The Man Who Laughs

by Victor Hugo

  To have within one the desire of injuring, vague but implacable, and never to lose sight of it, is not given to all.

  Barkilphedro possessed that fixity of intention.

  As the bulldog holds on with his jaws, so did his thought.

  To feel himself inexorable gave him a depth of gloomy satisfaction. As long as he had a prey under his teeth, or in his soul, a certainty of evil-doing, he wanted nothing.

  He was happy, shivering in the cold which his neighbour was suffering.

  To be malignant is an opulence. Such a man is believed to be poor, and, in truth, is so; but he has all his riches in malice, and prefers having them so. Everything is in what contents one. To do a bad turn, which is the same as a good turn, is better than money. Bad for him who endures, good for him who does it. Catesby, the colleague of Guy Fawkes in the Popish powder plot, said: "To see Parliament blown upside down, I wouldn't miss it for a million sterling."

  What was Barkilphedro? That meanest and most terrible of things--an envious man.

  Envy is a thing ever easily placed at court.

  Courts abound in impertinent people, in idlers, in rich loungers hungering for gossip, in those who seek for needles in trusses of hay, in triflers, in banterers bantered, in witty ninnies, who can not do without converse with an envious man.

  What a refreshing thing is the evil spoken to you of others.

  Envy is good stuff to make a spy. There is a profound analogy between that natural passion, envy, and that social function, espionage. The spy hunts on others' account, like the dog. The envious man hunts on his own, like the cat.

  A fierce Myself, such is the envious man.

  He had other qualities. Barkilphedro was discreet, secret, concrete. He kept in everything and racked himself with his hate. Enormous baseness implies enormous vanity. He was liked by those whom he amused, and hated by all others; but he felt that he was disdained by those who hated him, and despised by those who liked him. He restrained himself. All his gall simmered noiselessly in his hostile resignation. He was indignant, as if rogues had the right to be so. He was the furies' silent prey. To swallow everything was his talent. There were deaf wraths within him, frenzies of interior rage, black and brooding flames unseen; he was a smoke-consuming man of passion. The surface was smiling. He was kind, prompt, easy, amiable, obliging. Never mind to whom, never mind where, he bowed. For a breath of wind he inclined to the earth. What a source of fortune to have a reed for a spine!

  Such concealed and venomous beings are not so rare as is believed. We live surrounded by ill-omened crawling things. Wherefore the malevolent? A keen question! The dreamer constantly proposes it to himself, and the thinker never resolves it. Hence the sad eye of the philosophers ever fixed upon that mountain of darkness which is destiny, and from the top of which the colossal spectre of evil casts handfuls of serpents over the earth.

  Barkilphedro's body was obese, and his face lean. A fat bust and a bony countenance. His nails were channeled and short, his fingers knotted, his thumbs flat, his hair coarse, his temples wide apart, and his forehead a murderer's, broad and low. The littleness of his eye was hidden under his bushy eyebrows. His nose, long, sharp, and flabby, nearly met his mouth. Barkilphedro, properly attired as an emperor, would have somewhat resembled Domitian. His face of muddy yellow might have been modeled in slimy paste--his immovable cheeks were like putty; he had all kinds of ugly refractory wrinkles; the angle of his jaw was massive, his chin heavy, his ear underbred. In repose, and seen in profile, his upper lip was raised at an acute angle, showing two teeth. Those teeth seemed to look at you. The teeth can look, just as the eye can bite.

  Patience, temperance, continence, reserve, self-control, amenity, deference, gentleness, politeness, sobriety, chastity, completed and finished Barkilphedro. He calumniated those virtues by their possession.

  In a short time Barkilphedro took a foothold at court.

  * * *

  VIII

  INFERI

  THERE ARE two ways of making a footing at court. In the clouds, and you are august; in the mud, and you are powerful.

  In the first case, you belong to Olympus.

  In the second case, you belong to the private closet.

  He who belongs to Olympus has but the thunderbolt, he who is of the private closet has the police.

  The private closet contains all the instruments of government, and sometimes, for it is a traitor, its chastisement. Heliogabalus goes there to die. Then it is called the latrines.

