine, who
is never coming back. He has left us stuck here. I say ' All
THE LAUGHING MAN. 421
right,' And now 'tis Dea's turn. That won't be long. I
like things to be done with. I would not snap my fingers
to stop her dying — her dying, I tell you 1 See, she awakes 1 "
Dea opened her eyelids ; many blind persons shut them
when they sleep. Her sweet unwitting face wore all its usual
radiance.
" She smiles," whispered Ursus, " and I laugh. That is as
it should be."
Dea called, —
"Fibil Vinos! It must be the time for the performance.
1 think I have been asleep a long time. Come and
dress me."
Neither Fibi nor Vinos moved.
Meanwhile the ineffable blind look of Dea's eyes met those
of Ursus. He started.
" Well ! " he cried ; " what are you about ? Vinos 1 Fibil
Do you not hear your mistress? Are you deaf? Quick 1
the play is going to begin."
The two women looked at Ursus in stupefaction.
Ursus shouted, —
" Do you not hear the audience coming in ? — Fibi, dress
Dea. — Vinos, take your tambourine."
Fibi was obedient ; Vinos, passive. Together, they
personified submission. Their master, Ursus, had always
been to them an enigma. Never to be understood is a reason
for being always obeyed. They simply thought he had gone
mad, and did as they were told. Fibi took down the costume,
and Vinos the tambourine.
Fibi began to dress Dea. Ursus let down the door-curtain
of the women's room, and from behind the curtain con-
tinued,—
" Look there, Gwynplaine ! the court is already more than
half full of people. They are in heaps in the passages.
What a crowd 1 And you say that Fibi and Vinos look as if
they did not see them. How stupid the gipsies are ! What
fools they are in Egypt 1 Don't lift the curtain from the
door. Be decent. Dea is dressing."
He paused, and suddenly they heard an exclamation, —
" How beautiful Dea is! "
It was the voice of Gwynplaine.
Fibi and Vinos started, and turned round. It was the
voice of Gwynplaine, but in the mouth of Ursus.
422 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Ursus, by a sign which he made through the door ajar,
forbade the expression of any astonishment.
Then, again taking the voice of Gwynplaine, —
"Angel I"
Then he replied in his own voice, —
" Dea an angel! You are a fool, Gwynplaine. No mam-
mifer can fly except the bats."
And he added, —
" Look here, Gwynplaine I Let Homo loose; that wfll be
more to the purpose."
And he descended the ladder of the Green Box very
quickly, with the agile spring of Gwynplaine, imitating his
step so that Dea could hear it.
In the court he addressed the boy, whom the occurrences
of the day had made idle and inquisitive.
" Spread out both your hands," said he, in a loud voice.
And he poured a handful of pence into them.
Govicum was grateful for his munificence.
Ursus whispered in his ear, —
"Boy, go into the yard; jump, dance, knock, bawl,
whistle, coo, neigh, applaud, stamp your feet, burst out
laughing, break something."
Master Nicless, saddened and humiliated at seeing the folks
who had come to see " The Laughing Man " turned back and
crowding towards other caravans, had shut the door of the
inn. He had even given up the idea of selling any beer or
spirits that evening, that he might have to answer no awk-
ward questions ; and, quite overcome by the sudden close of
the performance, was looking, with his candle in his hand,
into the court from the balcony above.
Ursus, taking the precaution of putting his voice between
parentheses fashioned by adjusting the palms of his hands
to his mouth, cried out to him, —
"Sir! do as your boy is doing — yelp, bark, howl."
He re-ascended the steps of the Green Box, and said to the
wolf,—
" Talk as much as you can."
Then, raising his voice, —
" What a crowd there is I We shall have a crammed per-
formance."
In the meantime Vinos played the tambourine. Ursus
went on, —
THE LAUGHING MAN. 423
" Dea is dressed. Now we can begin. I am sorry they
have admitted so many spectators. How thickly packed
they are I — Look, Gwynplaine, what a mad mob it is ! I will
bet that to-day we shall take more money than we have ever
done yet. — Come, gipsies, play up, both of you. Come here.
— Fibi, take your clarion. Good. — Vinos, drum on your
tambourine. Fling it up and catch it again. — Fibi, put your-
self into the attitude of Fame. — Young ladies, you have too
much on. Take off those jackets. Replace stuff by gauze.
The public like to see the female form exposed. Let the
moralists thunder. A little indecency. Devil take it!
what of that? Look voluptuous, and rush into wild
melodies. Snort, blow, whistle, nourish, play the tambour-
ine.— What a number of people, my poor Gwynplaine 1 "
He interrupted himself.
" Gwynplaine, help me. Let down the platform." He
spread out his pocket-handkerchief. " But first let me roar
In my rag," and he blew his nose violently as a ventriloquist
ought. Having returned his handkerchief to his pocket, he
drew the pegs out of the pulleys, which creaked as usual as
tine platform was let down.
" Gwynplaine, do not draw the curtain until the perform-
ance begins. We are not alone. — You two come on in front.
Music, ladies I turn, turn, turn. — A pretty audience we have 1
the dregs of the people. Good heavens I "
The two gipsies, stupidly obedient, placed themselves in
their usual corners of the platform. Then Ursus became
wonderful. It was no longer a man, but a crowd. Obliged
to make abundance out of emptiness, he called to aid his
prodigious powers of ventriloquism. The whole orchestra
of human and animal voices which was within him he called
into tumult at once.
He was legion. Any one with his eyes closed would have
imagined that he was in a public place on some day of rejoic-
ing, or in some sudden popular riot. A whirlwind of clamour
proceeded from Ursus : he sang, he shouted, he talked, he
coughed, he spat, he sneezed, took snuff, talked and re-
sponded, put questions and gave answers, all at once. The
Ualf-uttered syllables ran one into another. In the court,
untenanted by a single spectator, were heard men, women,
and children. It was a clear confusion of tumult. Strange
laughter wound, vapour-like, through the noise, the chirping
424 THE LAUGHING MAN.
of birds, the swearing of cats, the wailings of children at the
breast. The indistinct tones of drunken men were to be
heard, and the growls of dogs under the feet of people who
stamped on them. The cries came from far and near, from
top to bottom, from the upper boxes to the pit. The whole
was an uproar, the detail was a cry. Ursus clapped his hands,
stamped his feet, threw his voice to the end of the court, and
then made it come from underground. It was both stormy
and familiar. It passed from a murmur to a noise, from a
noise to a tumult, from a tumult to a tempest. He was him-
self, any, every one else. Alone, and polyglot. As there
are optical illusions, there are also auricular illusions. That
which Proteus did to sight Ursus did to hearing. Nothing
could be more marvellous than his fac -simile of multitude.
From time to time he opened the door of the women's apart-
ment and looked at Dea. Dea was listening. On his part
the boy exerted himself to the utmost. Vinos and Fibi
trumpeted conscientiously, and took turns with the tambour-
ine. Master Nicless, the only spectator, quietly made him-
self the same explanation as they did — that Ursus was gone
mad ; which was, for that matter, but another sad item added
to his misery . The good tavern-keeper growled out, " What
insanity!" And he was serious as a man might well be who
has the fear of the law before him.
Govicum, delighted at being able to help in making a noise,
exerted himself almost as much as Ursus. It amused him,
and, moreover, it earned him pence.
Homo was pensive.
In the midst of the tumult Ursus now and then uttered
such words as these:—" Just as usual, Gwynplaine. There
is a cabal against us. Our rivals are undermining our success.
Tumult is the seasoning of triumph. Besides, there are too
many people. They are uncomfortable. The angles of their
neighbours' elbows do not dispose them to good-nature. I
hope the benches will not give way. We shall be the victims
of an incensed population. Oh, if our friend Tom- Jim- Jack
were only here! but he never comes now. Look at those
heads rising one above the other. Those who are forced to
stand don't look very well pleased, though the great Galen
pronounced it to be strengthening. We will shorten the
entertainment; as only ' Chaos Vanquished ' was announced
in the playbill, we will not play ' Ursus^Rursus. ' There will be
THE LAUGHING MAN. 425
something gained In that. What an uproar! O blind tur-
bulence of the masses. They will do us some damage. How-
ever, they can't go on like this. We should not be able to
play. No one can catch a word of the piece. I am going to
address them. Gwynplaine, draw the curtain a little aside.
— Gentlemen." Here Ursus addressed himself with a shrill
and feeble voice, —
" Down with that old fooll "
Then he answered in his own voice, —
" It seems that the mob insult me. Cicero Is right: plebs
fex urbis. Never mind; we will admonish the mob, though I
shall have a great deal of trouble to make myself heard. I
will speak, notwithstanding. Man, do your duty. Gwyn-
plaine, look at that scold grinding her teeth down there."
Ursus made a pause, in which he placed a gnashing of his
teeth. Homo, provoked, added a second, and Govicum a
^hird.
Ursus went on, —
" The women are worse than the men. The moment is
unpropitious, but it doesn't matter 1 Let us try the power
of a speech ; an eloquent speech is never out of place. Listen,
Gwynplaine, to my attractive exordium. Ladies and gentle-
men, I am a bear. I take off my head to address you. I
humbly appeal to you for silence." Ursus, lending a cry to
the crowd, said, " Grumphlll "
Then he continued, —
" I respect my audience. Grumphll is an epiphonema as
good as any other welcome. You growlers. That you are
all of the dregs of the people, I do not doubt. That in no
way diminishes my esteem for you. A well-considered
esteem. I have a profound respect for the bullies who honour
me with their custom. There are deformed folks amongst
you. They give me no offence. The lame and the humpv
backed are works of nature. The camel is gibbous. The
bison's back is humped. The badger's left legs are shorter
than the right. That fact is decided by Aristotle, in his
treatise on the walking of animals. There are those amongst
you who have but two shirts — one on his back, and the other
at the pawnbroker's. I know that to be true. Albuquerque
pawned his moustache, and St. Denis his glory. The Jews
advanced money on the glory. Great examples. To have
debts is to have something. I revere your beggardom."
420 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Ursus cut short his speech, interrupting it in a deep bass
voice by the shout, — •
"Triple ass 1 "
And he answered In his politest accent, —
" I admit it. I am a learned man. I do my best to
apologize for it. I scientifically despise science. Ignorance
is a reality on which we feed; science is a reality on which
we starve. In general one is obliged to choose between two
things — to be learned and grow thin, or to browse and be an
ass. O gentlemen, browse I Science is" not worth a mouthful
of anything nice. I had rather eat a sirloin of beejf than know
what they call the psoas muscle. I have but one merit — a
dry eye. Such as you see me, I have never wept. It must
be owned that I have never been satisfied — never satisfied —
not even with myself. I despise myself; but I submit this
to the members of the opposition here present — if Ursus is
only a learned man, Gwynplaine is an artist."
He groaned again, —
"Grumphll!"
And resumed, —
" Grumphll again 1 it is an objection. All the same, I pass
it over. Near Gwynplaine, gentlemen and ladies, is another
artist, a valued and distinguished personage who accompanies
us — his lordship Homo, formerly a wild dog, now a civilized
wolf, and a faithful subject of her Majesty's. Homo is a
mine of deep and superior talent. Be attentive and watch.
You are going to set Homo play as well as Gwynplaine, anc?
you must do honour to art. That is an attribute of great
nations. Are you men of the woods? I admit the fact.
In that case, sylva sunt consule digna. Two artists are well
worth one consul. All right! Some one has flung a cab-
bage stalk at me, but did not hit me. That will not stop
my speaking; on the contrary, a danger evaded makes folks
garrulous. Garrula pericula, says Juvenal. My hearers 1
there are amongst you drunken men and drunken women.
Very well. The men are unwholesome. The women are
hideous. You have all sorts of excellent reasons for stowing
yourselves away here on the benches of the pothouse — want
of work, idleness, the spare time between two robberies,
porter, ale, stout, malt, brandy, gin, and the attraction of one
sex for the other. What could be better? A wit prone
to irony would find this a fair field. But I abstain. Tis
-CHE LAUGHING MIAN. 427
luxury; so be it, but even, an orgy should be kept within
bounds. You are gay, but noisy. You imitate successfully
the cries of beasts ; but what would you say if, when you were
making love to a lady, I passed my time in barking at you ? It
would disturb you, and so it disturbs us. I order you to hold
your tongues. Art is as respectable as debauch. I speak to
you civilly."
He apostrophized himself, —
" May the fever strangle you, with your eyebrows like the
beard of rye."
And he replied, —
" Honourable gentlemen, let the' rye alone. It is impious
to insult the vegetables, by likening them either to human
creatures or animals. Besides, the fever does not strangle.
'Tis a false metaphor. For pity's sake, keep silence. Allow
me to tell you that you are slightly wanting in the repose
which characterizes the true English gentleman. I see that
some amongst you, who have shoes out of which their toes
are peeping, take advantage of the circumstance to rest their
feet on the shoulders of those who are in front of them, caus-
ing the ladies to remark that the soles of shoes divide always
at the part at which is the head of the metatarsal bones.
Show more of your hands and less of your feet. I perceive
scamps who plunge their ingenious fists into the pockets of
their foolish neighbours. Dear pickpockets, have a little
modesty. Fight those next to you If you like; do not
plunder them. You will vex them less by blackening an eye,
than by lightening their purses of a penny. Break their
noses if you like. The shopkeeper thinks more of his money
than of his beauty. Barring this, accept my sympathies,
for I am not pedantic enough to blame thieves. Evil exists.
Every one endures it, every one inflicts it. No one is exempt
from the vermin of his sins. That's what I keep saying.
Have we not all our Itch? I myself have made mistakes.
Plaudits , cives."
Ursus uttered a long groan, which he overpowered by these
concluding words, —
" My lords and gentlemen, I see that my address has
unluckily displeased you. I take leave of your hisses for a
moment. I shall put on my head, and the performance is
going to begin."
He dropt his oratorical tone, and resumed his usual voice-
428 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" Close the curtains. Let me breathe. I have spoken
like honey. I have spoken well. My words were like velvet;
but they were useless. I called them my lords and gentlemen.
What do you think of all this scum, Gwynplaine ? How well
may we estimate the ills which England has suffered for the
last forty years through the ill-temper of these irritable and
malicious spirits ! The ancient Britons were warlike ; these
are melancholy and learned. They glory in despising the
laws and contemning royal authority. I have done all that
human eloquence can do. I have been prodigal of metonymies,
as gracious as the blooming cheek of youth. t Were they
softened by them? I doubt it. What can affect a people
who eat so extraordinarily, who stupefy themselves by
tobacco so completely that their literary men often write
their works with a pipe in their mouths ? Never mind. Let
us begin the play."
The rings of the curtain were heard being drawn over
the rod. The tambourines of the gipsies were still. Ursus
took down his instrument, executed his prelude, and said in
a low tone: "Alas, Gwynplaine, how mysterious it is!"
then he flung himself down with the wolf.
When he had taken down his instrument, he had also taken
from the nail a rough wig which he had, and which he had
thrown on the stage in a corner within his reach. The per-
formance of " Chaos Vanquished " took place as usual, minus
only the effect of the blue light and the brilliancy of the
fairies. The wolf played his best. At the proper moment
Dea made her appearance, and, in her voice so tremulous and
heavenly, invoked Gwynplaine. She extended her arms,
feeling for that head.
Ursus rushed at the wig, ruffled it, put it on, advanced
softly, and holding his breath, his head bristled thus under
the hand of Dea.
Then calling all his art to his aid, and copying Gwynplaine 's
voice, he sang with ineffable love the response of the monster
to the call of the spirit. The imitation was so perfect that
again the gipsies looked for Gwynplaine, frightened at hearing
without seeing him.
Govicum, filled with astonishment, stamped, applauded,
clapped his hands, producing an Olympian tumult, and himself
laughed as if he had been a chorus of gods. This boy, it must
be confessed, developed a rare talent for acting an audience.
THE LAUGHING MAN, 429
Fibi and Vinos, being automatons of which Ursus pulled
the strings, rattled their instruments, composed of copper
and ass's skin — the usual sign of the performance being over
and of the departure of the people.
Ursus arose, covered with perspiration. He said, in a low
voice, to Homo, " You see it was necessary to gain time. I
think we have succeeded. I have not acquitted myself
badly — I, who have as much reason as any one to go dis-
tracted. Gwynplaine may perhaps return to-morrow. It is
useless to kill Dea directly. I can explain matters to you."
He took off his wig and wiped his forehead.
" I am a ventriloquist of genius," murmured he. " What
talent I displayed ! I have equalled Brabant, the engastrimist
of Francis I. of France. Dea is convinced that Gwynplaine
is here."
" Ursus," said Dea, " where is Gwynplaine? "
Ursus started and turned round. Dea was still standing
at the back of the stage, alone under the lamp which hung
from the ceiling. She was pale, with the pallor of a ghost.
She added, with an ineffable expression of despair, —
" I know. He has left us. He is gone. I always knew
that he had wings."
And raising her sightless eyes on high, she added, —
"When shall I follow?"
CHAPTER III.
COMPLICATIONS.
URSUS was stunned.
He had not sustained the illusion.
Was it the fault of ventriloquism? Certainly not. He
had succeeded in deceiving Fibi and Vinos, who had eyes,
although he had not deceived Dea, who was blind. It was
because Fibi and Vinos saw with their eyes, while Dea saw
with her heart. He could not utter a word. He thought
to himself, Bos in lingtia. The troubled man has an ox on
his tongue.
In his complex emotions, humiliation was the first which
dawned on him. Ursus, driven out of his last resource,
pondered.
" I lavish my onomatopies in vain." Then, like every
430 THE LAUGHING MAN.
dreamer, he reviled himself. " What a frightful failure! I
wore myself out in a pure loss of imitative harmony. But
what is to be done next? "
He looked at Dea. She was silent, and grew paler every
moment, as she stood perfectly motionless. Her sightless
eyes remained fixed in depths of thought.
Fortunately, something happened. Ursus saw Master
Nicless in the yard, with a candle in his hand, beckoning
to him.
Master Nicless had not assisted at the end of the phantom
comedy played by Ursus. Some one had happened to knock
at the door of the inn. Master Nicless had gone to open it.
There had been two knocks, and twice Master Nicless had
disappeared. Ursus, absorbed by his hundred- voiced mono-
logue, had not observed his absence.
On the mute call of Master Nicless, Ursus descended.
He approached the tavern-keeper. Ursus put his finger on
his lips. Master Nicless put his finger on his lips.
The two looked at each other thus.
Each seemed to say to the other, " We will talk, but we
will hold our tongues."
The tavern-keeper silently opened the door of the lower
room of the tavern. Master Nicless entered. Ursus entered.
There was no one there except these two. On the side look-
Ing on the street both doors and window-shutters were
closed.
The tavern-keeper pushed the door behind him, and shut
it in the face of the inquisitive Govicum.
Master Nicless placed the candle on the table.
A low whispering dialogue began.
"Master Ursus?"
"Master Nicless?"
" I understand at last."
" Nonsense I "
" You wished the poor blind girl to think that all was
going on as usual."
" There is no law against my being a ventriloquist."
" You are a clever fellow."
" No."
" It is wonderful how you manage all that you wish to do."
" I tell you it is not."
" Now, I have something to tell you."
THE LAUGHING MAN. 431
" Is it about politics? "
" I don't know."
" Because in that case I could not listen to you."
" Look here: whilst you were playing actors and audience
by yourself, some one knocked at the door of the tavern."
" Some one knocked at the door? "
" Yes."
" I don't like that."
" Nor I, either."
" And then? "
" And then I opened it."
" Who was it that knocked? "
" Some one who spoke to me."
"What did he say?"
" I listened to him."
" What did you answer? "
" Nothing. I came back to see you play."
-And ?"
" Some one knocked a second time."
" Who? the same person? "
" No, another."
" Some one else to speak to you ? "
" Some one who said nothing."
"I like that better."
" I do not."
" Explain yourself, Master Nicless."
" Guess who called the first time."
" I have no leisure to be an GEdipus."
" It was the proprietor of the circus."
"Over the way? "
" Over the way."
" Whence comes all that fearful noise. Well? "
" Well, Master Ursus, he makes you a proposal."
"A proposal?"
" A proposal."
"Why?"
" Because "
" You have an advantage over me, Master Nicless. Just
now you solved my enigma, and now I cannot understand
yours."
" The proprietor of the circus commissioned me to tell you
that he had seen the cortege of police pass this morning, and
432 THE LAUGHING MAN.
that he, the proprietor of the circus, wishing to prove that he
is your friend, offers to buy of you, for fifty pounds, ready1
money, your caravan, the Green Box, your two horses, your
trumpets, with the women that blow them, your play, with
the blind girl who sings in it, your wolf, and yourself."
Ursus smiled a haughty smile.
" Innkeeper, tell the proprietor of the circus that Gwyn-
plaine is coming back."
The innkeeper took something from a chair in the darkness,
and turning towards Ursus with both arms raised, dangled
from one hand a cloak, and from the other a leather esclavine,
a felt hat, and a jacket.
And Master Nicless said, " The man who knocked the
second time was connected with the police; he came in and
left without saying a word, and brought these things."
Ursus recognized the esclavine, the jacket, the hat, and »
the cloak of Gwynplaine.
CHAPTER IV.
MCENIBUS SURDIS CAMPANA MUTA.
URSUS smoothed the felt of the hat, touched the cloth of the
cloak, the serge of the coat, the leather of the esclavine, and
no longer able to doubt whose garments they were, with a
gesture at once brief and imperative, and without saying a
word, pointed to the door of the inn.
Master Nicless opened it.
Ursus rushed out of the tavern.
Master Nicless looked after him, and saw Ursus run, as fast
as his old legs would allow, in the direction taken that morn-
ing by the wapentake who carried off Gwynplaine.
A quarter of an hour afterwards, Ursus, out of breath,
reached the little street in which stood the back wicket of the
Southwark jail, which he had already watched so many hours.
This alley was lonely enough at all hours ; but if dreary during
the day, it was portentous in the night. No one ventured
through it after a certain hour. It seemed as though people
feared that the walls should close in, and that if the prison or
the cemetery took a fancy to embrace, they should be crushed
in their clasp. Such are the effects of darkness. The
pollard willows of the Ruelle Vauvert in Paris were thus ill-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 433
iamed. It was said that during the night the stumps of those
trees changed into great hands, and caught hold of the
passers-by.
By instinct the Southwark folks shunned, as we have
already mentioned, this alley between a prison and a church-
yard. Formerly it had been barricaded during the night by
an iron chain. Very uselessly; because the strongest chain
which guarded the street was the terror it inspired.
Ursus entered it resolutely.
What intention possessed him? None.
He came into the alley to seek intelligence.
Was he going to knock at the gate of the jail? Certainly
not. Such an expedient, at once fearful and vain, had no
place in his brain. To attempt to introduce himself to de-
mand an explanation. What folly 1 Prisons do not open to
those who wish to enter, any more than to those who desire
to get out. Their hinges never turn except by law. Ursus
knew this. Why, then, had he come there? To see. To
see what? Nothing. Who can tell? Even to be opposite
the gate through which Gwynplaine had disappeared was
something.
Sometimes the blackest and most rugged of walls whispers,
and some light escapes through a cranny. A vague glimmer-
ing is now and then to be perceived through solid and sombre
piles of building. Even to examine the envelope of a fact
may be to some purpose. The instinct of us all is to leave
between the fact which interests us and ourselves but the
thinnest possible cover. Therefore it was that Ursus re-
turned to the alley in which the lower entrance to the prison
was situated.
Just as he entered it he heard one stroke of the clock, then
a second.
" Hold," thought he; " can it be midnight already? "
Mechanically he set himself to count.
" Three, four, five."
He mused.
" At what long intervals this clock strikes! how slowly I
Six; seven! "
Then he remarked, —
" What a melancholy sound ! Eight, nine ! Ah ! nothing can
be more natural; it's dull work for a clock to live in a prison.
Ten 1 Besides, there is the cemetery. This clock sounds the
434 THE LAUGHING MAN.
hour to the living, and eternity to the dead. Eleven ! Alas!
to strike the hour to him who is not free is also to chronicle
an eternity. Twelve I "
He paused.
" Yes, it is midnight."
The clock struck a thirteenth stroke.
Ursus shuddered.
"Thirteen!"
Then followed a fourteenth; then a fifteenth.
" What can this mean? "
The strokes continued at long intervals. Ursus listened.
" It is not the striking of a clock; it is the bell Muta. No
wonder I said, ' How long it takes to strike midnight ! ' This
clock does not strike; it tolls. What fearful thing is about
to take place? "
Formerly all prisons and all monasteries had a bell called
Muta, reserved for melancholy occasions. La Muta (the
mute) was a bell which struck very low, as if doing its best
not to be heard.
Ursus had reached the corner which he had found so con-
venient for his watch, and whence he had been able, during a
great part of the day, to keep his eye on the prison.
The strokes followed each other at lugubrious intervals.
A knell makes an ugly punctuation in space. It breaks
the preoccupation of the mind into funereal paragraphs. A
knell, like a man's death-rattle, notifies an agony. If in the
houses about the neighbourhood where a knell is tolled there
are reveries straying in doubt, its sound cuts them into rigid
fragments. A vague reverie is a sort of refuge. Some in-
definable diffuseness in anguish allows now and then a ray of
hope to pierce through it. A knell is precise and desolating.
It concentrates this diffusion of thought, and precipitates the
vapours in which anxiety seeks to remain in suspense. A
knell speaks to each one in the sense of his own grief or of his
own fear. Tragic belli it concerns you. It is a warning
to you.
There Is nothing so dreary as a monologue on which its
cadence falls. The even returns of sound seem to show a
purpose.
What is it that this hammer, the bell, forges on the anvil
of thought?
Ursus counted, vaguely and without motive, the tolling of
THE LAUGHING MAN. 435
the knell. Feeling that his thoughts were sliding from him,
he made an effort not to let them slip into conjecture. Con-
jecture is an inclined plane, on which we slip too far to be to
our own advantage. Still, what was the meaning of the bell ?
He looked through the darkness in the direction in which
he knew the gate of the prison to be.
Suddenly, in that very spot which looked like a dark hole,
a redness showed. The redness grew larger, and became a
light.
There was no uncertainty about it. It soon took a form
and angles. The gate of the jail had just turned on its hinges.
The glow painted the arch and the jambs of the door. It
was a yawning rather than an opening. A prison does not
open; it yawns — perhaps from ennui. Through the gate
passed a man with a torch in his hand.
, The bell rang on. Ursus felt his attention fascinated by
two objects. He watched — his ear the knell, his eye the
torch. Behind the first man the gate, which had been ajar,
enlarged the opening suddenly, and allowed egress to two
other men; then to a fourth. This fourth was the wapen-
take, clearly visible in the light of the torch. In his grasp
was his iron staff.
Following the wapentake, there filed and opened out below
the gateway in order, two by two, with the rigidity of a series
of walking posts, ranks of silent men.
This nocturnal procession stepped through the wicket in
file, like a procession of penitents, without any solution of
continuity, with a funereal care to make no noise — gravely,
almost gently. A serpent issues from its hole with similar
precautions.
The torch threw out their profiles and attitudes into relief.
Fierce looks, sullen attitudes.
Ursus recognized the faces of the police who had that
morning carried off Gwynplaine.
There was no doubt about it. They were the same. They
were reappearing.
Of course, Gwynplaine would also reappear. They had
led him to that place; they would bring him back.
It was all quite clear.
Ursus strained his eyes to the utmost. Would they set
Gwynplaine at liberty ?
The files of police flowed from the low arch very slowly,
436 THE LAUGHING MAN.
and, as It were, drop by drop. The toll of the bell was unin-
terrupted, and seemed to mark their steps. On leaving the
prison, the procession turned their backs on Ursus, went to
the right, into the bend of the street opposite to that in which
he was posted.
A second torch shone under the gateway, announcing the
end of the procession.
Ursus was now about to see what they were bringing with
them. The prisoner — the man.
Ursus was soon, he thought, to see Gwynplaine.
That which they carried appeared.
It was a bier.
Four men carried a bier, covered with black cloth.
Behind them came a man, with a shovel on his shoulder.
A third lighted torch, held by a man reading a book£
probably the chaplain, closed the procession.
The bier followed the ranks of the police, who had turned
to the right.
Just at that moment the head of the procession stopped.
Ursus heard the grating of a key.
Opposite the prison, in the low wall which ran along the
other side of the street, another opening was illuminated by
a torch passing beneath it.
This gate, over which a death's-head was placed, was that
of the cemetery.
The wapentake passed through it, then the men, then the
second torch. The procession decreased therein, like a
reptile entering his retreat.
The files of police penetrated into that other darkness
which was beyond the gate; then the bier; then the man
with the spade; then the chaplain with his torch and his
book, and the gate closed.
There was nothing left but a haze of light above the
wall.
A muttering was heard; then some dull sounds. Doubt-
less the chaplain and the gravedigger — the one throwing on
the coffin some verses of Scripture, the other some clods of
earth.
The muttering ceased; the heavy sounds ceased. A
movement was made. The torches shone. The wapentake
reappeared, holding high his weapon, under the reopened
gate of the cemetery; then the chaplain with his book, and
THE LAUGHING MAN. 437
the gravedigger with his spade. The cortege reappeared
without the coffin.
The files of men crossed over in the same order, with the
same taciturnity, and in the opposite direction. The gate
of the cemetery closed. That of the prison opened. Its
sepulchral architecture stood out against the light. The
obscurity of the passage became vaguely visible. The solid
and deep night of the jail was revealed to sight; then the
whole vision disappeared in the depths of shadow.
The knell ceased. All was locked in silence. A sinister
incarceration of shadows.
A vanished vision ; nothing more.
A passage of spectres, which had disappeared.
The logical arrangement of surmises builds up something
which at least resembles evidence. To the arrest of Gwyn-
plaine, to the secret mode of his capture, to the return of his
garments by the police officer, to the death bell of the prison
to which he had been conducted, was now added, or rather
adjusted — portentous circumstance — a coffin carried to the
grave.
" He is dead! " cried Ursus.
He sank down upon a stone.
" Dead I They have killed him I Gwynplaine 1 My child 1
My son 1 "
And he burst into passionate sobs.
CHAPTER V.
STATE POLICY DEALS WITH LITTLE MATTERS AS WELL AS
WITH GREAT.
URSUS, alas! had boasted that he had never wept. His
reservoir of tears was fulL Such plentitude as is accumu-
lated drop on drop, sorrow on sorrow, through a long exist-
ence, is not to be poured out in a moment, Ursus wept
alone.
The first tear is a letting out of waters. He wept for
Gwynplaine, for Dea, for himself, Ursus, for Homo. He
wept like a child. He wept like an old man. He wept for
everything at which he had ever laughed. He paid ofi
arrears. Man is never nonsuited when he pleads his right to
tears.
438 THE LAUGHING MAN.
The corpse they had just buried was Hardquanonae's?
but Ursus could not know that.
The hours crept on.
Day began to break. The pale clothing of the morning
was spread out, dimly creased with shadow, over the bowl-
ing-green. The dawn lighted up the front of the Tadcaster
Inn. Master Nicless had not gone to bed, because sometimes
the same occurrence produces sleeplessness in many.
Troubles radiate in every direction. Throw a stone in the
water, and count the splashes.
Master Nicless felt himself impeached. It is very disagree-
able that such things should happen in one's house. Master
Nicless, uneasy, and foreseeing misfortunes, meditated. He
regretted having received such people into his house. Had
he but known that they would end by getting him into
mischief 1 But the question was how to get rid of them ?
He had given Ursus a lease. What a blessing if he could
free himself from it 1 How should he set to work to drive
them out ?
Suddenly the door of the inn resounded with one of those
tumultuous knocks which in England announces " Some-
body." The gamut of knocking corresponds with the ladder
of hierarchy.
It was not quite the knock of a lord; but it was the
knock of a justice.
The trembling innkeeper half opened his window. There
was, indeed, the magistrate. Master Nicless perceived at
the door a body of police, from the head of which two men
detached themselves, one of whom was the justice of the
quorum.
Master Nicless had seen the justice of the quorum that
morning, and recognized him.
He did not know the other, who was a fat gentleman, with
a waxen-coloured face, a fashionable wig, and a travelling
cloak. Nicless was much afraid of the first of these persons,
the justice of the quorum. Had he been of the court, he
would have feared the other most, because it was Barkil-
phedro.
One of the subordinates knocked at the door again
violently.
The innkeeper, with great drops of perspiration on his
brow, from anxiety, opened it.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 439
The justice of the quorum, in the tone of a man who is
employed in matters of police, and who is well acquainted
with various shades of vagrancy, raised his voice, and asked
severely, for
" Master Ursus 1"
The host, cap in hand, replied, —
" Your honour; he lives here."
I know it," said the justice.
No doubt, your honour."
Tell him to come down."
Your honour, he is not here."
Where is he?"
I do not know."
How is that? "
He has not come In."
Then he must have gone out very early? "
No; but he went out very late."
What vagabonds 1 " replied the justice.
Your honour," said Master Nicless, softly , ' ' here he comes. ' *
Ursus, indeed, had just come in sight, round a turn of the
wall. He was returning to the inn. He had passed nearly
the whole night between the jail, where at midday he had
seen Gwynplaine, and the cemetery, where at midnight he
had heard the grave filled up. He was pallid with two pallors
— that of sorrow and of twilight.
Dawn, which is light in a chrysalis state, leaves even
those forms which are in movement in the uncertainty of
night. Ursus, wan and indistinct, walked slowly, like a man
in a dream. In the wild distraction produced by agony of
mind, he had left the inn with his head bare. He had not
even found out that he had no hat on. His spare, gray
locks fluttered in the wind. His open eyes appeared sight-
less. Often when awake we are asleep, and as often when
asleep we are awake.
I Ursus looked like a lunatic.
• " Master Ursus," cried the innkeeper, " come ; their
honours desire to speak to you."
Master Nicless, in his endeavour to soften matters down,
let slip, although he would gladly have omitted, this plural,
" their honours " — respectful to the group, but mortifying,
perhaps, to the chief, confounded therein, to some degree,
with his subordinates.
