L'homme qui rit. English

  CHAPTER 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, thefeeble and the deformed. The widowed were betrothed. An inexpressiblethanksgiving 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 prayerknows its way better than you can.

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

  Gwynplaine and Dea were grateful. Deformity is expulsion. Blindness is aprecipice. The expelled one had been adopted; the precipice washabitable.

  Gwynplaine had seen a brilliant light descending on him, in anarrangement of destiny which seemed to put, in the perspective of adream, a white cloud of beauty having the form of a woman, a radiantvision in which there was a heart; and the phantom, almost a cloud andyet a woman, clasped him; and the apparition embraced him; and the heartdesired him. Gwynplaine was no longer deformed. He was beloved. The rosedemanded the caterpillar in marriage, feeling that within thecaterpillar there was a divine butterfly. Gwynplaine the rejected waschosen. To have one's desire is everything. Gwynplaine had his, Deahers.

  The abjection of the disfigured man was exalted and dilated intointoxication, into delight, into belief; and a hand was stretched outtowards the melancholy hesitation of the blind girl, to guide her in herdarkness.

  It was the penetration of two misfortunes into the ideal which absorbedthem. The rejected found a refuge in each other. Two blanks, combining,filled each other up. They held together by what they lacked: in that inwhich one was poor, the other was rich. The misfortune of the one madethe treasure of the other. Had Dea not been blind, would she have chosenGwynplaine? Had Gwynplaine not been disfigured, would he have preferredDea? She would probably have rejected the deformed, as he would havepassed by the infirm. What happiness for Dea that Gwynplaine washideous! What good fortune for Gwynplaine that Dea was blind! Apart fromtheir providential matching, they were impossible to each other. Amighty want of each other was at the bottom of their loves, Gwynplainesaved Dea. Dea saved Gwynplaine. Apposition of misery producedadherence. It was the embrace of those swallowed in the abyss; nonecloser, none more hopeless, none more exquisite.

  Gwynplaine had a thought--"What should I be without her?" Dea had athought--"What should I be without him?" The exile of each made acountry for both. The two incurable fatalities, the stigmata ofGwynplaine and the blindness of Dea, joined them together incontentment. They sufficed to each other. They imagined nothing beyondeach other. To speak to one another was a delight, to approach wasbeatitude; by force of reciprocal intuition they became united in thesame reverie, and thought the same thoughts. In Gwynplaine's tread Deabelieved that she heard the step of one deified. They tightened theirmutual grasp in a sort of sidereal _chiaroscuro_, full of perfumes, ofgleams, of music, of the luminous architecture of dreams. They belongedto each other; they knew themselves to be for ever united in the samejoy and the same ecstasy; and nothing could be stranger than thisconstruction 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 sawDea's smile. Thus ideal felicity was found, the perfect joy of life wasrealized, 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 worlddivine, and from which results that other mystery--confidence. Inreligions this is the only thing which is irreducible; but thisirreducible thing suffices. The great motive power is not seen; it isfelt.

  Gwynplaine was the religion of Dea. Sometimes, lost in her sense of lovetowards him, she knelt, like a beautiful priestess before a gnome in apagoda, made happy by her adoration.

  Imagine to yourself an abyss, and in its centre an oasis of light, andin this oasis two creatures shut out of life, dazzling each other. Nopurity could be compared to their loves. Dea was ignorant what a kissmight be, though perhaps she desired it; because blindness, especiallyin a woman, has its dreams, and though trembling at the approaches ofthe unknown, does not fear them all. As to Gwynplaine, his sensitiveyouth made him pensive. The more delirious he felt, the more timid hebecame. He might have dared anything with this companion of his earlyyouth, with this creature as innocent of fault as of the light, withthis blind girl who saw but one thing--that she adored him! But he wouldhave thought it a theft to take what she might have given; so heresigned himself with a melancholy satisfaction to love angelically, andthe conviction of his deformity resolved itself into a proud purity.

  These happy creatures dwelt in the ideal. They were spouses in it atdistances as opposite as the spheres. They exchanged in its firmamentthe deep effluvium which is in infinity attraction, and on earth thesexes. Their kisses were the kisses of souls.

  They had always lived a common life. They knew themselves only in eachother's society. The infancy of Dea had coincided with the youth ofGwynplaine. They had grown up side by side. For a long time they hadslept in the same bed, for the hut was not a large bedchamber. They layon the chest, Ursus on the floor; that was the arrangement. One fineday, whilst 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 alsosleep on the floor." And at night he stretched himself, with the oldman, on the bear skin. Then Dea wept. She cried for her bed-fellow; butGwynplaine, become restless because he had begun to love, decided toremain where he was. From that time he always slept by the side of Ursuson the planks. In the summer, when the nights were fine, he sleptoutside with Homo.

  When thirteen, Dea had not yet become resigned to the arrangement. Oftenin the evening she said, "Gwynplaine, come close to me; that will put meto sleep." A man lying by her side was a necessity to her innocentslumbers.

  Nudity is to see that one is naked. She ignored nudity. It was theingenuousness of Arcadia or Otaheite. Dea untaught made Gwynplaine wild.Sometimes it happened that Dea, when almost reaching youth, combed herlong hair as she sat on her bed--her chemise unfastened and falling offrevealed indications of a feminine outline, and a vague commencement ofEve--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 ofdarkness took flight before the Chloe of shadow.

  Such was the idyll blooming in a tragedy.

  Ursus said to them,--"Old brutes, adore each other!"