The Man Who Laughs

by Victor Hugo

  A part of her religion she derived from that ugliness.

  Josiana, beautiful and philosophical, was a cause of vexation to the queen.

  To an ugly queen a pretty duchess is not an agreeable sister.

  There was another grievance, Josiana's "improper" birth.

  Anne was the daughter of Anne Hyde, a simple gentlewoman, legitimately, but vexatiously, married by James II when Duke of York. Anne, having this inferior blood in her veins, felt herself but half royal, and Josiana, having come into the world quite irregularly, drew closer attention to the incorrectness, less great, but really existing, in the birth of the queen. The daughter of mésalliance looked without love upon the daughter of bastardy, so near her. It was an unpleasant resemblance. Josiana had a right to say to Anne, "My mother was at least as good as yours." At court no one said so, but they evidently thought it. This was bore to her Royal Majesty. Why this Josiana? What had put it into her head to be born? What good was a Josiana? Certain relationships are detrimental.

  Nevertheless, Anne smiled on Josiana.

  Perhaps she might even have liked her, had she not been her sister.

  * * *

  VI

  BARKILPHEDRO

  IT IS USEFUL to know what people do, and a certain surveillance is wise. Josiana had Lord David watched by a little creature of hers, in whom she reposed confidence, and whose name was Barkilphedro.

  Lord David had Josiana discreetly observed by a creature of his, of whom he was sure, and whose name was Barkilphedro.

  Queen Anne, on her part, kept herself secretly informed of the actions and conduct of the Duchess Josiana, her bastard sister, and of Lord David, her future brother-in-law by the left hand, by a creature of hers, on whom she counted fully, and whose name was Barkilphedro.

  This Barkilphedro had his fingers on that keyboard--Josiana, Lord David, a queen. A man between two women. What modulations possible! What amalgamation of souls!

  Barkilphedro had not always held the magnificent position of whispering into three ears.

  He was an old servant of the Duke of York. He had tried to be a churchman but had failed. The Pulse of York, an English and a Roman prince, compounded of royal Popery and legal Anglicanism, had his Catholic house and his Protestant house, and might have pushed Barkilphedro in one or the other hierarchy; but he did not judge him to be Catholic enough to make him almoner, or Protestant enough to make him chaplain. So that between two religions, Barkilphedro found himself with his soul on the ground.

  Not a bad posture, either, for certain reptile souls. Certain ways are impracticable, except by crawling flat on the belly.

  An obscure but fattening servitude had long made up Barkilphedro's whole existence. Service is something; but he wanted power besides. He was, perhaps, about to reach it when James II fell. He had to begin all over again. Nothing to do under William III, a sullen prince, and exercising in his mode of reigning a prudery which he believed to be probity. Barkilphedro, when his protector, James II, was dethroned, did not lapse all at once into rags. There is a something which survives deposed princes, and which feeds and sustains their parasites. The remains of the exhaustible sap causes leaves to live on for two or three days on the branches of the uprooted tree; then, all at once, the leaf yellows and dries up: and thus it is with the courtier.

  Thanks to that embalming which is called legitimacy, the prince himself, although fallen and cast away, lasts and keeps preserved; it is not so with the courtier, much more dead--than the king. The king, beyond there, is a mummy; the courtier, here, is a phantom. To be the shadow of a shadow is leanness indeed. Hence Barkilphedro became famished. Then he took up the character of a man of letters.

  But he was thrust back even from the kitchens. Sometimes he knew not where to sleep. "Who will give me shelter?" he would ask. He struggled on. A11 that is interesting in patience in distress he possessed. He had, besides, the talent of the termite--knowing how to bore a hole from the bottom to the top. By dint of making use of the name of James II, of old memories, of fables of fidelity, of touching stories, he pierced as far as the Duchess Josiana's heart.

