The Man Who Laughs

by Victor Hugo

  "Will you drink?"

  The child drank, and then went on eating.

  Ursus seized the pitcher again, and conveyed it to his mouth. The temperature of the water which it contained had been unequally modified by the proximity of the stove.

  He swallowed some mouthfuls and made a grimace.

  "Water! pretending to be pure, thou resemblest false friends. Thou art warm at the top and cold at bottom."

  In the meantime the boy had finished his supper. The porringer was more than empty, it was cleaned out. He picked up and ate pensively a few crumbs caught in the folds of the knitted jacket on his lap.

  Ursus turned toward him.

  "That is not all. Now, a word with you. The mouth is not made only for eating, it is made for speaking. Now that you are warmed and stuffed, you beast, take care of yourself. You are going to answer my questions. Whence do you come?"

  The child replied:

  "I do not know."

  "How do you mean, you don't know?"

  "I was abandoned this evening on the seashore."

  "You little scamp! what's your name? He is so good for nothing that his relations desert him."

  "I have no relations."

  "Give in a little to my tastes, and observe that I do not like those who sing to a tune of fibs. Thou must have relatives since you have a sister."

  "It is not my sister."

  "It is not your sister?"

  "No."

  "Who is it then?"

  "It is a baby that I found."

  "Found?"

  "Yes."

  "What! did you pick her up?"

  "Yes."

  "Where? If you lie I will exterminate you."

  "On the breast of a woman who was dead in the snow."

  "When?"

  "An hour ago."

  "Where?"

  "A league from here."

  The arched brow of Ursus knitted and took that pointed shape which characterises emotion on the brow of a philosopher.

  "Dead! Lucky for her! We must leave her in the snow. She is well off there. In which direction?"

  "In the direction of the sea."

  "Did you cross the bridge?"

  "Yes."

  Ursus opened the window at the back and examined the view.

  The weather had not improved. The snow was falling thickly and mournfully.

  He shut the window.

  He went to the broken glass; he filled the hole with a rag; he heaped the stove with peat; he spread out as far as he could the bearskin on the chest; took a large book which he had in a corner, placed it under the skin for a pillow, and laid the head of the sleeping infant on it.

  Then he turned to the boy.

  "Lie down there."

  The boy obeyed, and stretched himself at full length by the side of the infant.

  Ursus rolled the bearskin over the two children, and tucked it under their feet.

  He took down from a shelf, and tied round his waist, a linen belt with a large pocket containing, no doubt, a case of instruments and bottles of restoratives.

  Then he took the lantern from where it hung to the ceiling and lighted it. It was a dark lantern. When lighted it still left the children in shadow.

  Ursus half opened the door and said:

  "I am going out; do not be afraid. I shall return. Go to sleep."

  Then letting down the steps he called Homo. He was answered by a loving growl.

  Ursus, holding the lantern in his hand, descended. The steps were replaced, the door was reclosed. The children remained alone.

  From without, a voice, the voice of Ursus, said:

  "You, boy, who have just eaten up my supper, are you already asleep?"

  "No," replied the child.

  "Well, if she cries, give her the rest of the milk."

  The clinking of a chain being undone was heard, and the sound of a man's footsteps, mingled with that of the pads of an animal, died off in the distance.

  A few minutes after both children slept profoundly.

  The little boy and girl, lying naked side by side, were joined through the silent hours, in the seraphic promiscuousness of the shadows; such dreams as were possible to their age floated from one to the other; beneath their closed eyelids there shone, perhaps, a starlight; if the word marriage were not inappropriate to the situation, they were husband and wife after the fashion of the angels. Such innocence in such darkness, such purity in such an embrace, such foretastes of heaven are possible only to childhood, and no immensity approaches the greatness of little children. Of all gulfs this is the deepest.