440 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Ursus started like a man falling off a bed, on which he was
sound asleep.
" What is the matter ? " said he.
He saw the police, and at the head of the police the justice.
A fresh and rude shock.
But a short time ago, the wapentake, now the justice of
the quorum. He seemed to have been cast from one to the
other, as ships by some reefs of which we have read in old
stories.
The justice of the quorum made him a sign to enter the
tavern. Ursus obeyed.
Govicum, who had just got up, and who was sweeping
the room, stopped his work, got into a corner behind the
tables, put down his broom, and held his breath. He
plunged his fingers into his hair, and scratched his head,
a symptom which indicated attention to what was about to
occur.
The justice of the quorum sat down on a form, before a
table. Barkilphedro took a chair. Ursus and Master Nicless
remained standing. The police officers, left outside, grouped
themselves in front of the closed door.
The justice of the quorum fixed his eye, full of the law,
upon Ursus. He said, —
" You have a wolf."
Ursus answered, —
" Not exactly."
" You have a wolf," continued the justice, emphasizing
" wolf " with a decided accent.
Ursus answered, —
" You see "
And he was silent.
" A misdemeanour 1 " replied the justice.
Ursus hazarded an excuse, —
" He is my servant."
The justice placed his hand flat on the table, with his
fingers spread out, which is a very fine gesture of authority.
" Merry- andrew 1 to-morrow, by this hour, you and your
wolf must have left England. If not, the wolf will be seized,
carried to the register office, and killed."
Ursus thought, "More murder 1 " but he breathed not a
syllable, and was satisfied with trembling in every limb.
" You hear? " said the justice.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 441
Ursus nodded.
The justice persisted, —
"Killed."
There was silence.
" Strangled, or drowned."
The justice of the quorum watched Ursus.
" And yourself in prison."
Ursus murmured, —
" Your worship 1 "
"Be off before to-morrow morning; if not, such is the
order."
" Your worship 1 "
"What?"
' " Must we leave England, he and I ? "
' "Yes."
"To-day?"
" To-day."
"What is to be done?"
Master Nicless was happy. The magistrate, whom he had
feared, had come to his aid. The police had acted as auxiliary
to him, Nicless. They had delivered him from " such
people." The means he had sought were brought to him.
Ursus, whom he wanted to get rid of, was being driven away
by the police, a superior authority. Nothing to object to.
He was delighted. He interrupted, —
" Your honour, that man "
He pointed to Ursus with his finger.
" That man wants to know how he is to leave England
to-day. Nothing can be easier. There are night and day
at anchor on the Thames, both on this and on the other
side of London Bridge, vessels that sail to the Continent.
They go from England to Denmark, to Holland, to Spain;
not to France, on account of the war, but everywhere else.
To-night several ships will sail, about one o'clock in the morn-
ing, which is the hour of high tide, and, amongst others, the
Vograat of Rotterdam."
The justice of the quorum made a movement of his shoulder
towards Ursus.
" Be it so. Leave by the first ship — by the Vograat."
'• Your worship," said Ursus.
"Well?"
" Your worship, If I had. as formerly, only my little box
442 THE LAUGHING MAN.
on wheels, it might be done, A boat wauld contain that;
but "
"But what?"
" But now I have got the Green Box, which is a great
caravan drawn by two horses, and however wide the ship
might be, we could not get it into her."
" What is that to me? " said the justice. " The wolf will
be killed."
Ursus shuddered, as if he were grasped by a hand of ice.
"Monsters I" he thought. "Murdering people is their
way of settling matters."
The innkeeper smiled, and addressed Ursus.
" Master Ursus, you can sell the Green Box."
Ursus looked at Nicless.
" Master Ursus, you have the offer."
"From whom?"
" An offer for the caravan, an offer for the two horses, an
offer for the two gipsy women, an offer "
" From whom? " repeated Ursus.
" From the proprietor of the neighbouring circus."
Ursus remembered it.
" It is true."
Master Nicless turned to the justice of the quorum.
" Your honour, the bargain can be completed to-day. The
proprietor of the circus close by wishes to buy the caravan
and the horses."
" The proprietor of the circus is right," said the justice,
" because he will soon require them. A caravan and
horses will be useful to him. He, too, will depart to-day.
The reverend gentlemen of the parish of Southwark have
complained of the indecent riot in Tarrinzeau field. The
sheriff has taken his measures. To-night there will not be a
single juggler's booth in the place. There must be an end of
all these scandals. The honourable gentleman who deigns to
be here present "
The justice of the quorum interrupted his speech to salute
Barkilphedro, who returned the bow.
" The honourable gentleman who deigns to be present
has just arrived from Windsor. He brings orders. Her
Majesty has said, ' It must be swept away.' "
Ursus, during his long meditation all night, had not failed
to put himself some questions. After all, he had only seen
THE LAUGHING MAN. 443
a bier. Could he be sure that It contained Gwynplaine?
Other people might have died besides Gwynplaine, A coffin
does not announce the name of the corpse, as it passes by.
A funeral had followed the arrest of Gwynplaine. That
proved nothing. Post hoc, non propter hoc, etc. Ursus had
begun to doubt.
Hope burns and glimmers over misery like naphtha over
water. Its hovering flame ever floats over human sorrow.
Ursus had come to this conclusion, " It is probable that it
was Gwynplaine whom they buried, but it is not certain.
Who knows ? Perhaps Gwynplaine is still alive."
Ursus bowed to the justice.
" Honourable judge, I will go away, we will go away, all
will go away, by the Vograat of Rotterdam, to-day. I will
sell the Green Box, the horses, the trumpets, the gipsies.
But I have a comrade, whom I cannot leave behind —
Gwynplaine."
" Gwynplaine is dead," said a voice.
Ursus felt a cold sensation, such as is produced by a reptile
crawling over the skio. It was Barkilphedro who had just
spoken-
The last gleam was extinguished. No more doubt now.
Gwynplaine was dead. A person in authority must know.
This one looked ill-favoured enough to do so.
Ursus bowed to him.
Master Nicless was a good-hearted man enough, but a
dreadful coward. Once terrified, he became a brute. The
greatest cruelty is that inspired by fear.
He growled out, —
" This simplifies matters."
And he indulged, standing behind Ursus, in rubbing his
hands, a peculiarity of the selfish, signifying, " I am well
out of it," and suggestive of Pontius Pilate washing his
hands.
Ursus, overwhelmed, bent down his head.
The sentence on Gwynplaine had been executed — death.
His sentence was pronounced — exile. Nothing remained
but to obey. He felt as in a dream.
Some one touched his arm. It was the other person, who
was with the justice of the quorum. Ursus shuddered.
The voice which had said, "Gwynplaine is dead," whispered
to his ear,—
444 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" Here are ten guineas, sent you by one who wishes yoti
well."
And Barkilphedro placed a little purse on a table before
Ursus. We must not forget the casket that Barkilphedro
had taken with him.
Ten guineas out of two thousand I It was all that Barkil-
phedro could make up his mind to part with. In all con--
science It was enough. If he had given more, he would have
lost. He had taken the trouble of finding out a lord} and
having sunk the shaft, it was but fair that the first proceeds
of the mine should belong to him. Those who see meanness
in the act are right, but they would be wrong to feel astonished.
Barkilphedro loved money, especially money which was,
stolen. An envious man is an avaricious one. Barkilphedro
was not without his faults. The commission of crimes does
not preclude the possession of vices. Tigers have their lice.
Besides, he belonged to the school of Bacon.
Barkilphedro turned towards the justice of the quorum,
and said to him, —
" Sir, be so good as to conclude this matter. I am In haste.
A carriage and horses belonging to her Majesty await me.
I must go full gallop to Windsor, for I must be there within
two hours' time. I have intelligence to give, and orders to
take/"
The justice of the quorum arose.
He went to the door, which was only latched, opened it,
and, looking silently towards the police, beckoned to them
authoritatively. They entered with that silence which
heralds severity of action.
Master Nicless, satisfied with the rapid denouement which
cut short his difficulties, charmed to be out of the entangled
skein, was afraid, when he saw the muster of officers, that
they were going to apprehend Ursus In his house. Two
arrests, one after the other, made in his house — first that of
Gwynplaine, then that of Ursus — might be injurious to the
inn. Customers dislike police raids.
Here then was a time for a respectful appeal, suppliant and
generous. Master Nicless turned toward the justice of the
quorum a smiling face, in which confidence was tempered by
respect.
" Your honour, I venture to observe to your honour that
these honourable gentlemen, the police officers, might be
THE LAUGHING MAN. 445
dispensed with, now that the wolf is about to be carried away
from England, and that this man, Ursus, makes no resist-
ance; and since your honour's orders are being punctually
carried out, your honour will consider that the respectable
business of the police, so necessary to the good of the king-
dom, does great harm to an establishment, and that my
house is innocent. The merry andrews of the Green Box
having been swept away, as her Majesty says, there is no
longer any criminal here, as I do not suppose that the blind
girl and the two women are criminals; therefore, I implore
your honour to deign to shorten your august visit, and to
dismiss these worthy gentlemen who have just entered,
because there is nothing for them to do in my house; and, if
your honour will permit me to prove the justice of my speech
under the form of a humble question, I will prove the inu-
tility of these revered gentlemen's presence by asking your
honour, if the man, Ursus, obeys orders and departs, who
there can be to arrest here? "
" Yourself," said the justice.
A man does not argue with a sword which runs him through
and through. Master Nicless subsided — he cared not on
what, on a table, on a form, on anything that happened to be
there — prostrate.
The justice raised his voice, so that if there were people
outside, they might hear.
" Master Nicless Plumptree, keeper of this tavern, this is the
last point to be settled. This mountebank and the wolf are
vagabonds. They are driven away. But the person most
in fault is yourself. It is in your house, and with your con-
sent, that the law has been violated ; and you, a man licensed,
invested with a public responsibility, have established the
scandal here. Master Nicless, your licence is taken away;
you must pay the penalty, and go to prison."
The policemen surrounded the innkeeper.
The justice continued, pointing out Govicum, —
" Arrest that boy as an accomplice." The hand of an
officer fell upon the collar of Govicum, who looked at him
inquisitively. The boy was not much alarmed, scarcely
understanding the occurrence; having already observed
many things out of the way, he wondered if this were the
end of the comedy.
The justice of the quorum forced his hat down on his head.
446 THE LAUGHING MAN.
crossed his hands on his stomach, which is the height of
majesty, and added, —
"It is decided, Master Nicless; you are to be taken to
prison, and put into jail, you and the boy; and this house,
the Tadcaster Inn, is to remain shut up, condemned and
closed. For the sake of example. Upon which, you will
follow us."
BOOK THE SEVENTH
THE TITANESS.
CHAPTER I.
THE AWAKENING.
AND Deal
It seemed to Gwynplaine, as he watched the break of day
at Corleone Lodge, while the things we have related were
occurring at the Tadcaster Inn, that the call came from with-
out; but it came from within.
Who has not heard the deep clamours of the soul ?
Moreover, the morning was dawning.
Aurora is a voice.
Of what use is the sun if not to reawaken that dark sleeper
— the conscience ?
Light and virtue are akin.
Whether the god be called Christ or Love, there is at times
an hour when he is forgotten, even by the best. All of us,
even the saints, require a voice to remind us ; and the dawn
speaks to us, like a sublime monitor. Conscience calls out
before duty, as the cock crows before the dawn of day.
That chaos, the human heart, hears the -fiat lux!
Gwynplaine — we will continue thus to call him (Clan-
charlie is a lord, Gwynplaine is a man) — Gwynplaine felt
as if brought back to life. It was time that the artery was
bound up.
For a while his virtue had spread its wings and flown away.
"And Deal " he said.
448 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Then he felt through his veins a generous transfusion.
Something healthy and tumultuous rushed upon him. The
violent irruption of good thoughts is like the return home of
a man who has not his key, and who forces his own lock
honestly. It is an escalade, but an escalade of good. It is
a burglary, but a burglary of evil.
" Deal Deal Deal " repeated he.
He strove to assure himself of his heart's strength. And
he put the question with a loud voice — " Where are you? "
He almost wondered that no one answered him.
Then again, gazing on the walls and the v ceiling, with
wandering thoughts, through which reason returned.
" Where are you ? Where am I ? "
And in the chamber which was his cage he began to walk
again, to and fro, like a wild beast in captivity.
" Where am I? At Windsor. And you? In South wark.
Alasl this is the first time that there has been distance
between us. Who has dug this gulf? I here, thou there.
Oh, it cannot be; it shall not bel What Is this that they
have done to me ? "
He stopped.
" Who talked to me of the queen? What do I know of
such things? / changed 1 Why? Because I am a lord.
Do you know what has happened, Dea? You are a lady.
What has come to pass is astounding. My business now is
to get back into my right road. Who is it who led me astray ?
There is a man who spoke to me mysteriously. I remember
the words which he addressed to me. ' My lord, when one
door opens another is shut. That which you have left behind
is no longer yours/ In other words, you are a coward.
That man, the miserable wretch I said that to me before I
was well awake. He took advantage of my first moment of
astonishment. I was as it were a prey to him. Where is
he, that I may insult him? He spoke to me with the evil
smile of a demon. But see — I am myself again. That is well.
They deceive themselves if they think that they can do what
they like with Lord Clancharlie, a peer of England. Yes,
with a peeress, who is Dea! Conditions I Shall I accept
them ? The queen ! What is the queen to me ? I never saw
her. I am not a lord to be made a slave. I enter my posi-
tion unfettered. Did they think they had unchained me fof
nothing? They have unmuzzled me. That is all. Deal
THE LAUGHING MAN. 449
Ursusl we are together. That which you were, 1 was;
that which I am, you are. Come. No. I will go to you
directly — directly. I have already waited too long. What
can they think, not seeing me return I That money. When
I think I sent them that money 1 It was myself that they
wanted. I remember the man said that I could not leave
this place. We shall see that. Come! a carriage, a carriage!
put to the horses. I am going to look for them. Where are
the servants ? I ought to have servants here, since I am a
lord. I am master here. This is my house. I will twist off.
the bolts, I will break the locks, I will kick down the doors,
I will run my sword through the body of any one who bars my
passage. I should like to see who shall stop me. I have a
wife, and she is Dea. I have a father, who is Ursus. My
house is a palace, and I give it to Ursus. My name is a
diadem, and I give it to Dea. Quick, directly, Dea, I am
coming; yes, you may be sure that I shall soon stride across
the intervening space! "
And raising the first piece of tapestry he came to, he rushed
from the chamber impetuously.
He found himself in a corridor.
He went straight forward.
A second corridor opened out before him.
All the doors were open.
He walked on at random, from chamber to chamber, from
passage to passage, seeking an exit.
CHAPTER II.
THE RESEMBLANCE OF A PALACE TO A WOOD.
IN palaces after the Italian fashion, and Corleone Lodge was
one, there were very few doors, but abundance of tapestry
screens and curtained doorways. In every palace of that
date there was a wonderful labyrinth of chambers and cor-
ridors, where luxury ran riot; gilding, marble, carved wains-
coting, Eastern silks; nooks and corners, some secret and
dark as night, others light and pleasant as the day. There
were attics, richly and brightly furnished; burnished recesses
shining with Dutch tiles and Portuguese azulejos. The tops
of the high windows were converted into small rooms and
glass attics, forming pretty habitable lanterns. The thick-
15
450 THE LAUGHING MAN.
ness of the walls was such that there were rooms within them.
Here and there were closets, nominally wardrobes. They
were called " The Little Rooms." It was within them that
evil deeds were hatched.
When a Duke of Guise had to be killed, the pretty Presi-
dente of Sylvecane abducted, or the cries of little girls brought
thither by Lebel smothered, such places were convenient for
the purpose. They were labyrinthine chambers, impractic-
able to a stranger; scenes of abductions; unknown depths,
receptacles of mysterious disappearances. In those elegant
caverns princes and lords stored their plunder. In such a
place the Count de Charolais hid Madame Courchamp, the
wife of the Clerk of the Privy Council; Monsieur de Monthule,
the daughter of Haudry, the farmer of La Croix Saint Lenfroy ;
the Prince de Conti, the two beautiful baker women of L'lle
Adam; the Duke of Buckingham, poor Penny well, etc.
The deeds done there were such as were designated by the
Roman law as committed vi, clam, et precario — by force, in
secret, and for a short time. Once in, an occupant remained
there till the master of the house decreed his or her release.
They were gilded oubliettes, savouring both of the cloister
and the harem. Their staircases twisted, turned, ascended,
and descended. A zigzag of rooms, one running into another,
led back to the starting-point. A gallery terminated in an
oratory. A confessional was grafted on to an alcove. Per-
haps the architects of " the little rooms," building for royalty
and aristocracy, took as models the ramifications of coral
beds, and the openings in a sponge. The branches became a
labyrinth. Pictures turning on false panels were exits and
entrances. They were full of stage contrivances, and no
wonder — considering the dramas that were played there!
The floors of these hives reached from the cellars to the attics.
Quaint madrepore inlaying every palace, from Versailles
downwards, like cells of pygmies in dwelling-places of Titans.
Passages, niches, alcoves, and secret recesses. All sorts of
holes and corners, in which was stored away the meanness of
the great.
These winding and narrow passages recalled games, blind-
folded eyes, hands feeling in the dark, suppressed laughter,
blind man's buff, hide and seek, while, at the same time, they
suggested memories of the Atrides, of the Plantagenets, of
the Medicis, the brutal knights of Eltz, of Rizzio, of Monal-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 45 1
deschi; of naked swords, pursuing the fugitive flying from
room to room.
The ancients, too, had mysterious retreats of the same
kind, in which luxury was adapted to enormities. The
pattern has been preserved underground in some sepulchres
in Egypt, notably in the tomb of King Psammetichus, dis-
covered by Passalacqua. The 'ancient poets have recorded
the horrors of these suspicious buildings. Error circumflexus,
locus implicitus gyris.
Gwynplaine was in the " little rooms "of Corleone Lodge.
He was burning to be off, to get outside, to see Dea again.
The maze of passages and alcoves, with secret and bewilder-
ing doors, checked and retarded his progress. He strove to
run ; he was obliged to wander. He thought that he had but
one door to thrust open, while he had a skein of doors to
unravel. To one room succeeded another. Then a crossway,
with rooms on every side.
Not a living creature was to be seen. He listened. Not a
sound.
At times he thought that he must be returning towards his
starting-point; then, that he saw some one approaching.
It was no one. It was only the reflection of himself in a
mirror, dressed as a nobleman. That he? Impossible 1
Then he recognized himself, but not at once.
He explored every passage that he came to.
He examined the quaint arrangements of the rambling
building, and their yet quainter fittings. Here, a cabinet,
painted and carved in a sentimental but vicious style; there,
an equivocal-looking chapel, studded with enamels and
mother-of-pearl, with miniatures on ivory wrought out in
relief, like those on old-fashioned snuff-boxes; there, one of
those pretty Florentine retreats, adapted to the hypochondri-
asis of women, and even then called boudoirs. Everywhere
— on the ceilings, on the walls, and on the very floors — were
representations, in velvet or in metal, of birds, of trees; of
luxuriant vegetation, picked out in reliefs of lacework; tables
covered with jet carvings, representing warriors, queens,
and tritons armed with the scaly terminations of a hydra.
Cut crystals combining prismatic effects with those of re-
flection. Mirrors repeated the light of precious stones, and
sparkles glittered in the darkest corners. It was impossible
to guess whether those many-sided, shining surfaces, where
452 THE LAUGHING MAN.
emerald green mingled with the golden hues of the rising sun,
where floated a glimmer of ever-varying colours, like those on
a pigeon's neck, were miniature mirrors or enormous beryls.
Everywhere was magnificence, at once refined and stupen-
dous; if it was not the most diminutive of palaces, it was
the most gigantic of jewel-cases. A house for Mab or a jewel
for Geo.
Gwynplaine sought an exit. He could not find one. Im-
possible to make out his way. There is nothing so confusing
as wealth seen for the first time. Moreover, this was a
labyrinth. At each step he was stopped by some magnificent
object which appeared to retard his exit, and to be unwilling
to let him pass. He was encompassed by a net of wonders.
He felt himself bound and held back.
What a horrible palace I he thought. Restless, he
wandered through the maze, asking himself what it all meant
— whether he was in prison; chafing, thirsting for the fresh
air. He repeated Dea 1 Dea 1 as if that word was the thread
of the labyrinth, and must be held unbroken, to guide him
out of it. Now and then he shouted, " Ho ! Any one there ? "
No one answered. The rooms never came to an end. All
was deserted, silent, splendid, sinister. It realized the fables
of enchanted castles. Hidden pipes of hot air maintained
a summer temperature in the building. It was as if some
magician had caught up the month of June and imprisoned
it in a labyrinth. There were pleasant odours now and then,
and he crossed currents of perfume, as though passing by
invisible flowers. It was warm. Carpets everywhere. One
might have walked about there, unclothed.
Gwynplaine looked out of the windows. The view from
each one was different. From one he beheld gardens, spar-
kling with the freshness of a spring morning ; from another
a plot decked with statues; from a third, a patio in the
Spanish style, a little square, flagged, mouldy, and cold. At
times he saw a river — it was the Thames; sometimes a'great
tower — it was Windsor.
It was still so early that there were no signs of life without.
He stood still and listened.
"Oh 1 I will get out of this place," said he. " I will return
to Dea ! They shall not keep me here by force. Wpe to him
who bars my exit! What is that great tower yonder? If
there was a giant, a hell-hound, a miuotaur, to keep the gates
THE LAUGHING MAN. 453
of this enchanted palace, I would annihilate him. If an
army, I would exterminate it. Deal Deal "
Suddenly he heard a gentle noise, very faint. It was like
dropping water. He was in a dark narrow passage, closed,
some few paces further on, by a curtain. He advanced to
the curtain, pushed it aside, entered. He leaped before he
looked.
CHAPTER III.
EVE.
AN octagon room, with a vaulted ceiling, without windows,
but lighted by a skylight; walls, ceiling, and floors faced with
peach-coloured marble ; a black marble canopy, like a pall,
with twisted columns in the solid but pleasing Elizabethan
style, overshadowing a vase-like bath of the same black
marble — this was what he saw before him. In the centre of
the bath arose a slender jet of tepid and perfumed water,
which, softly and slowly, was filling the tank. The bath was
black to augment fairness into brilliancy.
It was the water which he had heard. A waste-pipe,
placed at a certain height in the bath, prevented It from over-
flowing. Vapour was rising from the water, but not sufficient
to cause It to hang in drops on the marble. The slender jet
of water was like a supple wand of steel, bending at the
slightest current of air. There was no furniture, except a
chair-bed with pillows, long enough for a woman to lie on at
full length, and yet have room for a dog at her feet. The
French, indeed, borrow their word canape from can-al-pU.
This sofa was of Spanish manufacture. In it silver took the
place of woodwork. The cushions and coverings were of
rich white silk.
On the other side of the bath, by the wall, was a lofty
dressing-table of solid silver, furnished with every requisite
for the table, having in its centre, and in imitation of a
window, eight small Venetian mirrors, set in a silver frame.
In a panel on the wall was a square opening, like a little win-
dow, which was closed by a door of solid silver. This door
was fitted with hinges, like a shutter. On the shutter there
glistened a chased and gilt royal crown. Over it, and affixed
to the wall, was a bell, silver gilt, if not of pure gold.
Opposite the entrance of the chamber, in which Gwynplaine
454 THE LAUGHING MAN.
stood as if transfixed, there was an opening in the marble
wall, extending to the 'ceiling, and closed by a high and
broad curtain of silver tissue. This curtain, of fairy-like
tenuity, was transparent, and did not interrupt the view.
Through the centre of this web, where one might expect a
spider, Gwynplaine saw a more formidable object — a woman.
Her dress was a long chemise — so long that it floated
over her feet, like the dresses of angels in holy pictures;
but so fine that it seemed liquid.
The silver tissue, transparent as glass and fastened only at
the ceiling, could be lifted aside. It separated the marble
chamber, which was a bathroom, from the adjoining apart-
ment, which was a bedchamber. This tiny dormitory was
as a grotto of mirrors. Venetian glasses, close together,
mounted with gold mouldings, reflected on every side the bed
in the centre of the room. On the bed, which, like the toilet-
table, was of silver, lay the woman ; she was asleep.
The crumpled clothes bore evidence of troubled sleep.
The beauty of the folds was proof of the quality of the
material.
It was a period when a queen, thinking that she should be
damned, pictured hell to herself as a bed with coarse sheets. -
A dressing-gown, of curious silk, was thrown over the foot of
the couch. It was apparently Chinese; for a great golden
lizard was partly visible in between the folds.
Beyond the couch, and probably masking a door, was a
large mirror, on which were painted peacocks and swans.
Shadow seemed to lose its nature in this apartment, and
glistened. The spaces between the mirrors and the gold work
were lined with that sparkling material called at Venice
thread of glass — that is, spun glass.
At the head of the couch stood a reading desk, on a mov-
able pivot, with candles, and a book lying open, bearing this
title, in large red letters, " Alcoranus Mahumedis."
Gwynplaine saw none of these details. He had eyes only
for the woman. He was at once stupefied and filled with
tumultuous emotions, states apparently incompatible, yet
sometimes co-existent. He recognized her. Her eyes were
closed, but her face was turned towards him. It was the
duchess — she,the mysterious being in whom all the splendours
* This fashion of sleeping partly undrest came from Italy, and was
derived from the Romans. " Sub clard nuda lacernd," says Horace.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 455
of the unknown, were united; she who had occasioned .him
so many unavowable dreams; she who had written him so
strange a letter I The only woman in the world of whom he
could say, " She has seen me, and she desires mel "
He had dismissed the dreams from his mind ; he had burnt
the letter. He had, as far as lay in his power, banished the
remembrance of her from his thoughts and dreams. He no
longer thought of her. He had forgotten her
Again he saw her, and saw her terrible in power. His
breath came in short catches. He felt as if he were in a
storm-driven cloud. He looked. This woman before him!
Was it possible? At the theatre a duchess; here a nereid,
a nymph, a fairy. Always an apparition. He tried to fly,
but felt the futility of the attempt. His eyes were riveted
on the vision, as though he were bound. Was she a woman ?
Was she a maiden ? Both. Messalina was perhaps present,
though invisible, and smiled, while Diana kept watch.
Over all her beauty was the radiance of inaccessibility.
No purity could compare with her chaste and haughty form.
Certain snows, which have never been touched, give an idea
of it — such as the sacred whiteness of the Jungfrau. Im-
modesty was merged in splendour. She felt the security of '
an Olympian, who knew that she was daughter of the depths,
and might say to the ocean, " Father 1 " And she exposed
herself, unattainable and proud, to everything that should
pass — to looks, to desires, to ravings, to dreams; as proud
in her languor, on her boudoir couch, as Venus in the im-
mensity of the sea-foam.
She had slept all night, and was prolonging her sleep into
the daylight; her boldness, begun in shadow, continued in
light.
Gwynplaine shuddered. He admired her with an unhealthy
and absorbing admiration, which ended in fear. Misfortunes
never come singly. Gwynplaine thought he had drained to
the dregs the cup of his ill-luck. Now it was refilled. Who
was itjwho was hurling all those unremitting thunderbolts on
his devoted head, and who had now thrown against him, as
he stood trembling there, a sleeping goddess ? What ! was
the dangerous and desirable object of his dream lurking all
the while behind these successive glimpses of heaven ? Did
these favours of the mysterious tempter tend to inspire him
with vague aspirations and confused ideas, and overwhelm
456 THE LAUGHING MAN.
him with, an intoxicating series of realities proceeding from
apparent impossibilities? Wherefore did all the shadows
conspire against him, a wretched man; and what would
become of him, with all those evil smiles of fortune beaming
on him? Was his temptation prearranged? This woman,
how and why was she there ? No explanation ! Why him ?
Why her ? Was he made a peer of England expressly for
this duchess ? Who had brought them together ? Who was
the dupe? Who the victim? Whose simplicity was being
abused? Was it God who was being deceived? All these
undefined thoughts passed confusedly, like a flight of dark
shadows, through his brain. That magical and malevolent
abode, that strange and prison-like palace, was it also in the
plot ? Gwynplaine suffered a partial unconsciousness. Sup-
pressed emotions threatened to strangle him. He was
weighed down by an overwhelming force. His will became
powerless. How could he resist? He was incoherent and
entranced. This time he felt he was becoming irremediably
insane. His dark, headlong fall over the precipice of stupe-
faction continued.
But the woman slept on.
What aggravated the storm within him was, that he saw
not the princess, not the duchess, not the lady, but the
woman.
Gwynplaine, losing all self-command, trembled. What
could he do against such a temptation ? Here were no skilful
effects of dress, no silken folds, no complex and coquettish
adornments, no affected exaggeration of concealment or of
exhibition, no cloud. It was fearful simplicity — a sort of
mysterious summons — the shameless audacity of Eden. The
whole of the dark side of human nature was there. Eve
worse than Satan; the human and the superhuman com-
mingled. A perplexing ecstasy, winding up in a brutal
triumph of instinct over duty. The sovereign contour of
beauty is imperious. When it leaves the ideal and con-
descends to be real, its proximity is fatal to man.
Now and then the duchess moved softly on the bed, with
the vague movement of a cloud in the heavens, changing as
a vapour changes its form. Absurd as it may appear, though
he saw her present in the flesh before him, yet she seemed a
chimera; and, palpable as she was, she seemed to him afar
off. Scared and livid, he gazed on. He listened for her
THE LAUGHING MAN. 457
breathing, and fancied he heard only a phantom's respiration.
He was attracted, though against his will. How arm himself
against her — or against himself? He had been prepared for
everything except this danger. A savage doorkeeper, a
raging monster of a jailer — suchwerehis expected antagonists.
He looked for Cerberus ; he saw Hebe. A sleeping woman 1
What an opponent I He closed his eyes. Too bright a
dawn blinds the eyes. But through his closed eyelids there
penetrated at once the woman's form — not so distinct, but
beautiful as ever.
Flyl Easier said than done. He had already tried and
failed. He was rooted to the ground, as if in a dream. When
we try to draw back, temptation clogs our feet and glues
them to the earth. We can still advance, but to retire is
impossible. The invisible arms of sin rise from below and
drag us down.
There is a commonplace idea, accepted by every one, that
feelings become blunted by experience. Nothing can be
more untrue. You might as well say that by dropping nitric
acid slowly on a sore it would heal and become sound, and
that torture dulled the sufferings of Damiens. The truth is,
that each fresh application intensifies the pain.
From one surprise after another, Gwynplaine had become
desperate. That cup, his reason, under this new stupor, was
overflowing. He felt within him a terrible awakening. Com-
pass he no longer possessed. One idea only was before him —
the woman. An indescribable happiness appeared, which
threatened to overwhelm him. He could no longer decide
for himself. There was an irresistible current and a reef.
The reef was not a rock, but a siren — a magnet at the bottom
of the abyss. He wished to tear himself away from this
magnet; but how was he to carry out his wish? He had
ceased to feel any basis of support. Who can foresee the
fluctuations of the human mind ! A man may be wrecked,
as is a ship. Conscience is an anchor. It is a terrible thing,
but, like the anchor, conscience may be carried away.
He had not even the chance of being repulsed on account
of his terrible disfigurement. The woman had written to say
that she loved him.
In every crisis there is a moment when the scale hesitates
before kicking the beam. When we lean to the worst side
of our nature, Instead of strengthening our better qualities,
458 THE LAUGHING MAN.
the moral force which has been preserving the balance gives
way, and down we go. Had this critical moment in Gwyn-
plaine's life arrived ?
How could he escape ?
So it is she — the duchess, the woman I There she was in
that lonely room — asleep, far from succour, helpless, alone,
at his mercy; yet he was in her power! The duchess! We
have, perchance, observed a star in the distant firmament.
We have admired it. It is so far off. What can there be to
make us shudder in a fixed star ? Well, one day — one night,
rather — it moves. We perceive a trembling gleam around it.
The star which we imagined to be immovable is in motion.
It is no longer a star, but a comet — the incendiary giant of
the skies. The luminary moves on, grows bigger, shakes off
a shower of sparks and fire, and becomes enormous. It
advances towards us. Oh, horror, it is coming our way!
The comet recognizes us, marks us for its own, and will not be
turned aside. Irresistible attack of the heavens 1 What is
it which is bearing down on us? An excess of light, which
blinds us; an excess of life, which kills us. That proposal
which the heavens make we refuse; that unfathomable love
we reject. We close our eyes; we hide; we tear ourselves
away; we imagine the danger is past. We open our eyes:
the formidable star is still before us ; but, no longer a star, it
has become a world — a world unknown, a world of lava and
ashes; the devastating prodigy of space. It fills the sky,
allowing no compeers. The carbuncle of the firmament's
depths, a diamond in the distance, when drawn close to us
becomes a furnace. You are caught in its flames. And the
first sensation of burning is that of a heavenly warmth.
CHAPTER IV.
SATAN.
SUDDENLY the sleeper awoke. She sat up with a sudden
and gracious dignity of movement, her fair silken tresses fall-
ing in soft disorder. Then stretching herself, she yawned
like a tigress in the rising sun.
Perhaps Gwynplaine breathed heavily, as we do when we
endeavour to restrain our respiration.
" Is any one there ? " said she.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 459
She yawned as she spoke, and her very yawn was graceful.
Gwynplaine listened to the unfamiliar voice — the voice of a
charmer, its accents exquisitely haughty, its caressing intona-
tion softening its native arrogance. Then rising on her knees
— there is an antique statue kneeling thus in the midst of a
thousand transparent folds — she drew the dressing-gown
towards her, and springing from the couch stood upright.
In the twinkling of an eye the silken robe was around her.
The trailing sleeve concealed her hands ; only the tips of her
toes, with little pink nails like those of an infant, were left
visible. Having drawn from underneath the dressing-gown
a mass of hair which had been imprisoned by it, she crossed
behind the couch to the end of the room, and placed her ear
to the painted mirror, which was, apparently, a door. Tap-
ping the glass with her finger, she called, " Is any one there ?