  Generally it is less tragic. It is there that Alberoni admires Vendôme. Royal personages willingly make it their place of audience. It takes the place of the throne. Louis XIV receives the Duchess of Burgundy there. Philip V is shoulder to shoulder there with the queen. The priest penetrates into it. The private closet is sometimes a branch of the confessional. Therefore it is that at court there are underground fortunes--not always the least.

  If, under Louis XI, you would be great, be Pierre de Rohan, Marshal of France; if you would be influential, be Olivier le Daim, the barber; if you would, under Mary de Medicis, be glorious, be Sillery, the Chancellor; if you would be a person of consideration, be La Hannon, the maid; if you would, under Louis XV, be illustrious, be Choiseul, the minister; if you would be formidable, be Lebel, the valet. Given Louis XIV, Bontemps, who makes his bed, is more powerful than Louvois, who raises his armies, and Turenne, who gains his victories. From Richelieu take Père Joseph, and you have Richelieu nearly empty. There is the mystery the less. His eminence in scarlet is magnificent; his eminence in gray is terrible. What power in being a worm! All the Narvaez amalgamated with all the O'Donnells do less work than one Sor Patrocinio.

  Of course, the condition of this power is littleness. If you would remain powerful, remain petty. Be Nothingness. The serpent in repose, twisted into a circle, is a figure at the same time of the infinite and of naught.

  One of these viper-like fortunes had fallen to Barkilphedro.

  He had crawled where he wanted.

  Flat beasts can get in everywhere. Louis XIV had bugs in his bed and Jesuits in his policy.

  The incompatibility is nil.

  In this world everything is a clock. To gravitate is to oscillate. One pole is attracted to the other. Francis I is attracted by Triboulet; Louis XIV is attracted by Lebel. There exists a deep affinity between extreme elevation and extreme debasement.

  It is abasement which directs. Nothing is easier of comprehension. It is he who is below who pulls the strings.

  No position more convenient.

  He is the eye, and has the ear.

  He is the eye of the government; he has the ear of the king.

  To have the eye of the king is to draw and shut, at one's whim, the bolt of the royal conscience, and to throw into that conscience whatever one wishes. The mind of the king is his cupboard; if he be a ragpicker, it is his basket. The ears of kings belong not to kings, and therefore it is that, on the whole, the poor devils are not altogether responsible for their actions. He who does not possess his own thought does not possess his own deed.

  A king obeys--what?

  Any evil spirit buzzing from outside in his ear; a noisome fly of the abyss.

  This buzzing commands. A reign is a dictation.

  The loud voice is the sovereign; the low voice, sovereignty.

  Those who know how to distinguish, in a reign, this low voice, and to hear what it whispers to the loud, are the real historians.

  * * *

  IX

  HATE IS AS STRONG AS LOVE

  QUEEN ANNE had several of these low voices about her. Barkilphedro was one.

  Besides the queen, he secretly worked, influenced, and plotted upon Lady Josiana and Lord David. As we have said, he whispered in three ears, one more than Dangeau. Dangeau whispered in but two, in the days when, thrusting himself between Louis XIV, in love with Henrietta. his sister-in-law, and Henrietta, in love with Louis XIV, her brother-in-law, he being Louis' secretary, without the knowled
ge of Henrietta, and Henrietta's without the knowledge of Louis, he wrote the questions and answers of both the love-making marionettes.

  Barkilphedro was so cheerful, so accepting, so incapable of taking up the defence of anybody, possessing so little devotion at bottom, so ugly, so mischievous, that it was quite natural that a regal personage should come to be unable to do without him. Once Anne had tasted Barkilphedro she would have no other flatterer. He flattered her as they flattered Louis the Great, by stinging her neighbours. "The king being ignorant," says Madame de Montchevreuil, "one is obliged to mock at the savants."

  To poison the sting, from time to time, is the acme of art. Nero loves to see Locusta at work.