  The fearful perpetuity of the dead chained beyond life, the mighty animosity of the ocean to a wreck, the whiteness of the snow over buried bodies, do not equal in pathos two children's mouths meeting divinely in sleep;� and the meeting of which is not even a kiss. A betrothal perchance, perchance a catastrophe. The unknown weighs down upon their juxtaposition. It charms, it terrifies; who knows which? It stays the pulse. Innocence is higher than virtue. Innocence is holy ignorance. They slept. They were in peace. They were warm. The nakedness of their bodies, embraced each in each, amalgamated with the virginity of their souls. They were there as in the nest of the abyss.

  * * *

  VI

  THE AWAKING

  THE BEGINNING of day is sinister. A sad pale light penetrated the hut. It was the frozen dawn. That wan light which throws into relief the mournful reality of objects which are blurred into spectral forms by the night did not awake the children, so soundly were they sleeping. The caravan was warm. Their breathings alternated like two peaceful waves. There was no longer a hurricane without The light of dawn was slowly taking possession of the horizon. The constellations were being extinguished, like candles blown out one after the other. Only a few large stars resisted. The deep-toned song of the Infinite was coming from the sea.

  The fire in the stove was not quite out. The twilight broke, little by little, into daylight. The boy slept less heavily than the girl. At length, a ray brighter than the others broke through the pane, and he opened his eyes. The sleep of childhood ends in forgetfulness. He lay in a state of semi-stupor, without knowing where he was or what was near him, without making an effort to remember, gazing at the ceiling, and setting himself an aimless task as he gazed dreamily at the letters of the inscription--URSUS, PHILOSOPHER--which, being unable to read, he examined without the power of deciphering.

  The sound of a key turning in the lock caused him to turn his head.

  The door turned on its hinges, the steps were let down. Ursus was returning. He ascended the steps, his extinguished lantern in his hand. At the same time the pattering of four paws fell upon the steps. It was Homo, following Ursus, who had also returned to his home.

  The boy awoke with somewhat of a start. The wolf, having probably an appetite, gave him a morning yawn, showing two rows of very white teeth. He stopped when he had got half-way up the steps, and placed both forepaws within the caravan, leaning on the threshold, like a preacher with his elbows on the edge of the pulpit. He sniffed the chest from afar, not being in the habit of finding it occupied as it then was. His wolfine form, framed by the doorway, was designed in black against the light of morning. He made up his mind, and entered. The boy, seeing the wolf in the caravan, got out of the bear-skin, and, standing up, placed himself in front of the little infant, who was sleeping more soundly than ever.

  Ursus had just hung the lantern up on a nail in the ceiling. Silently, and with mechanical deliberation, he unbuckled the belt in which was his case, and replaced it on the shelf. He looked at nothing, and seemed to see nothing. His eyes were glassy. Something was moving him deeply in his mind. His thoughts at length found breath, as usual, in a rapid outflow of words. He exclaimed:

  "Happy, doubtless! Dead! stone dead!"

  He bent down, and put a shovelful of turf mould into the stove; and, as he poked the peat, he growled out:

  "I had a deal of trouble to find her. The mischief of the unknown
had buried her under two feet of snow. Had it not been for Homo, who sees as clearly with his nose as Christopher Columbus did with his mind, I should be still there, scratching at the avalanche, and playing hide and seek with Death. Diogenes took his lantern and sought for a man; I took my lantern and sought for a woman. He found a sarcasm, and I found mourning. How cold she was. I touched her hand--a stone! What silence in her eyes. How can any one be such a fool as to die and leave a child behind! It will not be convenient to pack three into this box. A pretty family I have now! A boy and a girl!"

  While Ursus was speaking, Homo sidled up close to the stove. The hand of the sleeping infant was hanging down between the stove and the chest. The wolf set to licking it. He licked it so softly that he did not awake the little infant.

  Ursus turned round.

  "Well done, Homo. I shall be father and you shall be uncle."

  Then he betook himself again to arranging the fire with philosophical care, without interrupting his aside.

  "Adoption! It is settled; Homo is willing."

  He drew himself up.

  "I should like to know who is responsible for that woman's death? Is it man? or . . ."

  He raised his eyes, but looked beyond the ceiling, and his lips murmured:

  "Is it Thou?"

  Then his brow dropped, as if under a burden, and he continued:

  "The night took the trouble to kill the woman."