Lord David ? Are you come already ? What time is it then ?
Is that yoik Barkilphedro ? " She turned from the glass.
" No ! it was not there. Is there any one in the bathroom ?
Will you answer? Of course not. No one could come that
way."
Going to the silver lace curtain, she raised it with her foot,
thrust it aside with her shoulder, and entered the marble
room. An agonized numbness fell upon Gwynplaine. No
possibility of concealment. It was too late to fly. Moreover,
he was no longer equal to the exertion. He wished that
the earth might open and swallow him up. Anything to
hide him.
She saw him. She stared, immensely astonished, but
without the slightest nervousness. Then, in a tone of mingled
pleasure and contempt, she said, " Why, it is Gwynplaine 1 "
Suddenly with a rapid spring, for this cat was a panther, she
flung herself on his neck.
Suddenly, pushing him back, and holding him by both
shoulders with her small claw-like hands, she stood up face to
face with him, and began to gaze at him with a strange
expression.
It was a fatal glance she gave him with her Aldebaran-like
eyes — a glance at once equivocal and starlike. Gwynplaine
watched the blue eye and the black eye, distracted by the
double ray of heaven and of hell that shone in the orbs thus
fixed on him. The man and the woman threw a malign
dazzling reflection one on the other. Both were fascinated —
460 THE LAUGHING MAN.
he by her beauty, she by his deformity. Both were in a
measure awe-stricken. Pressed down, as by an overwhelm-
ing weight, he was speechless.
" Ohl " she cried. •" How clever you are ! You are come.
You found out that I was obliged to leave London. You
followed me. That was right. Your being here proves you
to be a wonder."
The simultaneous return of self-possession acts like a flash
of lightning. Gwynplaine, indistinctly warned by a vague,
rude, but honest misgiving, drew back, but the pink nails
clung to his shoulders and restrained him. Some inexorable
power proclaimed its sway over him. He himself, a wild
beast, was caged in a wild beast's den. She continued,
" Anne, the fool — you know whom I mean — the queen —
ordered me to Windsor without giving any reason. When
I arrived she was closeted with her idiot of a Chancellor.
But how did you contrive to obtain access to me? That's
what I call being a man. Obstacles, indeed ! there are no
such things. You come at a call. You found things out.
My name, the Duchess Josiana, you knew, I fancy. Who
was it brought you in ? No doubt it was the page. Oh, he
is clever 1 I will give him a hundred guineas. Which way
did you get in? Tell me I No, don't tell me; I don't want
to know. Explanations diminish interest. I prefer the
marvellous, and you are hideous enough to be wonderful.
You have fallen from the highest heavens, or you have risen
from the depths of hell through the devil's trap-door.
Nothing can be more natural. The ceiling opened or the
floor yawned. A descent in a cloud, or an ascent in a mass
of fire and brimstone, that is how you have travelled. You
have a right to enter like the gods. Agreed; you are my
lover."
Gwynplaine was scared, and listened, his mind growing
more irresolute every moment. Now all was certain. Im-
possible to have any further doubt. That letter 1 the woman
confirmed its meaning. Gwynplaine the lover and the
beloved of a duchess 1 Mighty pride, with its thousand
baleful heads, stirred his wretched heart. Vanity, that
powerful agent within us, works us measureless evil.
The duchess went on, " Since you are here, it is so decreed.
I ask nothing more. There is some one on high, or in hell,
who brings us together, The betrothal of Styx and Aurora f
THE LAUGHING MAN. 461
Unbridled ceremonies beyond all laws 1 The very day I first
saw you I said, "It is he 1" I recognize him. He is the monster
of my dreams. He shall be mine. We should give destiny
a helping hand. Therefore I wrote to you. One question,
Gwynplaine : do you believe in predestination ? For my part,
I have believed in it since I read, in Cicero, Scipio's dream.
Ah 1 I did not observe it. Dressed like a gentleman 1 You
in fine clothes I Why not? You are a mountebank. All
the more reason. A juggler is as good as a lord. Moreover,
what are lords ? Clowns. You have a noble figure ; you are
magnificently made. It is wonderful that you should be
here. When did you arrive? How long have you been
here? Did you see me naked? I am beautiful, am I not?
I was going to take my bath. Oh, how I love you I You
read my letter 1 Did you read it yourself? Did any one
read it to you ? Can you read ? Probably you are ignorant.
I ask questions, but don't answer them. I don't like the
sound of your voice. It is soft. An extraordinary thing
like you should snarl, and not speak. You sing harmoniously.
I hate it. It is the only thing about you that I do not like.
All the rest is terrible — is grand. In India you would be a
god. Were you born with that frightful laugh on your face ?
No I No doubt it is a penal brand. I do hope you have
committed some crime. Come to my arms."
She sank on the couch, and made him sit beside her. They
found themselves close together unconsciously. What she
said passed over Gwynplaine like a mighty storm. He hardly
understood the meaning of her whirlwind of words. Her
eyes were full of admiration. She spoke tumultuously,
frantically, with a voice broken and tender. Her words
were music, but their music was to Gwynplaine as a hurri-
cane. Again she fixed her gaze upon him and continued,^
" I feel degraded in your presence, and oh, what happiness
that is! How insipid it is to be a grandee! I am noble;
what can be more tiresome ? Disgrace is a comfort. I am
so satiated with respect that I long for contempt. We are
all a little erratic, from Venus, Cleopatra, Mesdames de
Chevreuse and de Longueville, down to myself. I will make
a display of you, I declare. Here's a love affair which will be
a blow to my family, the Stuarts. Ah I I breathe again. I
have discovered a secret. I am clear of royalty. To be free
from its trammels is indeed deliverance. To break down,
462 THE LAUGHING MAN.
defy, make and destroy at will, that is true enjoyment.
Listen, I love you."
She paused; then with a frightful smile went on, "I love
you, not only because you are deformed, but because you
are low. I love monsters, and I love mountebanks. . A lover
despised, mocked, grotesque, hideous, exposed to laughter
on that pillory called a theatre, has for me an extraordinary
attraction. It is tasting the fruit of hell. An infamous
lover, how exquisite! To taste the apple, not of Paradise,
but of hell — such is my temptation. It is for that I hunger
and thirst. I am that Eve, the Eve of the depths. Prob-
ably you are, unknown to yourself, a devil. I am in love
with a nightmare. You are a moving puppet, of which the
strings are pulled by a spectre. You are the incarnation of
infernal mirth. You are the master I require. I wanted a
lover such as those of Medea and Canidia. I felt sure that
some night would bring me such a one. You are all that I
want. I am talking of a heap of things of which you
probably know nothing. Gwynplaine, hitherto I have
remained untouched; I give myself to you, pure as a burning
ember. You evidently do not believe me; but if you only
knew how little I care 1 "
Her words flowed like a volcanic eruption. Pierce Mount
Etna, and you may obtain some idea of that jet of fiery
eloquence.
Gwynplaine stammered, " Madame — — "
She placed her hand on his mouth. " Silence," she said.
" I am studying you. I am unbridled desire, immaculate.
I am a vestal bacchante. No man has known me, and I
might be the virgin pythoness at Delphos, and have under
my naked foot the bronze tripod, where the priests lean their
elbows on the skin of the python, whispering questions to the
invisible god. My heart is of stone, but It is like those
mysterious pebbles which the sea washes to the foot of the
rock called Huntly Nabb, at the mouth of the Tees, and
which if broken are found to contain a serpent. That serpent
Is my love— a love which is all-powerful, for it has brought
you to me. An impossible distance was between us. I was
in Sirius, and you were in Allioth. You have crossed the
Immeasurable space, and here you are. 'Tis well. Be silent.
Take, me."
she ceased; he trembled. Then she went on, smiling,
THB LAUGHING MAN. 463
" You see, Gwynplaine, to dream is to create; to desire is to
summon. To build up the chimera is to provoke the reality.
The all-powerful and terrible mystery will not be defied. It
produces result. You are here. Do I dare to lose caste?
Yes. Do I dare to be your mistress — your concubine —
your slave — your chattel? Joyfully. Gwynplaine, I am
woman. Woman is clay longing to become mire. I want
to despise myself. That lends a zest to pride. The alloy of
greatness is baseness. They combine in perfection. Despise
me, you who are despised. Nothing can be better. Deg-
radation on degradation. What joyl I pluck the double
blossom of ignominy. Trample me under foot. You will
only love me the more. I am sure of it. Do you understand
why I idolize you? Because I despise you. You are so
immeasurably below me that I place you on an altar. Bring
the highest and lowest depths together, and you have Chaos,
and I delight in Chaos — Chaos, the beginning and end of
everything. What is Chaos? A huge blot. Out of that
blot God made light, and out of that sink the world. You
don't know how perverse I can be. Knead a star in mud,
and you will have my likeness."
She went on, —
" A wolf to all beside; a faithful dog to you. How
astonished they will all be I The astonishment of fools is
amusing. I understand myself. Am I a goddess ? Amphi-
trite gave herself to the Cyclops. Fluctivoma Amphitrite.
Am I a fairy ? Urgele gave herself to Bugryx, a winged man,
with eight webbed hands. Am I a princess ? Marie Stuart
had Rizzio. Three beauties, three monsters. I am greater
than they, for you are lower than they. Gwynplaine, we
were made for one another. The monster that you are out-
wardly, I am within. Thence my love for you. A caprice ?
Just so. What is a hurricane but a caprice ? Our stars have
a certain affinity. Together we are things of night — you in
your face, I in my mind. As your countenance is defaced, so
is my mind. You, in your turn, create me. You come,
and my real soul shows itself. I did not know it. It is
astonishing. Your coming has evoked the hydra in me,
who am a goddess. You reveal my real nature. See how
I resemble you. Look at me as if I were a mirror. Your
face is my mind. I did not know I was so terrible. I am
also, then, a monster. O Gwynplaine, you do amuse me!"
464 THE LAUGHING MAN.
She laughed, a strange and childlike laugh; and, putting
her mouth close to his ear, whispered, —
" Do you want to see a mad woman? look at me."
She poured her searching look into Gwynplaine. A look is
a philtre. Her loosened robe provoked a thousand danger-
ous feelings. Blind, animal ecstasy was invading his mind-^-
ecstasy combined with agony. Whilst she spoke, though
he felt her words like burning coals, his blood froze within
his veins. He had not strength to utter a word.
She stopped, and looked at him.
" O monster I " she cried. She grew wild.
Suddenly she seized his hands.
" Gwynplaine, I am the throne ; you are the footstool. Let
us join on the same level. Oh, how happy I am in my fall!
I wish all the world could know how abject I am become. It
would bow down all the lower. The more man abhors, the
more does he cringe. It is human nature. Hostile, but
reptile; dragon, but worm. Oh, I am as depraved as are the
gods 1 They can never say that I am not a king's bastard. I
act like a queen. Who was Rodope but a queen loving Pteh,
a man with a crocodile's head ? She raised the third pyramid
in his honour. Penthesilea loved the centaur, who, being
now a star, is named Sagittarius. And what do you say
about Anne of Austria? Mazarin was ugly enough I Now,
you are not only ugly; you are deformed. Ugliness is mean,
deformity is grand. Ugliness is the devil's grin behind
beauty; deformity is the reverse of sublimity. It is the
back view. Olympus has two aspects. One, by day, shows
Apollo ; the other, by night, shows Polyphemus. You — you
are a Titan. You would be Behemoth in the forests,
Leviathan in the deep, and Typhon in the sewer. You sur-
pass everything. There is the trace of lightning in your
deformity; your face has been battered by the thunderbolt.
The jagged contortion of forked lightning has imprinted its
mark on your face. It struck you and passed on. A
mighty and mysterious wrath has, in a fit of passion,
cemented your spirit in a terrible and superhuman form.
1 is a penal furnace, where the iron called Fatality is raised
:o a white heat. You have been branded with it. To love
you is to understand grandeur. I enjoy that triumph. To
be in love with Apollo— a fine effort, forsooth 1 Glory is to be
measured by the astonishment it creates. I love you. I
THE LAUGHING MAN. 465
have dreamt of you night after night. This is my palace.
You shall see my gardens. There are fresh springs under the
shrubs; arbours for lovers; and beautiful groups of marble
statuary by Bernini. Flowers I there are too many — during
the spring the place is on fire with roses. Did I tell you that
the queen is my sister? Do what you like with me. I am
made for Jupiter to kiss my feet, and for Satan to spit in my
face. Are you of any religion ? I am a Papist. My father,
James II., died in France, surrounded by Jesuits. I have
never felt before as I feel now that I am near you. Oh, how
I should like to pass the evening with you, in the midst of
music, both reclining on the same cushion, under a purple
awning, in a gilded gondola on the soft expanse of ocean !
Insult me, beat me, kick me, cuff me, treat me like a brute !
I adore you."
Caresses can roar. If you doubt it, observe the lion's.
The woman was horrible, and yet full of grace. The effect was
tragic. First he felt the claw, then the velvet of the paw.
A feline attack, made up of advances and retreats. There
was death as well as sport in this game of come and go. She
idolized him, but arrogantly. The result was contagious
frenzy. Fatal language, at once inexpressible, violent, and
sweet. The insulter did not insult ; the adorer outraged the
object of adoration. She, who buffeted, deified him. Her
tones imparted to her violent yet amorous words an indescrib-
able Promethean grandeur. According to ^Eschylus, in the
orgies in honour of the great goddess the women were smitten
by this evil frenzy when they pursued the satyrs under the
stars. Such paroxysms raged in the mysterious dances in
the grove of Dodona. This woman was as if transfigured
— if, indeed, we can term that transfiguration which is the
antithesis of heaven.
Her hair quivered like a mane; her robe opened and
closed. The sunshine of the blue eye mingled with the fire of
the Iplack one. She was unearthly.
Gwynplaine, giving way, felt himself vanquished by the
deep subtilty of this attack.
" I love you 1 " she cried. And she bit him with a kiss.
Homeric clouds were, perhaps, about to be required to
encompass Gwynplaine and Josiana, as they did Jupiter and
Juno. For Gwynplaine to be loved by a woman who could
see and who saw him, to feel on his deformed mouth the
466 THE LAUGHING MAN.
pressure of divine lips, was exquisite and maddening. Before
this woman, full of enigmas, all else faded away in his mind.
The remembrance of Dea struggled in the shadows with weak
cries. There is an antique bas-relief representing the Sphinx
devouring a Cupid. The wings of the sweet celestial are
bleeding between the fierce, grinning fangs.
Did Gwynplaine love this woman? Has man, like the
globe, two poles? Are we, on our inflexible axis, a moving
sphere, a star when seen from afar, mud when seen more
closely, in which night alternates with day ? Has the heart
two aspects — one on which its love is poured 'forth in light;
the other in darkness? Here a woman of light, there a
woman of the sewer. Angels are necessary. Is it possible
that demons are also essential? Has the soul the wings of
the bat ? Does twilight fall fatally for all ? Is sin an integral
and inevitable part of our destiny ? Must we accept evil as
part and portion of our whole ? Do we inherit sin as a debt?
What awful subjects for thought I
Yet a voice tells us that weakness is a crime. Gwyn-
plaine's feelings are not to be described. The flesh, life,
terror, lust, an overwhelming intoxication of spirit, and all
the shame possible to pride. Was he about to succumb ?
She repeated, " I love you! " and flung her frenzied arms
around him. Gwynplaine panted.
Suddenly close at hand there rang, clear and distinct, a
little bell. It was the little bell inside the wall. The
duchess, turning her head, said, — •
" What does she want of me ? "
Quickly, with the noise of a spring door, the silver panel,
with the golden crown chased on it, opened. A compartment
of a shaft, lined with royal blue velvet, appeared, and on a
golden salver a letter. The letter, broad and weighty, was
placed so as to exhibit the seal, which was a large impression
in red wax. The bell continued to tinkle. The open panel
almost touched the couch where the duchess and Gwynplaine
were sitting.
Leaning over, but still keeping her arm round his neck, she
took the letter from the plate, and touched the panel. The
compartment closed in, and the bell ceased ringing.
The duchess broke the seal, and, opening the envelope,
drew out two documents contained therein, and flung it on
the floor at Gwynplaine's feet. The impression of the broken
THE LAUGHING MAN. 467
seal was still decipherable, and Gwynplaine could distinguish
a royal crown over the initial A. The torn envelope lay open
before him, so that he could read, "To Her Grace the
Duchess Josiana." The envelope had contained both
vellum and parchment. The former was a small, the latter
a large document. On the parchment was a large Chancery
seal in green wax, called Lords' sealing-wax.
The face of the duchess, whose bosom was palpitating, and
whose eyes were swimming with passion, became overspread
with a slight expression of dissatisfaction.
" Ah! " she said. " What does she send me? A lot of
papers I What a spoil-sport that woman is 1 "
Pushing aside the parchment, she opened the vellum.
"It is her handwriting. It is my sister's hand. It is
quite provoking. Gwynplaine, I asked you if you could
read. Can you ? "
Gwynplaine nodded assent.
She stretched herself at full length on the couch, carefully
drew her feet and arms under her robe, with a whimsical
affectation of modesty, and, giving Gwynplaine the vellum,
watched him with an impassioned look.
" Well, you are mine. Begin your duties, my beloved.
Read me what the queen writes."
Gwynplaine took the vellum, unfolded it, and, in a voice
tremulous with many emotions, began to read :—
" MADAM, — We are graciously pleased to send to you
herewith, sealed and signed by our trusty and well-beloved
William Cowper, Lord High Chancellor of England, a copy of
a report showing forth the very important fact that the
legitimate son of Linnaeus Lord Clancharlie has just been
discovered and recognized, bearing the name of Gwynplaine,
in the lowest rank of a wandering and vagabond life, among
strollers and mountebanks. His false position dates from
his earliest days. In accordance with the laws of the
country, and in virtue of his hereditary rights, Lord Fermain
Clancharlie, son of Lord Linnaeus, will be this day admitted,
and installed in his position in the House of Lords. There-
fore, having regard to your welfare, and wishing to preserve
for your use the property and estates of Lord Clancharlie
of Hunkerville, we substitute him in the place of Lord David
Dfrry-Moir, and recommend him to your srood graces. We
468 THE LAUGHING MAN.
have caused Lord Fermain to be conducted to Corleone
Lodge. We will and command, as sister and as Queen, that
the said Fermain Lord Clancharlie, hitherto called Gwyn-
plaine, shall be your husband, and that you shall marry him.
Such is our royal pleasure."
While Gwynplaine, In tremulous tones which varied at
almost every word, was reading the document, the duchess,
half risen from the couch, listened with fixed attention.
When Gwynplaine finished, she snatched the letter from his
hands.
" Anne R," she murmured in a tone of abstraction. Then
picking up from the floor the parchment she had thrown
down, she ran her eye over it. It was the confession of the
shipwrecked crew of the Matutina, embodied in a report
signed by the sheriff of Southwark and by the lord chancellor.
Having perused the report, she read the queen's letter over
again. Then she said, "Be it so." And calmly pointing
with her finger to the door of the gallery through which he
had entered, she added, " Begone."
Gwynplaine was petrified, and remained immovable.
She repeated, in icy tones, " Since you are my husband,
begone." Gwynplaine, speechless, and with eyes downcast
like a criminal, remained motionless. She added, " You
have no right to be here; it is my lover's place." Gwyn-
plaine was like a man transfixed. " Very well," said she;
" I must go myself. So you are my husband. Nothing
can be better. I hate you." She rose, and with an inde-
scribably haughty gesture of adieu left the room. The
curtain in the doorway of the gallery fell behind her.
CHAPTER V.
THEY RECOGNIZE, BUT DO NOT KNOW, EACH OTHER.
GWYNPLAINE was alone— alone, and In the presence of the
tepid bath and the deserted couch. The confusion in his
mind had reached its culminating point. His thoughts no
longer resembled thoughts. They overflowed and ran riot;
it was the anguish of a creature wrestling with perplexity.
He felt as if he were awaking from a horrid nightmare. The
entrance into unknown spheres is no simple matter,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 469
From the time he had received the duchess's letter,
brought by the page, a series of surprising adventures had
befallen Gwynplaine, each one less intelligible than the other.
Up to this time, though in a dream, he had seen things clearly.
Now he could only grope his way. He no longer thought,
nor even dreamed. He collapsed. He sank down upon the
couch which the duchess had vacated.
Suddenly he heard a sound of footsteps, and those of a
man. The noise came from the opposite side of the gallery to
that by which the duchess had departed. The man ap-
proached, and his footsteps, though deadened by the carpet,
were clear and distinct. Gwynplaine, in spite of his abstrac-
tion, listened.
Suddenly, beyond the silver web of curtain which the
duchess had left partly open, a door, evidently concealed by
the painted glass, opened wide, and there came floating into
the room the refrain of an old French song, carolled at the
top of a manly and joyous voice, —
"Trois petits gorets sur leur fumier
Juraient comme de porteurs de chaise,"
and a man entered. He wore a sword by his side, a magnifi-
cent naval uniform, covered with gold lace, and held in his
hand a plumed hat with loops and cockade. Gwynplaine
sprang up erect as if moved by springs. He recognized the
man, and was, in turn, recognized by him. From their aston-
ished lips came, simultaneously, this double exclamation: —
" Gwynplaine I "
" Tom- Jim- Jack! "
The man with the plumed hat advanced towards Gywn-
plaine, who stood with folded arms.
" What are you doing here, Gwynplaine? "
" And you, Tom- Jim- Jack, what are you doing here? "
"Oh! I understand. Josiana! a caprice. A mounte-
bank and a monster! The double attraction is too powerful
to be resisted. You disguised yourself in order to get here,
Gwynplaine? "
' And you, too, Tom- Jim- Jack? "
' Gwynplaine, what does this gentleman's dress mean ? "
' Tom- Jim- Jack, what does that officer's uniform mean ? "
' Gwynplaine, I answer no questions."
' Neither do I. Tom- Jim- Jack."
470 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" Gwynplaine, my name is not Tom- Jim- Jack."
" Tom- Jim- Jack, my name is not Gwynplaine."
" Gwynplaine, I am here in my own house."
" I am here in my own house, Tom- Jim- Jack."
" I will not have you echo my words. You are ironical;
but I've got a cane. An end to your jokes, you wretched
fool."
Gwynplaine became ashy pale. " You are a fool yourself,
and you shall give me satisfaction for this insult."
" In your booth as much as you like, with fisticuffs."
" Here, and with swords? "
" My friend Gwynplaine, the sword is a weapon for gentle-
men. With it I can only fight my equals. At fisticuffs we
are equal, but not so with swords. At the Tadcaster Inn
Tom- Jim- Jack could box with Gwynplaine; at Windsor
the case is altered. Understand this: I am a rear-admiral."
" And I am a peer of England."
The man whom Gwynplaine recognized as Tom- Jim- Jack
burst out laughing. " Why not a king? Indeed, you are
right. An actor plays every part. You'll tell me next that
you are Theseus, Duke of Athens."
" I am a peer of England, and we are going to fight."
" Gwynplaine, this becomes tiresome. Don't play with
one who can order you to be flogged. I am Lord David
Dirry-Moir."
" And I am Lord Clancharlie."
Again Lord David burst out laughing.
"Well said! Gwynplaine is Lord Clancharlie. That Is
indeed the name the man must bear who is to win Josiana.
Listen. I forgive you; and do you know the reason? It's
because we are both lovers of the same woman."
The curtain in the door was lifted, and a voice exclaimed,
" You are the two husbands, my lords."
They turned.
" Barkilphedro! " cried Lord David.
It was Indeed he; he bowed low to the two lords, with a
smile on his face. Some few paces behind him was a gentle-
man with a stern and dignified countenance, who carried in
his hand a black wand. This gentleman advanced, and,
bowing three times to Gwynplaine, said, " I am the Usher of
the Black Rod. I come to fetch your lordship, in obedience
to her Majesty's commands."
BOOK THE EIGHTH.
THE CAPITOL AND THINGS AROUND IT.
CHAPTER I.
ANALYSIS OF MAJESTIC MATTERS.
IRRESISTIBLE Fate ever carrying him forward, which had
now for so many hours showered its surprises on Gwynplaine,
and which had transported him to Windsor, transferred him
again to London. Visionary realities succeeded each other
without a moment's intermission. He could not escape from
their influence. Freed from one he met another. He had
scarcely time to breathe. Any one who has seen a juggler
throwing and catching balls can judge the nature of fate.
Those rising and falling projectiles are like men tossed in the
hands of Destiny — projectiles and playthings.
On the evening of the same day, Gwynplaine was an actor
in an extraordinary scene. He was seated on a bench
covered with fleurs-de-lis; over his silken clothes he wore a
robe of scarlet velvet, lined with white silk, with a cape of
ermine, and on his shoulders two bands of ermine embroidered
with gold. Around him were men of all ages, young and old,
seated like him on benches covered with fleurs-de-lis, and
dressed like him in ermine and purple. In front of him other
men were kneeling, clothed in black silk gowns. Some of
them were writing; opposite, and a short distance from him,
he observed steps, a raised platform, a dais, a large escutcheon
glittering between a lion and a unicorn, and at the top of the
steps, on the platform under the dais, resting against the
472 THE LAUGHING MAN.
escutcheon, was a gilded chair with a crown over it. This
was a throne — the throne of Great Britain.
Gwynplaine, himself a peer of England, was in the House of
Lords. How Gwynplaine's introduction to the House of
Lords came about, we will now explain. Throughout the
day, from morning to night, from Windsor to London, from
Corleone Lodge to Westminster Hall, he had step by step
mounted higher in the social grade. At each step he grew
giddier. He had been conveyed from Windsor in a royal
carriage with a peer's escort. There is not much difference
between a guard of honour and a prisoner's. - On that day,
travellers on the London and Windsor road saw a galloping
cavalcade of gentlemen pensioners of her Majesty's house-
hold escorting two carriages drawn at a rapid pace. In the
first carriage sat the Usher of the Black Rod, his wand in his
hand. In the second was to be seen a large hat with white
plumes, throwing into shadow and hiding the face under-
neathit. Who was it who was thus being hurried on — aprince,
a prisoner ? It was Gwynplaine.
It looked as if they were conducting some one to the Tower,
unless, indeed, they were escorting him to the House of Lords.
The queen had done things well. As it was for her future
brother-in-law, she had provided an escort from her own
household. The officer of the Usher of the Black Rod rode on
horseback at the head of the cavalcade. The Usher of
the Black Rod carried, on a cushion placed on a seat of the
carriage, a black portfolio stamped with the royarcrown. At
Brentford, the last relay before London, the carriages and
escort halted. A four-horse carriage of tortoise-shell, with
two postilions, a coachman in a wig, and four footmen, was
in waiting. The wheels, steps, springs, pole, and all the fit-
tings of this carriage were gilt. The horses' harness was of
silver. This state coach was of an ancient and extraordinary
shape, and would have been distinguished by its grandeur
among the fifty-one celebrated carriages of which Roubo has
left us drawings.
The Usher of the Black Rod and his officer alighted. The
latter, having lifted the cushion, on which rested the royal
portfolio, from the seat in the postchaise, carried it on out-
stretched hands, and stood behind the Usher. He first
opened the door of the empty carriage, then the door of that
occupied by Gwynplaine, and, with downcast eyes, respect'
THE LAUGHING MAN. 473
fully invited him to descend. Gwynplaine left the chaise,
and took his seat in the carriage. The Usher carrying the
rod, and the officer supporting the cushion, followed, and
took their places on the low front seat provided for pages in
old state coaches. The inside of the carriage was lined with
white satin trimmed with Binche silk, with tufts and tassels
of silver. The roof was painted with armorial bearings. The
postilions of the chaises they were leaving were dressed in the
royal livery. The attendants of the carriage they now
entered wore a different but very magnificent livery.
Gwynplaine, in spite of his bewildered state, in which he felt
quite overcome, remarked the gorgeously-attired footmen,
and asked the Usher of the Black Rod, —
" Whose livery is that? "
He answered, —
" Yours, my lord."
The House of Lords was to sit that evening. Curia erat
serena, run the old records. In England parliamentary work
is by preference undertaken at night. It once happened
that Sheridan began a speech at midnight and finished it at
sunrise.
The two postchaises returned to Windsor. Gwynplaine 's
carriage set out for London. This ornamented four-horse
carriage proceeded at a walk from Brentford to London, as
befitted the dignity of the coachman. Gwynplaine's servi-
tude to ceremony was beginning in the shape of his solemn-
looking coachman. The delay was, moreover, apparently
prearranged ; and we shall see presently its probable motive.
Night was falling, though it was not quite dark, when the
carriage stopped at the King's Gate, a large sunken door
between two turrets connecting Whitehall with Westminster.
The escort of gentlemen pensioners formed a circle around the
carriage. A footman jumped down from behind it and
opened the door. The Usher of the Black Rod, followed by
the officer carrying the cushion, got out of the carriage, and
addressed Gwynplaine.
" My lord, be pleased to alight. I beg your lordship to
keep your hat on."
Gwynplaine wore under his travelling cloak the suit of
black silk, which he had not changed since the previous even-
ing. He had no sword. He left his cloak in the carriage.
Under the arched way of the King's Gate there was a small
474 THE LAUGHING MAN.
side door raised some few steps above the road. In
ceremonial processions the greatest personage never walks
first.
The Usher of the Black Rod, followed by his officer, walked
first; Gwynplaine followed. They ascended the steps, and
entered by the side door. Presently they were in a wide,
circular room, with a pillar in the centre, the lower part of a
turret. The room, being on the ground floor, was lighted by
narrow windows in the pointed arches, which served but to
make darkness visible. Twilight often lends -solemnity to a
scene. Obscurity is in itself majestic.
In this room, thirteen men, disposed in ranks, were stand-
ing— three in the front row, six in the second row, and four
behind. In the front row one wore a crimson velvet gown;
the other two, gowns of the same colour, but of satin. All
three had the arms of England embroidered on their shoulders.
The second rank wore tunics of white silk, each one having a
different coat of arms emblazoned in front. The last row
were clad in black silk, and were thus distinguished. The
first wore a blue cape. The second had a scarlet St. George
embroidered in front. The third, two embroidered crimson
crosses, in front and behind. The fourth had a collar of
black sable fur. All were uncovered, wore wigs, and carried
swords. Their faces were scarcely visible in the dim light,
neither could they see Gwynplaine's face.
The Usher of the Black Rod, raising his wand, said, —
" My Lord Fermain Clancharlie, Baron Clancharlie and
Hunkerville, I, the Usher of the Black Rod, first officer of the
presence chamber, hand your lordship over to Garter King-
at-Arms."
The person clothed In velvet, quitting his place in the
ranks, bowed to the ground before Gwynplaine, and said, —
" My Lord Fermain Clancharlie, I am Garter, Principal
King-at-Arms of England. I am the officer appointed and
installed by his grace the Duke of Norfolk, hereditary Earl
Marshal. I have sworn obedience to the king, peers, and
knights of the garter. The day of my installation, when the
Earl Marshal of England anointed me by pouring a goblet of
wine on my head, I solemnly promised to be attentive to the
nobility; to avoid bad company 4 to excuse, rather than
accuse, gentlefolks ; and to assist widows and virgins. It is I
who have the charge of arranging the funeral ceremonies of
THE LAUGHING MAN, 475
peers, and the supervision of their armorial bearings. I place
myself at the orders of your lordship."
The first of those wearing satin tunics, having bowed
deeply, said, —
" My lord, I am Clarenceaux, Second King-at-Arms of
England. I am the officer who arranges the obsequies of
nobles below the rank of peers. I am at your lordship's
disposal."
The other wearer of the satin tunic bowed and spoke
thus,—
" My lord, I am Nowoy, Third King-at-Arms of England.
Command me."
The second row, erect and without bowing, advanced a
pace. The right-hand man said, —
" My lord, we are the six Dukes-at-Arms of England. I
am York."
Then each of the heralds, or Dukes-at-Arms, speaking in
turn, proclaimed his title.
I am Lancaster."
I am Richmond."
I am Chester."
I am Somerset."
I am Windsor."
The coats of arms embroidered on their breasts were those
of the counties and towns from which they took their
names.
The third rank, dressed in black, remained silent Garter
King-at-Arms, pointing them out to Gwynplaine, said, —
" My lord, these are the four Pursuivants-at-Arms. Blue
Mantle."
The man with the blue cape bowed.
" Rouge Dragon."
He with the St. George inclined his head.
" Rouge Croix."
He with the scarlet crosses saluted.
" Portcullis."
He with the sable fur collar made his obeisance.
On a sign from the King-at-Arms, the first of the pursui-
vants, Blue Mantle, stepped forward and received from the
officer of the Usher the cushion of silver cloth and crown-
emblazoned portfolio. And the King-at-Arms said to the
Usher of the Black Rod,—
476 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" Proceed; I leave in your hands the Introduction of his
lordship I "
The observance of these customs, and also of others which
will now be described, were the old ceremonies in use prior to
the time of Henry VIII., and which Anne for some time
attempted to revive. There is nothing like it in existence
now. Nevertheless, the House of Lords thinks that it is un-
changeable ; and, if Conservatism exists anywhere, it is there.
It changes, nevertheless. E pur si muove. For instance,
what has become of the may-pole, which the citizens of
London erected on the ist of May, when the peers went down
to the House ? The last one was erected in 1 7 1 3. Since then
the may-pole has disappeared. Disuse.
Outwardly, unchangeable ; inwardly, mutable. Take, for
example, the title of Albemarle. It sounds eternal. Yet
it has been through six different families — Odo, Mandeville,
Bethune, Plantagenet, Beauchamp, Monck. Under the title of
Leicester five different names have been merged — Beaumont,
Breose, Dudley, Sydney, Coke. Under Lincoln, six; under
Pembroke, seven. The families change, under unchanging
titles. A superficial historian believes in immutability. In
reality it does not exist. Man can never be more than a
wave; humanity is the ocean.
