CHAPTER V.
WE THINK WE REMEMBER; WE FORGET.
Whence arise those strange, visible changes which occur in the soul ofman?
Gwynplaine had been at the same moment raised to a summit and cast intoan abyss.
His head swam with double giddiness--the giddiness of ascent anddescent. A fatal combination.
He felt himself ascend, and felt not his fall.
It is appalling to see a new horizon.
A perspective affords suggestions,--not always good ones.
He had before him the fairy glade, a snare perhaps, seen through openingclouds, and showing the blue depths of sky; so deep, that they areobscure.
He was on the mountain, whence he could see all the kingdoms of theearth. A mountain all the more terrible that it is a visionary one.Those who are on its apex are in a dream.
Palaces, castles, power, opulence, all human happiness extending as faras eye could reach; a map of enjoyments spread out to the horizon; asort of radiant geography of which he was the centre. A perilous mirage!
Imagine what must have been the haze of such a vision, not led up to,not attained to as by the gradual steps of a ladder, but reached withouttransition and without previous warning.
A man going to sleep in a mole's burrow, and awaking on the top of theStrasbourg steeple; such was the state of Gwynplaine.
Giddiness is a dangerous kind of glare, particularly that which bearsyou at once towards the day and towards the night, forming twowhirlwinds, one opposed to the other.
He saw too much, and not enough.
He saw all, and nothing.
His state was what the author of this book has somewhere expressed asthe blind man dazzled.
Gwynplaine, left by himself, began to walk with long strides. A bubblingprecedes an explosion.
Notwithstanding his agitation, in this impossibility of keeping still,he meditated. His mind liquefied as it boiled. He began to recall thingsto his memory. It is surprising how we find that we have heard soclearly that to which we scarcely listened. The declaration of theshipwrecked men, read by the sheriff in the Southwark cell, came back tohim clearly and intelligibly. He recalled every word, he saw under ithis whole infancy.
Suddenly he stopped, his hands clasped behind his back, looking up tothe ceilings--the sky--no matter what--whatever was above him.
"Quits!" he cried.
He felt like one whose head rises out of the water. It seemed to himthat he saw everything--the past, the future, the present--in theaccession of a sudden flash of light.
"Oh!" he cried, for there are cries in the depths of thought. "Oh! itwas so, was it! I was a lord. All is discovered. They stole, betrayed,destroyed, abandoned, disinherited, murdered me! The corpse of mydestiny floated fifteen years on the sea; all at once it touched theearth, and it started up, erect and living. I am reborn. I am born. Ifelt under my rags that the breast there palpitating was not that of awretch; and when I looked on crowds of men, I felt that they were theflocks, and that I was not the dog, but the shepherd! Shepherds of thepeople, leaders of men, guides and masters, such were my fathers; andwhat they were I am! I am a gentleman, and I have a sword; I am a baron,and I have a casque; I am a marquis, and I have a plume; I am a peer,and I have a coronet. Lo! they deprived me of all this. I dwelt inlight, they flung me into darkness. Those who proscribed the father,sold the son. When my father was dead, they took from beneath his headthe stone of exile which he had placed for his pillow, and, tying it tomy neck, they flung me into a sewer. Oh! those scoundrels who torturedmy infancy! Yes, they rise and move in the depths of my memory. Yes; Isee them again. I was that morsel of flesh pecked to pieces on a tomb bya flight of crows. I bled and cried under all those horrible shadows.Lo! it was there that they precipitated me, under the crush of those whocome and go, under the trampling feet of men, under the undermost of thehuman race, lower than the serf, baser than the serving man, lower thanthe felon, lower than the slave, at the spot where Chaos becomes asewer, in which I was engulfed. It is from thence that I come; it isfrom this that I rise; it is from this that I am risen. And here I amnow. Quits!"
He sat down, he rose, clasped his head with his hands, began to pace theroom again, and his tempestuous monologue continued within him.