  Raising his eyes, they met those of the boy, just awakened, who was listening. Ursus addressed him abruptly:

  "What are you laughing about?"

  The boy answered:

  "I am not laughing."

  Ursus felt a kind of shock, looked at him fixedly for a few minutes and said:

  "Then you are frightful."

  The interior of the caravan, on the previous night, had been so dark that Ursus had not yet seen the boy's face. The broad daylight revealed it. He placed the palms of his hands on the two shoulders of the boy, and, examining his countenance more and more piercingly, exclaimed:

  "Do not laugh any more!"

  "I am not laughing," said the child.

  Ursus was seized with a shudder from head to foot.

  "You do laugh, I tell you."

  Then, seizing the child with a grasp which would have been one of fury had it not been one of pity, he asked him roughly:

  "Who did that to you?"

  The child replied:

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "How long have you had that laugh?"

  "I have always been thus," said the child.

  Ursus turned toward the chest, saying in a low voice:

  "I thought that work was out of date."

  He took from the top of it, very softly, so as not to awaken the infant, the book which he had placed there for a pillow.

  "Let us see Conquest," he murmured.

  It was a bundle of paper in folio, bound in soft parchment. He turned the pages with his thumb, stopped at a certain one, opened the book wide on the stove, and read:

  "'De Denasatis,' it is here."

  And he continued:

  "'Bucca fissa usque ad aures, genezivis denudatis, nasoque murdridato, masca eris, et ridebis semper.'

  "There it is for certain."

  Then he replaced the book on one of the shelves, growling:

  "It might not be wholesome to inquire too deeply into a case of the kind. We will remain on the surface; laugh away, my boy!"

  Just then the little girl awoke. Her good-day was a cry.

  "Come, nurse, give her the breast," said Ursus.

  The infant sat up. Ursus taking the phial from the stove gave it to her to suck.

  Then the sun arose. He was level with the horizon. His red rays gleamed through the glass and struck against the face of the infant, which was turned toward him. Her eyeballs, fixed on the sun, reflected his purple orbit like two mirrors. The eyeballs were immovable, the eyelids also.

  "See!" said Ursus. "She is blind."

  * * *

  PART TWO

  BY ORDER OF THE KING

  BOOK 1

  THE EVERLASTING PRESENCE OF THE PAST: MAN REFLECTS MAN

  I

  LORD CLANCHARLIE

  THERE WAS, in those days, an old tradition. That tradition was Lord Linnæus Clancharlie. Linnæus Baron Clancharlie, a contemporary of Cromwell, was one of the peers of England, few in number be it said, who accepted the Republic. The reason of his acceptance of it might, indeed, for want of a better, be found in the fact that, for the time being, the Republic was triumphant. It was a matter of course that Lord Clancharlie should adhere to the Republic, as long as the Republic had the upper hand; but, after the close of the Revolution and the fall of the Parliamentary government, Lord Clancharlie had persisted in his fidelity to it. It would have been easy for the noble patrician to re-enter the reconstituted Upper House, repentance being ever well received on restorations, and Charles II being a kind prince enough to those who returned to their allegiance to him; but Lord Clancharlie had failed to understand what was due to events. While the nation overwhelmed with acclamation the king, come to retake possession of England; while unanimity was recording its verdict, while the people were bowing their salutation to the monarchy, while the dynasty was rising anew amid a glorious and triumphant recantation, at the moment when the past was becoming the future, and the future becoming the past, that nobleman remained refractory. He turned his head away from all that joy, and voluntarily exiled himself. While he could have been a peer, he preferred being an outlaw. Years had thus passed away. He had grown old in his fidelity to the dead Republic, and was therefore crowned with the ridicule which is the natural reward of such folly.