Aristocracy is proud of what women consider a reproach —
age! Yet both cherish the same illusion, that they do not
change. It is probable the House of Lords will not recognize
itself in the foregoing description, nor yet in that which
follows, thus resembling the once pretty woman, who objects
to having any wrinkles. The mirror is ever a scapegoat, yet
its truths cannot be contested. To portray exactly, con-
stitutes the duty of a historian. The King-at-Arms, turn-
ing to Gwynplaine, said, —
" Be pleased to follow me, my lord." And added, " You
will be saluted. Your lordship, in returning the salute, will
be pleased merely to raise the brim of your hat."
They moved off, in procession, towards a door at the far
side of the room. The Usher of the Black Rod walked in
front; then Blue Mantle, carrying the cushion; then the
King-at-Arms ; and after him came Gwynplaine, wearing his
hat. The rest, kings-at-arms, heralds, and pursuivants, re-
mained in the circular room. Gwynplaine, preceded by the
Usher of the Black Rod, and escorted by the King-at-Arma,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 477
passed from room to room, in a direction which it would now
be impossible to trace, the old Houses of Parliament having
been pulled down. Amongst others, he crossed that Gothic
state chamber in which took place the last meeting of James
II. and Monmouth, and whose walls witnessed the useless de-
basement of the cowardly nephew at the feet of his vindictive
uncle. On the walls of this chamber hung, in chronological
order, nine fell-length portraits of former peers, with their
dates — Lord Nansladron, 1305; Lord Baliol, 1306; Lord
Benestede, 1314; Lord Cantilupe, 1356; Lord Montbegon,
1357; Lord Tibotot, 1373; Lord Zouch of Codnor, 1615;
Lord Bella- Aqua, with no date; Lord Harren and Surrey,
Count of Blois, also without date.
It being now dark, lamps were burning at intervals in the
galleries. Brass chandeliers, with wax candles, illuminated
the rooms, lighting them like the side aisles of a church.
None but officials were present. In one room, which the
procession crossed, stood, with heads respectfully lowered,
the four clerks of the signet, and the Clerk of the Council. In
another room stood the distinguished Knight Banneret,
Philip Sydenham of Brympton in Somersetshire. The
Knight Banneret is a title conferred in time of war, under the
unfurled royal standard. In another room was the senior
baronet of England, Sir Edmund Bacon of Suffolk, heir of
Sir Nicholas Bacon, styled, Primus baronetorum Anglicce.
Behind Sir Edmund was an armour-bearer with an arquebus,
and an esquire carrying the arms of Ulster, the baronets being
the hereditary defenders of the province of Ulster in Ireland.
In another room was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with
his four accountants, and the two deputies of the Lord
Chamberlain, appointed to cleave the tallies.*
At the entrance of a corridor covered with matting, which
was the communication between the Lower and the Upper
House, Gwynplaine was saluted by Sir Thomas Mansell of
Margam, Comptroller of the Queen's Household and Member
for Glamorgan ; and at the exit from the corridor by a dep-
utation of one for every two of the Barons of the Cinque
* The author is apparently mistaken. The Chamberlains of the Ex.
chequer divided the wooden laths into tallies, which were given out
when disbursing coin, and checked or tallied when accounting for it.
It was in burning the old tallies in an oven that the Houses of Parlia-
ment were destroyed by fire.— TRANSLATOR.
478 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Ports, four on the right and four on the left, the Cinque Ports
being eight in number. William Hastings did obeisance for
Hastings; Matthew Aylmor, for Dover; Josias Burchett,
for Sandwich; Sir Philip Boteler, for Hythe; John Brewer,
for New Rumney; Edward Southwell, for the town of Rye;
James Hayes, for Winchelsea; George Nailor, for Seaford.
As Gwynplaine was about to return the salute, the King-at-
Arms reminded him in a low voice of the etiquette, " Only the
brim of your hat, my lord." Gwynplaine did as directed.
He now entered the so-called Painted Chamber, in which
there was no painting, except a few of saints, and amongst
them St. Edward, in the high arches of the long and deep-
pointed windows, which were divided by what formed the
ceiling of Westminster Hall and the floor of the Painted
Chamber. On the far side of the wooden barrier which
divided the room from end to end, stood the three Secretaries
of State, men of mark. The functions of the first of these
officials comprised the supervision of all affairs relating to the
south of England, Ireland, the Colonies, France, Switzerland,
Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey. The second had charge
of the north of England, and watched affairs in the Low
Countries, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and Russia.
The third, a Scot, had charge of Scotland. The two first-
mentioned were English, one of them being the Honourable
Robert Harley, Member for the borough of New Radnor.
A Scotch member, Mungo Graham, Esquire, a relation of the
Duke of Montrose, was present. All bowed, without speak-
ing, to Gwynplaine, who returned the salute by touching his
hat. The barrier-keeper -lifted the wooden arm which,
pivoting on a hinge, formed the entrance to the far side of the
Painted Chamber, where stood the long table, covered with
green cloth, reserved for peers. A branch of lighted candles
stood on the table. Gwynplaine, preceded by the Usher of
the Black Rod, Garter King-at-Arms, and Blue Mantle,
penetrated into this privileged compartment. The barrier-
keeper closed the opening immediately Gwynplaine had
passed. The King-at-Arms, having entered the precincts of
the privileged compartment, halted. The Painted Chamber
was a spacious apartment. At the farther end, upright,
beneath the royal escutcheon which was placed between the
two windows, stood two old men, in red velvet robes, with
two rows of ermine trimmed with gold lace on their shoulders,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 479
and wearing wigs, and hats with white plumes. Through the
openings of their robes might be detected silk garments and
sword hilts. Motionless behind them stood a man dressed in
black silk, holding on high a great mace of gold surmounted
by a crowned Hon. It was the Mace-bearer of the Peers of
England. The lion is their crest. Et les Lions ce sont les
Barons et li Per, runs the manuscript chronicle of Bertrand
Duguesclin.
The King-at-Arms pointed out the two persons in velvet,
and whispered to Gwynplaine, —
" My lord, these are your equals. Be pleased to return
their salute exactly as they make it. These two peers are
barons, and have been named by the Lord Chancellor as your
sponsors. They are very old, and almost blind. They will,
themselves, introduce you to the House of Lords. The first
is Charles Mildmay, Lord Fitzwalter, sixth on the roll of
barons; the second is Augustus Arundel, Lord Arundel of
Trerice, thirty-eighth on the roll of barons." The King-at-
Arms having advanced a step towards the two old men, pro-
claimed " Fermain Clancharlie, Baron Clancharlie, Baron
Hunkerville, Marquis of Corleone in Sicily, greets your
lordships 1 ' ' The two peers raised their hats to the full extent
of the arm, and then replaced them. Gwynplaine did the
same. The Usher of the Black Rod stepped forward,
followed by Blue Mantle and Garter King at-Arms. The
Mace-bearer took up his post in front of Gwynplaine, the
two peers at his side, Lord Fitzwalter on the right, and Lord
Arundel of Trerice on the left. Lord Arundel, the elder of
the two, was very feeble. He died the following year, be-
queathing to his grandson John, a minor, the title which
became extinct in 1768. The procession, leaving the Painted
Chamber, entered a gallery in which were rows of pilasters,
and between the spaces were sentinels, alternately pike-men
of England and halberdiers of Scotland. The Scotch hal-
berdiers were magnificent kilted soldiers, worthy to encounter
later on at Fontenoy the French cavalry, and the royal
cuirassiers, whom their colonel thus addressed: " Messieurs
les mattres, assure* vos chapeaux. Nous allons avoir Vhonneur
de charger.'' The captain of these soldiers saluted Gwyn-
plaine, and the peers, his sponsors, with their swords. The
men saluted with their pikes and halberds.
At the end of the gallery shone a large door, so magnificent
48o THE LAUGHING MAN.
that its two folds seemed to be masses of gold. On each side
of the door there stood, upright and motionless, men who
were called doorkeepers. Just before you came to this door,
the gallery widened out into a circular space. In this space
was an armchair with an immense back, and on it, judging
by his wig and from the amplitude of his robes, was a dis-
tinguished person. It was William Cowper, Lord Chancellor
of England. To be able to cap a royal infirmity with a
similar one has its advantages. William Cowper was short-
sighted. Anne had also defective sight, but in a lesser degree.
The near-sightedness of William Cowper found favour in the
eyes of the short-sighted queen, and induced her to appoint
him Lord Chancellor, and Keeper of the Royal Conscience.
William Cowper's upper lip was thin, and his lower one thick
— a sign of semi-good-nature.
This circular space was lighted by a lamp hung from the
ceiling. The Lord Chancellor was sitting gravely in his large
armchair ; at his right was the Clerk of the Crown, and at
his left the Clerk of the Parliaments.
Each of the clerks had before him an open register and an
inkhorn.
Behind the Lord Chancellor was his mace-bearer, holding
the mace with the crown on the top, besides the train-bearer
and purse-bearer, in large wigs.
All these officers are still in existence. On a little stand,
near the woolsack, was a sword, with a gold hilt and sheath,
and belt of crimson velvet.
Behind the Clerk of the Crown was an officer holding in his
hands the coronation robe.
Behind the Clerk of the Parliaments another officer held a
second robe, which was that of a peer.
The robes, both of scarlet velvet, lined with white silk, and
having bands of ermine trimmed with gold lace over the
shoulders, were similar, except that the ermine band was
wider on the coronation robe.
The third officer, who was the librarian, carried on a square
of Flanders leather the red book, a little volume, bound
in red morocco, containing a list of the peers and commons,
besides a few blank leaves and a pencil, which it was the
custom to present to each new member on his entering the
House.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 483
Gwynplaine, between the two peers, his sponsors, brought
up the procession, which stopped before the woolsack.
The two peers, who introduced him, uncovered their heads,
and Gwynplaine did likewise.
The King-at-Arms received from the hands of Blue Mantle
the cushion of silver cloth, knelt down, and presented the
black portfolio on the cushion to the Lord Chancellor.
The Lord Chancellor took the black portfolio, and handed
it to the Clerk of the Parliament.
The Clerk received it ceremoniously, and then sat down.
The Clerk of the Parliament opened the portfolio, and arose.
The portfolio contained the two usual messages — the royal
patent addressed to the House of Lords, and the writ of
summons.
The Clerk read aloud these two messages, with respectful
deliberation, standing.
The writ of summons, addressed to Fermain Lord Clan-
charlie, concluded with the accustomed formalities, —
" We strictly enjoin you, on the faith and allegiance that
you owe, to "come and take your place in person among the
prelates and peers sitting in our Parliament at Westminster,
for the purpose of giving your advice, in all honour and con-
science, on the business of the kingdom and of the church."
The reading of the messages being concluded, the Lord
Chancellor raised his voice, —
" The message of the Crown has been read. Lord Clan-
charlie, does your lordship renounce transubstantiation.
adoration of saints, and the mass ? "
Gwynplaine bowed.
" The test has been administered," said the Lord Chan-
cellor.
And the Clerk of the Parliament resumed, —
" His lordship has taken the test.'*
The Lord Chancellor added, —
" My Lord Clancharlie, you can take your seat."
" So be it," said the two sponsors.
The King-at-Arms rose, took the sword from the stand,
and buckled it round Gwynplaine's waist.
" Ce faict," says the old Norman charter, " le pair prend
son espee, et monte aux hauts sieges, et assiste a 1'audience."
Gwynplaine heard a voice behind him which said, —
" I array your lordship in a peer's robe."
16
THE LAUGHING MAN.
At the same time, the officer who spoke to him, who was
holding the robe, placed it on him, and tied the black strings
of the ermine cape round his neck.
Gwynplaine, the scarlet robe on his shoulders, and the
golden sword by his side, was attired like the peers on his
right and left.
The librarian presented to him the red book, and put it in
the pocket of his waistcoat.
The King-at-Arms murmured in his ear, —
" My lord, on entering, will bow to the royal chair."
The royal chair is the throne.
Meanwhile the two clerks were writing, each at his table —
one on the register of the Crown, the other on the register of
the House.
Then both — the Clerk of the Crown preceding the other —
brought their books to the Lord Chancellor, who signed
them. Having signed the two registers, the Lord Chan-
cellor rose.
" Fermain Lord Clancharlie, Baron Clancharlie, Baron
Hunkerville, Marquis of Corleone in Sicily, be you welcome
among your peers, the lords spiritual and temporal of Great
Britain."
Gwynplaine's sponsors touched his shoulder.
He turned round.
The folds of the great gilded door at the end of the gallery
opened.
It was the door of the House of Lords.
Thirty-six hours only had elapsed since Gwynplaine, sur-
rounded by a different procession, had entered the iron door
of Southwark Jail.
What shadowy chimeras had passed, with terrible rapid-
ity through his brain — chimeras which were hard facts;
rapidity, which was a capture by assault!
CHAPTER II.
IMPARTIALITY.
THE creation of an equality with the king, called Peerage, was,
in barbarous epochs, a useful fiction. This rudimentary
political expedient produced in France and England different
results. In France, the peer was a mock king; in England, a
THE LAUGHING MAN. 483
real prince — less grand than in France, but more genuine:
we might say less, but worse.
Peerage was born in France ; the date is uncertain — under
Charlemagne, says the legend; under Robert le Sage, says
history, and history is not more to be relied on than legend.
Favin writes : " The King of France wished to attach to
himself the great of his kingdom, by the magnificent title of
peers, as if they were his equals."
Peerage soon thrust forth branches, and from France
passed over to England.
The English peerage has been a great fact, and almost a
mighty institution. It had for precedent the Saxon witten-
agemote. The Danish thane and the Norman vavassour
commingled in the baron. Baron is the same as vir, which is
translated into Spanish by varon, and which signifies, par
excellence, " Man." As early as 1075, the barons made
themselves felt by the king — and by what a kingl By
William the Conqueror. In 1086 they laid the foundation
of feudality, and its basis was the " Doomsday Book."
Under John Lackland came conflict. The French peerage
took the high hand with Great Britain, and demanded that
the king of England should appear at their bar. Great was
the indignation of the English barons. At the coronation of
Philip Augustus, the King of England, as Duke of Normandy,
carried the first square banner, and the Duke of Guyenne the
second. Against this king, a vassal of the foreigner, the War
of the Barons burst forth. The barons imposed on the weak-
minded King John Magna Charta, from which sprang the
House of Lords. The pope took part with the king, and
excommunicated the lords. The date was 1215, and the
pope was Innocent III., who wrote the " Veni, Sancte
Spiritus," and who sent to John Lackland the four cardinal
virtues in the shape of four gold rings. The Lords persisted.
The duel continued through many generations. Pembroke
struggled. 1248 was the year of " the provisions of Oxford."
Twenty-four barons limited the king's powers, discussed him,
and called a knight from each county to take part in the
widened breach. Here was the dawn of the Commons.
Later on, the Lords added two citizens from each city, and
two burgesses from each borough. It arose from this, that
up to "the time of Elizabeth the peers were judges of the
validity of elections to the House of Commons. From their
484 THE LAUGHING MAN.
jurisdiction sprang the proverb that the members returned
ought to be without the three P's — sine Prece, sine Pretio,
sine Poculo. This did not obviate rotten boroughs. In
1293, the Court of Peers in France had still the King of
England under their jurisdiction; and Philippe le Bel cited
Edward I. to appear before him. Edward I. was the king
who ordered his son to boil him down after death, and to
carry his bones to the wars. Under the follies of their kings
the Lords felt the necessity of fortifying Parliament. They
divided it into two chambers, the upper and the lower. The
Lords arrogantly kept the supremacy. " If it happens that
any member of the Commons should be so bold as to speak to
the prejudice of the House of Lords, he is called to the bar of
the House to be reprimanded, and, occasionally, to be sent to
the Tower." There is the same distinction in voting. In the
House of Lords they vote one by one, beginning with the
junior, called the puisne baron. Each peer answers " Con-
tent," or "Non-content." In the Commons they vote to-
gether, by " Aye," or " No," in a crowd. The Commons
accuse, the peers j udge. The peers, in their disdain of figures,
delegated to the Commons, who were to profit by it, the super-
intendence of the Exchequer — thus named, according to some,
after the table-cover, which was like a chess-board; and
according to others, from the drawers of the old safe, where
was kept, behind an iron grating, the treasure of the kings of
England. The " Year-Book " dates from the end of the
thirteenth century. In the War of the Roses the weight of
the Lords was thrown, now on the side of John of Gaunt,
Duke of Lancaster, now on the side of Edmund, Duke of
York. Wat Tyler, the Lollards, Warwick the King-maker,
all that anarchy from which freedom is to spring, had for
foundation, avowed or secret, the English feudal system.
The Lords were usefully jealous of the Crown; for to be
jealous is to be watchful. They circumscribed the royal
initiative, diminished the category of cases of high treason,
raised up pretended Richards against Henry IV., appointed
themselves arbitrators, judged the question of the three
crowns between the Duke of York and Margaret of Anjou,
and at need levied armies, and fought their battles of Shrews-
bury, Tewkesbury, and St. Albans, sometimes winning,
sometimes losing. Before this, in the thirteenth century,
they had gained the battle oi Lewes, and had driven from the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 485
kingdom the four brothers of the king, bastards of Queen
Isabella by the Count de la Marche; all four usurers, who
extorted money from Christians by means of the Jews ; half
princes, half sharpers — a thing common enough in more
recent times, but not held in good odour in those days. Up
to the fifteenth century the Norman Duke peeped out in the
King of England, and the acts of Parliament were written in
French. From the reign of Henry VII., by the will of the
Lords, these were written in English. England, British
under Uther Pendragon ; Roman under Caesar ; Saxon under
the Heptarchy; Danish under Harold; Norman after
William; then became, thanks to the Lords, English. After
that she became Anglican. To have one's religion at home
is a great power. A foreign pope drags down the national
life. A Mecca is an octopus, and devours it. In 1534,
London bowed out Rome. The peerage adopted the reformed
religion, and the Lords accepted Luther. Here we have the
answer to the excommunication of 1215. It was agreeable
to Henry VIII. ; but, in other respects, the Lords were a
trouble to him. As a bulldog to a bear, so was the House of
Lords to Henry VIII. When Wolsey robbed the nation of
Whitehall, and when Henry robbed Wolsey of it, who com-
plained ? Four lords — Darcie, of Chichester ; Saint John of
Bletsho ; and (two Norman names ) Mountjoie and Mounteagle.
The king usurped. The peerage encroached. There is some-
thing in hereditary power which is incorruptible. Hence the
insubordination of the Lords. Even in Elizabeth's reign
the barons were restless. From this resulted the tortures at
Durham. Elizabeth was as a farthingale over an execu-
tioner's block. Elizabeth assembled Parliament as seldom
as possible, and reduced the House of Lords to sixty-five
members, amongst whom there was but one marquis (Win-
chester), and not a single duke. In France the kings felt the
same jealousy and carried out the same elimination. Under
Henry III. there were no more than eight dukedoms in the
peerage, and it was to the great vexation of the king that the
Baron de Mantes, the Baron de Courcy, the Baron de Coulom-
miers, the Baron de Chateauneuf-en-Thimerais, the Baron de
la Fere-en-Lardenois, the Baron de Mortagne, and some
others besides, maintained themselves as barons — peers of
France. In England the crown saw the peerage diminish
with pleasure. Under Anne, to quote but one example, the
486 THE LAUGHING MAN.
peerages become extinct since the twelfth century amounted
to five hundred and sixty-five. The War of the Roses had
begun the extermination of dukes, which the axe of Mary
Tudor completed. This was, indeed, the decapitation of the
nobility. To prune away the dukes was to cut off its head.
Good policy, perhaps; but it is better to corrupt than to
decapitate. James I. was of this opinion. He restored
dukedoms. He made a duke of his favourite Villiers, who
had made him a pig; * a transformation from the duke feudal
to the duke courtier. This sowing was to bring forth a rank
harvest: Charles II. was to make two of his mistresses
duchesses — Barbara of Southampton, and Louise de la
Querouel of Portsmouth. Under Anne there were to be
twenty-five dukes, of whom three were to be foreigners,
Cumberland, Cambridge, and Schomberg. Did this court
policy, invented by James I., succeed? No. The House of
Peers was irritated by the effort to shackle it by intrigue.
It was irritated against James I., it was irritated against
Charles I., who, we may observe, may have had something to
do with the death of his father, just as Marie de Medicis may
have had something to do with the death of her husband.
There was a rupture between Charles I. and the peerage.
The lords who, under James I., had tried at their bar ex-
tortion, in the person of Bacon, under Charles I. tried
treason, in the person of Strafford. They had condemned
Bacon ; they condemned Strafford. One had lost his
honour, the other lost his life. Charles I. was first beheaded
in the person of Strafford. The Lords lent their aid to the
Commons. The king convokes Parliament to Oxford; the
revolution convokes it to London. Forty-four peers side
with the King, twenty-two with the Republic. From this
combination of the people with the Lords arose the Bill of
Rights — a sketch of the French Droits de I'homme, a vague
shadow flung back from the depths of futurity by the
revolution of France on the revolution of England.
Such were the services of the peerage. Involuntary ones,
we admit, and dearly purchased, because the said peerage
is a huge parasite. But considerable services, nevertheless.
The despotic work of Louis XL, of Richelieu, and of Louis
XIV., the creation of a sultan, levelling taken for true
equality, the bastinado given by the sceptre, the common
* Villiers called James I., " Votre cochonncrie."
THE LAUGHING MAN, 487
abasement of the people, all these Turkish tricks in France
the peers prevented in England. The aristocracy was a wall,
banking up the king on one side, sheltering the people on the
other. They redeemed their arrogance towards the people
by their insolence towards the king. Simon, Earl of
Leicester, said to Henry III., " King, thou hast lied I " The
Lords curbed the crown, and grated against their kings in the
tenderest point, that of venery. Every lord, passing through
a royal park, had the right to kill a deer: in the house of the
king the peer was at home; in the Tower of London the scale
of allowance for the king was no more than that for a peer
— namely, twelve pounds sterling per week. This was the
House of Lords' doing.
Yet more. We owe to it the deposition of kings. The
Lords ousted John Lackland, degraded Edward II., deposed
Richard II., broke the power of Henry VI., and made Crom-
well a possibility. What a Louis XIV. there was in Charles
I.I Thanks to Cromwell, it remained latent. By-the-bye,
we may here observe that Cromwell himself, though no
historian seems to have noticed the fact, aspired to the peer-
age. This was why he married Elizabeth Bouchier, descend-
ant and heiress of a Cromwell, Lord Bouchier, whose peerage
became extinct in 1471, and of a Bouchier, Lord Robesart,
another peerage extinct in 1429. Carried on with the
formidable increase of important events, he found the sup-
pression of a king a shorter way to power than the recovery of
a peerage. A ceremonial of the Lords, at times ominous,
could reach even to the king. Two men-at-arms from the
Tower, with their axes on their shoulders, between whom an
accused peer stood at the bar of the house, might have been
there inlike attendance on the king as on any other nobleman.
For five centuries the House of Lords acted on a system, and
carried it out with determination. They had their days of
idleness and weakness, as, for instance, that strange time
when they allowed themselves to be seduced by the vessels
loaded with cheeses, hams, and Greek wines sent them by
Julius II. The English aristocracy was restless, haughty,
ungovernable, watchful, and patriotically mistrustful. It
was that aristocracy which, at the end of the seventeenth
century, by act the tenth of the year 1694, deprived the
borough of Stockbridge, in Hampshire, of the right of sending
members to Parliament, and forced the Commons to declare
488 THE LAUGHING MAN.
null the election for that borough, stained by papistical
fraud. It imposed the test on James, Duke of York, and, on
his refusal to take it, excluded him from the throne. He
reigned, notwithstanding; but the Lords wound up by calling
him to account and banishing him. That aristocracy has
had, in its long duration, some instinct of progress. It has
always given out a certain quantity of appreciable light,
except now towards its end, which is at hand. Under James
II. it maintained in the Lower House the proportion of three
hundred and forty-six burgesses against ninety-two knights.
The sixteen barons, by courtesy, of the Cinque Ports were
more than counterbalanced by the fifty citizens of the
twenty-five cities. Though corrupt and egotistic, that aris-
tocracy was, in some instances, singularly impartial. It is
harshly judged. History keeps all its compliments for the
Commons. The justice of this is doubtful. We consider the
part played by the Lords a very great one. Oligarchy is the
independence of a barbarous state, but it is an independence.
Take Poland, for instance, nominally a kingdom, really a
republic. The peers of England held the throne in suspicion
and guardianship. Time after time they have made their
power more felt than that of the Commons. They gave
check to the king. Thus, in that remarkable year, 1694, the
Triennial Parliament Bill, rejected by the Commons, in conse-
quence of the objections of William III., was passed by the
Lords. William III., in his irritation, deprived the Earl of
Bath of the governorship of Pendennis Castle, and Viscount
Mordaunt of all his offices. The House of Lords was the
republic of Venice in the heart of the royalty of England.
To reduce the king to a doge was its object; and in propor-
tion as it decreased the power of the crown it increased that
of the people. Royalty knew this, and hated the peerage.
Each endeavoured to lessen the other. What was thus lost
by each was proportionate profit to the people. Those two
blind powers, monarchy and oligarchy, could not see that
they were working for the benefit of a third, which was
democracy. What a delight it was to the crown, in the last
century, to be able to hang a peer, Lord Ferrers 1
However, they hung him with a silken rope. How polite I
" They would not have hung a peer of France," the Duke
of Richelieu haughtily remarked. Granted. They would
have beheaded him. Still more polite 1
THE LAUGHING MAN. 489
Montmorency Tancarville signed himself peer of France
and England ; thus throwing the English peerage into the
second rank. The peers of France were higher and less
powerful, holding to rank more than to authority, and to
precedence more than to domination. There was between
them and the Lords that shade of difference which separates
vanity from pride. With the peers of France, to take pre-
cedence of foreign princes, of Spanish grandees, of Venetian
patricians ; to see seated on the lower benches the Marshals of
France, the Constable and the Admiral of France, were he
even Comte de Toulouse and son of Louis XIV. ; to draw a
distinction between duchies in the male and female line; to
maintain the proper distance between a simple comte, like
Armagnac or Albret, and a comtS pairie, like Evreux ; to wear
by right, at five-and-twenty, the blue ribbon of the Golden
Fleece; to counterbalance the Duke de la Tremoille, the most
ancient peer of the court, with the Duke Uzes, the most
ancient peer of the Parliament; to claim as many pages and
horses to their carriages as an elector; to be called monsei-
gneur by the first President ; to discuss whether the Duke de
Maine dates his peerage as the Comte d'Eu, from 1458; to
cross the grand chamber diagonally, or by the side — such
things were grave matters. Grave matters with the Lords
were the Navigation Act, the Test Act, the enrolment of
Europe in the service of England, the command of the sea,
the expulsion of the Stuarts, war with France. On one side,
etiquette above all; on the other, empire above all. The
peers of England had the substance, the peers of France the
shadow.
To conclude, the House o^ Lords was a starting-point;
towards civilization this is an immense thing. It had the
honour to found a nation. It was the first incarnation of the
unity of the people : English resistance, that obscure but all-
powerful force, was born in the House of Lords. The
barons, by a series of acts of violence against royalty, have
paved the way for its eventual downfall. The House of
Lords at the present day is somewhat sad and astonished at
what it has unwillingly and unintentionally done, all the
more that it is irrevocable.
What are concessions? Restitutions; — and nations
know it.
" I grant," says the king.
490 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" I get back my own," says the people.
The House of Lords believed that it was creating the privi-
leges of the peerage, and it has produced the rights of the
citizen. That vulture, aristocracy, has hatched the eagle's
egg of liberty.
And now the egg is broken, the eagle is soaring, the vulture
dying.
Aristocracy is at its last gasp ; England is growing up.
Still, let us be just towards the'aristocracy. It entered the
scale against royalty, and was its counterpoise. It was an
obstacle to despotism. It was a barrier. Let us thank and
bury it.
CHAPTER III.
THE OLD HALL.
NEAR Westminster Abbey was an old Norman palace which
was burnt in the time of Henry VIII. Its wings were spared.
In one of them Edward VI. placed the House of Lords, in the
other the House of Commons. Neither the two wings nor
the two chambers are now in existence. The whole has been
rebuilt.
We have already said, and we must repeat, that there is no
resemblance between the House of Lords of the present day
and that of the past. In demolishing the ancient palace they
somewhat demolished its ancient usages. The strokes of the
pickaxe on the monument produce their counter-strokes on
customs and charters. An old stone cannot fall without
dragging down with it an old law. Place in a round room a
parliament which has been hitherto held in a square room,
and it will no longer be the same thing. A change in the
shape of the shell changes the shape of the fish inside.
If you wish to preserve an old thing, human or divine, a
code or a dogma, af nobility or a priesthood, never repair
anything about it thoroughly, even its outside cover. Patch it
up, nothing more. For instance, Jesuitism is a piece added
to Catholicism. Treat edifices as you would treat institu-
tions. Shadows should dwell in ruins. Worn-out powers
are uneasy in chambers freshly decorated. Ruined palaces
accord best with institutions in rags. To attempt to describe
the House of Lords of other days would be to attempt to
describe the unknown. History is night. In history there
THE LAUGHING MAN. 491
is no second tier. That which is no longer on the stage
immediately fades into obscurity. The scene is shifted, and
all is at once forgotten. The past has a synonym, the
unknown.
The peers of England sat as a court of justice in West-
minster Hall, and as the higher legislative chamber in a
chamber specially reserved for the purpose, called The House
of Lords.
Besides the house of peers of England, which did not
assemble as a court unless convoked by the crown, two great
English tribunals, inferior to the house of peers, but superior
to all other jurisdiction, sat in Westminster Hall. At the end
of that hall they occupied adjoining compartments. The
first was the Court of King's Bench, in which the king was
supposed to preside; the second, the Court of Chancery, in
which the Chancellor presided. The one was a court of
justice, the other a court of mercy. It was the Chancellor
who counselled the king to pardon ; only rarely, though.
These two courts, which are still in existence, interpreted
legislation, and reconstructed it somewhat, for the art of the
judge is to carve the code into jurisprudence; a task from
which equity results as it best may. Legislation was worked
up and applied in the severity of the great hall of Westminster,
the rafters of which were of chestnut wood, over which
spiders could not spread their webs. There are enough of
them in all conscience in the laws.
To sit as a court and to sit as a chamber are two distinct
things. This double function constitutes supreme power.
The Long Parliament, which began in November 1640, felt
the revolutionary necessity for this two-edged sword. So it
declared that, as House of Lords, it possessed judicial as well
as legislative power.
This double power has been, from time immemorial, vested
in the House of Peers. We have just mentioned that as
judges they occupied Westminster Hall; as legislators, they
had another chamber. This other chamber, properly called
the House of Lords, was oblong and narrow. All the light
in it came from four windows in deep embrasures, which
received their light through the roof, and a bull's-eye, cpn>
posed of six panes with curtains, over the throne. At night
there was no other light than twelve'half candelabra, fastened
to the wall. The chamber of Venice was darker still. A
492 THE LAUGHING MAN.
certain obscurity is pleasing to those owls of supreme
power.
A high ceiling adorned with many-faced relievos and gilded
cornices, circled over the chamber where the Lords as-
sembled. The Commons had but a flat ceiling. There is a
meaning in all monarchical buildings. At one end of the
long chamber of the Lords was the door; at the other, op-
posite to it, the throne. A few paces from the door, the
bar, a transverse barrier, and a sort of frontier, marked the
spot where the people ended and the peerage began. To the
right of the throne was a fireplace with emblazoned pinnacles,
and two bas-reliefs of marble, representing, one, the victory
of Cuthwolf over the Britons, in 572; the other, the geo-
metrical plan of the borough of Dunstable, which had four
streets, parallel to the four quarters of the world. The throne
was approached by three steps. It was called the royal
chair. On the two walls, opposite each other, were displayed
in successive pictures, on a huge piece of tapestry given to the
Lords by Elizabeth, the adventures of the Armada, from the
time of its leaving Spain until it was wrecked on the coasts of
Great Britain. The great hulls of the ships were embroidered
with threads of gold and silver, which had become blackened
by time. Against this tapestry, cut at intervals by the
candelabra fastened in the wall, were placed, to the right of
the throne, three rows of benches for the bishops, and to the
left three rows of benches for the dukes, marquises, and earls,
in tiers, and separated by gangways. On the three benches
of the first section sat the dukes ; on those of the second, the
marquises ; on those of the third, the earls. The viscounts'
bench was placed across, opposite the throne, and behind,
between the viscounts and the bar, were two benches for the
barons.
On the highest bench to the right of the throne sat the two
archbishops of Canterbury and York; on the middle bench,
three bishops, London, Durham, and Winchester, and the
other bishops on the lowest bench. There is between the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the other bishops this con-
siderable difference, that he is bishop " by divine provi-
dence," whilst the others are only so " by divine permission."
On the right of the throne was a chair for the Prince of Wales,
and on the left, folding chairs for the royal dukes, and behind
the latter, a raised seat for minor peers, who had not the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 493
privilege of voting. Plenty of fleurs-de-lis everywhere, and
the great escutcheon of England over the four walls, above
the peers, as well as above the king.
The sons of peers and the heirs to peerages assisted at the
debates, standing behind the throne, between the dai's and the
wall. A large square space was left vacant between the tiers
of benches placed along three sides of the chamber and the
throne. In this space, which was covered with the state
carpet, Interwoven with the arms of Great Britain, were four
woolsacks — one in front of the throne, on which sat the Lord
Chancellor, between the mace and the seal; one in front of
the bishops, on which sat the judges, counsellors of state, who
had the right to vote, but not to speak; one in front of the
dukes, marquises, and earls, on which sat the Secretaries of
State ; and one in front of the viscounts and barons, on which
sat the Clerk of the Crown and the Clerk of the Parliament,
and on which the two under-clerks wrote, kneeling.