  Josiana took a liking to this man of poverty and wit, an interesting combination. She presented him to Lord Dirry-Moir, gave him a shelter in the servants' hall among her domestics, retained him in her household, was kind to him, and sometimes even spoke to him. Barkilphedro felt neither hunger nor cold again. Josiana addressed him in the second person; it was the fashion for great ladies to do so to men of letters who allowed it. The Marquis de Mailly received Roy, whom she had never seen before, in bed, and said to him, "C'est toi qui as fait l'Année galante! Bon jour." Later on. the men of letters returned the custom. The day came when Fabre d'Eglantine said to the Duchesse de Rohan:

  "N'est-tu pas la Chabot?"

  For Barkilphedro to be "thee'd" and "thou'd" was a success; he was overjoyed by it. He had aspired to this contemptuous familiarity.

  "Lady Josiana thees-and-thous me," he would say to himself. And he would rub his hands. He profited by this theeing-and-thouing to make further way. He became a sort of constant attendant in Josiana's private rooms; in no way troublesome; unperceived; the duchess would almost have changed her shift before him. All this, however, was precarious. Barkilphedro was aiming at a position. A duchess was half-way; an underground passage which did not lead to the queen was having bored for nothing.

  One day Barkilphedro said to Josiana:

  "Would your Grace like to make my fortune?"

  "What dost thou want?"

  "An appointment."

  "An appointment? for thee!"

  "Yes, madame."

  "What an idea! thou to ask for an appointment! thou, who art good for nothing."

  "That's just the reason."

  Josiana burst out laughing.

  "Among the offices to which thou art unsuited, which dost thou desire?"

  "That of cork drawer of the bottles of the ocean."

  Josiana's laughter redoubled. "What meanest thou? Thou art fooling."

  "No, madame."

  "To amuse myself, I shall answer you seriously," said the duchess. "What dost thou wish to be? Repeat it."

  "Uncorker of the bottles of the ocean."

  "Everything is possible at court. Is there an appointment of that kind?"

  "Yes, madame."

  "This is news to me. Go on."

  "There is such an appointment."

  "Swear it on the soul which thou dost not possess.

  "I swear it."

  "I do not believe thee."

  "Thank you, madame."

  "Then thou wishest?--Begin again."

  "To uncork the bottles of the ocean."

  "That is a situation which can give little trouble. It is like grooming a bronze horse."

  "Very nearly."

  "Nothing to do. Well, 'tis a situation to suit thee. Thou art good for that much."

  "You see I am good for something."

  "Come! thou art talking nonsense. Is there such an appointment i"

  Barkilphedro assumed an attitude of deferential gravity.

  "Madame, you had an august father, James II, tile king, and you have an illustrious brother-in-law, George of Denmark, Duke of Cumberland; your father was, and your brother is, Lord High Admiral of England----"

  "Is what thou tellest me fresh news? I know all that as well as thou."

  "But here is what your Grace does not know. In the sea there are three kinds of things: those at the bottom, lagan; those which float, flotsam; those which the sea throws up on the shore, jetsam."

  "And then?"

  "These three things--lagan, flotsam, and jetsam--belong to the Lord High Admiral."

  "And then?"

  "Your Grace understands."

  "No."

  "All that is in the sea, all that sinks, all that floats, all that is cast ashore--all belongs to the Admiral of England."

  "Everything! Really? And then?"

  "Except the sturgeon, which belongs to
the king."

  "I should have thought," said Josiana, "all that would have belonged to Neptune."

  "Neptune is a fool. He has given up everything. He has allowed the English to take everything."

  "Finish what thou wert saying."

  "'Prizes of the sea' is the name given to such treasure-trove."

  "Be it so."

  "It is boundless: there is always something floating, something being cast up. It is the contribution of the sea--the tax which the ocean pays to England."

  "With all my heart. But pray conclude."

  "Your Grace understands that in this way the ocean creates a department."

  "Where?"

  "At the Admiralty."

  "What department?"

  "The Sea Prize Department."

  "Well?"

  "The department is subdivided into three offices--Lagan, Flotsam, and Jetsam--and in each there is an of ricer."

  "And then?"

