L'homme qui rit. English

  CHAPTER I.

  THE TEMPTATION OF ST. GWYNPLAINE.

  One jet of flame hardly makes a prick in the darkness; another sets fireto a volcano.

  Some sparks are gigantic.

  Gwynplaine read the letter, then he read it over again. Yes, the wordswere there, "I love you!"

  Terrors chased each other through his mind.

  The first was, that he believed himself to be mad.

  He was mad; that was certain: He had just seen what had no existence.The twilight spectres were making game of him, poor wretch! The littleman in scarlet was the will-o'-the-wisp of a dream. Sometimes, at night,nothings condensed into flame come and laugh at us. Having had his laughout, the visionary being had disappeared, and left Gwynplaine behindhim, mad.

  Such are the freaks of darkness.

  The second terror was, to find out that he was in his right senses.

  A vision? Certainly not. How could that be? Had he not a letter in hishand? Did he not see an envelope, a seal, paper, and writing? Did he notknow from whom that came? It was all clear enough. Some one took a penand ink, and wrote. Some one lighted a taper, and sealed it with wax.Was not his name written on the letter--"_To Gwynplaine_?" The paper wasscented. All was clear.

  Gwynplaine knew the little man. The dwarf was a page. The gleam was alivery. The page had given him a rendezvous for the same hour on themorrow, at the corner of London Bridge.

  Was London Bridge an illusion?

  No, no. All was clear. There was no delirium. All was reality.Gwynplaine was perfectly clear in his intellect. It was not aphantasmagoria, suddenly dissolving above his head, and fading intonothingness. It was something which had really happened to him. No,Gwynplaine was not mad, nor was he dreaming. Again he read the letter.

  Well, yes! But then?

  That then was terror-striking.

  There was a woman who desired him! If so, let no one ever againpronounce the word incredible! A woman desire him! A woman who had seenhis face! A woman who was not blind! And who was this woman? An uglyone? No; a beauty. A gipsy? No; a duchess!

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

  What! that woman! The siren, the apparition, the lady in the visionarybox, 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 wasthe strange, unknown lady, she who had previously so troubled histhoughts; and his first tumultuous feelings about this woman returned,heated by the evil fire. Forgetfulness is nothing but a palimpsest: anincident happens unexpectedly, and all that was effaced revives in theblanks of wondering memory.

  Gwynplaine thought that he had dismissed that image from hisremembrance, and he found that it was still there; and she had put hermark in his brain, unconsciously guilty of a dream. Without hissuspecting it, the lines of the engraving had been bitten deep byreverie. And now a certain amount of evil had been done, and this trainof thought, thenceforth, perhaps, irreparable, he took up again eagerly.What! she desired him! What! the princess descend from her throne, theidol from its shrine, the statue from its pedestal, the phantom from itscloud! What! from the depths of the impossible had this chimera come!This deity of the sky! This irradiation! This nereid all glisteningwith jewels! This proud and unattainable beauty, from the height of herradiant throne, was bending down to Gwynplaine! What! had she drawn upher chariot of the dawn, with its yoke of turtle-doves and dragons,before Gwynplaine, and said to him, "Come!" What! this terrible glory ofbeing the object of such abasement from the empyrean, for Gwynplaine!This woman, if he could give that name to a form so starlike andmajestic, this woman proposed herself, gave herself, delivered herselfup 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 ofa goddess, and that without degradation! Such majestic creatures cannotbe sullied. The gods bathe themselves pure in light; and this goddesswho came to him knew what she was doing. She was not ignorant of theincarnate hideousness of Gwynplaine. She had seen the mask which was hisface; and that mask had not caused her to draw back. Gwynplaine wasloved notwithstanding it!

  Here was a thing surpassing all the extravagance of dreams. He was lovedin consequence of his mask. Far from repulsing the goddess, the maskattracted her. Gwynplaine was not only loved; he was desired. He wasmore than accepted; he was chosen. He, chosen!