In the middle of the space was a large covered table,
heaped with bundles of papers, registers, and summonses, with
magnificent inkstands of chased silver, and with high candle-
sticks at the four corners.
The peers took their seats in chronological order, each
according to the date of the creation of his peerage. They
ranked according to their titles, and within their grade of
nobility according to seniority. At the bar stood the Usher
of the Black Rod, his wand in his hand. Inside the door was
the Deputy-Usher; and outside, the Crier of the Black Rod,
whose duty it was to open the sittings of the Courts of
Justice with the cry, " Oyez! " in French, uttered thrice,
with a solemn accent upon the first syllable. Near the Crier
stood the Serjeant Mace-Bearer of the Chancellor.
In royal ceremonies the temporal peers wore coronets on
their heads, and the spiritual peers, mitres. The arch-
bishops wore mitres, with a ducal coronet; and the bishops,
who rank after viscounts, mitres, with a baron's cap.
It is to be remarked, as a coincidence at once strange and
instructive, that this square formed by the throne, the
bishops, and the barons, with kneeling magistrates within it,
was in form similar to the ancient parliament in France under
the two first dynasties. The aspect of authority was the
same in France as in England. Hincmar, in his treatise, " De
494 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Ordinatione Sacri Palatii," described in 853 the sittings of
the House of Lords at Westminster in the eighteenth century.
Strange, indeed! a description given nine hundred years
before the existence of the thing described.
But what is history? An echo of the past in the future; a
reflex from the future on the past.
The assembly of Parliament was obligatory only once in
every seven years.
The Lords deliberated in secret, with closed doors. The
debates of the Commons were public. Publicity entails
diminution of dignity.
The number of the Lords was unlimited. To create Lords
was the menace of royalty; a means of government.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the House of
Lords already contained a very large number of members.
It has increased still further since that period. To dilute
the aristocracy is politic. Elizabeth most probably erred in
condensing the peerage into sixty-five lords. The less
numerous, the more intense is a peerage. In assemblies, the
more numerous the members, the fewer the heads. James II.
understood this when he increased the Upper House to a
hundred and eighty-eight lords ; a hundred and eighty-six if
we subtract from the peerages the two duchies of royal
favourites, Portsmouth and Cleveland. Under Anne the
total number of the lords, including bishops, was two hundred
and seven. Not counting the Duke of Cumberland, husband
of the queen, there were twenty-five dukes, of whom the
premier, Norfolk, did not take his seat, being a Catholic ; and
of whom the junior, Cambridge, the Elector of Hanover, did,
although a foreigner. Winchester, termed first and sole
marquis of England, as Astorga was termed sole Marquis of
Spain, was absent, being a Jacobite ; so that there were only
five marquises, of whom the premier was Lindsay, and the
junior Lothian; seventy-nine earls, of whom Derby was
premier and Islay junior; nine viscounts, of whom Hereford
was premier and Lonsdale junior; and sixty-two barons, of
whom Abergavenny was premier and Hervey junior. Lord
Hervey, the junior baron, was what was called the " Puisne
of the House." Derby, of whom Oxford, Shrewsbury, and
Kent took precedence, and who was therefore but the fourth
under James II., became (under Anne) premier earl. Two
chancellors' names had disappeared from the list of barons —
THE LAUGHING MAN. 495
Verulam, under which designation history finds us Bacon;
and Wem, under which it finds us Jeffreys. Bacon and
Jeffreys! both names overshadowed, though by different
crimes. In 1705, the twenty-six bishops were reduced to
twenty-five, the see of Chester being vacant. Amongst the
bishops some were peers of high rank, such as William
Talbot, Bishop of Oxford, who was head of the Protestant
branch of that family. Others were eminent Doctors, like
John Sharp, Archbishop of York, formerly Dean of Norwich;
the poet, Thomas Spratt, Bishop of Rochester, an apoplectic
old man ; and that Bishop of Lincoln, who was to die Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, Wake, the adversary of Bossuet. On
important occasions, and when a message from the Crown to
the House was expected, the whole of this august assembly —
in robes, in wigs, in mitres, or plumes — formed out, and dis-
played their rows of heads, in tiers, along the walls of the
House, where the storm was vaguely to be seen exterminating
the Armada — almost as much as to say, " The storm is at the
orders of England."
CHAPTER IV.
THE OLD CHAMBER.
THE whole ceremony of the investiture of Gwynplaine, from
his entry under the King's Gate to his taking the test under
the nave window, was enacted in a sort of twilight.
Lord William Cowper had not permitted that he, as Lord
Chancellor of England, should receive too many details of
circumstances connected with the disfigurement of the young
Lord Fermain Clancharlie, considering it below his dignity to
know that a peer was not handsome; and feeling that his
dignity would suffer if an inferior should venture to intrude
on him information of such a nature. We know that a
common fellow will take pleasure in saying, " That prince is
humpbacked; " therefore, it is abusive to say that a lord is
deformed. To the few words dropped on the subject by the
queen the Lord Chancellor had contented himself with
replying, " The face of a peer is in his peerage! "
Ultimately, however, the affidavits he had read and certified
enlightened him. Hence the precautions which he took.
The face of the new lord, on his entrance into the House,
496 THE LAUGHING MAN.
might cause some sensation. This it was necessary to pre-
vent; and the Lord Chancellor took his measures for the
purpose. It is a fixed idea, and a rule of conduct in grave
personages, to allow as little disturbance as possible. Dislike
of incident is a part of their gravity. He felt the necessity of
so ordering matters that the admission of Gwynplaine should
take place without any hitch, and like that of any other
successor to the peerage.
It was for this reason that the Lord Chancellor directed
that the reception of Lord Fermain Clancharlie should take
place at the evening sitting. The Chancellor being the door-
keeper— " Quodammodo ostiarus," says the Norman charter;
" Januarum cancellorumque," says Tertullian — he can
officiate outside the room on the threshold; and Lord
William Cowper had used his right by carrying out under the
nave the formalities of the investiture of Lord Fermain Clan-
charlie. Moreover, he had brought forward the hour for the
ceremonies ; so that the new peer actually made his entrance
into the House before the House had assembled.
For the investiture of a peer on the threshold, and not in
the chamber itself, there were precedents. The first heredi-
tary baron, John de Beauchamp, of Holt Castle, created by
patent by Richard II., in 1387, Baron Kidderminster, was
thus installed. In renewing this precedent the Lord Chan-
cellor was creating for himself a future cause for embarrass-
ment, of which he felt the inconvenience less than two years
afterwards on the entrance of Viscount Newhaven into the
House of Lords.
Short-sighted as we have already stated him to be, Lord
William Cowper scarcely perceived the deformity of Gwyn-
plaine; while the two sponsors, being old and nearly blind,
did not perceive it at all.
The Lord Chancellor had chosen them for that very reason.
More than this, the Lord Chancellor, having only seen the
presence and stature of Gwynplaine, thought him a fine-
looking man. When the door-keeper opened the folding
doors to Gwynplaine there were but few peers in the house ;
and these few were nearly all old men. In assemblies the old
members are the most punctual, just as towards women they
are the most assiduous.
On the dukes' benches there were but two, one white-
headed, the other gray — Thomas Osborne, Duke of Leeds,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 497
and Schomberg, son of that Schomberg, German by birth,
French by his marshal's baton, and English by his peerage,
who was banished by the edict of Nantes, and who, having
fought against England as a Frenchman, fought against
France as an Englishman. On the benches of the lords
spiritual there sat only the Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate
of England, above; and below, Dr. Simon Patrick, Bishop of
Ely, in conversation with Evelyn Pierrepoint, Marquis of
Dorchester, who was explaining to him the difference between
a gabion considered singly and when used in the parapet of a
field work, and between palisades and f raises; the former
being a row of posts driven into the ground in front of the
tents, for the purpose of protecting the camp; the latter
sharp-pointed stakes set up under the wall of a fortress, to
prevent the escalade of the besiegers and the desertion of the
besieged; and the marquis was explaining further the
method of placing fraises in the ditches of redoubts, half of
each stake being buried and half exposed. Thomas Thynne,
Viscount Weymouth, having approached the light of a
chandelier, was examining a plan of his architect's for laying
out his gardens at Longleat, in Wiltshire, in the Italian style
— as a lawn, broken up into plots, with squares of turf alter-
nating with squares of red and yellow sand, of river shells,
and of fine coal dust. On the viscounts' benches was a group
of old peers, Essex, Ossulstone, Peregrine, Osborne, William
Zulestein, Earl of Rochford, and amongst them, a few more
youthful ones, of the faction which did not wear wigs,
gathered round Prince Devereux, Viscount Hereford, and
discussing the question whether an infusion of apalaca holly
was tea. " Very nearly," said Osborne. " Quite," said
Essex. This discussion was attentively listened to by Paulet
St. John, a cousin of Bolingbroke, of whom Voltaire was,
later on, in some degree the pupil; for Voltaire's education,
commenced by Pere Poree, was finished by Bolingbroke. On
the marquises' benches, Thomas de Grey, Marquis of Kent,
Lord Chamberlain to the Queen, was informing Robert Bertie,
Marquis of Lindsay, Lord Chamberlain of England, that the
first prize in the great English lottery of 1694 had been won
by two French refugees, Monsieur Le Coq, formerly coun-
cillor in the parliament of Paris, and Monsieur Ravenel, a
gentleman of Brittany. The Earl of Wemyss was reading a
book, entitled " Pratique Curieuse des Oracles des Sybilles."
498 THE LAUGHING MAN.
John Campbell, Earl of Greenwich, famous for his long chin,
his gaiety, and his eighty-seven years, was writing to his
mistress. Lord Chandos was trimming his nails.
The sitting which was about to take place, being a royal
one, where the crown was to be represented by commissioners,
two assistant door-keepers were placing in front of the throne
a bench covered with purple velvet. On the second woolsack
sat the Master of the Rolls, sacrorum scriniorum magister,
who had then for his residence the house formerly belonging
to the converted Jews. Two under-clerks were kneeling, and
turning over the leaves of the registers which lay on the
fourth woolsack. In the meantime the Lord Chancellor took
his place on the first woolsack. The members of the chamber
took theirs, some sitting, others standing; when the Arch-
bishop of Canterbury rose and read the prayer, and the sitting
of the house began.
Gwynplaine had already been there for some time without
attracting any notice. The second bench of barons, on
which was his place, was close to the bar, so that he had had
to take but a few steps to reach it. The two peers, his
sponsors, sat, one on his right, the other on his left, thus
almost concealing the presence of the new-comer.
No one having been furnished with any previous informa-
tion, the Clerk of the Parliament had read in a low voice, and,
as it were, mumbled through the different documents con-
cerning the new peer, and the Lord Chancellor had pro-
claimed his admission in the midst of what is called, in the
reports, " general inattention." Every one was talking.
There buzzed through the House that cheerful hum of voices
during which assemblies pass things which will not bear the
light, and at which they wonder when they find out what they
have done, too late.
Gwynplaine was seated in silence, with his head uncovered,
between the two old peers, Lord Fitzwalter and Lord
Arundel. On entering, according to the instructions of the
King-at-Arms — -afterwards renewed by his sponsors — he had
bowed to the throne.
Thus all was over. He was a peer. That pinnacle, under
the glory of which he had, all his life, seen his master, Ursus,
bow himself down in fear — that prodigious pinnacle was
under his feet. He was in that place, so dark and yet so
dazzling in England. Old peak of the feudal mountain,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 499
looked up to for six centuries by Europe and by history!
Terrible nimbus of a world of shadow 1 He had entered into
the brightness of its glory, and his entrance was irrevocable.
He was there in his own sphere, seated on his throne, like
the king on his. He was there and nothing in the future
could obliterate the fact. The royal crown, which he saw
under the dais, was brother to his coronet. He was a peer of
that throne. In the face of majesty he was peerage; less,
but like. Yesterday, what was he? A player. To-day,
what was he ? A prince.
Yesterday, nothing; to-day, everything.
It was a sudden confrontation of misery and power, meet-
ing face to face, and resolving themselves at once into the two
halves of a conscience. Two spectres, Adversity and Pros-
perity, were taking possession of the same soul, and each
drawing that soul towards itself.
Oh, pathetic division of an intellect, of a will, of a brain,
between two brothers who are enemies ! the Phantom of
Poverty and the Phantom of Wealth ! Abel and Cain in the
same man 1
CHAPTER V.
ARISTOCRATIC GOSSIP.
BY degrees the seats of the House filled as the Lords arrived.
The question was the vote for augmenting, by a hundred
thousand pounds sterling, the annual income of George of
Denmark, Duke of Cumberland, the queen's husband.
Besides this, it was announced that several bills assented to
by her Majesty were to be brought back to the House by the
Commissioners of the Crown empowered and charged to
sanction them. This raised the sitting to a royal one. The
peers all wore their robes over their usual court or ordinary
dress. These robes, similar to that which had been thrown
over Gwynplaine, were alike for all, excepting that the dukes
had five bands of ermine, trimmed with gold; marquises,
four ; earls and viscounts, three ; and barons, two. Most of
the lords entered in groups. They had met in the corridors,
and were continuing the conversations there begun. A few
came in alone. The costumes of all were solemn ; but neither
their attitudes nor their words corresponded with them. On
entering, each one bowed to the throne.
500 THE LAUGHING MAN.
The peers flowed In. The series of great names marched
past with scant ceremonial, the public not being present.
Leicester entered, and shook Lichfield's hand; then came
Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Peterborough and Monmouth, the
friend of Locke, under whose advice he had proposed the re-
coinage of money; then Charles Campbell, Earl of Loudoun,
listening to Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke; then Dorme, Earl
of Carnarvon; then Robert Sutton, Baron Lexington, son of
that Lexington who recommended Charles II. to banish
Gregorio Leti, the historiographer, who was so ill-advised as
to try to become a historian; then Thomas Bellasys, Vis-
count Falconberg, a handsome old man; and the three
cousins, Howard, Earl of Bindon, Bowes Howard, Earl of
Berkshire, and Stafford Howard, Earl of Stafford— all
together; then John Lovelace, Baron Lovelace, which peer-
age became extinct in 1736, so that Richardson was enabled
to introduce Lovelace in his book, and to create a type under
the name. All these personages — celebrated each in his own
way, either in politics or in war, and of whom many were an
honour to England — were laughing and talking.
It was history, as it were, seen in undress.
In less than half an hour the House was nearly full. This
was to be expected, as the sitting was a royal one. What was
more unusual was the eagerness of the conversations. The
House, so sleepy not long before, now hummed like a hive of
bees.
The arrival of the peers who had come in late had wakened
them up. These lords had brought news. It was strange
that the peers who had been there at the opening of the sitting
knew nothing of what had occurred, while those who had not
been there knew all about it. Several lords had come from
Windsor.
For some hours past the adventures of Gwynplaine had been
the subject of conversation. A secret is a net; let one mesh
drop, and the whole goes to pieces. In the morning, in con-
sequence of the incidents related above, the whole story of a
peer found on the stage, and of a mountebank become a lord,
had burst forth at Windsor in Royal places. The princes
had talked about it, and then the lackeys. From the Court
the news soon reached the town. Events have a weight, and
the mathematical rule of velocity, increasing in proportion to
the squares of the distance, applies to them. They fall upon
THE LAUGHING MAN. 501
the public, and work themselves through it with the most
astounding rapidity. At seven o'clock no one in London had
caught wind of the story; by eight Gwynplaine was the
talk of the town. Only the lords who had been so punctual
that they were present before the assembling of the House
were ignorant of the circumstances, not having been in the
town when the matter was talked of by every one, and having
been in the House, where nothing had been perceived.
Seated quietly on their benches, they were addressed by the
eager newcomers.
" Well! " said Francis Brown, Viscount Montacute, to the
Marquis of Dorchester.
"What?"
"Is it possible?"
"What?"
"The Laughing Man I"
" Who is the Laughing Man? "
" Don't you know the Laughing Man? "
"No."
" He is a clown, a fellow performing at fairs. He has an
extraordinary face, which people gave a penny to look at. A
mountebank."
"Well, what then?"
11 You have just installed him as a peer of England."
" You are the laughing man, my Lord Montacute 1 "
" I am not laughing, my Lord Dorchester."
Lord Montacute made a sign to the Clerk of the Parlia-
ment, who rose from his woolsack, and confirmed to their
lordships the fact of the admission of the new peer. Besides,
he detailed the circumstances.
" How wonderful 1 " said Lord Dorchester. " I was talk-
ing to the Bishop of Ely all the while."
The young Earl of Annesley addressed old Lord Eure, who
had but two years more to live, as he died in 1707.
" My Lord Eure."
" My Lord Annesley."
" Did you know Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie? "
" A man of bygone days. Yes I did."
" He died in Switzerland? "
" Yes; we were relations."
" He was a republican under Cromwell, and remained a
republican under Charles II. ? "
502 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" A republican? Not at alll He was sulking. He had a
personal quarrel with the king. I know from good authority
that Lord Clancharlie would have returned to his allegiance,
if they had given him the office of Chancellor, which Lord
Hyde held."
" You astonish me, Lord Eure. I had heard that Lord
Clancharlie was an honest politician."
" An honest politician 1 does such a thing exist? Young
man, there is no such thing."
"And Cato? "
" Oh, you believe in Cato, do you? "
"And Aristides?"
" They did well to exile him."
" And Thomas More? "
" They did well to cut off his head."
" And in your opinion Lord Clancharlie was a man as you
describe. As for a man remaining in exile, why, it is simply
ridiculous."
" He died there."
" An ambitious man disappointed? "
" You ask if I knew him? I should think so indeed. I
was his dearest friend."
" Do you know, Lord Eure, that he married when in
Switzerland? "
" I am pretty sure of it."
" And that he had a lawful heir by that marriage ? "
"Yes; who is dead.1'
" Who is living."
"Living?"
" Living."
" Impossible I "
" It is a fact — proved, authenticated, confirmed, registered. ' '
" Then that son will inherit the Clancharlie peerage? "
" He is not going to inherit it."
"Why?"
" Because he has inherited it. It is done."
"Done?"
" Turn your head, Lord Eure; he is sitting behind you, qn
the barons' benches."
Lord Eure turned, but Gwynplaine's face was concealed
under his forest of hair.
" So," said the old man, who could see nothing but his hair,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 503
" he has already adopted the new fashion He does not wear
a wig."
Grantham accosted Colepepper.
Some one is finely sold."
Who is that?"
David Dirry-Moir."
How is that? "
He is no longer a peer."
How can that be? "
And Henry Auverquerque, Earl of Grantham, told John
Baron Colepepper the whole anecdote — how the waif-flask
had been carried to the Admiralty, about the parchment of
the Comprachicos, the jussu regis, countersigned Jeffreys,
and the confrontation in the torture-cell at Southwark, the
proof of all the facts acknowledged by the Lord Chancellor
and by the Queen; the taking the test under the nave, and
finally the admission of Lord Fermain Clancharlie at the
commencement of the sitting. Both the lords endeavoured
to distinguish his face as he sat between Lord Fitzwalter and
Lord Arundel, but with no better success than Lord Eure
and Lord Annesley.
Gwynplaine, either by chance or. by the arrangement of his
sponsors, forewarned by the Lord Chancellor, was so placed in
shadow as to escape their curiosity.
" Who is it? Where is he? "
Such was the exclamation of all the new-comers, but no
one succeeded in making him out distinctly. Some, who had
seen Gwynplaine in the Green Box, were exceedingly curious,
but lost their labour: as it sometimes happens that a young
lady is entrenched within a troop of dowagers, Gwynplaine
was, as it were, enveloped in several layers of lords, old, infirm,
and indifferent. Good livers, with the gout, are marvellously
indifferent to stories about their neighbours.
There passed from hand to hand copies of a letter three
lines in length, written, it was said, by the Duchess Josiana to
the queen, her sister, in answer to the injunction made by her
Majesty, that she should espouse the new peer, the lawful
heir of the Clancharlies, Lord Fermain. This letter was
couched in the following terms : —
" MADAM,— The arrangement will suit me just as well. I
can have Lord David for my lover. — (Signed) JOSIANA."
504 THE LAUGHING MAN.
This note, whether a true copy or a forgery, was received
by all with the greatest enthusiasm. A young lord, Charles
Okehampton, Baron Mohun, who belonged to the wigless
faction, read and re-read it with delight. Lewis de Duras,
Earl of Faversham, an Englishman with a Frenchman's wit,
looked at Mohun and smiled.
" That is a woman I should like to marry I " exclaimed
Lord Mohun.
The lords around them overheard the following dialogue
between Duras and Mohun: —
' Marry the Duchess Josiana, Lord Mohun J "
Why not? "
' Plague take it."
' She would make one very happy."
' She would make many very happy."
But is it not always a question of many? "
' Lord Mohun, you are right. With regard to women, we
have always the leavings of others. Has any one ever had a
beginning ? "
" Adam, perhaps."
" Not he."
" Then Satan."
" My dear lord," concluded Lewis de Duras, " Adam only
lent his name. Poor dupe ! He endorsed the human race.
Man was begotten on the woman by the devil."
Hugh Cholmondeley, Earl of Cholmondeley, strong in
points of law, was asked from the bishops' benches by
Nathaniel Crew, who was doubly a peer, being a temporal
peer, as Baron Crew, and a spiritual peer, as Bishop of Durham.
" Is it possible? " said Crew.
"Is it regular? " said Cholmondeley.
" The investiture of this peer was made outside the
House," replied the bishop; " but it is stated that there are
precedents for it."
" Yes. Lord Beauchamp, under Richard II. ; Lord
Chenay, under Elizabeth; and Lord Broghill, under Crom-
well."
" Cromwell goes for nothing."
" What do you think of it all? "
" Many different things."
" My Lord Cholmondeley, what will be the rank of this
young Lord Clancharlie in the House? "
THE LAUGHING MAN. 505
"My Lord Bishop, the interruption of the Republic
having displaced ancient rights of precedence, Clancharlie
now ranks in the peerage between Barnard and Somers, so
that should each be called upon to speak in turn, Lord Clanv
Charlie would be the eighth in rotation."
" Really! he — a mountebank from a public show! "
" The act, per se, does not astonish me, my Lord Bishop.
We meet with such things. StiU more wonderful circum-
stances occur. Was not the War of the Roses predicted by
the sudden drying up of the river Ouse, in Bedfordshire, on
January ist, 1399. Now, if a river dries up, a peer may,
quite as naturally, fall into a servile condition. Ulysses, King
of Ithaca, played all kinds of different parts. Fermain Clan-
charlie remained a lord under his player's garb. Sordid
garments touch not the soul's nobility. But taking the test
and the investiture outside the sitting, though strictly legal,
might give rise to objections. I am of opinion that it will be
necessary to look into the matter, to see if there be any
ground to question the Lord Chancellor in Privy Council later
on. We shall see in a week or two what is best to be done."
And the Bishop added, —
" All the same. It is an adventure such as has not oc-
curred since Earl Gesbodus's time."
Gwynplaine, the Laughing Man; the Tadcaster Inn; the
Green Box; " Chaos Vanquished; " Switzerland; Chillon;
the Comprachicos ; exile; mutilation; the Republic;
Jeffreys; James II.; the jussu regis ; the bottle opened at
the Admiralty; the father, Lord Linnaeus; the legitimate
son, Lord Fermain ; the bastard son, Lord David ; the prob-
able lawsuits; the Duchess Josiana; the Lord Chancellor;
the Queen; — all these subjects of conversation ran from
bench to bench.
Whispering is like a train of gunpowder.
They seized\>n every incident. All the details of the occur-
rence caused an immense murmur through the House.
Gwynplaine, wandering in the depths of his reverie, heard the
buzzing, without knowing that he was the cause of it. He
was strangely attentive to the depths, not to the surface.
Excess of attention becomes isolation.
The buzz of conversation in the House impedes its usual
business no more than the dust raised by a troop impedes its
march. The judges — who in the Upper House were mere
$o6 THE LAUGHING MAN,
assistants, without the privilege of speaking, except when
questioned — had taken their places on the second woolsack;
and the three Secretaries of State theirs on the third.
The heirs to peerages flowed into their compartment, at
once without and within the House, at the back of the throne.
The peers in their minority were on their own benches. In
1705 the number of these little lords amounted to no less than
a dozen — Huntingdon, Lincoln, Dorset, Warwick, Bath,
Barlington, Derwentwater — destined to a tragical death —
Longueville, Lonsdale, Dudley, Ward, and Carteret: a troop
of brats made up of eight earls, two viscounts, and two barons.
In the centre, on the three stages of benches, each lord had
taken his seat. Almost all the bishops were there. The
dukes mustered strong, beginning with Charles Seymour,
Duke of Somerset; and ending with George Augustus,
Elector of Hanover, and Duke of Cambridge, junior in date
of creation, and consequently junior in rank. All were in
order, according to right of precedence: Cavendish, Duke of
Devonshire, whose grandfather had sheltered Hobbes, at
Hardwicke, when he was ninety-two; Lennox, Duke of
Richmond; the three Fitzroys, the Duke of Southampton,
the Duke of Graf ton, and the Duke of Northumberland;
Butler, Duke of Ormond; Somerset, Duke of Beaufort;
Beauclerk, Duke of St. Albans; Paulet, Duke of Bolton;
Osborne, Duke of Leeds; Wrottesley Russell, Duke of
Bedford, whose motto and device was Che sarh sark, which
expresses a determination to take things as they come;
Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham; Manners, Duke of Rutland;
and others. Neither Howard, Duke of Norfolk, nor Talbot,
Duke of Shrewsbury, was present, being Catholics; nor
Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, the French Malbrouck, who
was at that time fighting the French and beating them.
There were no Scotch dukes then — Queensberry, Montrose,
and Roxburgh not being admitted till 1707.
CHAPTER VI.
THE HIGH AND THE LOW.
ALL at once a bright light broke upon the House. Four
doorkeepers brought and placed on each side of the throne
four high candelabra filled with wax-lights. The throne,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 507
thus illuminated, shone in a kind of purple light. It was
empty but august. The presence of the queen herself could
not have added much majesty to it.
The Usher of the Black Rod entered with his wand and
announced, —
" The Lords Commissioners of her Majesty."
The hum of conversation immediately subsided.
A clerk, in a wig and gown, appeared at the great door,
holding a cushion worked with fteurs de Us, on which lay
parchment documents. These documents were bills. From
each hung the bille, or bulle, by a silken string, from which
laws are called bills in England and bulls at Rome. Behind
the clerk walked three men in peers' robes, and wearing
plumed hats.
These were the Royal Commissioners. The first was the
Lord High Treasurer of England, Godolphin; the second,
the Lord President of the Council, Pembroke ; the third, the
Lord of the Privy Seal, Newcastle.
They walked one by one, according to precedence, not of
their rank, but of their commission — Godolphin first, New-
castle last, although a duke.
They reached the bench in front of the throne, to which
they bowed, took off and replaced their hats, and sat down
on the bench.
The Lord Chancellor turned towards the Usher of the
Black Rod, and said, —
" Order the Commons to the bar of the House."
The Usher of the Black Rod retired.
The clerk, who was one of the clerks of the House of Lords,
placed on the table, between the four woolsacks, the cushion
on which lay the bills.
Then there came an interruption, which continued for
some minutes.
Two doorkeepers placed before the bar a stool with three
steps.
This stool was covered with crimson velvet, on which
fleurs de Us were designed in gilt nails.
The great door, which had been closed, was reopened; and
a voice announced, —
" The faithful Commons of England."
It was the Usher of the Black Rod announcing the other
half of Parliament.
508 THE LAUGHING MAN.
The lords put on their hats.
The members of the House of Commons entered, preceded
by their Speaker, all with uncovered heads.
They stopped at the bar. They were in their ordinary
garb ; for the most part dressed in black, and wearing swords.
The Speaker, the Right Honourable John Smith, an
esquire, member for the borough of Andover, got up on the
stool which was at the centre of the bar. The Speaker of the
Commons wore a robe of black satin, with large hanging
sleeves, embroidered before and behind with brandenburgs
of gold, and a wig smaller than that of the Lord Chancellor.
He was majestic, but inferior.
The Commons, both Speaker and members, stood waiting
with uncovered heads, before the peers, who were seated,
with their hats on.
Amongst the members of Commons might have been re-
marked the Chief Justice of Chester, Joseph Jekyll; the
Queen's three Serjeants-at-Law — Hooper, Powys, and
Parker ; James Montagu, Solicitor-General ; and the
Attorney- General, Simon Harcourt. With the exception of
a few baronets and knights, and nine lords by courtesy—
Hartington, Windsor, Woodstock, Mordaunt, Granby,
Scudamore, Fitzhardinge, Hyde, and Berkeley — sons of
peers and heirs to peerages — all were of the people, a sort of
gloomy and silent crowd.
When the noise made by the trampling of feet had ceased,
the Crier of the Black Rod, standing by the door, exclaimed : —
"Oyezl"
The Clerk of the Crown arose. He took, unfolded, and
read the first of the documents on the cushion. It was a
message from the Queen, naming three commissioners to
represent her in Parliament, with power to sanction the bills.
" To wit "
Here the Clerk raised his voice.
" Sidney Earl Godolphin."
The Clerk bowed to Lord Godolphin. Lord Godolphin
raised his hat.
The Clerk continued, —
" Thomas Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery."
The Clerk bowed to Lord Pembroke. Lord Pembroke
touched his hat.
The Clerk resumed, —
THE LAUGHING MAN. 509
" John Holies, Duke of Newcastle."
The Duke of Newcastle nodded.
The Clerk of the Crown resumed his seat.
The Clerk of the Parliaments arose. His under-clerk, who
had been on his knees behind him, got up also. Both turned
their faces to the throne, and their backs to the Commons.
There were five bills on the cushion. These five bills, voted
by the Commons and agreed to by the Lords, awaited the
royal sanction.
The Clerk of the Parliaments read the first bill.
It was a bill passed by the Commons, charging the country
with the costs of the improvements made by the Queen to
her residence at Hampton Court, amounting to a million
sterling.
The reading over, the Clerk bowed low to the throne. The
under-clerk bowed lower still; then, half turning his head
towards the Commons, he said, —
" The Queen accepts your bounty — et ainsi le veut."
The Clerk read the second bill.
It was a law condemning to imprisonment and fine who-
soever withdrew himself from the service of the trainbands.
The trainbands were a militia, recruited from the middle and
lower classes, serving gratis, which in Elizabeth's reign
furnished, on the approach of the Armada, one hundred and
eighty-five thousand foot-soldiers and forty thousand horse.
The two clerks made a fresh bow to the throne, after which
the under-clerk, again half turning his face to the Commons,
said, —
" La Reine le veut."
The third bill was for increasing the tithes and prebends of
the Bishopric of Lichfield and Coventry, which was one of the
richest in England; for making an increased yearly allow-
ance to the cathedral, for augmenting the number of its
canons, and for increasing its deaneries and benefices, " to
the benefit of our holy religion," as the preamble set forth.
The fourth bill added to the budget fresh taxes — one on
marbled paper; one on hackney coaches, fixed at the number
of eight hundred in London, and taxed at a sum equal to
fifty-two francs yearly each; one on barristers, attorneys,
and solicitors, at forty-eight francs a year a head; one on
tanned skins, notwithstanding, said the preamble, the com-
plaints of the workers in leather; one on soap, notwith-
5io THE LAUGHING MAN.
standing the petitions of the City of Exeter and of the whole
of Devonshire, where great quantities of cloth and serge were
manufactured; one on wine at four shillings; one on flour;
one on barley and hops; and one renewing for four years —
" the necessities of the State," said the preamble," requiring
to be attended to before the remonstrances of commerce " —
tonnage- dues, varying from six francs per ton, for ships
coming from the westward, to eighteen francs on those
coming from the eastward. Finally, the bill, declaring the
sums already levied for the current year insufficient, con-
cluded by decreeing a poll-tax on each subject throughout
the kingdom of four shillings per head, adding that a double
tax would be levied on every one who did not take the fresh
oath to Government. The fifth bill forbade the admission
into the hospital of any sick person who on entering did not
deposit a pound sterling to pay for his funeral, in case of
death. These last three bills, like the first two, were one
after the other sanctioned and made law by a bow to the
throne, and the four words pronounced by the under-clerk,
" la Reine le veut," spoken over his shoulder to the Commons.
Then the under-clerk knelt down again before the fourth
woolsack, and the Lord Chancellor said, —
" Soit fait comme il est dhirt."
This terminated the royal sitting. The Speaker, bent
double before the Chancellor, descended from the stool, back-
wards, lifting up his robe behind him; the members of the
House of Commons bowed to the ground, and as the Upper
House resumed the business of the day, heedless of all these
marks of respect, the Commons departed.
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 Lords Commissioners left the bench of State,
took their places at the top of the dukes' benches, by right of
their commission, and the Lord Chancellor addressed the
House : —
" My 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
THE LAUGHING MAN. 511
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 puisne 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 puisne of the House of Lords at that time was John
Hervey, created Baron and 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 Killul-
tagh."
" 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 Leveson, Baron Gower," continued the
Clerk.
This Baron, from whom were to spring the Dukes of
Sutherland, rose, and, as he reseated himself, said " Content."
The Clerk went on.
" My Lord Heneage Finch, Baron Guernsey."
The ancestor of the Earls of Aylesford, neither older nor
less elegant than the ancestor of the Marquises of Hertford,
justified his device, Aperto vivere voto, by the proud tone in
which he exclaimed, " Content."
Whilst 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."
512 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" 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 Montagu and Montacute. And Lord Halifax
added, " Prince 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 popery, 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.
" Content."
He took some time in reseating 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 atten-
tion ; then, lifting up his head, he said, —
" My Lord Fermain Clancharlie Baron Clancharlie and
Hunkerville."
Gwynplaine arose.
" Non-content," said he.
Every face was turned towards him. Gwynplaine re-
mained 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 chamber in the relief
with which a mask might show against a background of
smoke.
Gwynplaine 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 cow 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. Rebellion 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,
THE LAUGHING MAN. 513
swell Into a waterspout and become a mountain, but only on
the condition of falling back again.
