The Man Who Laughs

by Victor Hugo

  They were in a Paradise.

  They were in love.

  Gwynplaine adored Dea. Dea idolised Gwynplaine.

  "How beautiful you are!" she would say to him.

  * * *

  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, sucking 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 desertion 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 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 encompassed 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 surrounding 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 contemplated 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 recognised the archangel.

  It was the Dea, blind, perceived his soul.

  * * *

  IV

  WELL-MATCHED LOVERS

  URSUS, being a philosopher, understood. He approved of the fascination of Dea.

  He said:

  "The blind see the invisible."

  He 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

  Gwynplaine, we have said, compared himself and compared 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. It was a human face shipwrecked into the mask of an animal. Never had been seen so total an eclipse 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 amalgamated in a man. The unfortunate heart, masked and calumniated by the face, seemed forever 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 toward 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 redemption. 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 Dr. Conquest, de Denasatis, and in another folio, Hugo Flagon [1], the passage Nares habens mutilas; but Ursus had prudently abstained from "hypotheses," and had been reserved in his opinion of what it might mean. Suppositions were possible. The probability of violence inflicted on Gwynplaine when an infant was hinted at, but for Gwynplaine 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 uncertain in the conjectures which could be fitted to the tragical reality; excepting the terrible fact, nothing was certain. In his discouragement Dea intervened a sor
t of celestial interposition 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 beautiful 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 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 succeeded in driving him into enchantment. They had affianced him beforehand to a healing wound. They had predestined him for consolation by an affliction. The pincers of the executioner had softly changed into the delicately molded hand of a girl. Gwynplaine was horrible; artificially horrible--made horrible by the hand of man. They had hoped to exile him forever: 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 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] Versio Gallico Will Tyrii, Book II, chapter xiii.

  * * *

  V

  THE BLUE SKY THROUGH THE BLACK CLOUD

  THUS LIVED these unfortunate creatures together, Dea, relying; 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 destination. Your prayer knows its way better than you can.

  How many men have believed that they prayed to Jupiter when they prayed to Jehovah! How many believers in amulets are listened to by the Almighty! How many atheists there are who know not that, in the simple fact of being good and sad, they pray to God!

  Gwynplaine and Dea were grateful.

  Deformity is expulsion. Blindness is a precipice. The expelled one had been adopted; the precipice was habitable.

  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 toward 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 probably have rejected the deformed, as he would have passed by the infirm. What happiness for Dea that Gwynplaine was hideous! 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 Gwynplaine. 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, joined them together in contentment. They sufficed to each other. They imagined nothing beyond each other. To speak to each other 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 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 forever 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!

  Dea heard Gwynplaine's laugh; Gwynplaine saw Dea's smile.

  Thus ideal felicity was found, the perfect joy of life was realised, the mysterious problem of happiness was solved; and by whom? By two outcasts.

  For Gwynplaine, Dea was splendour. For Dea, Gwynplaine 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 toward 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 unknown, does not fear them all. A, to Gwynplaine, his sensitive youth made him pensive. The more delirious he felt, the more timid he became. He might have dared anything 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 resolved itself into a proud purity.

  These happy 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.

  They had always lived a common life. They knew themselves 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, while 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 bedfellow; but Gwynplaine, 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 ar
rangement. 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 darkness took flight before the Chloe of shadow.

  Such was the idyll blooming in a tragedy.

  Ursus said to them:

  "Old brutes! adore each other!"

  * * *

  VI

  URSUS AS TUTOR AND URSUS AS GUARDIAN