  "A ship at sea writes to give notice on any subject to those on land;--that it is sailing in such a latitude--that it has met a sea monster--that it is in sight of shore--that it is in distress--that it is about to founder--that it is lost, etc. The captain takes a bottle, puts into it a bit of paper on which he has written the information, corks up the flask, and casts it into the sea. If the bottle goes to the bottom, it is in the department of the lagan officer if it floats, it is in the department of the flotsam officer, if it be thrown upon shore, it concerns the jetsam officer."

  "And wouldst thou like to be the jetsam officer?"

  "Precisely so."

  "And that is what thou callest uncorking the bottles of the ocean?"

  "Since there is such an appointment."

  "Why dost thou wish for the last-named place in preference to both the others?"

  "Because it is vacant just now."

  "In what does the appointment consist?"

  "Madame, in 1598 a tarred bottle, picked up by a man, conger-fishing on the strand of Epidium Promontorium, was brought to Queen Elizabeth; and a parchment drawn out of it gave information to England that Holland had taken, without saying anything about it, an unknown country, Nova Zembla; that the capture had taken place in June, 1596; that in that country people were eaten by bears; and that the manner of passing the winter was described on a paper inclosed in a musket-case hanging in the chimney of the wooden house built in the island, and left by the Dutchmen, who were all dead: and that the chimney was built of a barrel with the end knocked out, sunk into the roof."

  "I don't understand much of thy rigmarole."

  "Be it so. Elizabeth understood. A country the more for Holland was a country the less for England. The bottle which had given the information was held to be of importance; and thenceforward an order was issued that anybody who should find a sealed bottle on the seashore should take it to the Lord High Admiral of England, under pain of the gallows. The Admiral intrusts the opening of such bottles to an officer, who presents the contents to the queen, if there be reason for so doing."

  "Are many such bottles brought to the Admiralty?"

  "But few. But it's all the same. The appointment exists. There is for the officer a room and lodgings at the Admiralty."

  "And for that way of doing nothing, how is one paid?"

  "One hundred guineas a year."

  "And thou wouldst trouble me for that much?"

  "It is enough to live upon."

  "Like a beggar."

  "As it becomes one of my sort."

  "One hundred guineas! It's a bagatelle."

  "What keeps you for a minute, keeps us for a year. That's the advantage of the poor."

  "Thou shalt have the place."

  A week afterward, thanks to Josiana's exertions, thanks to the influence of Lord David Dirry-Moir, Barkilphedro--safe thenceforward, drawn out of his precarious existence, lodged, and boarded, with a salary of a hundred guineas--was installed at the Admiralty.

  * * *

  VII

  BARKILPHEDRO GNAWS HIS WAY

  THERE IS one thing the most pressing of all: to be ungrateful.

  Barkilphedro was not wanting therein.

  Having received so many benefits from Josiana, he had naturally but one thought,--to revenge himself on her.

  When we add that Josiana was beautiful, great, young rich, powerful, illustrious, while Barkilphedro was ugly, little, old, poor, dependent, obscure, he must necessarily revenge himself for all this as well.

  When a man is made out of night, how is he to forgive so many beams of light?

  Barkilphedro was an Irishman who had denied Ireland--a bad species.

  Barkilphedro had but one thing in his favour,--that he had a very big belly. A big belly passes for a sign of kind-heartedness. Yet his belly was but an addition to Barkilphedro's hypocrisy; for the man was full of malice.

  What was Barkilphedro's ape? None. The age necessary for his project of the moment. He was old in his wrinkles and gray hairs, young in the activity of his mind. He was active and ponderous; a sort of hippopotamus-monkey. A royalist, certainly; a republican--who knows? a Catholic, perhaps; a Protestant, without doubt. For Stuart, probably; for Brunswick, evidently. To be For, is a power only on the condition of being at the same time Against. Barkilphedro practiced this wisdom.