  He had retired into Switzerland, and dwelt in a sort of lofty ruin on the banks of the Lake of Geneva. He had chosen his dwelling in the most rugged nook of the lake, between Chillon, where is the dungeon of Bonnivard, and Vevay, where is Ludlow's tomb. The rugged Alps, filled with twilight, winds, and clouds, were around him: and he lived there, hidden in the great shadows that fall from the mountains. He was rarely met by any passer-by. The man was out of his country, almost out of his century. At that time, to those who understood and were posted in the affairs of the period, no resistance to established things was justifiable. England was happy; a restoration is as the reconciliation of husband and wife, prince and nation return to each other; no state can be more graceful or more pleasant. Great Britain beamed with joy; to have a king at all was a good deal--but, furthermore, the king was a charming one. Charles II was amiable, a man of pleasure, yet able to govern, and great, if not after the fashion of Louis XIV. He was essentially a gentleman. Charles II was admired by his subjects. He had made war in Hanover for reasons best known to himself; at least, no one else knew them. He had sold Dunkirk to France, a manoeuvre of state policy. The Whig peers, concerning whom Chamberlayne says, "The cursed Republic infected with its stinking breath several of the high nobility," had had the good sense to bow to the inevitable, to conform to the times, and to resume their seats in the House of Lords. To do so it sufficed that they should take the oath of allegiance to the king. When these facts were considered, the glorious reign, the excellent king, august princes given back by divine mercy to the people's love; when it was remembered that persons of such consideration as Monk, and, later on, Jeffreys, had rallied round the throne; that they had been properly rewarded for their loyalty and zeal by the most splendid appointments and the most lucrative offices; that Lord Clancharlie could not be ignorant of this, and that it only depended on himself to be seated by their side, glorious in his honours; that England had, thanks to her king, risen again to the summit of prosperity; that London was all banquets and carousels; that everybody was rich and enthusiastic; that the court was gallant, gay, and magnificent;--if by chance, far from these splendours, in some melancholy, indescribable half-light, like nightfall, that old man, clad in the same garb as the common people, was observed pale, absent-minded, bent toward the grave, stan
ding on the shore of the lake, scarce heeding the storm and the winter, walking as though at random, his eye fixed, his white hair tossed by the wind of the shadow, silent, pensive, solitary, who could forbear to smile?

  It was the sketch of a madman.

  Thinking of Lord Clancharlie, of what he might have been and what he was, a smile was indulgent; some laughed out aloud, others could not restrain their anger. It is easy to understand that men of sense were much shocked by the insolence implied by his isolation.

  One extenuating circumstance: Lord Clancharlie had never had any brains. Everyone agreed on that point.

  II

  It is disagreeable to see one's fellows practice obstinacy. Imitations of Regulus are not popular, and public opinion holds them in some derision. Stubborn people are like reproaches, and we have a right to laugh at them.

  Besides, to sum up, are these perversities, these rugged notches, virtues? Is there not in these excessive advertisements of self-abnegation and of honour a good deal of ostentation? It is all parade more than anything else. Why such exaggeration of solitude and exile? to carry nothing to extremes is the wise man's maxim. Be in opposition if you choose, blame if you will, but decently, and crying out all the while "Long live the King!" The true virtue is common-sense--what falls ought to fall, what succeeds ought to succeed. Providence acts advisedly, it crowns him who deserves the crown; do you pretend to know better than Providence? When matters are settled--when one rule has replaced another--when success is the scale in which truth and falsehood are weighed, in one side the catastrophe, in the other the triumph; then doubt is no longer possible, the honest man rallies to the winning side, and, although it may happen to serve his fortune and his family, he does not allow himself to be influenced by that consideration, but, thinking only of the public weal, holds out his hand heartily to the conqueror.

  What would become of the state if no one consented to serve it? Would not everything come to a standstill? To keep his place is the duty of a good citizen. Learn to sacrifice your secret preferences. Appointments must be filled, and some one must necessarily sacrifice himself. To be faithful to public functions is true fidelity. The retirement of public officials would paralyse the state. What! banish yourself!--how weak! As an example?--what vanity! As a defiance?--what audacity! What do you set yourself up to be, I wonder? Learn that we are just as good as you. If we chose, we, too, could be intractable and untamable, and do worse things than you; but we prefer to be sensible people. Because I am a Trimalcion, you think that I could not be a Cato! What nonsense.