  Royal palaces are very easily entered; these madrepores have a way in soon guessed at, contrived, examined, and scooped out at need by the gnawing thing which is called the courtier. A pretext to enter is sufficient. Barkilphedro, having found this pretext, his position with the queen soon became the same as that with the Duchess Josiana--that of an indispensable domestic animal. A witticism risked one day by him immediately led to his perfect understanding of the queen and how to estimate exactly her kindness of heart. The queen was greatly attached to her Lord Steward, William Cavendish, Duke of Devonshire, who was a great fool. This lord, who had obtained every Oxford degree and did not know how to spell, one fine morning committed the folly of dying. To die is a very imprudent thing at court, for there is then no further restraint in speaking of you. The queen, in the presence of Barkilphedro, lamented the event, finally exclaiming, with a sigh:

  "It is a pity that so many virtues should have been borne, and served by so poor an intellect."

  "Dieu veuille avoir son âne!" whispered Barkilphedro, in a low voice, and in French.

  The queen smiled. Barkilphedro noted the smile.

  His conclusion was that biting pleased.

  Free licence had been given to his spite. From that day he thrust his curiosity everywhere, and his malignity with it. He was given his way, so much was he feared. He who can make the king laugh makes the others tremble.

  He was a powerful buffoon.

  Every day he worked his way forward underground. Barkilphedro became a necessity. Many great people honoured him with their confidence, to the extent of charging him, when they required him, with their disgraceful commissions.

  There are wheels within wheels at court Barkilphedro became the motive power. Have you remarked, in certain mechanisms, the smallness of the motive wheel?

  Josiana, in particular, who, as we have explained, made use of Barkilphedro's talents as a spy, reposed such confidence in him that she had not hesitated to intrust him with one of the master-keys of her apartments, by means of which he was able to enter them at any hour. This excessive license of insight into private life was in fashion in the seventeenth century. It was called "giving the key." Josiana had given two of these confidential keys--Lord David had one, Barkilphedro the other. However, to enter straight into a bedchamber was, in the old code of manners, a thing not in the least out of the way. Thence resulted incidents. La Ferté, suddenly drawing back the bed curtains of Mademoiselle Lafont, found, inside, Sainson, the black musketeer, etc., etc.

  Barkilphedro excelled in making the cunning discoveries which place the great in the power of the little. His walk in the dark was winding, soft, clever. Like every perfect spy, he was composed of the inclemency of the executioner and the patience of a micrograph. He was a born courtier. Every courtier is a noctambulist. The courtier prowls in the night, which is called power. He carries a dark lantern in his hand. He lights up the spot he wishes, and remains in darkness himself. What he seeks with his lantern is not a man, it is a fool. What he finds is the king.

  Kings do not like to see those about them pretend to greatness. Irony aimed at any one except themselves has a charm for them. The talent of Barkilphedro consisted in a perpetual dwarfing of the peers and princes to the advantage of her Majesty's stature, thus increased in proportion. The master-key held by Barkilphedro was made with two sets of wards, one at each end, so as to open the inner apartments in both Josiana's favourite residences--Hunkerville House in London, Corleone Lodge at Windsor. These two houses were part of the Clancharlie inheritance. Hunkerville House was close to Oldgate. Oldgate was a gate of London, which was entered by the Harwich road, and on which was displayed a statue of Charles II, with a painted angel on his head, and beneath his feet a carved lion and unicorn. From Hunkerville House, in an easterly wind, you heard the peals of St. Marylebone. Corleone Lodge was a Florentine palace of brick and stone, with a marble colonnade, built on pilework, at Windsor, at the head of the wooden bridge, and having one of the finest courts in England.

  In the latter palace, near Windsor Castle, Josiana was within the queen's reach. Nevertheless, Josiana liked it.

  Scarcely anything in appearance, everything in the root; such was the influence of Barkilphedro over the queen. There is nothing more difficult than to drag up these bad grasses of the court--they take a deep root, and offer no hold above the surface. To root out a Roquelaure, a Triboulet, or a Brummel, is almost impossible.

  From day to day, and more and more, did the queen take Barkilphedro into her good graces. Sarah Jennings is famous; Barkilphedro is unknown. His existence remains ignored. The name of Barkilphedro has not reached as far as history. All the moles are not caught by the mole-trapper.

