The Man Who Laughs

by Victor Hugo

  What was it all about; and what could it all mean? What peril in such a triumph! And how was he to help plunging into it headlong?

  What! that woman! The syren, the apparition, the lady in the visionary box, the light in the darkness! It was she. Yes; it was she!

  The crackling of the fire burst out in every part of his frame. It was the strange, unknown lady, she who had previously so troubled his thoughts; and his first tumultuous feelings about this woman returned, heated by the evil fire. Forgetfulness 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 engraving 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! What! the princess descend from her throne, the idol from its shrine, the statue from its pedestal, the phantom from its cloud! What! from the depth of the impossible had this chimera come! This deity of the sky! This irradiation! This nereid all glistening with jewels! This proud and unattainable beauty, from the height of her radiant throne, was bending down to Gwynplaine! What! had she drawn up her chariot of the dawn, with its yoke of turtle-doves and dragons, before Gwynplaine, and said to him, "Come!" What, this terrible glory of being the object of such abasement from the empyrean, for Gwynplaine! 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! Wonder of wonders! A goddess prostituting herself for him! The arms of a courtesan opening in a cloud to clasp him to the bosom of a goddess, and that without degradation! Such majestic creatures can not be sullied. The gods bathe themselves pure in light; and this goddess who came to him knew what she was doing. She was not ignorant of the incarnate hideousness of 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. Gwynplaine 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! She could choose from the midst of meteors and thunders, the mighty six-winged seraph, 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 carried it! What kind of scales could there be in the heart of this woman? By what measure did she weigh her love? She took of her ducal coronet, and flung it on the platform of a clown! She took from her brow the Olympian aureole, and placed it on the bristly head of a gnome! The world had turned topsy-turvy. The insects swarmed on high, the stars were scattered below, while the wonder-stricken Gwynplaine, overwhelmed by a falling ruin of light and lying in the dust, was enshrined in a glory.

  One all-powerful, revolting against beauty and splendour, gave herself to the damned of night; preferred Gwynplaine to Antinoüs; excited by curiosity, she entered the shadows, and, descending within them, from this abdication of goddess-ship was rising, crowned and prodigious, the royalty of the wretched. "You are hideous. 1 love you." These words touched Gwynplaine in the ugly spot of pride. Pride is the heel in which all heroes are vulnerable. Gwynplaine was flattered in his vanity as a monster. He was loved for his deformity. He, too, was the Exception, as much, and perhaps more than the Jupiters and the Apollos. He felt superhuman, and so much a monster as to be a god. Fearful bewilderment!

  Now, who was this woman? What did he know about her? Everything and nothing. She was a duchess, that he knew; he knew, also, that she was beautiful and rich; that she had liveries, lackeys, 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!

  Never had perfidious chance taken its measures better, nor timed more fitly the moment of temptation. Gwynplaine, stirred by spring, and by the sap arising 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! Love is the thief, Spring the receiver.

  Gwynplaine was shaken.

  There is a kind of smoke of evil, preceding sin, in which the conscience can not breathe. The obscure nausea of hell comes over virtue in temptation. The yawning abyss discharges 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 overstrung brandies; you can not 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 toward the unknown.

  And he trembled. He could catch a glimpse of a crumbling precipice, and he drew back, stricken by the terror encircling him. He closed his eyes. He tried hard to deny to himself that the adventure had ever occurred, and to persuade himself into doubting his reason. This was evidently his best plan; the wisest thing he could do was to believe himself mad.

  Fatal fever! Every man, surprised by the unexpected, has at times felt the throb of such tragic pulsations. The observer ever listens with anxiety to the echoes resounding from the dull strokes of the battering-ram of destiny striking against a conscience.

  Alas! Gwynplaine put himself questions. Where duty is clear, to put one's self questions is to suffer defeat.

  One detail, however, is noteworthy, the effrontery of the adventure, which might, perhaps, have shocked a depraved man, never struck him. He was utterly unconscious of what cynicism is co
mposed. He had no idea of prostitution as referred to above. He had not the power to conceive it. He was too pure to admit complicated hypotheses. He saw but the grandeur of the woman. Alas! he felt flattered. His vanity assured him of victory only. To dream that he was the object of unchaste desire, rather than of love, would have required much greater wit than innocence possesses. Close to I love you, he could not perceive the frightful corrective, I desire you.

  He could not grasp the animal side of the goddess's nature.

  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 toward 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 fancying that bed and sleep were one, he laid his head upon the pillow without undressing, making darkness the concession of closing his eyes. But the storm of emotions which assailed him had not waned for an instant. 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, 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; the 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. Gwynplaine 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, charming 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 his 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 indescribable effect of a star shining on the sea.

  * * *

  II

  FROM GAY TO GRAVE

  HOW SIMPLE is a miracle! 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!" exclaimed Gwynplaine; and he had said everything. There was no other horizon, no vision for him now but the heaven 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 has 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!

  A few minutes afterward 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 compartment. From the position in which the narrow table was placed, Dea's back was turned toward the aperture in the partition, 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 burned 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 evapourated 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! With two loving hearts, go no further for poetry: with two kisses for dialogue, go no further for music.

  "Do you know something?"

  "No.?"

  "Gwynplaine, I dreamed 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!"

  "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!"

  Exquisite to lovers are their moments of silence! In them they gather, as it were, masses of love, which afterward explode into sweet fragments.

  Then came a pause, and Dea cried:

  "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 my self: In all this world of darkness which encompasses me, in this universe of solitude, in this great obscurity of ruin in which I am, in this quaking fear of myself and of everything, I have one prop; and he is there. It is he. It is you.

  "Oh, you love me," said Gwynplaine. "I, t
oo, 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! Then take care you aren't seen. Take up as little room as you can. Happiness ought to stuff itself into a hole. Make yourselves still less than you are, if that can be. God measures the greatness of happiness by the littleness of the happy. The happy should conceal themselves like malefactors. Oh, only shine out like the wretched glowworms that you are, and you'll be trodden on; and quite right, too! What do you mean by all that love-making nonsense? I'm no 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 tenderness, he drowned his emotion in a loud grumble.

  "Father," said Dea, "how roughly you scold."

  "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, Homo! Come, don't dwell on it, you philosopher!"

  But the wolf sat up, and looked toward 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 ecstasy peculiar to the blind, which seems at times to give them a song to listen to in their souls, and to make up to them for the light which they lack, by some strain of ideal music. Blindness is a cavern, to which reaches the deep harmony of the Eternal.