  What! there, where this woman dwelt, in the regal region ofirresponsible splendour, and in the power of full, free will; wherethere were princes, and she could take a prince; nobles, and she couldtake a noble; where there were men handsome, charming, magnificent, andshe could take an Adonis: whom did she take? Gnafron! She could choosefrom the midst of meteors and thunders, the mighty six-winged seraphim,and she chose the larva crawling in the slime. On one side werehighnesses and peers, all grandeur, all opulence, all glory; on theother, a mountebank. The mountebank carried it! What kind of scalescould there be in the heart of this woman? By what measure did she weighher love? She took off her ducal coronet, and flung it on the platformof a clown! She took from her brow the Olympian aureola, and placed iton the bristly head of a gnome! The world had turned topsy-turvy. Theinsects swarmed on high, the stars were scattered below, whilst thewonder-stricken Gwynplaine, overwhelmed by a falling ruin of light, andlying in the dust, was enshrined in a glory. One all-powerful,revolting against beauty and splendour, gave herself to the damned ofnight; preferred Gwynplaine to Antinoues; excited by curiosity, sheentered the shadows, and descending within them, and from thisabdication of goddess-ship was rising, crowned and prodigious, theroyalty of the wretched. "You are hideous. I love you." These wordstouched Gwynplaine in the ugly spot of pride. Pride is the heel in whichall heroes are vulnerable. Gwynplaine was flattered in his vanity as amonster. He was loved for his deformity. He, too, was the exception, asmuch and perhaps more than the Jupiters and the Apollos. He feltsuperhuman, and so much a monster as to be a god. Fearful bewilderment!

  Now, who was this woman? What did he know about her? Everything andnothing. She was a duchess, that he knew; he knew, also, that she wasbeautiful and rich; that she had liveries, lackeys, pages, and footmenrunning with torches by the side of her coroneted carriage. He knew thatshe was in love with him; at least she said so. Of everything else hewas 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? Ofwhat family was she? Were there snares, traps, dangers about her? Of thegallantry existing on the idle heights of society; the caves on thosesummits, in which savage charmers dream amid the scattered skeletons ofthe loves which they have already preyed on; of the extent of tragiccynicism to which the experiments of a woman may attain who believesherself to be beyond the reach of man--of things such as theseGwynplaine had no idea. Nor had he even in his mind materials out ofwhich to build up a conjecture, information concerning such things beingvery scanty in the social depths in which he lived. Still he detected ashadow; he felt that a mist hung over all this brightness. Did heunderstand it? No. Could he guess at it? Still less. What was therebehind that letter? One pair of folding doors opening before him,another closing on him, and causing him a vague anxiety. On the one sidean avowal; on the other an enigma--avowal and enigma, which, like twomouths, one tempting, the other threatening, pronounce the same word,Dare!

  Never had perfidious chance taken its measures better, nor timed morefitly the moment of temptation. Gwynplaine, stirred by spring, and bythe sap rising in all things, was prompt to dream the dream of theflesh. The old man who is not to be stamped out, and over whom none ofus can triumph, was awaking in that backward youth, still a boy attwenty-four.

  It was just then, at the most stormy moment of the crisis, that theoffer was made him, and the naked bosom of the Sphinx appeared beforehis 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, Springthe receiver.

  Gwynplaine was shaken.

  There is a kind of smoke of evil, preceding sin, in which the consciencecannot breathe. The obscure nausea of hell comes over virtue intemptation. The yawning abyss discharges an exhalation which warns thestrong and turns the weak giddy. Gwynplaine was suffering its mysteriousattack.

  Dilemmas, transient and at the same time stubborn, were floating beforehim. Sin, presenting itself obstinately again and again to his mind, wastaking form. The morrow, midnight? London Bridge, the page? Should hego? "Yes," cried the flesh; "No," cried the soul.

