The Man Who Laughs

by Victor Hugo

  The prisoner opened his eyes, lifted his head, and, with a voice strangely resonant of agony, but which had still an indescribable calm mingled with its hoarseness, pronounced in excruciating accents from under the mass of stones, words, to pronounce each of which he had to lift that which was like the slab of a tomb placed upon him. He spoke:

  "I swore to keep the secret. I have kept it as long as I could. Men of dark lives are faithful, and hell has its honour. Now silence is useless. So be it! For this reason I speak. Well--yes; 'tis he! We did it between us--the king and I! The king, by his will; I, by my art!"

  And looking at Gwynplaine: "Now laugh forever!"

  And he himself began to laugh.

  This second laugh, wilder yet than the first, might have been taken for a sob.

  The laugh ceased, and the man lay back. His eyelids closed.

  The sheriff, who had allowed the prisoner to speak, resumed: "All which is placed on record."

  He gave the secretary time to write, and then said: "Hardquanonne, by the terms of the law, after confrontation followed by identification: after the third reading of the declarations of your accomplices, since confirmed by your recognition and confession, and after your renewed avowal, you are about to be relieved from these irons, and placed at the good pleasure of her Majesty to be hanged as plagiary."

  "Plagiary," said the sergeant of the coif. "That is to say, a buyer and seller of children. Law of the Visigoths, seventh book, third section, paragraph Usurpaverit, and Salic law, section the forty-first, paragraph the second, and law of the Frisons, section the twenty-first, De Plagio; and Alexander Nequam says:

  'Qui pueros vendis, plagiarius est tibi nomen.'"

  The sheriff placed the parchment on the table, laid down his spectacles, took up the nosegay, and said: "End of la peine forte et dure. Hardquanonne, thank her Majesty."

  By a sign, the justice of the quorum set in motion the man dressed in leather.

  This man, who was the executioner's assistant, "groom of the gibbet," the old charters call him, went to the prisoner, took off the stones, one by one, from his chest, and lifted the plate of iron up, exposing the wretch's crushed sides. Then he freed his wrists and ankle-bones from the four chains that fastened him to the pillars.

  The prisoner, released alike from stones and chains, lay flat on the ground, his eyes closed, his arms and legs apart, like a crucified man taken down from a cross.

  "Hardquanonne," said the sheriff, "arise!"

  The prisoner did not move.

  The groom of the gibbet took up a hand and let it go; the hand fell back. The other hand, being raised, fell back likewise.

  The groom of the gibbet seized one foot and then the other, and the heels fell back on the ground.

  The fingers remained inert, and the toes motionless. The naked feet of an extended corpse seem, as it were, to bristle.

  The doctor approached, and drawing from the pocket of his robe a little mirror of steel, put it to the open mouth of Hardquanonne. Then with his fingers he opened the eyelids. They did not close again. The glassy eyeballs remained fixed.

  The doctor rose up and said: "He is dead."

  And he added: "He laughed; that killed him."

  "'Tis of little consequence," said the sheriff. "After confession, life or death is a mere formality."

  Then, pointing to Hardquanonne by a gesture with the nosegay of roses, the sheriff gave the order to the wapentake:

  "A corpse to be carried away to-night."

  The wapentake acquiesced by a nod.

  And the sheriff added:

  "The cemetery of the jail is Opposite."

  The wapentake nodded again.

  The sheriff, holding in his left hand the nosegay and in his right the white wand, placed himself opposite Gwynplaine, who was still seated, and made him a low bow; then assuming another solemn attitude, he turned his head over his shoulder and looking Gwynplaine in the face, said:

  "To you here present, we, Philip Denzill Parsons, knight, sheriff of the county of Surrey, assisted by Aubrey Dominick, Esq., our clerk and registrar, and by our usual officers, duly provided by the direct and special commands of her Majesty, in virtue of our commission, and the rights and duties of our charge, and with authority from the Lord Chancellor of England, the affidavits having been drawn up and recorded, regard being had to the documents communicated by the Admiralty, after verification of attestations and signatures, after declarations read and heard, after confrontation made, all the statements and legal information having been completed, exhausted, and brought to a good and just issue, we signify and declare to you, in order that right may be done, that you are Fermain Clancharlie, Baron Clancharlie and Hunkerville, Marquis de Corleone in Sicily, and a peer of England; and God keep your lordship!"