"Where am I?--on the summit? Where is it that I have just alighted?--onthe highest peak? This pinnacle, this grandeur, this dome of the world,this great power, is my home. This temple is in air. I am one of thegods. I live in inaccessible heights. This supremacy, which I looked upto from below, and from whence emanated such rays of glory that I shutmy eyes; this ineffaceable peerage; this impregnable fortress of thefortunate, I enter. I am in it. I am of it. Ah, what a decisive turn ofthe wheel! I was below, I am on high--on high for ever! Behold me alord! I shall have a scarlet robe. I shall have an earl's coronet on myhead. I shall assist at the coronation of kings. They will take the oathfrom my hands. I shall judge princes and ministers. I shall exist. Fromthe depths into which I was thrown, I have rebounded to the zenith. Ihave palaces in town and country: houses, gardens, chases, forests,carriages, millions. I will give fetes. I will make laws. I shall havethe choice of joys and pleasures. And the vagabond Gwynplaine, who hadnot the right to gather a flower in the grass, may pluck the stars fromheaven!"
Melancholy overshadowing of a soul's brightness! Thus it was that inGwynplaine, who had been a hero, and perhaps had not ceased to be one,moral greatness gave way to material splendour. A lamentable transition!Virtue broken down by a troop of passing demons. A surprise made on theweak side of man's fortress. All the inferior circumstances called bymen superior, ambition, the purblind desires of instinct, passions,covetousness, driven far from Gwynplaine by the wholesome restraints ofmisfortune, took tumultuous possession of his generous heart. And fromwhat had this arisen? From the discovery of a parchment in a waifdrifted by the sea. Conscience may be violated by a chance attack.
Gwynplaine drank in great draughts of pride, and it dulled his soul.Such is the poison of that fatal wine.
Giddiness invaded him. He more than consented to its approach. Hewelcomed it. This was the effect of previous and long-continued thirst.Are we an accomplice of the cup which deprives us of reason? He hadalways vaguely desired this. His eyes had always turned towards thegreat. To watch is to wish. The eaglet is not born in the eyrie fornothing.
Now, however, at moments, it seemed to him the simplest thing in theworld that he should be a lord. A few hours only had passed, and yet thepast of yesterday seemed so far off! Gwynplaine had fallen into theambuscade of Better, who is the enemy of Good.
Unhappy is he of whom we say, how lucky he is! Adversity is more easilyresisted than prosperity. We rise more perfect from ill fortune thanfrom good. There is a Charybdis in poverty, and a Scylla in riches.Those who remain erect under the thunderbolt are prostrated by theflash. Thou who standest without shrinking on the verge of a precipice,fear lest thou be carried up on the innumerable wings of mists anddreams. The ascent which elevates will dwarf thee. An apotheosis has asinister power of degradation.
It is not easy to understand what is good luck. Chance is nothing but adisguise. Nothing deceives so much as the face of fortune. Is sheProvidence? Is she Fatality?
A brightness may not be a brightness, because light is truth, and agleam may be a deceit. You believe that it lights you; but no, it setsyou on fire.
At night, a candle made of mean tallow becomes a star if placed in anopening in the darkness. The moth flies to it.
In what measure is the moth responsible?
The sight of the candle fascinates the moth as the eye of the serpentfascinates the bird.
Is it possible that the bird and the moth should resist the attraction?Is it possible that the leaf should resist the wind? Is it possible thatthe stone should refuse obedience to the laws of gravitation?
These are material questions, which are moral questions as well.
After he had received the letter of the duchess, Gwynplaine hadrecovered himself.
The deep love in his nature had resisted it. But thestorm having wearied itself on one side of the horizon, burst out on theother; for in destiny, as in nature, there are successive convulsions.The first shock loosens, the second uproots.
Alas! how do the oaks fall?
Thus he who, when a child of ten, stood alone on the shore of Portland,ready to give battle, who had looked steadfastly at all the combatantswhom he had to encounter, the blast which bore away the vessel in whichhe had expected to embark, the gulf which had swallowed up the plank,the yawning abyss, of which the menace was its retrocession, the earthwhich refused him a shelter, the sky which refused him a star, solitudewithout pity, obscurity without notice, ocean, sky, all the violence ofone infinite space, and all the mysterious enigmas of another; he whohad neither trembled nor fainted before the mighty hostility of theunknown; he who, still so young, had held his own with night, asHercules of old had held his own with death; he who in the unequalstruggle had thrown down this defiance, that he, a child, adopted achild, that he encumbered himself with a load, when tired and exhausted,thus rendering himself an easier prey to the attacks on his weakness,and, as it were, himself unmuzzling the shadowy monsters in ambusharound him; he who, a precocious warrior, had immediately, and from hisfirst steps out of the cradle, struggled breast to breast with destiny;he, whose disproportion with strife had not discouraged from striving;he who, perceiving in everything around him a frightful occultation ofthe human race, had accepted that eclipse, and proudly continued hisjourney; he who had known how to endure cold, thirst, hunger, valiantly;he who, a pigmy in stature, had been a colossus in soul: thisGwynplaine, who had conquered the great terror of the abyss under itsdouble form, Tempest and Misery, staggered under a breath--Vanity.
