CHAPTER IV.
WELL-MATCHED LOVERS.
Ursus being a philosopher understood. He approved of the fascination ofDea. He said, The blind see the invisible. He said, Conscience isvision. Then, looking at Gwynplaine, he murmured, Semi-monster, butdemi-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. Hesaw his contrast before him: in proportion as he was terrible, Dea wassweet. He was horror; she was grace. Dea was his dream. She seemed avision scarcely embodied. There was in her whole person, in her Grecianform, in her fine and supple figure, swaying like a reed; in hershoulders, on which might have been invisible wings; in the modestcurves which indicated her sex, to the soul rather than to the senses;in her fairness, which amounted almost to transparency; in the augustand reserved serenity of her look, divinely shut out from earth; in thesacred innocence of her smile--she was almost an angel, and yet just awoman.
Gwynplaine, we have said, compared himself and compared Dea.
His existence, such as it was, was the result of a double and unheard-ofchoice. It was the point of intersection of two rays--one from below andone from above--a black and a white ray. To the same crumb, perhapspecked at at once by the beaks of evil and good, one gave the bite, theother the kiss. Gwynplaine was this crumb--an atom, wounded andcaressed. Gwynplaine was the product of fatality combined withProvidence. Misfortune had placed its finger on him; happiness as well.Two extreme destinies composed his strange lot. He had on him ananathema and a benediction. He was the elect, cursed. Who was he? Heknew not. When he looked at himself, he saw one he knew not; but thisunknown was a monster. Gwynplaine lived as it were beheaded, with a facewhich did not belong to him. This face was frightful, so frightful thatit was absurd. It caused as much fear as laughter. It was ahell-concocted absurdity. It was the shipwreck of a human face into themask of an animal. Never had been seen so total an eclipse of humanityin a human face; never parody more complete; never had apparition morefrightful grinned in nightmare; never had everything repulsive to womanbeen more hideously amalgamated in a man. The unfortunate heart, maskedand calumniated by the face, seemed for ever condemned to solitude underit, as under a tombstone.
Yet no! Where unknown malice had done its worst, invisible goodness hadlent its aid. In the poor fallen one, suddenly raised up, by the side ofthe repulsive, it had placed the attractive; on the barren shoal it hadset the loadstone; it had caused a soul to fly with swift wings towardsthe deserted one; it had sent the dove to console the creature whom thethunderbolt had overwhelmed, and had made beauty adore deformity. Forthis to be possible it was necessary that beauty should not see thedisfigurement. For this good fortune, misfortune was required.Providence had made Dea blind.
Gwynplaine vaguely felt himself the object of a redemption. Why had hebeen persecuted? He knew not. Why redeemed? He knew not. All he knew wasthat a halo had encircled his brand. When Gwynplaine had been old enoughto understand, Ursus had read and explained to him the text of DoctorConquest _de Denasatis_, and in another folio, Hugo Plagon, the passage,_Naves habensmutilas_; but Ursus had prudently abstained from"hypotheses," and had been reserved in his opinion of what it mightmean. Suppositions were possible. The probability of violence inflictedon Gwynplaine when an infant was hinted at, but for Gwynplaine theresult 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 theconjectures which could be fitted to the tragical reality; excepting theterrible fact, nothing was certain. In his discouragement Dea interveneda sort of celestial interposition between him and despair. He perceived,melted and inspirited by the sweetness of the beautiful girl who turnedto him, that, horrible as he was, a beautified wonder affected hismonstrous visage. Having been fashioned to create dread, he was theobject of a miraculous exception, that it was admired and adored in theideal by the light; and, monster that he was, he felt himself thecontemplation of a star.
Gwynplaine and Dea were united, and these two suffering hearts adoredeach other. One nest and two birds--that was their story. They hadbegun to feel a universal law--to please, to seek, and to find eachother.
Thus hatred had made a mistake. The persecutors of Gwynplaine, whoeverthey might have been--the deadly enigma, from wherever it came--hadmissed their aim. They had intended to drive him to desperation; theyhad succeeded in driving him into enchantment. They had affianced himbeforehand to a healing wound. They had predestined him for consolationby an infliction. The pincers of the executioner had softlychanged into the delicately-moulded hand of a girl. Gwynplaine washorrible--artificially horrible--made horrible by the hand of man. Theyhad hoped to exile him for ever: first, from his family, if his familyexisted, and then from humanity. When an infant, they had made him aruin; of this ruin Nature had repossessed herself, as she does of allruins. This solitude Nature had consoled, as she consoles all solitudes.Nature comes to the succour of the deserted; where all is lacking, shegives 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!