Such a struggle was Gwynplaine'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 under-
standing; 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 moun-
tain 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 vulture's
beak, should have suddenly appeared before them, like a
blood-coloured moon on the horizon. Olympus looking on
Caucasus! What a vision I Old and young, open-mouthed
with surprise, fixed their eyes upon Gwynplaine.
An old man, respected by the whole House, who had seen
many men and many things, and who was intended for a
dukedom — 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 Gwynplaine haughtily, —
" Who are you ? Whence do you come ? "
Gwynplaine 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.
Gwynplaine continued, —
" My lords, you are highly placed. It is well. We 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,
514 THE LAUGHING MAN.
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."
Assemblies 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.
Gwynplaine 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, that quiver under one's heel. Gwynplaine
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 Gwynplaine 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 Gwynplaine arose cries of " Hear, hear I "
Meanwhile, rigid and superhuman, he succeeded in main-
taining 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 1 The dawn is all-powerful. You
cannot prevail over it. It is coming. Nayl it is come.
Within it is the day-spring 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 ? Chance. 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 neighbour. 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
THE LAUGHING MAN. 515
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 to-
gether, 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 con-
fused mass. Did I foresee this? No. You are astonished.
So am I. Yesterday I was a mountebank; to-day I am a
peer. 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 Fermain
Clancharlie; 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 feltl
Suffering is not a mere word, ye happy ones! Poverty I
grew up in; winter has frozen me; hunger I have tasted;
contempt I have suffered; pestilence 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. Oh, have pity 1 Of this fatal world
to which you believe yourselves to belong you know nothing.
516 THE LAUGHING MAN.
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. Oh,
you who are masters, do you know what you are ? do you see
what you are doing ? No. Oh, it is dreadful 1 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 Gwynplaine, 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 contagion 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, Gwynplaine! " — " Bravo, Laughing Man! "•
" Bravo, Snout of the Green Box! " — " Mask of Tarrinzeau
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'ye do, my lord clown i " — " 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 Beauclerk,
Duke of St. Albans,—
" How has he voted? "
" Non-content."
THE LAUGHING MAN. 517
'* 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. Hearers naturally dislike the speaker, which is a
fact not as clearly understood as it ought to be. Instinc-
tively he pulls the reins, but that is a useless expedient.
However, all orators try it, as Gwynplaine did.
He looked for a moment at those men who were laughing at
him. Then he cried, —
" So, you insult misery I Silence, Peers of England 1
Judges, listen to my pleading 1 Oh, I conjure you, have pity..
Pity for whom? Pity for yourselves. Who is in danger?
Yourselves I Do you not see that you are in a balance, and
that there is in one scale your power, and in the other your
responsibility ? It is God who is weighing you. Oh, do not
laugh. Think. The trembling of your consciences is the
oscillation of the balance in which God is weighing your
actions. You are not wicked; you are like other men,
neither better nor worse. You believe yourselves to be gods ;
but be ill to-morrow, and see your divinity shivering in fever t
We are worth one as much as the other. I address myself to
honest men ; there are such here. I address myself to lofty
intellects ; there are such here. I address myself to generous
souls; there are such here. You are fathers, sons, and
brothers ; therefore you are often touched. He amongst you
who has this morning watched the awaking of his little child
is a good man. Hearts are all alike. Humanity is nothing
but a heart. Between those who oppress and those who are
oppressed there is but a difference of place. Your feet tread
on the heads of men. The fault is not yours ; it is that of the
social Babel. The building is faulty, and out of the perpen-
dicular. One floor bears down the other. Listen, and I will
tell you what to do. Oh! as you are powerful, be brotherly;
as you are great, be tender. If you only knew what I have
seenl Alas, what gloom is there beneath! The people are
in a dungeon. How many are condemned who are innocent I
No daylight, no air, no virtue! They are without hope, and
yet— there is the danger— they expect something. Realiz
all this misery. There are beings who live in death. There
518 THE LAUGHING MAN.
are little girls who at twelve begin by prostitution, and who
end in old age at twenty. As to the severities of the criminal
code, they are fearful. I speak somewhat at random, and do
not pick my words. I say everything that comes into my
head. No later than yesterday I who stand here saw a man
lying in chains, naked, with stones piled on his chest, expire in
torture. Do you know of these things ? No. If you knew
what goes on, you would not dare to be happy. Who of you
have been to Newcastle-upon-Tyne ? There, in the mines,
are men who chew coals to fill their stomachs and deceive
hunger. Look here 1 in Lancashire, Ribblechester has sunk,
by poverty, from a town to a village. I do not see that Prince
George of Denmark requires a hundred thousand pounds
extra. I should prefer receiving a poor sick man into the
hospital, without compelling him to pay his funeral expenses
in advance. In Carnarvon, and at Strathmore, as well as at
Strathbickan, the exhaustion of the poor is horrible. At
Stratford they cannot drain the marsh for want of money.
The manufactories are shut up all over Lancashire. There
is forced idleness everywhere. Do you know that the herring
fishers at Harlech eat grass when the fishery fails ? Do you
know that at Burton-Lazars there are still lepers confined, on
whom they fire if they leave their tan houses 1 At Ailesbury,
a town of which one of you is lord, destitution is chronic. At
Penkridge, in Coventry, where you have just endowed a
cathedral and enriched a bishop, there are no beds in the
cabins, and they dig holes in the earth in which to put the
little children to lie, so that instead of beginning life in the
cradle, they begin it in the grave. I have seen these things 1
My lords, do you know who pays the taxes you vote ? The
dying I Alasl you deceive yourselves. You are going the
wrong road. You augment the poverty of the poor to in-
crease the riches of the rich. You should do the reverse.
What I 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 1 Oh yes 1 I have old republican blood in my
veins. I have a horror of these things. How I execrate
kings 1 And how shameless are the women I 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 1 Charles II., James II. I
After a scamp, a scoundrel. What is there in a king? A
THE LAUGHING MAN. 5!9
man, feeble and contemptible, subject to wants and in-
firmities. Of what good is a king? You cultivate that
parasite royalty; you make a serpent of that worm, a
dragon of that insect. O pity the poor! You increase the
weight of the taxes for the profit of the throne. Look to the
laws which you decree. Take heed of the suffering swarms
which you crush. Cast your eyes down. Look at what is at
your feet. O ye great, there are the little. Have pity 1 yes,
have pity on yourselves; for the people is in its agony, and
when the lower part of the trunk dies, the higher parts die
too. Death spares no limb. When night comes no one can
keep his corner of daylight. Are you selfish? then save
others. The destruction of the vessel cannot be a matter of
indifference to any passenger. There can be no wreck for
some that is not wreck for all. O believe it, the abyss
yawns for alll "
The laughter increased, and became irresistible. For that
matter, such extravagance as there was in his words was
sufficient to amuse any assembly. To be comic without and
tragic within, what suffering can be more humiliating? what
pain deeper ? Gwynplaine felt it. His words were an appeal
in one direction, his face in the other. What a terrible
position was his I
Suddenly his voice rang out in strident bursts.
"How gay these men are I Be it so. Here is irony face to
face with agony ; a sneer mocking the death-rattle. They are
all-powerful. Perhaps so; be it so. We shall see. Behold!
I am one of them ; but I am also one of you, O ye poor 1 A
king sold me. A poor man sheltered me. Who mutilated
me ? A prince. Who healed and nourished me ? A pauper.
I am Lord Clancharlie; but I am still Gwynplaine. I take
my place amongst the great; but I belong to the mean. I
am amongst those who rejoice; but I am with those who
suffer. Oh, this system of society is false ! Some day will
come that which is true. Then there will be no more lords,
and there shall be free and living men. There will be no more
masters ; there will be fathers. Such is the future. No more
prostration; no more baseness; no more ignorance; no more
human beasts of burden; no more courtiers; no more
toadies; no more kings; but Light! In the meantime, see
me here. I have a right, and I will use it. Is it a right?
No, if I use it for myself; yes, if I use it for all. I will
520 THE LAUGHING MAN.
speak to you, my lords, being one of you. O my brothers
below, I will tell them of your nakedness. I will rise up with
a bundle of the people's rags in my hand. I will shake off
over the masters the misery of the slaves ; and these favoured
and arrogant ones shall no longer be able to escape the re-
membrance of the wretched, nor the princes the itch of the
poor ; and so much the worse, if it be the bite of vermin ; and
so much the better, if it awake the lions from their slumber."
Here Gwynplaine turned towards the kneeling under-
clerks, who were writing on the fourth woolsack.
" Who are those fellows kneeling down? — What are you
doing? Get up; you are men."
These words, suddenly addressed to inferiors whom a lord
ought not even to perceive, increased the merriment to the
utmost.
They had cried, "Bravo!" Now they shouted,
" Hurrah 1 " From clapping their hands they proceeded to
stamping their feet. One might have been back in the Green
Box, only that there the laughter applauded Gwynplaine;
here it exterminated him. The effort of ridicule is to kill.
Men's laughter sometimes exerts all its power to murder.
The laughter proceeded to action. Sneering words rained
down upon him. Humour is the folly of assemblies. Their
ingenious and foolish ridicule shuns facts instead of studying
them, and condemns questions instead of solving them. Any
extraordinary occurrence is a point of interrogation; to
laugh at it is like laughing at an enigma. But the Sphynx,
which never laughs, is behind it.
Contradictory shouts arose, —
"Enough! enough!" "Encore! encore!"
William Farmer, Baron Leimpster, flung at Gwynplaine
the insult cast by Rye Quiney at Shakespeare, —
" Histrio, mima! "
Lord Vaughan, a sententious man, twenty-ninth on the
barons' bench, exclaimed, —
" We must be back in the days when animals had the gift
of speech. In the midst of human tongues the jaw of a beast
has spoken."
" Listen to Balaam's ass," added Lord Yarmouth.
Lord Yarmouth presented that appearance of sagacity
produced by a round nose and a crooked mouth.
" The rebel Linnaeus is chastised in his tomb. The son is
THE LAUGHING HAN. 521
the punishment of the father/' said John Hough, Bishop of
Lichfield and Coventry, whose prebendary Gwynplaine's
attack had glanced.
" He lies! " said Lord Cholmondeley, the legislator so well
read up in the law. "That which he calls torture is only the
peine forte et dure, and a very good thing, too. Torture is not
practised in England."
Thomas Wentworth, Baron Raby, addressed the Chan-
cellor.
" My Lord Chancellor, adjourn the House."
" No, no. Let him go on. He is amusing. Hurrah I
hip! hipl hip!"
Thus shouted the young lords, their fun amounting to fury.
Four of them especially were in the full exasperation of
hilarity and hate. These were Laurence Hyde, Earl of
Rochester; Thomas Tufton, Earl of Thanet; Viscount
Hattonj and the Duke of Montagu.
" To your tricks, Gwynplainel " cried Rochester.
" Put him out, put him outl " shouted Thanet.
Viscount Hatton drew from his pocket a penny, which he
f/ung to Gwynplaine.
And John Campbell, Earl of Greenwich; Savage, Earl
Rivers; Thompson, Baron Haversham; Warrington, Escrick
Rolleston, Rockingham, Carteret, Langdale, Barcester,
Maynard, Hunsdon, Caernarvon, Cavendish, Burlington,
Robert Darcy, Earl of Holderness, Other Windsor, Earl of
Plymouth, applauded.
There was a tumult as of pandemonium or of pantheon, in
which the words of Gwynplaine were lost.
Amidst it all, there was heard but one word of Gwyn-
plaine's: " Beware! "
Ralph, Duke of Montagu, recently down from Oxford, and
still a beardless youth, descended from the bench of dukes,
where he sat the nineteenth in order, and placed himself in
front of Gwynplaine, with his arms folded. In a sword there
is a spot which cuts sharpest, and in a voice an accent which
insults most keenly. Montagu spoke with that accent, and
sneering with his face close to that of Gwynplaine, shouted, —
" What are you talking about? "
" I am prophesying," said Gwynplaine.
The laughter exploded anew; and below this laughter,
anger growled its continued bass. One of the minors, Lionel
522 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Cranfield Sackville, Earl of Dorset and Middlesex, stood upon
his seat, not smiling, but grave as became a future legislator,
and, without saying a word, looked at Gwynplaine with his
fresh twelve-year old face, and shrugged his shoulders.
Whereat the Bishop of St. Asaph's whispered in the ear of the
Bishop of St. David's, who was sitting beside him, as he
pointed to Gwynplaine, " There is the fool; " then pointing
to the child, " there is the sage."
A chaos of complaint rose from amidst the confusion of
exclamations : —
"Gorgon's face l"—" What does it all mean?"— "An
insult to the House I " — " The fellow ought to be put outl "
— "What a madman 1 " — " Shame I shame!" — "Adjourn
the House! "— " No; let him finish his speechl "— " Talk
away, you buffoon I "
Lord Lewis of Duras, with his arms akimbo, shouted, —
"Ah I it does one good to laugh. My spleen is cured. I
propose a vote of thanks in these terms : ' The House of Lords
returns thanks to the Green Box/ "
Gwynplaine, it may be remembered, had dreamt of a
different welcome.
A man who, climbing up a steep and crumbling acclivity of
sand above a giddy precipice, has felt it giving way under his
hands, his nails, his elbows, his knees, his feet; who — losing
instead of gaining on his treacherous way, a prey to every
terror of the danger, slipping back instead of ascending,
increasing the certainty of his fall by his very efforts to
gain the summit, and losing ground in every struggle for
safety — has felt the abyss approaching nearer and nearer,
until the certainty of his coming fall into the yawning
jaws open to receive him, has frozen the marrow of his
bones ; — that man has experienced the sensations of Gwyn-
plaine.
He felt the ground he had ascended crumbling under him,
and his audience was the precipice.
There is always some one to say the word which sums all up.
Lord Scarsdale translated the impression of the assembly
in one exclamation, —
" What is the monster doing here? "
Gwynplaine stood up, dismayed and indignant, in a sort
of final convulsion. He looked at them all fixedly.
" What am I doing here? I have come to be a terror to
THE LAUGHING MAN. 523
you! I am a monster, do you say? Nol I am the people I
I am an exception ? No I I am the rule ; you are the excep-
tion 1 You are the chimera; I am the reality! I am the
frightful man who laughs I Who laughs at what? At you,
at himself, at everything! What is his laugh? Your crime
and his torment 1 That crime he flings at your head I That
punishment he spits in your face I I laugh, and that means I
weep! "
He paused. There was less noise. The laughter con-
tinued, but it was more subdued. He may have fancied that
he had regained a certain amount of attention. He breathed
again, and resumed, —
' ' This laugh which is on my face a king placed there. This
laugh expresses the desolation of mankind. This laugh
means hate, enforced silence, rage, despair. This laugh is the
production of torture. This laugh is a forced laugh. If
Satan were marked with this laugh, it would convict God.
But the Eternal is not like them that perish. Being absolute,
he is just; and God hates the acts of kings. Oht 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 incarna-
tion of All. I represent humanity, such as its masters have
made it. Mankind is mutilated. That which has been done
to me has been done to it. In it have been deformed right,
justice, truth, reason, intelligence, as eyes, nostrils, and ears
have been deformed in me; its heart has been made a sink of
passion and pain, like mine, and, like mine, its features have
been hidden in a mask of joy. Where God had placed his
finger, the king set his sign-manual. Monstrous super-
position! Bishops, peers, and princes, the people is a sea of
suffering, smiling on the surface. My lords, I tell you that
the people are as I am. To-day you oppress them; to-day
you hoot at me. But the future is the ominous thaw, in
which that which was as stone shall become wave,
appearance of solidity melts into liquid. A crack in the ice,
and all is over. There will come an hour when convulsi
shall break down your oppression; when an angry roar will
reply to your jeers. Nay, that hour did comet Thou wert
of it, O my father! That hour of God did come, and was
called the Republic! It was destroyed, but it will i
Meanwhile, remember that the line of kings armed with tl
sword was broken by Cromwell, armed with the axe.
524 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Tremble I 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 1 it is the coming of the people, the ascent of mankind,
the beginning of the end, the red dawn of the catastrophe 1
Yes, all these things are in this laugh of mine, at which you
laugh to-day! London is one perpetual fe"te. Be it so.
From one end to the other, England rings with acclamation.
Well I but listen. All that you see is I. You have your
fetes — they are my laugh; you have your public rejoicings —
they are my laugh; you have your weddings, consecrations,
and coronations — they are my laugh. The births of your
princes are my laugh. But above you is the thunderbolt — it
is my laugh."
How could they stand such nonsense ? The laughter burst
out afresh; and now it was overwhelming. Of all the lava
which that crater, the human mouth, ejects, the most cor-
rosive 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 execu-
tioner amongst them, called sarcasm. There is no torture to
be compared to that of the wretch condemned to execution
by ridicule. This was Gwynplaine's fate. He was stoned
with their jokes, and riddled by the scoffs shot at him. He
stood there a mark for all. They sprang up; they cried,
" Encore; " they shook with laughter; they stamped their
feet; they pulled each other's bands. The majesty of the
place, the purple of the robes, the chaste ermine, the dignity
of the wigs, had no effect. The lords laughed, the bishops
laughed, the judges laughed, the old men's benches derided,
the children's benches were in convulsions. The Archbishop
of Canterbury nudged the Archbishop of York; Henry
Compton, Bishop of London, brother of Lord Northampton,
held his sides; the Lord Chancellor bent down his head,
probably to conceai his Inclination to laugh ,j and. at the bar.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 525
that statue of respect, the Usher of the Black Rod, was
laughing also.
Gwynplaine, become pallid, had folded his arms; and,
surrounded by all those faces, young and old, in which had
burst forth this grand Homeric jubilee; in that whirlwind of
clapping hands, of stamping feet, and of hurrahs; in that
mad buffoonery, of which he was the centre ; in that splendid
overflow of hilarity; in the midst of that unmeasured gaiety,
he felt that the sepulchre was within him. All was over.
He could no longer master the face which betrayed nor the
audience which insulted him.
That eternal and fatal law by which the grotesque is
linked with the sublime— by which the laugh re-echoes the
groan, parody rides behind despair, and seeming is opposed
to being — had never found more terrible expression. Never
had a light more sinister illumined the depths of human
darkness.
Gwynplaine was assisting at the final destruction of his
destiny by a burst of laughter. The irremediable was in this.
Having fallen, we can raise ourselves up; but, being pul-
verized, 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 sym-
pathy of the people, who welcomed Gwynplaine; on the
other, the contempt of the great, rejecting Lord Fermain
Clancharlie. On one side, attraction ; on the other, repul-
sion ; both leading him towards the shadows. He felt him-
self, as it were, struck from behind. Fate strikes treacherous
blows. Everything will be explained hereafter, but, in the
meantime, destiny is a snare, and man sinks into its pitfalls.
He had expected to rise, and was welcomed by laughter.
Such apotheoses have lugubrious terminations. There is a
dreary expression — to be sobered; tragical wisdom born of
drunkenness I In the midst of that tempest of gaiety com-
mingled with ferocity, Gwynplaine fell into a reverie.
An assembly in mad merriment drifts as chance directs,
and loses its compass when it gives itself to laughter. None
knew whither they were tending, or what they were doing.
526 THE LAUGHING MAN.
The House was obliged to rise, adjourned by the Lord Chan-
cellor, " 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 oi
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 imper-
ceptibly, and those places, so lately full of voices, are sud-
denly given back to silence.
Reverie carries one far ; and one comes by long dreaming
to reach, as it were, another planet.
Gwynplaine suddenly awoke from such a dream. He was
alone. The chamber was empty. He had not even observed
that the House had been adjourned. All the peers had de-
parted, 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 extin-
guished the lights.
Mechanically he placed his hat on his head, and, leaving
his place, directed his steps to the great door opening into
the gallery. As he was passing through the opening in the
bar, a doorkeeper relieved him of his peer's robes. This he
scarcely felt. In another instant he was in the gallery.
The officials who remained observed with astonishment
that the peer had gone out without bowing to the throne 1
CHAPTER VIII.
HE WOULD BE A GOOD BROTHER, WERE HE NOT
A GOOD SON.
THERE was no one in the gallery.
Gwynplaine crossed the circular space, from whence they
had removed the arm-chair and the tables, and where there
now remained no trace of his investiture. Candelabra and
lustres, placed at certain intervals, marked the way out.
Thanks to this string of light, he retraced without difficulty,
through the suite of saloons and galleries, the way which he
had followed on his arrival with the King-at-Arms and the
THE LAUGHING MAN. 52/
Usher of the Black Rod. He saw no one, except here and
there some old lord with tardy steps, plodding along heavily
in front of him.
Suddenly, in the silence of those great deserted rooms,
bursts of indistinct exclamations reached him, a sort of
nocturnal clatter unusual in such a place. He directed his
steps to the place whence this noise proceeded, and found
himself in a spacious hall, dimly lighted, which was one of the
exits from the House of Lords. He saw a great glass door
open, a flight of steps, footmen and links, a square outside,
and a few coaches waiting at the bottom of the steps.
This was the spot from which the noise which he had heard
had proceeded.
Within the door, and under the hall lamp, was a noisy
group in a storm of gestures and of voices.
Gwynplaine approached in the gloom.
They were quarrelling. On one side there were ten or
twelve young lords, who wanted to go out; on the other, a
man, with his hat on, like themselves, upright and with a
haughty brow, who barred their passage.
Who was this man? Tom- Jim- Jack.
Some of these lords were still in their robes, others had
thrown them off, and were in their usual attire. Tom-Jim-
Jack wore a hat with plumes — not white, like the peers ; but
green tipped with orange. He was embroidered and laced
from head to foot, had flowing bows of ribbon and lace round
his wrists and neck, and was feverishly fingering with his left
hand the hilt of the sword which hung from his waistbelt, and
on the billets and scabbard of which were embroidered an
admiral's anchors.
It was he who was speaking and addressing the young
lords; and Gwynplaine overheard the following: —
" I have told you you are cowards. You wish me to with-
draw my words. Be it so. You are not cowards; you are
idiots. You all combined against one man. That was not
cowardice. All right. Then it was stupidity. He spoke to
you, and you did not understand him. Here, the old are
hard of hearing, the young devoid of intelligence. I am one
of your own order to quite sufficient extent to tell you the
truth. This new-comer is strange, and he has uttered a heap
of nonsense, I admit; but amidst all that nonsense there were
some things which were true. His speech was confused,
528 THE LAUGHING MAN.
undigested, ill-delivered. Be it so. He repeated, ' You
know, you know,' too often; but a man who was but yester-
day a clown at a fair cannot be expected to speak like
Aristotle or like Doctor Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury.
The vermin, the lions, the address to the under-clerks — all
that was in bad taste. Zounds 1 who says it wasn't? It
was a senseless and fragmentary and topsy-turvy harangue;
but here and there came out facts which were true. It is no
small thing to speak even as he did, seeing it is not his trade.
I should like to see you do it. Yes, you! What he said
about the lepers at Burton Lazars is an undeniable fact.
Besides, he is not the first man who has talked nonsense. In
fine, my lords, I do not like to see many set upon one. Such
is my humour; and I ask your lordships' permission to take
offence. You have displeased me; I am angry. I am
grateful to God for having drawn up from the depth of his
low existence this peer of England, and for having given back
his inheritance to the heir; and, without heeding whether it
will or will not affect my own affairs, I consider it a beautiful
sight to see an insect transformed into an eagle, and Gwyn-
plaine into Lord Clancharlie. My lords, I forbid you holding
any opinion but mine. I regret that Lord Lewis Duras
should not be here. I should like to insult him. My lords,
it is Fermain Clancharlie who has been the peer, and you who
have been the mountebanks. As to his laugh, it is not his
fault. You have laughed at that laugh; men should not
laugh at misfortune. If you think that people cannot laugh
at you as well, you are very much mistaken. You are ugly.
You are badly dressed. My Lord Haversham, I saw your
mistress the other day; she is hideous — a duchess, but a
monkey. Gentlemen who laugh, I repeat that I should like
to hear you try to say four words running! Many men
jabber; very few speak. You imagine you know something,
because you have kept idle terms at Oxford or Cambridge,
and because, before being peers of England on the benches of
Westminster, you have been asses on the benches at Gonville
and Caius. Here I am ; and I choose to stare you in the face.
You have just been impudent to this new peer. A monster,
certainly; but a monster given up to beasts. I had rather
be that man than you. I was present at the sitting, in my
place as a possible heir to a peerage. I heard all. I have not
the right to speak; but I have the right to be a gentleman.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 529
Your jeering airs annoyed me. When I am angry I would
go up to Mount Pendlehill, and pick the cloudberry which
brings the thunderbolt down on the gatherer. That is the
reason why I have waited for you at the door. We must
have a few words, for we have arrangements to make. Did it
strike you that you failed a little in respect towards myself ?
My lords, I entertain a firm determination to kill a few of you.
All you who are here — Thomas Tufton, Earl of Thanet;
Savage, Earl Rivers; Charles Spencer, Earl of Sunderland;
Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester; you Barons, Gray of
Rolleston, Gary Hunsdon, Escrick, Rockingham, little
Carteret; Robert Darcy, Earl of Holderness; William,
Viscount Hutton; and Ralph, Duke of Montagu; and any
who choose — I, David Dirry-Moir, an officer of the fleet,
summon, call, and command you to provide yourselves, in all
haste, with seconds and umpires, and I will meet you face to
face and hand to hand, to-night, at once, to-morrow, by day
or night, by sunlight or by candlelight, where, when, or how
you please, so long as there is two sword-lengths' space ; and
you will do well to look to the flints of your pistols and the
edges of your rapiers, for it is my firm intention to cause
vacancies in your peerages. — Ogle Cavendish, take your
measures, and think of your motto, Cavendo tutus. — Marma-
duke Langdale, you will do well, like your ancestor, Grindold,
to order a coffin to be brought with you. — George Booth, Earl
of Warrington, you will never again see the County Palatine
of Chester, or your labyrinth like that of Crete, or the high
towers of Dunham Massy I— As to Lord Vaughan, he is young
enough to talk impertinently, and too old to answer for it.
I shall demand satisfaction for his words of his nephew
Richard Vaughan, Member of Parliament for the Borough of
Merioneth.— As for you, John Campbell, Earl of Greenwich,
I will kiU you as Achon killed Matas ; but with a fair cut, and
not from behind, it being my custom to present my heart and
not my back to the point of the sword.— I have spoken my
mind, my lords. And so use witchcraft if you like. Consult
the fortune-tellers. Grease your skins with ointments and
drugs to make them invulnerable; hang round your necks
charms of the devil or the Virgin. I will fight you blest or
curst, and I will not have you searched to see if you are
wearing any wizard's tokens. On foot or on horseback, on
the highroad if you wish it, in Piccadilly, or at Charing
530 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Cross ; and they shall take up the pavement for our meeting,
as they unpaved the court of the Louvre for the duel between
Guise and Bassompierre. All of youl Do you hear? I
mean to fight you all. — Dorme, Earl of Caernarvon, I will
make you swallow my sword up to the hilt, as Marolles did to
Lisle Mariveaux, and then we shall see, my lord, whether you
will laugh or not. — You, Burlington, who look like a girl of
seventeen — you shall choose between the lawn of your house
in Middlesex, and your beautiful garden at Londesborough in
Yorkshire, to be buried in. — I beg to inform your lordships
that it does not suit me to allow your insolence in" my presence.
I will chastise you, my lords. I take it ill that you should
have ridiculed Lord Fermain Clancharlie. He is worth more
than you. As Clancharlie, he has nobility, which you have;
as Gwynplaine, he has intellect, which you have not. I
make his cause my cause, insult to him insult to me, and your
ridicule my wrath. We shall see who will come out of this
affair alive, because I challenge you to the death. Do you
understand ? With any arm, in any fashion, and you shall
choose the death that pleases you best; and since you are
clowns as well as gentlemen, I proportion my defiance to your
qualities, and I give you your choice of any way in which a
man can be killed, from the sword of the prince to the fist of
the blackguard."
To this furious onslaught of words the whole group of
young noblemen answered by a smile. " Agreed," they said.
" I choose pistols," said Burlington.
"I," said Escrick, " the ancient combat of the lists, with
the mace and the dagger."
"I," said Holderness, " the duel with two knives, long and
short, stripped to the waist, and breast to breast."
" Lord David," said the Earl of Thanet, " you are a Scot.
I choose the claymore."
" I the sword," said Rockingham.
" I," said Duke Ralph, " prefer the fists ; 'tis noblest."
Gwynplaine came out from the shadow. He directed his
steps towards him whom he had hitherto called Tom- Jim-
Jack, but in whom now, however, he began to perceive some-
thing more. " I thank you," said he, " but this is my
business."
Every head turned towards him.
Gwynplaine advanced. He felt himself impelled towards
THE LAUGHING MAN. 531
the man whom he heard called Lord David — his defender,
and perhaps something nearer. Lord David drew back.
" Oh 1 " 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 Clancharlie,
loved Charles II."
" It is true."
" Sir, you insulted my mother."
" Your mother! " cried Gwynplaine. " In that case, as I
guessed, we are "
" Brothers," answered Lord David, and he struck Gwyn-
plaine. "We are brothers," said he; "so we can fight.
One can only fight one's equal; who is one's equal if not one's
brother? I will send you my seconds; to-morrow we will
cut each other's throats."
BOOK THE NINTH.
IN RUINS.
CHAPTER I.
IT IS THROUGH EXCESS OF GREATNESS THAT MAN
REACHES EXCESS OF MISERY.
As midnight tolled from St. Paul's, a man who had just
crossed London Bridge struck into the lanes of Southwark.
There were no lamps lighted, it being at that time the custom
in London, as in Paris, to extinguish the public lamps at
eleven o'clock — that is, to put them out just as they became
necessary. The streets were dark and deserted. When the
lamps are out men stay in. He whom we speak of advanced
with hurried strides. He was strangely dressed for walking
at such an hour. He wore a coat of embroidered silk, a
sword by his side, a hat with white plumes, and no cloak.
The watchmen, as they saw him pass, said, "It is a lord
walking for a wager," and they moved out of his way with
the respect due to a lord and to a better.
The man was Gwynplaine. He was making his escape.
Where was he ? He did not know. We have said that the
soul has its cyclones — fearful whirlwinds, in which heaven,
the sea, day, night, life, death, are all mingled in unintelligible
horror. It can no longer breathe Truth; it is crushed by
things in which it does not believe. Nothingness becomes
hurricane. The firmament pales. Infinity is empty. The
mind of the sufferer wanders away. He feels himself dying.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 533
He craves for a star. What did Gwynplaine feel? a thirst —
a thirst to see Dea.
He felt but that. To reach the Green Box again, and the
Tadcaster Inn, with its sounds and light — full of the cordial
laughter of the people; to find Ursus and Homo, to see Dea
again, to re-enter life. Disillusion, like a bow, shoots its
arrow, man, towards the True. Gwynplaine hastened on.
He approached Tarrinzeau Field. He walked no longer now;
he ran. His eyes pierced the darkness before him. His
glance preceded him, eagerly seeking the harbour on the
horizon. What a moment for him when he should see the
lighted windows of Tadcaster Inn I
He reached the bowling-green. He turned the corner of
the wall, and saw before him, at the other end of the field,
some distance off, the inn — the only house, it may be re-
membered, in the field where the fair was held.
He looked. There was no light ; nothing but a black mass.
He shuddered. Then he said to himself that it was late;
that the tavern was shut up; that it was very natural; that
every one was asleep; that he had only to awaken Nicless or
Govicum; that he must go up to the inn andknock at the door.
He did so, running no longer now, but rushing.
He reached the inn, breathless. It is when, storm-beaten
and struggling in the invisible convulsions of the soul until
he knows not whether he is in life or in death, that all the
delicacy of a man's affection for his loved ones, being yet un-
impaired, proves a heart true. When all else is swallowed
up, tenderness still floats unshattered. Not to awaken Dea
too suddenly was Gwynplaine's first thought. He approached
the inn with as little noise as possible. He recognized the
nook, the old dog kennel, where Govicum used to sleep. In
it, contiguous to the lower room, was a window opening on to
the field. Gwynplaine tapped softly at the pane. It would
be enough to awaken Govicum, he thought.
There was no sound in Govicum's room.
" At his age," said Gwynplaine, " a boy sleeps soundly."
With the back of his hand he knocked against the window
gently. Nothing stirred.
He knocked louder twice. Still nothing stirred. Then,
feeling somewhat uneasy, he went to the door of the inn and
knocked. No one answered. He reflected, and began to feel
a cold shudder come over him.
534 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" Master Nicless is old, children sleep soundly, and old men
heavily. Courage! louder 1 "
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 1 he was.
The house remained silent. He felt that he was losing his
head. He no longer thought of caution. He shouted, —
" Nicless I Govicuml "
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, —
" UrsusI 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 melan-
choly sight to him — that everything on it had vanished.
There was not a single caravan. The circus was gone. Not
a tent, not a booth, not a cart remained. The strollers, with
their thousand noisy cries, who had swarmed there, had
given place to a black and sullen void.
All were gone.
The madness of anxiety took possession of him. What
did this mean? What had happened? Was no one left?
Could it be that life had crumbled away behind him ? What
had happened to them all ? Good heavens ! Then he rished
like a tempest against the house. He struck the small door,
the gate, the windows, the window-shutters, the walls, with
fists and feet, furious with terror and agony of mind.
He called Nicless, Govicum, Fibi, Vinos, Ursus, Homo.
He tried every shout and every sound against this wall. At
times he waited and listened ; but the house remained mute
and dead. Then, exasperated, he began again with blows,
shouts, and repeated knockings, re-echoed all around. It
might have been thunder trying to awake the grave.
There is a certain stage of fright in which a man becomes
THE LAUGHING MAN. 535
terrible. He who fears everything fears nothing. He
would strike the Sphynx. He defies the Unknown.
Gwynplaine renewed the noise in every possible form —
stopping, resuming, unwearying in the shouts and appeals
by which he assailed the tragic silence. He called a thou-
sand times on the names of those who should have been there.
