The Man Who Laughs

by Victor Hugo

  How could they stand such nonsense? The laughter burst out afresh; and now it was overwhelming. Of all the lava which that crater, the human mouth, ejects, the most corrosive is joy. To inflict evil gayly is a contagion which no crowd can resist. All executions do not take place on the scaffold; and men, from the moment they are in a body, whether in mobs or in senates, have always a ready executioner among 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 conceal his inclination to laugh; and, at the bar, 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 gayety, 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 pulverised, never. And the insult of their sovereign mockery had reduced him to dust. From thenceforth nothing was possible. Everything is in accordance with the scene. That which was triumph in the Green Box was disgrace and catastrophe in the House of Lords. What was applause there was insult here. He felt something like the reverse side of his mask. On one side of that mask he had the sympathy of the people, who welcomed Gwynplaine; on the other, the contempt of the great, rejecting Lord Fermain Clancharlie. On one side, attraction; on the other, repulsion; both leading him to ward the shadows. He felt himself, 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! In the midst of that tempest of gayety commingled 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.

  The House was obliged to rise, adjourned by the Lord Chancellor, "owing to extraordinary circumstances," to the next day. The peers broke up. They bowed to the royal throne and departed. Echoes of prolonged laughter were heard losing themselves in the corridors.

  Assemblies, besides their official doors, have--under tapestry, under projections, and under arches--all sorts of hidden doors, by which the members escape like water through the cracks in a vase.

  In a short time the chamber was deserted. This takes place quickly and almost imperceptibly, and those places, so lately full of voices, are suddenly given back to silence.

  Reverie carries one far, and one comes by long dreaming to reach, as it were, another planet.

  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 departed, even his sponsors. There only remained here and there some of the lower officers of the House, waiting for his lordship to depart before they put the covers on, and extinguished the lights.

  Mechanically he 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!

  * * *

  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 armchair 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 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 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 quarreling. On one side there were ten or twelve young lords, who wanted to go out; on the other, a man, with his hat on, like themselves, upright and with a haughty brow, who barred their passage.

  Who was that 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 withdraw my words. Be it so. You are not cowards; you are idiots. You all combined against one man. That was not cowardice. All right. Then it was stupidity. He spoke to you, and you did not understand him. 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 newcomer is strange, and he has uttered a heap of nonsense, I admit; but amid all that nonsense there were some things which are true. His speech was confused, undigested, ill-delivered. Be it so. He repeated, 'You know, you know,' too often; but a man who was but yesterday a clown at a fair can not 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. Rounds! 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 the many set upon one. Such is my humou
r; 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 Gwynplaine 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 can not 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 at 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. Your jeering airs annoyed me. When I am angry I would go up to Mount Pendlehill, and pick the cloud-berry 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 not strike you that you failed a little in respect toward 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, Cary 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; Marmaduke 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! 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 kill 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 blessed or cursed, and I will not have you searched to see if you are wearing any wizard's tokens. On foot or on horseback, on the high-road if you wish it, in Piccadilly, or at Charing Cross; and they shall take up the pavement for our meeting, as they unpaved the court of the Louvre for the duel between Guise and Bassompierre. All of you t Do you hear? I mean to fight you all. Dorme, Earl of Carnarvon, 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 you 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 toward him whom he had hitherto called Tom-Jim-Jack, but in whom now, however, he began to perceive something more.

  "I thank you," said he, "but this is my business.

  Every head turned toward him.

  Gwynplaine advanced. He felt himself impelled toward the man whom he heard called Lord David; his defender, and perhaps something nearer. Lord David drew back.

  "Oh!" said he. "It is you, is it? This is well-timed. I have a word for you as well. Just now you spoke of a woman who, after having loved Lord Linnæus 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 Gwynplaine.

  "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 9

  IN RUINS

  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 Southern ark. 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. 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 p
eople; to find Ursus and Homo, to see Dea again, to re-enter life.

  Disillusion, like a bow, shoots its arrow, man, toward 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!

  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 remembered, in the field where the fair was held.

  He looked. There was no light; nothing but a black mass.

  He shuddered. Then he said to himself that it was late, that the tavern was shut up, that it was very natural, that every one was asleep, that he had only to awaken Nicless or Govicum, that he must go up to the inn and knock 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 vet unimpaired, proves a heart true. When all else is swallowed up, tenderness still floats unshuttered. Not to awaken Dea too suddenly was Gwynplaine's first thought.