  And he bowed to him.

  The sergeant on the right, the doctor, the justice of the quorum, the wapentake, the secretary, all the attendants except the executioner, repeated his salutation still more respectfully, and bowed to the ground before Gwynplaine.

  "Ah!" said Gwynplaine; "awake me!"

  And he stood up, pale as death.

  "I come to awake you indeed," said a voice which had not yet been heard.

  A man came out from behind the pillars. As no one had entered the cell since the sheet of iron had gin en passage to the cortege of police, it was clear that this man had been there in the shadow before Gwynplaine had entered, that he had a regular right of attendance, and had been present by appointment and mission. The man was fat and pursy, and wore a court wig and a traveling cloak.

  He was rather old than young, and very precise.

  He saluted Gwynplaine with ease and respect--with the ease of a gentleman-in-waiting, and without the awkwardness of a Judge.

  "Yes," he said, "I have come to awaken you. For twenty-five years you have slept. You have been dreaming. It is time to awake. You believe yourself to be Gwynplaine; you are Clancharlie. You believe yourself to be one of the people; you belong to the peerage. You believe yourself to be of the lowest rank; you are of the highest. You believe yourself a player; you are a senator. You believe yourself poor; you are wealthy. You believe yourself to be of no account; you are important. Awake, my lord!

  Gwynplaine, in a low voice, in which a tremor of fear was to be distinguished, murmured:

  "What does it all mean?"

  "It means, my lord," said the fat man, "that I am called Barkilphedro; that I am an officer of the Admiralty; that this waif, the flask of Hardquanonne, was found on the beach, and was brought to be unsealed by me, according to the duty and prerogative of my office; that I opened it in the presence of two sworn jurors of the Jetsam Office, both members of Parliament, William Brathwait, for the city of Bath, and Thomas Jervois, for Southampton; that the two jurors deciphered and attested the contents of the flask, and signed the necessary affidavit conjointly with me; that I made my report to her Majesty, and by order of the queen all necessary and legal formalities were carried out with the discretion necessary in a matter so delicate; that the last form, the confrontation, has just been carried out; that you have forty thousand pounds a year, that you are a peer of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, a legislator and a judge, a supreme judge, a sovereign legislator, dressed m purple and ermine, equal to princes, like unto emperors; that you have on your brow the coronet of a peer, and that you are about to wed a duchess, the daughter of a king."

  Under this transfiguration, overwhelming him like a series of thunderbolts, Gwynplaine fainted.

  * * *

  II

  THE WAIF KNOWS ITS OWN COURSE

  ALL THIS HAD occurred owing to the circumstance of a soldier having found a bottle on the beach.

  We will relate the facts.

  In all facts there are wheels within wheels.

  One day one of the four gunners composing the garrison of Castle Calshor picked up on the sand at low water a flask covered with wicker, which had been cast up by the tide. This flask, covered with mou
ld, was corked by a tarred bung. The soldier carried the waif to the colonel of the castle, and the colonel sent it to the High Admiral of England. The Admiral meant the Admiralty; with waifs the Admiralty meant Barkilphedro.

  Barkilphedro, having uncorked and emptied the bottle, carried it to the queen. The queen immediately took the matter into consideration.