He shrieked out every name except that of Dea — a precaution
of which he could not have explained the reason himself, but
which instinct inspired even in his distraction.
Having exhausted calls and cries, nothing was left but to
break in.
" I must enter the house," he said to himself; " but
how?"
He broke a pane of glass in Govicum's room by thrusting
his hand through it, tearing the flesh ; he drew the bolt of the
sash and opened the window. Perceiving that his sword was
in the way, he tore it off angrily, scabbard, blade, and belt,
and flung it on the pavement. Then he raised himself by the
inequalities in the wall, and though the window was nar-
row, he was able to pass through it. He entered the inn.
Govicum's bed, dimly visible in its nook, was there; but
Govicum was not in it. If Govicum was not in his bed, it
was evident that Nicless could not be in his.
The whole house was dark. He felt in that shadowy
interior the mysterious immobility of emptiness, and that
vague fear which signifies — " There is no one here."
Gwynplaine, convulsed with anxiety, crossed the lower
room, knocking against the tables, upsetting the earthen-
ware, throwing down the benches, sweeping against the jugs,
and, striding over the furniture, reached the door leading
into the court, and broke it open with one blow from his knee,
which sprung the lock. The door turned on its hinges. He
looked into the court. The Green Box was no longer there.
CHAPTER II.
THE DREGS.
GWYNPLAINE left the house, and began"to explore Tarrinzeau
Field in every direction. He went to every place where, the
day before, the tents and caravans had stood. He knocked
at the stalls, though he knew well that they were uninhabited.
536 THE LAUGHING MAN.
He struck everything that looked like a door or a window.
Not a voice arose from the darkness. Something like death
had been there.
The ant-hill had been razed. Some measures of police had
apparently been carried out. There had been what, in our
days, would bf; called a razzia. Tarrinzeau Field was worse
than a desert; it had been scoured, and every corner of it
scratched up, as it were, by pitiless claws. The pocket of the
unfortunate fair-green had been turned inside out, and com-
pletely emptied.
Gwynplaine, after having searched every yard of ground,
left the green, struck into the crooked streets abutting on the
site called East Point, and directed his steps towards the
Thames. He had threaded his way through a network of
lanes, bounded only by walls and hedges, when he felt the
fresh breeze from the water, heard the dull lapping of the
river, and suddenly saw a parapet in front of him. It was
the parapet of the Effroc stone.
This parapet bounded a block of the quay, which was very
short and very narrow. Under it the high wall, the Effroc
stone, buried itself perpendicularly in the dark water below.
Gwynplaine stopped at the parapet, and, leaning his elbows
on it, laid his head in his hands and set to thinking, with the
water beneath him.
Did he look at the water? No. At what then? At the
shadow; not the shadow without, but within him. In the
melancholy night-bound landscape, which he scarcely marked,
in the outer depths, which his eyes did not pierce, were the
blurred sketches of masts and spars. Below the Effroc
stone there was nothing on the river ; but the quay sloped
insensibly downwards till, some distance off, it met a pier,
at which several vessels were lying, some of which had just
arrived, others which were on the point of departure. These
vessels communicated with the shore by little jetties, con-
structed 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
THE LAUGHING MAN. 537
ladders, were barely visible. All was livid and confused.
Here and there a red cresset pierced the haze.
Gwynplaine saw nothing of all this. What he was musing
on was destiny.
He was in a dream — a vision — giddy in presence of an
inexorable reality.
He fancied that he heard behind him something like an
earthquake. It was the laughter of the Lords.
From that laughter he had j ust emerged. He had come out
of it, having received a blow, and from whom ?
From his own brother 1
Flying from the laughter, carrying with him the blow,
seeking refuge, a wounded bird, in his nest, rushing from hate
and seeking love, what had he found?
Darkness.
No one.
Everything gone.
He compared that darkness to the dream he had in-
dulged in.
What a crumbling awayl
Gwynplaine had just reached that sinister bound — the
void. The Green Box gone was his universe vanished.
His soul had been closed up.
He reflected.
What could have happened? Where were they? They
had evidently been carried away. Destiny had given him,
Gwynplaine, a blow, which was greatness; its reaction had
struck them another, which was annihilation. It was clear
that he would never see them again. Precautions had been
taken against that. They had scoured the fair-green, be-
ginning by Nicless and Govicum, so that he should gain no
clue through them. Inexorable dispersion! That fearful
social system, at the same time that it had pulverized him in
the House of Lords, had crushed them in their little cabin.
They were lost; Dea was lost — lost to him for ever. Powers
of heaven ! where was she ? And he had not been there to
defend her!
To have to make guesses as to the absent whom we love is
to put oneself to the torture. He inflicted this torture on
himself. At every thought that he fathomed, at every sup-
position which he made, he felt within him a moan of agony.
Through a succession of bitter reflections he remembered a
538 THE LAUGHING MAN.
man who was evidently fatal to him, and who had called him-
self Barkilphedro. That man had inscribed on his brain a
dark sentence which reappeared now; he had written it in
such terrible ink that every letter had turned to fire; and
Gwynplaine saw flaming at the bottom of his thought the
enigmatical words, the meaning of which was at length
solved: " Destiny never opens one door without closing
another."
All was over. The final shadows had gathered about him.
In every man's fate there may be an end of the world for
himself alone. It is called despair. The soul is full of falling
stars.
This, then, was what he had come to.
A vapour had passed. He had been mingled with it. It had
lain heavily on his eyes; it had disordered his brain. He had
been outwardly blinded, intoxicated within. This had lasted
the time of a passing vapour. Then everything melted away,
the vapour and his life. Awaking from the dream, he found
himself alone.
All vanished, all gone, all lost — night — nothingness.
Such was his horizon.
He was alone.
Alone has a synonym, which is Dead. Despair is an
accountant. It sets itself to find its total; it adds up every-
thing, 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, out-
wardly cool, while the burning lava is still flowing on within.
Gwynplaine examined himself, and examined his fate.
The backward glance of thought; terrible recapitulation I
When at the top of a mountain, we look down the preci-
pice; when at the bottom, we look up at heaven. And we
say, "I was there."
Gwynplaine was at the very bottom of misfortune. How
sudden, too, had been his fall I
Such is the hideous swiftness of misfortune, although it is
so heavy that we might fancy it slow. But no I 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
THE LAUGHING MAN. 539
frozen, but It devours. The avalanche had enveloped Gwyn-
plaine. 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. Ex-
cruciating vivisection I
His absence had caused a catastrophe. Had this absence
depended on him ? In all that had happened, had he been a
free agent ? No 1 He had felt himself captive. What was
that which had arrested and detained him — a prison? No.
A chain? No. What then? Sticky slime! He had sunk
into the slough of greatness.
To whom has it not happened to be free in appearance, yet
to feel that his wings are hampered ?
There had been something like a snare spread for him.
What is at first temptation ends by captivity.
Nevertheless — and his conscience pressed him on this point
— had he merely submitted to what had been offered him?
No ; he had accepted it.
Violence and surprise had been used with him in a certain
measure, it was true ; but he, in a certain measure, had given
in. To have allowed himself to be carried off was not his
fault; but to have allowed himself to be inebriated was his
weakness. There had been a moment — a decisive moment
when the question was proposed. This Barkilphedro had
placed a dilemma before Gwynplaine, and had given him
clear power to decide his fate by a word. Gwynplaine might
have said, " No." He had said, " Yes."
From that " Yes," uttered in a moment of dizziness, every-
thing had sprung. Gwynplaine realized this now in the
bitter aftertaste of that consent.
Nevertheless— for he debated with himself— was it then so
great a wrong to take possession of his right, of his patrimony,
of his heritage, of his house; and, as a patrician, of the rank
of his ancestors; as an orphan, of the name of his father?
What had he accepted? A restitution. Made by whom?
By Providence.
Then his mind revolted. Senseless acceptance 1 What a
bargain had he struck! what a foolish exchange! He had
540 THE LAUGHING MAN.
trafficked with Providence at a loss* How nowl For an
income of ^80,000 a year ; for seven or eight titles ; for ten or
twelve palaces ; for houses in town, and castles in the country;
for a hundred lackeys ; for packs of hounds, and carriages,
and armorial bearings; to be a judge and legislate!; for a
coronet and purple robes, like a king; to be a baron and a
marquis; to be a peer of England, he had given the hut of
Ursus and the smile of Dea. For shipwreck and destruction
in the surging immensity of greatness, he had bartered happi-
ness. For the ocean he had given the pearl. O madman 1
O fooll O dupel
Yet nevertheless — and here the objection reappeared on
firmer ground — in this fever of high fortune which had
seized him all had not been unwholesome. Perhaps there
would have been selfishness in renunciation ; perhaps he had
done his duty in the acceptance. Suddenly transformed into
a lord, what ought he to have done? The complication of
events produces perplexity of mind. This had happened to
him. Duty gave contrary orders. Duty on all sides at once,
duty multiple and contradictory — this was the bewilderment
which he had suffered. It was this that had paralyzed him,
especially when he had not refused to take the journey from
Corleone Lodge to the House of Lords. What we call rising
in life is leaving the safe for the dangerous path. Which is,
thenceforth, the straight line? Towards whom Is our first
duty? Is it towards those nearest to ourselves, or is it
towards mankind generally? Do we not cease to belong to
our own circumscribed circle, and become part of the great
family of all ? As we ascend we feel an increased pressure on
our virtue. The higher we rise, the greater is the strain.
The increase of right is an Increase of duty. We come to
many cross-ways, phantom roads perchance, and we imagine
that we see the finger of conscience pointing each one of them
out to us. Which shall we take? Change our direction,
remain where we are, advance, go back ? What are we to do ?
That there should be cross-roads in conscience is strange
enough; but responsibility may be a labyrinth. And when
a man contains an idea, when he is the incarnation of a fact
— when he is a symbolical man, at the same time that he is a
man of flesh and blood — is not the responsibility still more
oppressive? Thence the care-laden docility and the dumb
anxiety of Gwynplaine; thence his obedience when sum-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 54I
moned to take his seat. A pensive man is often a passive
man. He had heard what he fancied was the command of
duty itself. Was not that entrance into a place where
oppression could be discussed and resisted the realization of
one of his deepest aspirations? When he had been called
upon to speak — he the fearful human scantling, he the living
specimen of the despotic whims under which, for six thousand
years, mankind has groaned in agony — had he the right
to refuse? Had he the right to withdraw his head from
under the tongue of fire descending from on high to rest
upon him ?
In the ob°cure 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 Hard-
quanonne's flask, in which was the metamorphosis of Gwyn-
plaine into Lord Clancharlie, should have floated for fifteen
years on the ocean, on the billows, in the surf, through the
storms, and that all the raging of the sea did it no harm. But
I can see the reason. There are destinies with secret springs.
I have the key of mine, and know its enigma. I am pre-
destined ; 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 howl-
ing of the wind. They cry out, but they are understood; so
that cries become equivalent to silence, and silence with them
means throwing down their arms. This forced disarmament
calls for help. I will be their help ; I will be the Denunciation ;
I will be the Word of the people. Thanks to me, they shall be
understood. I will be the bleeding mouth from which the
gag has been torn. I will tell everything. This will be
great indeed."
Yes ; it is fine to speak for the dumb, but to speak to the
deaf is sad. And that was his second part in the drama.
Alas I he had failed irremediably. The elevation in which
\\e had believed, the high fortune, had melted away like a
542 THE LAUGHING MAN.
mirage. And what a fall! To be drowned in a surge of
laughter 1
He had believed himself strong — he who, during so many
years, had floated with observant mind on the wide sea of
suffering ; he who had brought back out of the great shadow
so touching a cry. He had been flung against that huge
rock the frivolity of the fortunate. He believed himself an
avenger; he was but a clown. He thought that he wielded
the thunderbolt; he did but tickle. In place of emotion, he
met with mockery. He sobbed; they burst into gaiety,
and under that gaiety he had sunk fatally submerged.
And what had they laughed at? At his laugh. So that
trace of a hateful act, of which he must keep the mark for
ever — mutilation carved in everlasting gaiety ; the stigmata
of laughter, image of the sham contentment of nations under
their oppressors; that mask of joy produced by torture;
that abyss of grimace which he carried on his features; the
scar which signified Jussu regis, the attestation of a crime
committed by the king towards him, and the symbol of crime
committed by royalty towards the people; — that it was
which had triumphed over him ; that it was which had over-
whelmed him; so that the accusation against the execu-
tioner turned into sentence upon the victim. What a pro-
digious denial of justice! Royalty, having had satisfaction
of his father, had had satisfaction of him ! The evil that had
been done had served as pretext and as motive for the
evil which remained to be done. Against whom were the
lords angered ? Against the torturer ? No ; against the
tortured. Here is the throne; there, the people. Here,
James II. ; there, Gwynplaine. That confrontation, indeed,
brought to light an outrage and a crime. What was the
outrage? Complaint. What was the crime? Suffering.
Let misery hide itself in silence, otherwise it becomes
treason. And those men who had dragged Gwynplaine on
the hurdle of sarcasm, were they wicked? No; but they,
too, had their fatality — they were happy. They were execu-
tioners, ignorant of the fact. They were good-humoured;
they saw no use in Gwynplaine. He opened himself to them.
He tore out his heart to show them, and they cried, " Go on
with your play! " But, sharpest sting! he had laughed
himself. The frightful chain which tied down his soul hin-
dered his thoughts from rising to his face. His disfigure-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 543
ment reached even his senses ; and, while his conscience was
indignant, his face gave it the lie, and jested. Then all was
over. He was the laughing man, the caryatid of the weeping
world. He was an agony petrified in hilarity, carrying the
weight of a universe of calamity, and walled up for ever with
the gaiety, the ridicule, and the amusement of others ; of all
the oppressed, of whom he was the incarnation, he partook
the hateful fate, to be a desolation not believed in; they
jeered at his distress; to them he was but an extraordinary
buffoon lifted out of some frightful condensation of misery,
escaped from his prison, changed to a deity, risen from the
dregs of the people to the foot of the throne, mingling with
the stars, and who, having once amused the damned, now
amused the elect. All that was in him of generosity, of
enthusiasm, of eloquence, of heart, of soul, of fury, of anger,
of love, of inexpressible grief, ended in — a burst of laughter I
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. Immu-
table fate I
He had cried, " Pity for those who suffer/
had striven to awake pity; he had awakened horror. Such
is the law of apparitions.
But while he was a spectre, he was also a man; here was
the heartrending complication. A spectre without, a man
within. A man more than any other, perhaps, since his
double fate was the synopsis of all humanity. And he fe
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
544 THE LAUGHING MAN,
lord. Was he a lord? No; for he was a rebel. He was
the light-bearer; a terrible spoil-sport. He was not Satan,
certainly; but he was Lucifer. His entrance, with his torch
in his hand, was sinister.
Sinister for whom? for the sinister. Terrible to whom?
to the terrible. Therefore they rejected him. Enter their
order ? be accepted by them ? Never. The obstacle which
he carried in his face was frightful; but the obstacle which
he carried in his ideas was still more insurmountable. His
speech was to them more deformed than his face. He had no
possible thought in common with the world of the great and
powerful, in which he had by a freak of fate been born, and
from which another freak of fate had driven him out. There
was between men and his face a mask, and between society
and his mind a wall. In mixing, from infancy, a wandering
mountebank, with that vast and tough substance which is
called the crowd, in saturating himself with the attraction of
the multitude, and impregnating himself with the great soul
of mankind, he had lost, in the common sense of the whole of
mankind, the particular sense of the reigning classes. On
their heights he was impossible. He had reached them wet
with water from the well of Truth; the odour of the abyss
was on him. He was repugnant to those princes perfumed
with lies. To those who live on fiction, truth is disgusting;
and he who thirsts for flattery vomits the real, when -he has
happened to drink it by mistake. That which Gwynplaine
brought was not fit for their table. For what was it?
Reason, wisdom, justice; and they rejected them with
disgust.
There were bishops there. He brought God Into theit
presence. Who was this intruder?
The two poles repel each other. They can never amalga-
mate, for transition is wanting. Hence the result — a cry of
anger — when they were brought together in terrible juxta-
positions all misery concentrated in a man, face to face with
all pride concentrated in a caste.
To accuse is useless. To state is sufficient. Gwynplaine,
meditating on the limits of his destiny, proved the total use-
lessness of his effort. He proved the deafness of high places.
The privileged have no hearing on the side next the dis-
inherited. Is it their fault? Alast no. It is their law.
Forgive them I To be moved would be to abdicate." Ol
THE LAUGHING MAN. 545
lords and princes expect nothing. He who Is satisfied is
inexorable. For those that have their fill the hungry do
not exist. The happy ignore and isolate themselves. On
the threshold of their paradise, as on the threshold of hell,
must be written, " Leave all hope behind."
Gwynplaine had met with the reception of a spectre enter-
ing 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 I he had exaggerated hope into believing in that thing
at once so brilliant and so dark which is called Society. He
who was without had re-entered it. It had at once, and at
first sight, made him its three offers, and given him its three
gifts — marriage, family, and caste. Marriage? He had
seen prostitution on the threshold. Family? His brother
had struck him, and was awaiting him the next day, sword in
hand. Caste? It had burst into laughter in his face, at
him the patrician, at him the wretch. It had rejected,
almost before it had admitted him. So that his first three
steps into the dense shadow of society had opened three
gulfs beneath him.
And it was by a treacherous transfiguration that his
disaster had begun; and catastrophe had approached him
with the aspect of apotheosis I
Ascend had signified Descend!
His fate was the reverse of Job's. It was through pros-
perity that adversity had reached him.
O tragical enigma of life! Behold what pitfalls! A
child, he had wrestled against the night, and had been
stronger than it ; a man, he had wrestled against destiny,
and had overcome it. Out of disfigurement he had created
success; and out of misery, happiness. Of his exile he had
made an asylum. A vagabond, he had wrestled against
space; and, like the birds of the air, he had found his crumb
of bread. Wild and solitary, he had wrestled against the
crowd, and had made it his friend. An athlete, he had
wrestled against that lion, the people ; and he had tamed it.
18
546 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Indigent, he had wrestled against distress, he had faced the
dull necessity of living, and from amalgamating with misery
every joy of his heart, he had at length made riches out of
poverty. He had believed himself the conqueror of life. Of
a sudden he was attacked by fresh forces, reaching him from
unknown depths; this time, with menaces no longer, but
with smiles and caresses. Love, serpent-like and sensual, had
appeared to him, who was filled with angelic love. The flesh
had tempted him, who had lived on the ideal. He had heard
words of voluptuousness like cries of rage; he had felt the
clasp of a woman's arms, like the convolutions of a snake ; to
the illumination of truth had succeeded the fascination of
falsehood; for it Is not the flesh that is real, but the soul.
The flesh is ashes, the soul is flame. For the little circle allied
to him by the relationship of poverty and toil, which was his
true and natural family, had been substituted the social
family — his family in blood, but of tainted blood ; and even
before he had entered it, he found himself face to face with an
intended f ractricide. Alas I he had allowed himself to be
thrown back into that society of which Brant6me, 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 ap-
plauded him, the lords who cursed him. Mournful meta-
morphosis I Ignominious ennobling 1 Rude spoliation of all
that had been his happiness 1 Pillage of his life by derision 1
Gwynplaine, Clancharlie, the lord, the mountebank, torn out
of his old lot, out of his new lot, by the beaks of those eagles I
What availed it that he had commenced life by immediate
victory over obstacle? Of what good had been his early
triumphs? Alasl the fall must come, ere destiny be com-
plete.
So, half against his will, half of it— because after he had
done with the wapentake he had to do with Barkilphedro,
and he had given a certain amount of consent to his abductions
— he had left the real for the chimerical; the true for the
false; Dea for Josiana; love for pride; liberty for power;
labour proud and poor for opulence full of unknown responsi-
THE LAUGHING MAN. 547
bilities; the shade in which is God for the lurid flames In
which the devils dwell ; Paradise for Olympus 1
He had tasted the golden fruit. He was now spitting out
the ashes to which it turned.
Lamentable result 1 Defeat, failure, fall into ruin, in-
solent expulsion of all his hopes, frustrated by ridicule.
Immeasurable disillusion 1 And what was there for him in the
future? If he looked forward to the morrow, what did he
see? A drawn sword, the point of which was against his
breast, and the hilt in the hand of his brother. He could see
nothing but the hideous flash of that sword. Josiana and the
House of Lords made up the background in a monstrous
chiaroscuro full of tragic shadows.
And that brother seemed so brave and chivalrous ! Alas 1
he had hardly seen the Tom- Jim- Jack who had defended
Gwynplaine, 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
weariness dwells in the depths of despair.
The trial had been made. It could not be renewed.
Gwynplaine was like a gamester who has played all his
trumps away, one after the other. He had allowed himself
to be drawn to a fearful gambling-table, without thinking
what he was about; for, so subtle is the poison of illusion,
he had staked Dea against Josiana, and had gained a
monster; he had staked Ursus against a family, and had
gained an insult; he had played his mountebank platform
against his seat in the Lords; for the applause which was his
he had gained insult. His last card had fallen on that fatal
green cloth, the deserted bowling-green. Gwynplaine had
lost. Nothing remained but to pay. Pay up, wretched
manl
The thunder-stricken lie still. Gwynplaine remained
motionless. Anybody perceiving him from afar, in the
shadow, stiff, and without movement, might have fancied
that he saw an upright stone.
Hell, the serpent, and reverie are tortuous. Gwynplaine
was descending the sepulchral spirals of the deepest thought.
He reflected on that world of which he had just caught a
548 THE LAUGHING MAN.
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. Inexor-
able balance-sheet 1 He went throughout the supreme vision
in which his mind had been plunged. He examined success-
ively destiny, situation, society, and himself. What was
destiny? A snare. Situation? Despair. Society?
Hatred. And himself ? A defeated man. In the depths of
his soul he cried. Society is the stepmother, Nature is the
mother. Society is the world of the body, Nature is the
world of the soul. The one tends to the coffin, to the deal
box in the grave, to the earth-worms, and ends there. The
other tends to expanded wings, to transformation into the
morning light, to ascent into the firmament, and there
revives into new life.
By degrees a paroxysm came over him, like a sweeping
surge. At the close of events there is always a last flash, in
which all stands revealed once more.
He who judges meets the accused face to face. Gwyn-
plaine reviewed all that society and all that nature had done
for him. How kind had nature been to him I How she, who
is the soul, had succoured him I 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 1 Dea was
his sister, because he felt between them the grand fraternity
of above — the mystery which contains the whole of heaven.
Dea, when he was a little child, was his virgin; because every
child has his virgin, and at the commencement of life a
marriage of souls is always consummated in the plenitude of
innocence. Dea was his wife, for theirs was the same nest on
the highest branch of the deep-rooted tree of Hymen. Dea
was still more — she was his light, for without her all was void,
and nothingness ; and for him her head was crowned with
rays. What would become of him without Dea? What
THE LAUGHING MAN. 549
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 I He allowed
distance to intervene between himself and his star; and, by
the unknown and terrible laws of gravitation in such things,
distance is immediate loss.
Where was she, the star ? Deal Deal Deal Deal Alas!
he had lost her light. Take away the star, and what is the
sky? A black mass. But why, then, had all this befallen
him ? Oh, what happiness had been his! For him God had
remade Eden. Too close was the resemblance, alas I 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 1 O grief! How fright-
ful seemed all that had fascinated him! That Josiana,
fearful creature I — half beast, half goddess! Gwynplaine
was now on the reverse side of his elevation, and he saw the
other aspect of that which had dazzled him. It was baleful.
His peerage was deformed, his coronet was hideous; his
purple robe, a funeral garment; those palaces, infected;
those trophies, those statues, those armorial bearings,
sinister; the unwholesome and treacherous air poisoned
those who breathed it, and turned them mad. How brilliant
the rags of the mountebank, Gwynplaine, appeared to him
now I Alas! where was the Green Box, poverty, joy, the
sweet wandering life — wandering together, like the swallows ?
They never left each other then ; he saw her every minute,
morning, evening. At table their knees, their elbows,
touched; they drank from the same cup; the sun shone
through the pane, but it was only the sun, and Dea was Love.
At night they slept not far from each other; and the dream
of Dea came and hovered over Gwynplaine, and the dream
of Gwynplaine spread itself mysteriously above the head of
Dea. When they awoke they could be never quite sure that
they had not exchanged kisses in the azure mists of dreams.
Dea was all innocence; Ursus, all wisdom. They wandered
from town to town ; and they had for provision and for stimu-
lant the frank, loving gaiety of the people. They were angel
vagabonds, with enough of humanity to walk the earth and not
enough of wings to fly away; and now all had disappeared!
Where was it gone ? Was it possible that it was all effaced ?
550 THE LAUGHING MAN.
What wind from the tomb had swept over them? All was
eclipsed 1 All was lost I Alasl power, irresistible and deaf
to appeal, which weighs down the poor, flings its shadow over
all, and is capable of anything. What had been done to
them ? And he had not been there to protect them, to fling
himself in front of them, to defend them, as a lord, with his
title, his peerage, and his sword ; as a mountebank, with his
fists and his nails 1
And here arose a bitter reflection, perhaps the most bitter
of all. Well, no ; he could not have defended them. It was
he himself who had destroyed them; it was to save him,
Lord Clancharlie, from them; it was to isolate his
dignity from contact with them, that the infamous omnip-
otence 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 I Oh 1 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 1 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?
Gwynplakie without Dea I Was it possible ? Without Dea
was to be without everything. It was all over now. The
beloved group was for ever buried in irreparable disappear-
ance. All was spent. Besides, condemned and damned as
Gwynplaine was, what was the good of further struggle ? He
had nothing more to expect either of men or of heaven.
Dea! Deal Where is Dea? Lostl What 1 lost? He who
has lost his soul can regain it but through one outlet —
death.
Gwynplaine, tragically distraught, placed his hand firmly
on the parapet, as on a solution, and looked at the river.
It was his third night without sleep. Fever had come
over him. His thoughts, which he believed to be clear, were
blurred. He felt an imperative need of sleep. He remained
for a few instants leaning over the water. Its darkness
THfi LAUGHING MAN. 551
offered him a bed of boundless tranquillity in the infinity of
shadow. Sinister temptation 1
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 1 "
Then he signed, " Fermain Clancharlie, peer of England."
He took off his waistcoat and placed it upon the coat;
then his hat, which he placed upon the waistcoat. In the hat
he laid the red book open at the page on which he had
written. Seeing a stone lying on the ground, he picked it
up and placed it in the hat. Having done all this, he looked
up into the deep shadow above him. Then his head sank
slowly, as if drawn by an invisible thread towards the abyss.
There was a hole in the masonry near the base of the
parapet; he placed his foot in it, so that his knee stood
higher than the top, and scarcely an effort was necessary to
spring over it. He clasped his hands behind his back and
leaned over. "So be it," said he.
And he fixed his eyes on the deep waters. Just then he
felt a tongue licking his hands.
He shuddered, and turned round.
Homo was behind him.
CONCLUSION.
THE. NIGHT AND THE SEA.
CHAPTER I.
A WATCH-DOG MAY BE A GUARDIAN ANGEL.
GWYNPLAINE uttered a cry.
" Is that you, wolf?"
Homo wagged his tail. His eyes sparkled in the darkness.
He was looking earnestly at Gwynplaine.
Then he began to lick his hands again. For a moment
Gwynplaine was like a drunken man, so great is the shock of
Hope's mighty return.
Homo! What an apparition! During the last forty-
eight hours he had exhausted what might be termed every
variety of the thunder-bolt. But one was left to strike him
— the thunderbolt of joy. And it had just fallen upon him.
Certainty, or at least the light which leads to it, regained;
the sudden intervention of some mysterious clemency pos-
sessed, perhaps, by destiny; life saying, " Behold me! " in
the darkest recess of the grave; the very moment in which
all expectation has ceased bringing back health and deliver-
ance; a place of safety discovered at the most critical instant
in the midst of crumbling ruins — Homo was all this to Gwyn-
plaine. The wolf appeared to him in a halo of light.
Meanwhile, Homo had turned round. He advanced a
few steps, and then looked back to see if Gwynplaine was
following him.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 553
Gwynplalne was doing so. Homo wagged his tail, and
went on.
The road taken by the wolf was the slope of the quay of the
Effroc-stone. This slope shelved down to the Thames; and
Gwynplaine, guided by Homo, descended it.
Homo turned his head now and then, to make sure that
Gwynplaine was behind him.
In some situations of supreme importance nothing ap-
proaches so near an omniscient intelligence as the simple
instinct of a faithful animal. An animal is a lucid somnam-
bulist.
There are cases in which the dog feels that he should follow
his master; others, in which he should precede him. Then
the animal takes the direction of sense. His imperturbable
scent is a confused power of vision in what is twilight to us.
He feels a vague obligation to become a guide. Does he
know that there is a dangerous pass, and that he can help his
master to surmount it? Probably not. Perhaps he does.
In any case, some one knows it for him. As we have already
said, it often happens in life that some mighty help which we
have held to have come from below has, in reality, come from
above. Who knows all the mysterious forms assumed by
God?
What was this animal ? Providence.
Having reached the river, the wolf led down the narrow
tongue of land which bordered the Thames.
Without noise or bark he pushed forward on his silent way.
Homo always followed his instinct and did his duty, but
with the pensive reserve of an outlaw.
Some fifty paces more, and he stopped. A wooden plat-
form appeared on the right. At the bottom of this platform,
which was a kind of wharf on piles, a black mass could be
made out, which was a tolerably large vessel. On the deck of
the vessel, near the prow, was a glimmer, like the last flicker
of a night-light.
The wolf, having finally assured himself that Gwynplaine
was there, bounded on to the wharf. It was a long platform,
floored and tarred, supported by a network of joists, and
under which flowed the river. Homo and Gwynplaine
shortly reached the brink.
The ship moored to the wharf was a Dutch vessel, of the
Japanese build, with two decks, fore and aft, and between
554 THE LAUGHING MAN.
them an open hold, reached by an upright ladder, in which
the cargo was laden. There was thus a forecastle and an
afterdeck, as in our old river boats, and a space between
them ballasted by the freight. The paper boats made by
children are of a somewhat similar shape. Under the decks
were the cabins, the doors of which opened into the hold and
were lighted by glazed portholes. In stowing the cargo a
passage was left between the packages of which it consisted.
These vessels had a mast on each deck. The foremast was
called Paul, the mainmast Peter — the ship being sailed by
these two masts, as the Church was guided .by her two
apostles. A gangway was thrown, like a Chinese bridge,
from one deck to the other, over the centre of the hold. In
bad weather, both flaps of the gangway were lowered, on the
right and left, on hinges, thus making a roof over the hold;
so that the ship, in heavy seas, was hermetically closed.
These sloops, being of very massive construction, had a beam
for a tiller, the strength of the rudder being necessarily pro-
portioned to the height of the vessel. Three men, the skipper
and two sailors, with a cabin-boy, sufficed to navigate these
ponderous sea-going machines. The decks, fore and aft,
were, as we have already said, without bulwarks. The great
lumbering hull of this particular vessel was painted black,
and on it, visible even in the night, stood out, in white letters,
the words, Vograat, Rotterdam.
About that time many events had occurred at sea, and
amongst others, the defeat of the Baron de Pointi's eight
ships off Cape Carnero, which had driven the whole French
fleet into refuge at Gibraltar; so that the Channel was swept
of every man-of-war, and merchant vessels were able to sail
backwards and forwards between London and Rotterdam,
without a convoy.
The vessel on which was to be read the word Vograat, and
which Gwynplaine was now close to, lay with her main-deck
almost level with the wharf. But one step to descend, and
Homo in a bound, and Gwynplaine in a stride, were on
board.
The deck was clear, and no stir was perceptible. The
passengers, if, as was likely, there were any, were already on
board, the vessel being ready to sail, and the cargo stowed,
as was apparent from the state of the hold, which was full of
bales and cases. But they were, dovbtlcss, lying asleep in
THE LAUGHING MAN. 555
the cabins below, as the passage was to take place during the
night. In such cases the passengers do not appear on deck
till they awake the following morning. As for the crew, they
were probably having their supper in the men's cabin, whilst
awaiting the hour fixed for sailing, which was now rapidly
approaching. Hence the silence on the two decks connected
by the gangway,
The wolf had almost run across the wharf; once on board,
he slackened his pace into a discreet walk. He still wagged
his tail — no longer joyfully, however, but with the sad and
feeble wag of a dog troubled in his mind. Still preceding
Gwynplaine, he passed along the after-deck, and across the
gangway.
Gwynplaine, having reached the gangway, perceived a
light in front of him. It was the same that he had seen from
the shore. There was a lantern on the deck, close to the
foremast, by the gleam of which was sketched in black, on
the dim background of the night, what Gwynplaine recog-
nized to be Ursus's old four-wheeled van.
This poor wooden tenement, cart and hut combined, in
which his childhood had rolled along, was fastened to the
bottom of the mast by thick ropes, of which the knots were
visible at the wheels. Having been so long out of service, it
had become dreadfullyrickety ; it leant over feebly on one side ;
it had become quite paralytic from disuse ; and, moreover, it
was suffering from that incurable malady — old age. Mouldy
and out of shape, it tottered in decay. The materials of
which it was built were all rotten. The iron was rusty, the
leather torn, the wood- work worm-eaten. There were lines
of cracks across the window in front, through which shone a
ray from the lantern. The wheels were warped. The lining,
the floor, and the axletrees seemed worn out with fatigue.
Altogether, it presented an indescribable appearance of
beggary and prostration. The shafts, stuck up, looked like
two arms raised to heaven. The whole thing was in a state
of dislocation. Beneath it was hanging Homo's chain.
Does it not seem that the law and the will of nature would
have dictated Gwynplaine's headlong rush to throw himself
upon life, happiness, love regained? So they would, except
in some case of deep terror such as his. But he who comes
forth, shattered in nerve and uncertain of his way, from a
series of catastrophes, each one like a fresh betrayal, is
556 THE LAUGHING MAN.
prudent even in his joy; hesitates, lest he should bear the
fatality of which he has been the victim to those whom he
loves; feels that some evil contagion may still hang about
him, and advances towards happiness with wary steps. The
gates of Paradise reopen ; but before he enters he examines
his ground.