  Nevertheless, we must remark that, strange as it may appear at firstsight, he never once put himself the question, "Should he go?" quitedistinctly. Reprehensible actions are like over-strong brandies--youcannot swallow them at a draught. You put down your glass; you will seeto it presently; there is a strange taste even about that first drop.One thing is certain: he felt something behind him pushing him, forwardtowards the unknown. And he trembled. He could catch a glimpse of acrumbling precipice, and he drew back, stricken by the terror encirclinghim. He closed his eyes. He tried hard to deny to himself that theadventure had ever occurred, and to persuade himself into doubting hisreason. This was evidently his best plan; the wisest thing he could dowas to believe himself mad.

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

  Alas! Gwynplaine put himself questions. Where duty is clear, to putoneself questions is to suffer defeat.

  There are invasions which the mind may have to suffer. There are theVandals of the soul--evil thoughts coming to devastate our virtue. Athousand contrary ideas rushed into Gwynplaine's brain, now followingeach other singly, now crowding together. Then silence reigned again,and he would lean his head on his hands, in a kind of mournfulattention, as of one who contemplates a landscape by night.

  Suddenly he felt that he was no longer thinking. His reverie had reachedthat point of utter darkness in which all things disappear.

  He remembered, too, that he had not entered the inn. It might be abouttwo 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 directedhis steps towards the inn, which he entered stealthily, and withoutawaking little Govicum, who, while waiting up for him, had fallen asleepon the table, with his arms for a pillow. He closed the door, lighted acandle at the lamp, fastened the bolt, turned the key in the lock,taking, mechanically, all the precautions usual to a man returning homelate, ascended the staircase of the Green Box, slipped into the oldhovel which he used as a bedroom, looked at Ursus who was asleep, blewout his candle, and did not go to bed.

  Thus an hour passed away. Weary, at length, and fancying that bed andsleep were one, he laid his head upon the pillow without undressing,making darkness the concession of closing his eyes. But the storm ofemotions which assailed him had not waned for an instant. Sleeplessnessis a cruelty which night inflicts on man. Gwynplaine suffered greatly.For the first time in his life, he was not pleased with himself. Ache ofheart mingled with gratified vanity. What was he to do? Day broke atlast; he heard Ursus get up, but did not raise his eyelids. No truce forhim, however. The letter was ever in his mind. Every word of it cameback to him in a kind of chaos. In certain violent storms within thesoul thought becomes a liquid. It is convulsed, it heaves, andsomething rises from it, like the dull roaring of the waves. Flood andflow, sudden shocks and whirls, the hesitation of the wave before therock; hail and rain clouds with the light shining through their breaks;the petty flights of useless foam; wild swell broken in an instant;great efforts lost; wreck appearing all around; darkness and universaldispersion--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 exquisitevoice saying, "Are you asleep, Gwynplaine?" He opened his eyes with astart, and sat up. Dea was standing in the half-open doorway. Herineffable smile was in her eyes and on her lips. She was standing there,charming in the unconscious serenity of her radiance. Then came, as itwere, a sacred moment. Gwynplaine watched her, startled, dazzled,awakened. Awakened from what?--from sleep? no, from sleeplessness. Itwas she, it was Dea; and suddenly he felt in the depths of his being theindescribable wane of the storm and the sublime descent of good overevil; the miracle of the look from on high was accomplished; the blindgirl, the sweet light-bearer, with no effort beyond her mere presence,dissipated all the darkness within him; the curtain of cloud wasdispersed from the soul as if drawn by an invisible hand, and a sky ofazure, as though by celestial enchantment, again spread overGwynplaine's conscience. In a moment he became by the virtue of thatangel, the great and good Gwynplaine, the innocent man. Such mysteriousconfrontations occur to the soul as they do to creation. Both weresilent--she, who was the light; he, who was the abyss; she, who wasdivine; he, who was appeased; and over Gwynplaine's stormy heart Deashone with the indescribable effect of a star shining on the sea.