CHAPTER II.
DEA.
That boy was at this time a man. Fifteen years had elapsed. It was in1705. Gwynplaine was in his twenty-fifth year.
Ursus had kept the two children with him. They were a group ofwanderers. Ursus and Homo had aged. Ursus had become quite bald. Thewolf was growing gray. The age of wolves is not ascertained like that ofdogs. According to Moliere, there are wolves which live to eighty,amongst others the little koupara, and the rank wolf, the _Canisnubilus_ of Say.
The little girl found on the dead woman was now a tall creature ofsixteen, with brown hair, slight, fragile, almost trembling fromdelicacy, and almost inspiring fear lest she should break; admirablybeautiful, her eyes full of light, yet blind. That fatal winter nightwhich threw down the beggar woman and her infant in the snow had strucka double blow. It had killed the mother and blinded the child. Guttaserena had for ever paralysed the eyes of the girl, now become woman inher turn. On her face, through which the light of day never passed, thedepressed corners of the mouth indicated the bitterness of theprivation. Her eyes, large and clear, had a strange quality:extinguished for ever to her, to others they were brilliant. They weremysterious torches lighting only the outside. They gave light butpossessed it not. These sightless eyes were resplendent. A captive ofshadow, she lighted up the dull place she inhabited. From the depth ofher incurable darkness, from behind the black wall called blindness, sheflung her rays. She saw not the sun without, but her soul wasperceptible 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 shecame out a star.
Ursus, with his mania for Latin names, had christened her Dea. He hadtaken his wolf into consultation. He had said to him, "You representman, I represent the beasts. We are of the lower world; this little oneshall represent the world on high. Such feebleness is all-powerful. Inthis manner the universe shall be complete in our hut in its threeorders--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 inventing a name forhim. The morning of the day on which he had realized the disfigurementof the little boy and the blindness of the infant he had asked him,"Boy, what is your name?" and the boy had answered, "They call meGwynplaine." "Be Gwynplaine, then," said Ursus.
Dea assisted Gwynplaine in his performances. If human misery could besummed up, it might have been summed up in Gwynplaine and Dea. Eachseemed born in a compartment of the sepulchre; Gwynplaine in thehorrible, Dea in the darkness. Their existences were shadowed by twodifferent kinds of darkness, taken from the two formidable sides ofnight. Dea had that shadow in her, Gwynplaine had it on him. There was aphantom 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; hecould compare himself with other men. Now, in a situation such as thatof Gwynplaine, admitting that he should seek to examine it, to comparehimself with others was to understand himself no more. To have, likeDea, 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 iswanting here as well, and that something, oneself; to see the universeand not to see oneself. Dea had a veil over her, the night; Gwynplaine amask, his face. Inexpressible fact, it was by his own flesh thatGwynplaine was masked! What his visage had been, he knew not. His facehad vanished. They had affixed to him a false self. He had for a face, adisappearance. His head lived, his face was dead. He never remembered tohave 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 wasfunereal, she saw nothing; that of Gwynplaine sinister, he saw allthings. For Dea creation never passed the bounds of touch and hearing;reality was bounded, limited, short, immediately lost. Nothing wasinfinite to her but darkness. For Gwynplaine to live was to have thecrowd for ever before him and outside him. Dea was the proscribed fromlight, 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 hisreverie melt into immeasurable pity. What must they not have suffered!The decree of misfortune weighed visibly on these human creatures, andnever had fate encompassed two beings who had done nothing to deserveit, 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.