  Two weighty counselors were instructed and consulted, viz., the Lord Chancellor, who is by law the guardian of the king's conscience, and the Lord Marshal, who is referee in Heraldry and in the pedigrees of the nobility. Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, a Catholic peer, who is hereditary Earl Marshal of England, had sent word by his deputy Earl Marshal, Henry Howard, Earl Bindon, that he would agree with the Lord Chancellor. The Lord Chancellor was William Cowper. We must not confound this chancellor with his namesake and contemporary, William Cowper, the anatomist and commentator on Bidloo, who published a treatise on muscles, in England, at the very time that Etienne Abeille published a history of bones in France. A surgeon is a very different thing from a lord. Lord William Cowper is celebrated for having, with reference to the affair of Talbot Yelverton Viscount Longueville, propounded this opinion: That in the English constitution, the restoration of a peer is more important than the restoration of a king. The flask found at Calshor had awakened his interest in the highest degree. The author of a maxim delights in opportunities to which it may be applied. Here was a case of the restoration of a peer. Search was made. Gwynplaine, by the inscription over his door, was soon found. Neither was Hardquanonne dead. A prison rots a man, but preserves him; if to keep is to preserve. People placed in bastiles were rarely removed. There is little more change in the dungeon than in the tomb. Hardquanonne was still in the prison at Chatham. They had only to put their hands on him. He was transferred from Chatham to London. In the meantime, information w as sought in Switzerland. The facts were found to be correct. They obtained from the local archives at Vévey, at Lausanne, the certificate of Lord Linnæus' marriage in exile, the certificate of his child's birth, the certificate of the decease of the father and mother; and they had duplicates, duly authenticated, made to answer all necessary requirements. All this was done with the most rigid secrecy, with what is called royal promptitude, and with that mole like silence recommended and practiced by Bacon, and later on made law by Blackstone, for affairs connected with the Chancellorship and the State, and in matters termed Parliamentary.

  The jussu regis and the signature Jeffreys were authenticated. To those who have studied pathologically the cases of caprice called "our good will and pleasure," this jussu Regis is very simple. Why should James II, whose credit required the concealment of such acts, have allowed that to be written which endangered their success? The answer is, cynicism--haughty indifference. Oh! you believe that effrontery is confined to abandoned women? The raison d'état is equally abandoned. Et se cupit ante videri. To commit a crime and emblazon it--there is the sum total of history. The king tattooes himself like the convict. Often when it would be to a man's greatest advantage to escape from the hands of the police, or the records of history, he would seem to regret the escape, so great is the love of notoriety. Look at my arm! Observe the design! I am Lacenaire! See, a temple of love and a burning heart pierced through with an arrow! Jussu Regis . It is I, James the Second. A man commits a bad action, and places his mark upon it. To fill up the measure of crime by effrontery, to denounce himself, to cling to his misdeeds, is the insolent bravado of the criminal. Christina seized Monaldeschi, had him confessed and assassinated, and said: "I am the Queen of Sweden, in the palace of the King of France."

  There is the tyrant who conceals himself, like Tiberius; and the tyrant who displays himself, like Philip II. One has the attributes of the scorpion, the other those rather of the leopard. James II was of this latter variety. He had, we know, gay and open countenance, differing so far from Philip. Philip was sullen; James jovial. Both were equally ferocious. James II was an easy-minded tiger; like Philip II, his crimes lay light upon his conscience. He was a monster by the grace of God. Therefore he had nothing to dissimulate or to extenuate, and his assassinations were by divine right. He, too, would not have minded leaving behind him those archives of Simancas, with all his misdeeds dated, classified, labeled, and put in order, each in its compartment, like poisons in the cabinet of a chemist. To set the sign-manual to crimes is right royal.

  Every deed done is a draft drawn on the great invisible paymaster. A bill had just come due with the ominous endorsement, Jussu regis.

  Queen Anne, in one particular unfeminine, seeing that she could keep a secret, demanded a confidential report of so grave a matter from the Lord Chancellor; one of the kind specified as "report to the royal ear." Reports of this kind have been common in all monarchies. At Vienna there was "a counselor of the ear"--an aulic dignitary. It was an ancient Carlovingian office--the auricularius of the old palatine deeds. He who whispers to the emperor.