  The appointment of drawer of the bottles of the ocean was not as absurd as Barkilphedro had appeared to make out. The complaints, which would in these times be termed declamations, of Garcia Fernandez in his Chart-Book of the Sea, against the robbery of jetsam, called right of wreck, and against the pillage of wreck by the inhabitants of the coast, had created a sensation in England, and had obtained for the shipwrecked this reform--that their goods, chattels, and property, instead of being stolen by the country-people, were confiscated by the Lord High Admiral. All the débris of the sea cast upon the English shore--merchandise, broken hulls of ships, bales, chests, etc.--belonged to the Lord High Admiral; but--and here was revealed the importance of the place asked for by Barkilphedro--the floating receptacles containing messages and declarations awakened particularly the attention of the Admiralty. Shipwrecks are one of England's gravest cares. Navigation being her life, ship-wreck is her anxiety. England is kept in perpetual care by the sea. The little glass bottle thrown to the waves by the doomed ship contains final intelligence, precious from every point of view. Intelligence concerning the ship, intelligence concerning the crew, intelligence concerning the place, the time, the manner of loss, intelligence concerning the winds which have broken up the vessel, intelligence concerning the currents which bore the floating flask ashore. The situation filled by Barkilphedro has been abolished more than a century, but it had its real utility. The last holder was William Hussey, of Doddington, in Lincolnshire. The man who held it was a sort of guardian of the things of the sea. All the closed and sealed-up vessels, bottles, flasks, jars, thrown upon the English coast by the tide, were brought to him. He alone had the right to open them; he was first in the secrets of their contents; he put them in order, and ticketed them with his signature. The expression "loger un papier au greffe," still used in the Channel Islands, is thence derived. However, one precaution was certainly taken. Not one of these bottles could be unsealed except in the presence of two jurors of the Admiralty sworn to secrecy, who signed, conjointly with the holder of the jetsam office, the official report of the opening. But these jurors being held to secrecy, there resulted for Barkilphedro a certain discretionary latitude; it depended upon him, to a certain extent, to suppress a fact or bring it to light.

  These fragile floating messages were far from being what Barkilphedro had told Josiana, rare and insignificant. Sometimes they reached land with little delay; at others, after many years. That depended on the winds and the currents. The fashion of casting bottles on the surface of the sea has somewhat passed away, like that of vowing offerings, but in those religious times, those who were about to die were glad thus to send their last thought to God and to men, and at times these messages from th
e sea were plentiful at the Admiralty. A parchment preserved in the hall at Audlyene (ancient spelling), with notes by the Earl of Suffolk, Grand Treasurer of England under James I, bears witness that in the one year, 1615, fifty-two flasks, bladders, and tarred vessels, containing mention of sinking ships, were brought and registered in the records of the Lord High Admiral.

  Court appointments are the drop of oil in the widow's cruse, they ever increase. Thus it is that the porter has become chancellor, and the groom, constable. The special officer charged with the appointment desired and obtained by Barkilphedro was invariably a confidential man. Elizabeth had wished that it should be so. At court, to speak of confidence is to speak of intrigue, and to speak of intrigue is to speak of advancement. This functionary had come to be a personage of some consideration. He was a clerk, and ranked directly after the two grooms of the almonry. He had the right of entrance into the palace, but we must add, what was called the humble entrance--humilis introïtus--and even into the bedchamber. For it was the custom that he should inform the monarch, on occasions of sufficient importance, of the objects found, which were often very curious: the wills of men in despair--farewells cast to fatherland--revelations of falsified logs, bills of lading, and crimes committed at sea, legacies to the crown, etc., that he should maintain his records in communication with the court, and should account, from time to time, to the king or queen, concerning the opening of these ill-omened bottles. It was the black cabinet of the ocean.

  Elizabeth, who was always glad of an opportunity of speaking Latin, used to ask Tonfield, of Coley in Berkshire, jetsam officer of her day, when he brought her one of these papers cast up by the sea--"Quid mihi scribit Neptunus?" (What does Neptune write me?)

  The way had been eaten, the insect had succeeded.

  Barkilphedro approached the queen.

  This was all he wanted.

  To make his fortune?

  No.

  To unmake that of others?

  A greater happiness.

  To hurt is to enjoy.