  Barkilphedro, once a candidate for orders, had studied a little of everything. Skimming all things leaves naught for result. One may be victim of the omnis res scibilis. Having the vessel of the Danaïdes in one's head is the misfortune of a whole race of learned men, who may be termed the sterile. What Barkilphedro had put into his brain had left it empty.

  The mind, like nature, abhors vacuum. Into emptiness nature puts love; the mind often puts hate. Hate occupies.

  Hate for hate's sake exists. Art for art's sake exists in nature more than is believed.

  A man hates--he must do something.

  Gratuitous hate formidable word! It means hate which is itself its own payment.

  The bear lives by licking his claws.

  Not indefinitely, of course. The claws must be revictualed. Something must be put under them.

  Hate indistinct is sweet and suffices for a time; but one must end by having an object. An animosity diffused over creation is exhausting, like every solitary pleasure. Hate without an object is like a shooting-match without a target. What lends interest to the game is a heart to be pierced.

  One can not hate solely for honour; some seasoning is necessary--a man, a woman, somebody, to destroy.

  This service of making the game interesting; of offering an end; of throwing passion into hate by fixing it on an object; of amusing the hunter by the sight of his living prey; of giving the watcher the hope of the smoking and boiling blood about to flow; of amusing the birdcatcher by the credulity of the uselessly-winged lark; of being a victim, unknowingly reared for murder by a master-mind; all this exquisite and horrible service, of which the person rendering it is unconscious, Josiana rendered Barkilphedro.

  Thought is a projectile. Barkilphedro had, from the first day, begun to aim at Josiana the evil intentions which were in his mind. An intention and a carbine are alike. Barkilphedro aimed at Josiana, directing against the duchess all his secret malice. That astonishes you! What has the bird done at which you fire? You want to eat it, you say. And so it was with Barkilphedro.

  Josiana could not be struck in the heart--the spot where the enigma lies is hard to wound; but she could be struck in the head--that is, in her pride.

  It was there that she thought herself strong, and that she was weak.

  Barkilphedro had found it out.

  If Josiana had been able to see clearly through the night of Barkilphedro, if she had been able to distinguish what lay in ambush behind his smile, that proud woman, so highly situated, would have trembled. Fortunately for the tranquillity of her sleep, she was in complete ignorance of what was in
the man.

  The unexpected spreads, one knows not whence. The profound depths of life are dangerous. There is no small hate. Hate is always enormous. It preserves its stature in the smallest being, and remains a monster. An elephant hated by a worm is in danger.

  Even before he struck, Barkilphedro felt, with joy, the foretaste of the evil action which he was about to commit. He did not as yet know what he was going to do to Josiana; but he had made up his mind to do something. To have come to this decision was a great step taken.

  To crush Josiana utterly would have been too great a triumph. He did not hope for so much; but to humiliate her, lessen her, bring her grief, redden her proud eyes with tears of rage--what a success! He counted on it. Tenacious, diligent, faithful to the torment of his neighbour, not to be torn from his purpose, nature had not formed him for nothing. He well understood how to find the flaw in Josiana's golden armour, and how to make the blood of that Olympian flow. What benefit, we ask again, would accrue to him in so doing? An immense benefit; doing evil to one who had done good to him.

  What is an envious man? An ungrateful one. He hates the light which lights and warms him. Zoilus hated that benefit to man, Homer.

  To inflict on Josiana what would nowadays be called vivisection--to place her, all convulsed, on his anatomical table; to dissect her alive, at his leisure, in some surgery; to cut her up, as an amateur, while she should scream: this dream delighted Barkilphedro.

  To arrive at this result it was necessary to suffer somewhat himself; he did so willingly. We may pinch ourselves with our own pincers. The knife as it shuts cuts our fingers. What does it matter? That he should partake of Josiana's torture was a matter of little moment. The executioner handling the red-hot iron, when about to brand a prisoner, takes no heed of a little burn. Because another suffers much, he suffers nothing. To see the victim's writhings takes all pain from the inflicter.