Thus, when she has exhausted distress, nakedness, storms, catastrophes,agonies on an unflinching man, Fatality begins to smile, and her victim,suddenly intoxicated, staggers.
The smile of Fatality! Can anything more terrible be imagined? It is thelast resource of the pitiless trier of souls in his proof of man. Thetiger, lurking in destiny, caresses man with a velvet paw. Sinisterpreparation, hideous gentleness in the monster!
Every self-observer has detected within himself mental weaknesscoincident with aggrandisement. A sudden growth disturbs the system, andproduces fever.
In Gwynplaine's brain was the giddy whirlwind of a crowd of newcircumstances; all the light and shade of a metamorphosis; inexpressiblystrange confrontations; the shock of the past against the future. TwoGwynplaines, himself doubled; behind, an infant in rags crawling throughnight--wandering, shivering, hungry, provoking laughter; in front, abrilliant nobleman--luxurious, proud, dazzling all London. He wascasting off one form, and amalgamating himself with the other. He wascasting the mountebank, and becoming the peer. Change of skin issometimes change of soul. Now and then the past seemed like a dream. Itwas complex; bad and good. He thought of his father. It was a poignantanguish never to have known his father. He tried to picture him tohimself. He thought of his brother, of whom he had just heard. Then hehad a family! He, Gwynplaine! He lost himself in fantastic dreams. Hesaw visions of magnificence; unknown forms of solemn grandeur moved inmist before him. He heard flourishes of trumpets.
"And then," he said, "I shall be eloquent."
He pictured to himself a splendid entrance into the House of Lords. Heshould arrive full to the brim with new facts and ideas. What could henot tell them? What subjects he had accumulated! What an advantage to bein the midst of them, a man who had seen, touched, undergone, andsuffered; who could cry aloud to them, "I have been near to everything,from which you are so far removed." He would hurl reality in the face ofthose patricians, crammed with illusions. They should tremble, for itwould be the truth. They would applaud, for it would be grand. He wouldarise amongst those powerful men, more powerful than they. "I shallappear as a torch-bearer, to show them truth; and as a sword-bearer, toshow them justice!" What a triumph!
And, building up these fantasies in his mind, clear and confused at thesame time, he had attacks of delirium,--sinking on the first seat hecame to; sometimes drowsy, sometimes starting up. He came and went,looked at the ceiling, examined the coronets, studied vaguely thehieroglyphics of the emblazonment, felt the velvet of the walls, movedthe chairs, turned over the parchments, read the names, spelt out thetitles, Buxton, Homble, Grundraith, Hunkerville, Clancharlie; comparedthe wax, the impression, felt the twist of silk appended to the royalprivy seal, approached the window, listened to the splash of thefountain, contemplated the statues, counted, with the patience of asomnambulist, the columns of marble, and said,--
"It is real."
Then he touched his satin clothes, and asked himself,--
"Is it I? Yes."
He was torn by an inward tempest.
In this whirlwind, did he feel faintness and fatigue? Did he drink, eat,sleep? If he did so, he was unconscious of the fact. In certain violentsituations instinct satisfies itself, according to its requirements,unconsciously. Besides, his thoughts were less thoughts than mists. Atthe moment that the black flame of an irruption disgorges itself fromdepths full of boiling lava, has the crater any consciousness of theflocks which crop the grass at the foot of the mountain?
The hours passed.
The dawn appeared and brought the day. A bright ray penetrated thechamber, and at the same instant broke on the soul of Gwynplaine.
And Dea! said the light.
BOOK THE SIXTH.
_URSUS UNDER DIFFERENT ASPECTS._