  William, Baron Cowper, Chancellor of England, whom the queen believed in because he was short-sighted like herself, or even more so, had committed to writing a memorandum commencing thus: "Two birds were subject to Solomon, a lapwing, the Hudbud, who could speak all languages, and an eagle, the Simourganka, who covered with the shadow of his wings a caravan of twenty thousand men. Thus, under another form, Providence," etc. The Lord Chancellor proved the fact that the heir to a peerage had been carried off, mutilated, and then restored. He did not blame James II, who was, after all, the queen's father. He even went so far as to justify him. First, there are ancient monarchical maxims. E senioratu eripimus. In roturagio cadat. Secondly, there is a royal right of mutilation. Chamberlayne asserts the fact. [1] "Corpora et bona nostrorum subjectorum nostra sunt," said James I, of glorious and learned memory. The eyes of dukes of the blood royal have been plucked out for the good of the kingdom. Certain princes, too near to the throne, have been conveniently stifled between mattresses, the cause of death being given out as apoplexy. Now, to stifle is worse than to mutilate. The King of Tunis tore out the eyes of his father, Muley Assem, and his ambassadors have not been the less favourably received by the emperor. Hence the king may order the suppression of a limb like the suppression of a state, etc. It is legal. But one law does not destroy another. "If a drowned man is east up by the water, and is not dead, it is an act of God readjusting one of the king. If the heir be found, let the coronet be given back to him. Thus was it done for Lord Alla, King of Northumberland, who was also a mountebank. Thus should be done to Gwynplaine, who is also a king, seeing that he is a peer. The lowness of the occupation which he has been obliged to follow, under constraint of superior power, does not tarnish the blazon; as in the case of Abdolmumen, who was a king, although he had been a gardener; that of Joseph, who was a saint, although he had been a carpenter; that of Apollo, who was a god, although he had been a shepherd."

  In short, the learned chancellor concluded by advising the reinstatement in all his estates and dignities of Lord Fermain Clancharlie, miscalled Gwynplaine, on the sole condition that he should be confronted with the criminal Hardquanonne, and identified by the same. And on this point the chancellor, as constitutional keeper of the royal conscience, based the royal decision.

  The Lord Chancellor added in a postscript that if Hardquanonne refused to answer, he should be subjected to the peine forte et dure, until the period called the frodmortell, according to the statute of King Athelstane, which orders the confrontation to talkie place on the fourth day. In this there is a certain inconvenience, for if the prisoner dies on the second or third day the confrontation becomes difficult; still the law must be obeyed. The inconvenience of the law makes part and parcel of it.

  In the mind of the Lord Chancellor, however, the recognition of Gwynplaine by Hardquanonne was indubitable.

  Anne, having been made aware of the deformity of Gwynplaine, and not wishing to wrong her sister, on whom had been bestowed the estates of Clancharlie, graciously decided that the Duchess Josiana should be espoused
by the new lord--that is to say, by Gwynplaine.

  The reinstatement of Lord Fermain Clancharlie was, moreover, a very simple afraid the heir being legitimate and in the direct line. In cases of doubtful descent and of peerages in abeyance claimed by collaterals, the House of Lords must be consulted. This (to go no further back) was done in 1782, in the case of the barony of Sydney, claimed by Elizabeth Perry, in 1798, in that of the barony of Beaumont, claimed by Thomas Stapleton; in 1803, in that of the barony of Chandos, claimed by the Reverend Tymewell Brydges; in 1813, in that of the earldom of Banbury, claimed by General Knollys, etc., etc. But the present was no similar case. Here there was no pretence for litigation; the legitimacy was undoubted; the right clear and certain. There was no point to submit to the House, and the queen, assisted by the Lord Chancellor, had power to recognise and admit the new peer.

  Barkilphedro managed everything.

  The affair, thanks to him, was kept so close, the secret was so hermetically sealed, that neither Josiana nor Lord David caught sight of the fearful abyss which was being dug under them. It was easy to deceive Josiana, intrenched as she was behind a rampart of pride. She was self-isolated. As to Lord David, they sent him to sea, off' the coast of Flanders. He was going to lose his peerage, and had no suspicion of it. One circumstance is noteworthy. It happened that at six leagues from the anchorage of the naval station commanded by Lord David, a captain called Halyburton broke through the French fleet. The Earl of Pembroke, President of the Council, proposed that this Captain Halyburton should be made vice-admiral. Anne struck out Halyburton's name, and put Lord David Dirry-Moir's in its place, that he might, when no longer a peer, have the satisfaction of being a vice-admiral.