Gwynplaine, staggering under the weight of his emotion,
looked around him, while the wolf went and lay down silently
by his chain.
CHAPTER II.
BARKILPHEDRO, HAVING AIMED AT THE EAGLE, BRINGS
DOWN THE DOVE.
THE step of the little van was down — the door ajar — there
was no one inside. The faint light which broke through the
pane in front sketched the interior of the caravan vaguely
in melancholy chiaroscuro. The inscriptions of Ursus,
gloryifying the grandeur of Lords, showed distinctly on the
worn-out boards, which were both the wall without and the
wainscot within. On a nail, near the door, Gwynplaine saw
his esclavine and his cape hung up, as they hang up the
clothes of a corpse in a dead-house. Just then he had
neither waistcoat nor coat on.
Behind the van something was laid out on the deck at the
foot of the mast, which was lighted by the lantern. It was a
mattress, of which he could make out one corner. On this
mattress some one was probably lying, for he could see a
shadow move.
Some one was speaking. Concealed by the van, Gwyn-
plaine listened. It was Ursus's voice. That voice, so harsh
in its upper, so tender in its lower, pitch ; that voice, which
had so often upbraided Gwynplaine, and which had taught
him so well, had lost the life and clearness of its tone. It was
vague and low, and melted into a sigh at the end of every
sentence. It bore but a confused resemblance to his natural
and firm voice of old. It was the voice of one in whom
happiness is dead. A voice may become a ghost.
He seemed to be engaged in monologue rather than in con-
versation. We are already aware, however, that soliloquy
was a habit with aim. It was for that reason that he passed
for a madmanc
THE LAUGHING MAN, f57
Gwynplaine held his breath, so as not to lose a word of
what Ursus said, and this was what he heard.
" This is a very dangerous kind of craft, because there are
no bulwarks to it. If we were to slip, there is nothing to
prevent our going overboard. If we have bad weather, we
shall have to take her below, and that will be dreadful. An
awkward step, a fright, and we shall have a rupture of the
aneurism. I have seen instances of it. O my God I what is
to become of us ? Is she asleep ? Yes. She is asleep. Is
she in a swoon? No. Her pulse is pretty strong. She is
only asleep. Sleep is a reprieve. It is the happy blindness.
What can I do to prevent people walking about here?
Gentlemen, if there be anybody on deck, I beg of you to make
no noise. Do not come near us, if you do not mind. You
know a person in delicate health requires a little attention.
She is feverish, you see. She is very young. "Tis a little
creature who is rather feverish. I put this mattress down
here so that she may have a little air. I explain all this so
that you should be careful. She fell down exhausted on the
mattress as if she had fainted. But she is asleep. I do hope
that no one will awake her. I address myself to the ladies,
if there are any present. A young girl, it is pitiful 1 We are
only poor mountebanks, but I beg a little kindness, and if
there is anything to pay for not making a noise, I will pay it.
I thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Is there any one there ?
No ? I don't think there is. My talk is mere loss of breath.
So much the better. Gentlemen, I thank you, if you are
there ; and I thank you still more if you are not. Her fore-
head is all in perspiration. Come, let us take our places in
the galleys again. Put on the chain. Misery is come back.
We are sinking again. A hand, the fearful hand which we
cannot see, but the weight of which we feel ever upon us, has
suddenly struck us back towards the dark point of our
destiny. Be it so. We will bear up. Only I will not have
her ill. I must seem a fool to talk aloud like this, when I am
alone ; but she must feel she has some one near her when she
awakes. What shall I do if somebody awakes her sud-
denly i No noise, in the name of Heaven 1 A sudden shock
which would awake her suddenly would be of no use. It will
be a pity if anybody comes by. I believe that every one on
board is asleep. Thanks be to Providence for that mercy.
Well, and Homo ? Where is he, I wonder ? In all this con-
558 THE LAUGHING MAN.
fusion I forgot to tie him up. I do not know what I am
doing. It is more than an hour since I have seen him. I
suppose he has been to look for his supper somewhere ashore.
I hope nothing has happened to him. Homol Homol "
Homo struck his tail softly on the planks of the deck.
" You are there. Oh I you are there! Thank God for
that. If Homo had been lost, it would have been too much
to bear. She has moved her arm. Perhaps she is going to
awake. Quiet, Homo I The tide is turning. We shall sail
directly. I think it will be a fine night. There is no wind:
the flag droops. We shall have a good passage. I do not
know what moon it is, but there is scarcely a stir in the clouds.
There will be no swell. It will be a fine night. Her cheek is
pale ; it is only weakness 1 No, it is flushed ; it is only the
fever. Stay 1 It is rosy. She is well 1 I can no longer see
clearly. My poor Homo, I no longer see distinctly. So we
must begin life afresh. We must set to work again. There
are only we two left, you see. We will work for her, both of
us I She is our child, Ah 1 the vessel moves ! We are off 1
Good-bye, London 1 Good evening 1 good-night 1 To the
devil with horrible London 1 "
He was right. He heard the dull sound of the unmooring
as the vessel fell away from the wharf. Abaft on the poop a
man, the skipper, no doubt, just come from below, was stand-
ing. He had slipped the hawser and was working the tiller.
Looking only to the rudder, as befitted the combined phlegm
of a Dutchman and a sailor, listening to nothing but the wind
and the water, bending against the resistance of the tiller, as
he worked it to port or starboard, he looked in the gloom of
the after-deck like a phantombearingabeamuponitsshoulder.
He was alone there. So long as they were in the river the
other sailors were not required. In a few minutes the vessel
was in the centre of the current, with which she drifted
without rolling or pitching. The Thames, little disturbed
by the ebb, was calm. Carried onwards by the tide, the
vessel made rapid way. Behind her the black scenery of
London was fading in the mist.
Ursus went on talking.
" Never mind, I will give her digitalis. I am afraid that
delirium will supervene. She perspires in the palms of her
hands. What sin can we have committed in the sight of
God? How quickly has all this misery come upon us I
THE LAUGHING MAN. 559
Hideous rapidity of evil! A stone falls. It has claws. It
is the hawk swooping on the lark. It is destiny. There you
lie, my sweet child 1 One comes to London. One says:
What a fine cityl What fine buildings 1 Southwark is a
magnificent suburb. One settles there. But now they are
horrid places. What would you have me do there? I am
going to leave. This is the 3oth of April. I always dis-
trusted the month of April. There are but two lucky days in
April, the 5th and the 27 th; and four unlucky ones — the
loth, the 2oth, the 29th, and the 3oth. This has been placed
beyond doubt by the calculations of Cardan. I wish this day
were over. Departure is a comfort. At dawn we shall be at
Gravesend, and to-morrow evening at Rotterdam. Zounds 1
I will begin life again in the van. We will draw it, won't we,
Homo? "
A light tapping announced the wolf's consent.
Ursus continued, —
" If one could only get out of a grief as one gets out of a
cityl Homo, we must yet be happy. Alasl there must
always be the one who is no more. A shadow remains on
those who survive. You know whom I mean, Homo. We
were four, and now we are but three. Life is but a long loss
of those whom we love. They leave behind them a train of
sorrows. Destiny amazes us by a prolixity of unbearable
suffering; who then can wonder that the old are garrulous?
It is despair that makes the dotard, old fellow 1 Homo, the
wind continues favourable. We can no longer see the dome
of St. Paul's. We shall pass Greenwich presently. That
will be six good miles over. Oh! I turn my back for ever on
those odious capitals, full of priests, of magistrates, and of
people. I prefer looking at the leaves rustling in the woods.
Her forehead is still in perspiration. I don't like those great
violet veins in her arm. There is fever in them. Oh! all
this is killing me. Sleep, my child. Yes; she sleeps."
Here a voice spoke: an ineffable voice, which seemed from
afar, and appeared to come at once from the heights and the
depths— a voice divinely fearful, the voice of Dea.
All that Gwynplaine had hitherto felt seemed nothing.
His angel spoke. It seemed as though he heard words
spoken from another world in a heaven-like trance.
The voice said, —
" He did well to go. This world was not worthy of him.
560 THE LAUGHING MAN.
Only I must go with. him. Father! I am not ill; I heard
you speak just now. I am very well, quite well. I was
asleep. Father, I am going to be happy."
" My child," said Ursus in a voice of anguish, " what do
you mean by that? "
The answer was, —
" Father, do not be unhappy."
There was a pause, as if to take breath, and then these few
words, pronounced slowly, reached Gwynplaine.
" Gwynplaine is no longer here. It is now that I am
blind. I knew not what night was. Night is absence."
The voice stopped once more, and then continued, —
" I always feared that he would fly away. I felt that he
belonged to heaven. He has taken flight suddenly. It was
natural that it should end thus. The soul flies away like a
bird. But the nest of the soul is in the height, where dwells
the Great Loadstone, who draws all towards Him. I know
where to find Gwynplaine. I have no doubt about the way.
Father, it is yonder. Later on, you will rejoin us, and Homo,
too."
Homo, hearing his name pronounced, wagged his tail softly
against the deck.
" Father! " resumed the voice, " you understand that once
Gwynplaine is no longer here, all is over. Even if I would
remain, I could not, because one must breathe. We must
not ask for that which is impossible. I was with Gwynplaine.
It was quite natural, I lived. Now Gwynplaine is no more,
I die. The two things are alike: either he must come or I
must go. Since he cannot come back, I am going* to him.
It is good to die. It is not at all difficult. Father, that
which is extinguished here shall be rekindled elsewhere. It
is a heartache to live in this world. It cannot be that we
shall always be unhappy. When we go to what you call the
stars, we shall marry, we shall never part again, and we shall
love, love, love; and that is what is God."
" There, there, do not agitate yourself," said Ursus.
The voice continued, —
" Well, for instance; last year. In the spring of last year
we were together, and we were happy. How different it is
now 1 I forget what little village we were in, but there were
trees, and I heard the linnets singing. We came to London;
all was changed. This is no reproach, mind. When one
THE LAUGHING MAN. 561
comes to a fresh place, how is one to know anything about it ?
Father, do you remember that one day there was a woman in
the great box; you said: ' It is a duchess.' I felt sad. I
think it might have been better had we kept to the little
towns. Gwynplaine has done right, withal. Now my turn
has come. Besides, you have told me yourself, that when I
was very little, my mother died, and that I was lying on the
ground with the snow falling upon me, and that he, who was
also very little then, and alone, like myself, picked me up,
and that it was thus that I came to be alive ; so you cannot
wonder that now I should feel it absolutely necessary to go
and search the grave to see if Gwynplaine be in it. Because
the only thing which exists in life is the heart; and after life,
the soul. You take notice of what I say, father, do you not ?
What is moving ? It seems as if we are in something that is
moving, yet I do not hear the sound of the wheels."
After a pause the voice added, —
" I cannot exactly make out the difference between yester-
day and to-day. I do not complain. I do not know what
has occurred, but something must have happened."
These words, uttered with deep and inconsolable sweet-
ness, and with a sigh which Gwynplaine heard, wound up
thus,—
" I must go, unless he should return."
Ursus muttered gloomily: " I do not believe in ghosts."
He went on, —
"This is a ship. You ask why the house moves; it is
because we are on board a vessel. Be calm; you must not
talk so much. Daughter, if you have any love for me, do
not agitate yourself, it will make you feverish. I am so old,
I could not bear it if you were to have an illness. Spare me I
do not be ill! "
Again the voice spoke, —
" What is the use of searching the earth, when we can only
find in heaven? "
Ursus replied, with a half attempt at authority,—
" Be calm. There are times when you have no sense at all.
I order you to rest. After all, you cannot be expected to
know what it is to rupture a blood-vessel. I should be easy
if you were easy. My child, do something for me as well. If
he picked you up, I took you in. You will make me ill.
That is wrong. You must calm yourself, and go to sleep.
562 THE LAUGHING MAN.
All will come right. I give you my word of honour, all will
come right. Besides, it is very fine weather. The night
might have been made on purpose. To-morrow we shall be
at Rotterdam, which is a city in Holland, at the mouth of the
Meuse."
" Father," said the voice, " look here; when two beings
have always been together from infancy, their state should
not be disturbed, or death must come, and it cannot be other-
wise. I love you all the same, but I feel that I am no longer
altogether with you, although I am as yet not altogether with
him."
" Cornel try to sleep," repeated Ursus.
The voice answered, —
" I shall have sleep enough soon."
Ursus replied, in trembling tones, —
" I tell you that we are going to Holland, to Rotterdam,
which is a city."
" Father," continued the voice, " I am not ill; if you are
anxious about that, you may rest easy. I have no fever. I
am rather hot; it is nothing more."
Ursus stammered out, —
" At the mouth of the Meuse "
" I am quite well, father; but look here! I feel that I am
going to diel "
" Do nothing so foolish," said Ursus. And he added,
" Above all, God forbid she should have a shock 1 "
There was a silence. Suddenly Ursus cried out, —
" What are you doing? Why are you getting up? Lie
down again, I implore of you."
Gwynplaine shivered, and stretched out his head.
CHAPTER III.
PARADISE REGAINED BELOW.
HE saw Dea. She had just raised herself up on the mattress.
She had on a long white dress, carefully closed, and showing
only the delicate form of her neck. The sleeves covered her
arms; the folds, her feet. The branch-like tracery of blue
veins, hot and swollen with fever, were visible on her hands.
She was shivering and rocking, rather than reeling, to and
fro. like a reed. The lantern threw up its glancing light on
THE LAUGHING HAN. 563
her beautiful face. Her loosened hair floated over her
shoulders. No tears fell on her cheeks. In her eyes there
was fire, and darkness. She was pale, with that paleness
which is like the transparency of a divine life in an earthly
face. Her fragile and exquisite form was, as it were, blended
and interfused with the folds of her robe. She wavered like
the nicker of a flame, while, at the same time, she was dwind-
ling into shadow. Her eyes, opened wide, were resplendent.
She was as one just freed from the sepulchre; a soul standing
in the dawn.
Ursus, whose back only was visible to Gwynplaine, raised
his arms in terror. " O my child 1 O heavens 1 she is
delirious. Delirium is what I feared worst of all. She must
have no shock, for that might kill her; yet nothing but a
shock can prevent her going mad. Dead or madl what a
situation. O God! what can I do? My child, lie down
again."
Meanwhile, Dea spoke. Her voice was almost indistinct,
as if a cloud already interposed between her and earth.
" Father, you are wrong. I am not in the least delirious.
I hear all you say to me, distinctly. You tell me that there
is a great crowd of people, that they are waiting, and that I
must play to-night. I am quite willing. You see that I
have my reason ; but I do not know what to do, since I am
dead, and Gwynplaine is dead. I am coming all the same.
I am ready to play. Here I am; but Gwynplaine is no
longer here."
" Come, my child," said Ursus, " do as I bid you. Lie
down again."
"He is no longer here, no longer here. Oh! how dark
it is!"
" Dark ! " muttered Ursus. " This is the first time she has
ever uttered that word! "
Gwynplaine, with as little noise as he could help making as
he crept, mounted the step of the caravan, entered it, took
from the nail the cape and the esclavine, put the esclavine
round his neck, and redescended from the van, still concealed
by the projection of the cabin, the rigging, and the mast.
Dea continued murmuring. She moved her lips, and by
degrees the murmur became a melody. In broken pauses,
and with the interrupted cadences of delirium, her voice
broke into the mysterious appeal she had so often addres
564 THE LAUGHING MAN.
to Gwynplaine In Chaos Vanquished. She sang, and her
voice was low and uncertain as the murmur of the bee, —
" Noche, quita te de allf,
El alba canta ...."*
She stopped. " No, it is not true. I am not dead. What
was I saying ? Alas I I am alive. I am alive. He is dead.
I am below. He is above. He is gone. I remain. I shall
hear his voice no more, nor his footstep. God, who had
given us a little Paradise on earth, has taken it away. Gwyn-
plaine, it is over. I shall never feel you near me again.
Never 1 And his voice! I shall never hear his voice again.
And she sang : —
" Es menester a cielos ir —
Deja, quiero,
A tu negro
Caparazon."
"We must go to heaven.
Take off, I entreat thee,
Thy black cloak."
She stretched out her hand, as if she sought something in
space on which she might rest.
Gwynplaine, rising by the side of Ursus, who had suddenly
become as though petrified, knelt down before her.
" Never," said Dea, " never shall I hear him again."
She began, wandering, to sing again: —
" Deja, quiero,
A tu negro
Caparazon."
Then she heard a voice — even the beloved voice — answer-
ing:—
"O ven ! ama !
Eres alma,
Soy corazon."
" O come and love
Thou art the soul,
I am the heart."
* " Depart, O night 1 sings the dawn."
THE LAUGHING MAN. 565
And at the same instant Dea felt under her hand the head
of Gwynplaine. She uttered an indescribable cry.
" Gwynplaine! "
A light, as of a star, shone over her pale face, and she
tottered. Gwynplaine received her in his arms.
" Alive 1 " cried Ursus.
Dea repeated " Gwynplaine; " and with her head bowed
against Gwynplaine's cheek, she whispered faintly, —
" You have come down to me again. I thank you, Gwyn-
plaine."
And seated on his knee, she lifted up her head. Wrapt in
his embrace, she turned her sweet face towards him, and
fixed on him those eyes so full of light and shadow, as though
she could see him.
" It is you," she said.
Gwynplaine covered her sobs with kisses. There are words
which are at once words, cries, and sobs, in which all ecstasy
and all grief are mingled and burst forth together. They
have no meaning, and yet tell all.
" Yes, it is! It is I, Gwynplaine, of whom you are the
soul. Do you hear me ? I, of whom you are the child, the
wife, the star, the breath of life; I, to whom you are eternity.
It is I. I am here. I hold you in my arms. I am alive.
I am yours. Oh, when I think that in a moment all would
have been over — one minute more, but for Homo 1 I will tell
you everything. How near is despair to joy 1 Dea, we live 1
Dea, forgive me. Yes — yours for ever. You are right.
Touch my forehead. Make sure that it Is I. If you only
knew — but nothing can separate us now. I rise out of hell,
and ascend into heaven. Am I not with you? You said
that I descended. Not so; I reascend. Once more with
you! For everl I tell you for ever! Together! We are
together! Who would have believed it? We have found
each other again. All our troubles are past. Before us now
there is nothing but enchantment. We will renew our happy
life, and we will shut the door so fast that misfortune shall
never enter again. I will tell you alL You will be as-
tonished. The vessel has sailed. No one can prevent that
now. We are on our voyage, and at liberty, We are going
to Holland. We will marry. I have no fear about gaining
a livelihood. What can hinder it ? There is nothing to fear.
I adore you! "
566 THE LAUGHING MAN.
" Not so quick 1 " stammered Ursus.
Dea, trembling, and with the rapture of an angelic touch,
passed her hand over Gwynplaine's profile. He overheard
her say to herself, " It is thus that gods are made."
Then she touched his clothes.
" The esclavine," she said, " the cape. Nothing changed;
all as it was before."
Ursus, stupefied, delighted, smiling, drowned in tears,
looked at them, and addressed an aside to himself.
" I don't understand it in the least. I am a stupid idiot —
I, who saw him carried to the gravel I cry and I laugh.
That is all I know. I am as great a fool as if I were in love
myself. But that is just what I am. I am in love with
them both. Old fooll Too much emotion — too much
emotion. It is what I was afraid of. No ; it is that I wished
for. Gwynplaine, be careful of her. Yes, let them kiss; it
is no affair of mine. I am but a spectator. What I feel is
droll. I am the parasite of their happiness, and I am
nourished by it."
Whilst Ursus was talking to himself, Gwynplaine ex-
claimed,—
" Dea, you are too beautiful I I don't know where my
wits were gone these last few days. Truly, there is but you
on earth. I see you again, but as yet I can hardly believe it.
In this ship I But tell me, how did it all happen ? To what
a state have they reduced you! But where is the Green Box ?
They have robbed you. They have driven you away. It is
infamous. Oh, I will avenge you — I will avenge you, Dea!
They shall answer for it. I am a peer of England."
Ursus, as if -stricken by a planet full in his breast, drew
back, and looked at Gwynplaine attentively.
"It is clear that he is not dead; but can he have gone
mad? " and he listened to him doubtfully.
Gwynplaine resumed.
" Be easy, Dea; I will carry my complaint to the House of
Lords."
Ursus looked at him again, and struck his forehead with
the tip of his forefinger. Then making up his mind, —
" It is all one to me," he said. " It will be all right, all the
same. Be as mad as you like, my Gwynplaine. It is one of
the rights of man. As for me, I am happy. But how came
all this about?"
THE LAUGHING MAN. 567
The vessel continued to sail smoothly and fast. The night
grew darker and darker. The mists, which came inland from
the ocean, were invading the zenith, from which no wind
blew them away. Only a few large stars were visible, and
they disappeared one after another, so that soon there were
none at all, and the whole sky was dark, infinite, and soft.
The river broadened until the banks on each side were nothing
but two thin brown lines mingling with the gloom. Out of
all this shadow rose a profound peace. Gwynplaine, half
seated, held Dea in his embrace. They spoke, they cried,
they babbled, they murmured in a mad dialogue of joy I
How are we to paint thee, O joy I
1 My life 1"
'My heaven 1 "
'My love 1"
' My whole happiness I "
' Gwynplaine 1 "
' Dea, I am drunk. Let me kiss your feet."
' Is it you, then, for certain? "
' I have so much to say to you now that I do not know
where to begin."
'One kiss I"
'O my wife I"
' Gwynplaine, do not tell me that I am beautiful. It is
you who are handsome."
" I have found you again. I hold you to my heart. This
is true. You are mine. I do not dream. Is it possible?
Yes, it is. I recover possession of life. If you^only knew I
I have met with all sorts of adventures. Deal "
" Gwynplaine, I love youl "
And Ursus murmured, —
" Mine is the joy of a grandfather."
Homo, having come from under the van, was going from
one to the other discreetly, exacting no attention, licking
them left and right— now Ursus's thick shoes, now Gwyn-
plaine's cape, now Dea's dress, now the mattress,
his way of giving his blessing.
They had passed Chatham and the mouth of the Medway.
They were approaching the sea. The shadowy serenity of
the atmosphere was such that the passage down the Thames
ws bcin" made without trouble: no manoeuvre was needful,
nor was any sailor called on deck. At the other end of the
568 THE LAUGHING MAN.
vessel the skipper, still alone, was steering. There was only
this man aft. At the bow the lantern lighted up the happy
group of beings who, from the depths of misery, had suddenly
been raised to happiness by a meeting so unhoped for.
CHAPTER IV.
NAY; ON HIGHl
SUDDENLY Dea, disengaging herself from Gwynplaine's
embrace, arose. She pressed both her hands against her
heart, as if to still its throbbings.
" What is wrong with me? " said she. " There is some-
thing the matter. Joy is suffocating. No, it is nothing I
That is lucky- Your reappearance, O my Gwynplaine, has
given me a blow — a blow of happiness. All this heaven of
joy which you have put into my heart has intoxicated me.
You being absent, I felt myself dying. The true life which
was leaving me you have brought back. I felt as if some-
thing was being torn away within me. It is the shadows
that have been torn away, and I feel life dawn in my brain —
a glowing life, a life of fever and delight. This life which you
have just given me is wonderful. It is so heavenly that it
makes me suffer somewhat. It seems as though my soul is
enlarged, and can scarcely be contained in my body. This
life of seraphim, this plenitude, flows into my brain and
penetrates it. I feel like a beating of wings within my
breast. I feel strangely, but happy. Gwynplaine, you have
been my resurrection."
She flushed, became pale, then flushed again, and fell.
" Alas I " said Ursus, " you have killed her."
Gwynplaine stretched his arms towards Dea. Extremity
of anguish coming upon extremity of ecstasy, what a shock 1
He would himself have fallen, had he not had to support her.
" Deal " he cried, shuddering, " what is the matter? "
" Nothing," said she—" I love you I "
She lay in his arms, lifeless, like a piece of linen; her hands
were hanging down helplessly.
Gwynplaine and Ursus placed Dea on the mattress. She
said, feebly, —
" I cannot breathe lying down."
They lifted her up.
THE LAUGHING MAN. 5<59
Ursus said, —
" Fetch a pillow."
She replied, —
" What for ? I have Gwynplaine ! "
She laid her head on Gwynplaine's shoulder, who was
sitting behind, and supporting her, his eyes wild with grief.
" Oh," said she, " how happy I am! "
Ursus took her wrist, and counted the pulsation of the
artery. He did not shake his head. He said nothing, nor
expressed his thought except by the rapid movement of his
eyelids, which were opening and closing convulsively, as if to
prevent a flood of tears from bursting out.
" What is the matter? " asked Gwynplaine.
Ursus placed his ear against Dea's left side.
Gwynplaine repeated his question eagerly, fearful of the
answer.
Ursus looked at Gwynplaine, then at Dea. He was livid.
He said, —
" We ought to be parallel with Canterbury. The distance
from here to Gravesend cannot be very great. We shall have
fine weather all night. We need fear no attack at sea, be-
cause the fleets are all on the coast of Spain. We shall have
a good passage."
Dea, bent, and growing paler and paler, clutched her robe
convulsively. She heaved a sigh of inexpressible sadness,
and murmured, —
" I know what this is. I am dying! "
Gwynplaine rose in terror. Ursus held Dea.
"Die! You die! No; it shall not be ! You cannot die I
Die now! Die at once! It is impossible! God is not
ferociously cruel — to give you and to take you back in the
same moment. No; such a thing cannot be. It would
make one doubt in Him. Then, indeed, would everything be
a snare — the earth, the sky, the cradles of infants, the human
heart, love, the stars. God would be a traitor and man a
dupe. There would be nothing in which to believe. It
would be an insult to the creation. Everything would be an
abyss. You know not what you say, Dea. You shall live!
I command you to live! You must obey me! I am your
husband and your master; I forbid you to leave me! O
heavens ! O wretched Man ! No, it cannot be — I to
remain in the world after you ! Why, it is as monstrous as
570 THE LAUGHING MAN,
that there should be no sun! Deal Deal recover! It is
but a moment of passing pain. One feels a shudder at times,
and thinks no more about it. It is absolutely necessary that
you should get well and cease to suffer. You die! What
have I done to you ? The very thought of it drives me mad.
We belong to each other, and we love each other. You have
no reason for going 1 It would be unjust 1 Have I committed
crimes? Besides, you have forgiven me. Oh, you would
not make me desperate — have me become a villain, a mad-
man, drive me to perdition? Dea, I entreat you! I conjure
youl I supplicate you! Do not die! "
And clenching his hands in his hair, agonized with fear,
stifled with tears, he threw himself at her feet.
" My Gwynplaine," said Dea, " it is no fault of mine."
There then rose to her lips a red froth, which Ursus wiped
away with the fold of her robe, before Gwynplaine, who was
prostrate at her feet, could see it.
Gwynplaine took her feet in his hands, and implored her in
all kinds of confused words.
"I tell you, I will not have it! You die? I have no
strength left to bear it. Die ? Yes ; but both of us together
— not otherwise. You die, my Dea? I will never consent
to it! My divinity, my love! Do you understand that I
am with you? I swear that you shall live! Oh, but you
cannot have thought what would become of me after you
were gone. If you had an idea of the necessity which you
are to me, you would see that it is absolutely impossible!
Pea! you see I have but youl The most extraordinary
things have happened to me. You will hardly believe that I
have just explored the whole of life in a few hours! I have
found out one thing — that there is nothing in it ! You exist I
if you did not, the universe would have no meaning. Stay
with me! Have pity on me! Since you love me, live on!
If I have just found you again, it is to keep you. Wait a
little longer; you cannot leave me like this, now that we
have been together but a few minutes I Do not be impatient I
0 Heaven, how I suffer ! You are not angry with me, are
you? You know that I could not help going when the
wapentake came for me. You will breathe more easily
presently, you will see. Dea, all has been put right. We
are going to be happy. Do not drive me to despair, Deal
1 have done nothing to you."
THE LAUGHING MAN. 571
These words were not spoken, but sobbed out. They rose
from his breast — now in a lament which might have attracted
the dove, now in a roar which might have made lions recoil.
Dea answered him in a voice growing weaker and weaker,
and pausing at nearly every word.
" Alasi it is of no use, my beloved. I see that you are
doing all you can. An hour ago I wanted to die ; now I do
not. Gwynplaine — my adored Gwynplaine — how happy we
have been 1 God placed you in my life, and He takes me out
of yours. You see, I am going. You will remember the
Green Box, won't you, and poor blind little Dea? You will
remember my song ? Do not forget the sound of my voice,
and the way in which I said, ' I love you I ' I will come back
and tell it to you again, in the night while you are asleep. Yes,
we found each other again ; but it was too much joy. It was
to end at once. It is decreed that I am to go first. I love
my father, Ursus, and my brother, Homo, very dearly. You
are all so good. There is no air here. Open the window.
My Gwynplaine, I did not tell you, but I was jealous of a
woman who came one day. You do not even know of whom
I speak. Is it not so? Cover my arms; I am rather cold.
And Fibi and Vinos, where are they? One comes to love
everybody. One feels a friendship for all those who have
been mixed up in one's happiness. We have a kindly feeling
towards them for having been present in our joys. Why
has it all passed away ? I have not clearly understood what
has happened during the last two days. Now I am dying.
Leave me in my dress. When I put it on I foresaw that it
would be my shroud. I wish to keep it on. Gwynplaine's
kisses are upon it. Oh, what would I not have given to have
lived on I What a happy life we led in our poor caravan!
How we sang I How I listened to the applause! What joy
it was never to be separated from each other ! It seemed to
me that I was living in a cloud with you; I knew one day
from another, although I was blind. I knew that it was
morning, because I heard Gwynplaine; I felt that it was
night, because I dreamed of Gwynplaine. I felt that I was
wrapped up in something which was his soul. We adored
each other so sweetly. It is all fading away; and there will
be no more songs. Alas that I cannot live on! You will
think of me, my beloved! "
Her voice was growing fainter. The ominous waning,
572 THE LAUGHING MAN.
which was death, was stealing away her breath. She folded
her thumbs within her fingers — a sign that her last moments
were approaching. It seemed as though the first uncertain
words of an angel just created were blended with the last
failing accents of the dying girl.
She murmured, —
" You will think of me, won't you? It would be very sad
to be dead, and to be remembered by no one. I have been
wayward at times ; I beg pardon of you all. I am sure that,
if God had so willed it, we might yet have been happy, my
Gwynplaine; for we take up but very little room, and we
might have earned our bread together in another land. But
God has willed it otherwise. I cannot make out in the least
why I am dying. I never complained of being blind, so that
I cannot have offended any one. I should never have asked
for anything, but always to be blind as I was, by your side.
Oh, how sad it is to have to part! "
Her words were more and more inarticulate, evaporating
into each other, as if they were being blown away. She
had become almost inaudible.
" Gwynplaine," she resumed, " you will think of me,
won't you? I shall crave it when I am dead."
And she added, —
" Oh, keep me with you I "
Then, after a pause, she said, —
" Come to me as soon as you can. I shall be very unhappy
without you, even in heaven. Do not leave me long alone,
my sweet Gwynplaine! My paradise was here; above
there is only heaven 1 Oh I I cannot breathe ! My beloved 1
My beloved! My beloved! "
" Mercy I " cried Gwynplaine.
" Farewell 1 " murmured Dea.
And he pressed his mouth to her beautiful icy hands. For
a moment it seemed as if she had ceased to breathe. Then
she raised herself on her elbows, and an intense splendour
flashed across her eyes, and through an ineffable smile her
voice rang out clearly.
" Light I " she cried. " I see ! "
And she expired. She fell back rigid and motionless on
the mattress.
"Dead!" said Ursus.
And the poor old man, as if crushed by his despair, bowed
THE LAUGHING MAN. 573
his bald head and buried his swollen face in the folds of the
gown which covered Dea's feet. He lay there in a swoon.
Then Gwynplaine became awful. He arose, lifted his eyes,
and gazed into the vast gloom above him. Seen by none on
earth, but looked down upon, perhaps, as he stood in the
darkness, by some invisible presence, he stretched his hands
on high, and said,—
" I come! "
And he strode across the deck, towards the side of the
vessel, as if beckoned by a vision.
A few paces off was the abyss. He walked slowly, never
casting down his eyes. A smile came upon his face, such as
Dea's had just worn. He advanced straight before him, as if
watching something. In his eyes was a light like the reflec-
tion of a soul perceived from afar off. He cried out, " Yes I "
At every step he was approaching nearer to the side of the
vessel. His gait was rigid, his arms were lifted up, his head
was thrown back, his eyeballs were fixed. His movement
was ghost-like. He advanced without haste and without
hesitation, with fatal precision, as though there were before
him no yawning gulf and open grave. He murmured,
" Be easy. I follow you. I understand the sign that you
are making me." His eyes were fixed upon a certain spot
in the sky, where the shadow was deepest. The smile was
still upon his face. The sky was perfectly black; there was
no star visible in it, and yet he evidently saw one. He
crossed the deck. A few stiff and ominous steps, and he had
reached the very edge.
" I come," said he; " Dea, behold, I come! "
One step more; there was no bulwark; the void was before
him; he strode into it. He fell. The night was thick and
dull, the water deep. It swallowed him up. He disappeared
calmly and silently. None saw nor heard him. The ship
sailed on, and the river flowed.
Shortly afterwards the ship reached the sea.
When Ursus returned to consciousness, he found that Gwyn-
plaine was no longer with him, and he saw Homo by the edge
of the deck baying in the shadow and looking down upon the
water.
THE END.
ESTABLISHED 1798
T. NELSON
AND SONS
PRINTERS AND
PUBLISHERS
Hugo, Victor Marie, corate
2285 The laus:hin£ n:tn
H8E5
1903
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