The Man Who Laughs

by Victor Hugo

  He took off his wig and wiped his forehead.

  "I am a ventriloquist of genius," murmured he. "What talent I displayed I I have equaled Brabant, the engastrimist of Francis I of France. Dea is convinced that Gwynplaine is here."

  "Ursus," said Dea, "where is Gwynplaine?"

  Ursus started, and turned round. Dea was still standing at the back of the stage, alone under the lamp which hung from the ceiling. She was pale, with the pallor of a ghost.

  She added, with an ineffable expression of despair:

  "I know. He has left us. He is gone. I always knew that he had wings."

  And raising her sightless eyes on high, she added:

  "When shall I follow?"

  * * *

  III

  COMPLICATIONS

  URSUS WAS STUNNED.

  He had not sustained the illusion.

  Was it the fault of ventriloquism? Certainly not. He had succeeded in deceiving Fibi and Vinos, who had eyes, although he had not deceived Dea, who was blind. It was because Fibi and Vinos saw with their eyes, while Dea saw with her heart.

  He could not utter a word. He thought to himself, Bos in lingua. The troubled man has an ox on his tongue.

  In his complex emotions, humiliation was the first which dawned on him. Ursus, driven out of his last resource, pondered.

  "I lavish my onomatopoeies in vain."

  Then, like every dreamer, he reviled himself.

  "What a frightful failure! I wore myself out in a pure loss of imitative harmony. But what is to be done next?"

  He looked at Dea. She was silent, and grew paler every moment, as she stood perfectly motionless. Her sightless eyes remained fixed in depths of thought.

  Fortunately, something happened. Ursus saw Master Nicless in the yard, with a candle in his hand, beckoning to him.

  Master Nicless had not assisted at the end of the phantom comedy played by Ursus. Some one had happened to knock at the door of the inn. Master Nicless had gone to open it. There had been two knocks, and twice Master Nicless had disappeared. Ursus, absorbed by his hundred-voiced monologue, had not observed his absence.

  On the mute call of Master Nicless, Ursus descended.

  He approached the tavern-keeper. Ursus put his finger on his lips. Master Nicless put his finger on his lips.

  The two looked at each other thus.

  Each seemed to say to the other, "We will talk, but we will hold our tongues."

  The tavern-keeper silently opened the door of the lower room of the tavern. Master Nicless entered. Ursus entered. There was no one there except these two. On the side looking on the street, both doors and window-shutters were closed.

  The tavern-keeper pushed the door behind him, and shut it in the face of the inquisitive Govicum.

  Master Nicless placed the candle on the table.

  A low, whispering dialogue began.

  "Master Ursus?"

  "Master Nicless?"

  "I understand at last."

  "Nonsense!"

  "You wished the poor blind girl to think that all was going on as usual."

  "There is no law against my being a ventriloquist."

  "You are a clever fellow."

  "No."

  "It is wonderful how you manage all that you wish to do."

  "I tell you, it is not."

  "Now, I have something to tell you."

  "Is it about politics?"

  "I don't know."

  "Because, in that case I could not listen to you."

  "Look here, while you were playing actors and audience by yourself, some one knocked at the door of the tavern."

  "Some one knocked at the door?"

  "Yes."

  "I don't like that."

  "Nor I, either."

  "And then?"

  "And then I opened it."

  "Who was it that knocked?"

  "Some one who spoke to me."

  "What did he say?"

  "I listened to him."

  "What did you answer?"

  "Nothing. I came back to see you play."

  "And--?"

  "Some one knocked a second time."

  "Who--the same person?"

  "No--another."

  "Some one else to speak to you?"

  "Some one who said nothing."

  "I like that better."

  "I do not."

  "Explain yourself, Master Nicless."

  "Guess who called the first time."

  "I have no leisure to be Oedipus."

  "It was the proprietor of the circus."

  "Over the way?"

  "Over the way."

  "Whence comes all that fearful music. Well?"

  "Well, Master Ursus, he makes you a proposal."

  "A proposal?"

  "A proposal."

  "Why?"

  "Because----"

  "You have an advantage over me, Master Nicless; just now you solved my enigma, and now I can not understand yours."

  "The proprietor of the circus commissioned me to tell you that he had seen the cortège of police pass this morning, and that he, the proprietor of the circus, wishing to prove that he is your friend, offers to buy you for fifty pounds, ready money, your caravan, the green box, your two horses, your trumpets, with the women that blow them, your play, with the blind girl who sings in it, your wolf, and yourself."

  Ursus smiled a haughty smile.

  "Innkeeper, tell the proprietor of the circus that Gwynplaine is coming back."

  The innkeeper took something from a chair in the darkness, and turning toward Ursus with both hands raised, dangled from one hand a cloak, and from the other a leather esclavine, a felt hat, and a jacket.

  And Master Nicless said:

  "The man who knocked the second time was connected with the police; he came in and left without saying a word, and brought these things."

  Ursus recognised the esclavine, the jacket, the hat, and the cloak of Gwynplaine.

  * * *

  IV

  MOENIBUS SURDIS CAMPANA MUTA

  URSUS SMOOTHED the felt of the hat, touched the cloth of the cloak, the serge of the coat, the leather of the esclavine, and no longer able to doubt whose garments they were, with a gesture at once brief and imperative, and without saying a word, pointed to the door of the inn.

  Master Nicless opened it.

  Ursus rushed out of the tavern.

  Master Nicless looked after him, and saw Ursus run as fast as his old legs would allow, in the direction taken that morning by the wapentake who carried off Gwynplaine. A quarter of an hour afterward, Ursus, out of breath, reached the little street in which stood the back wicket Of the Southwark jail, which he had already watched so many hours.

  This alley was lonely enough at all hours but if so during the day, it was portentous in the night. No one ventured through it after a certain hour. It seemed as though people feared that the walls should close in, and that if the prison or the cemetery took fancy to embrace, they should be crushed in the clasp. Such are the effects of darkness. The Pollard willows c the ruelle Vauvert in Paris were thus ill-famed. It we said that during the night the stumps of those tree changed into great hands, and caught hold of the passer-by.

  By instinct the Southwark folks shunned, as we have already mentioned, this alley between a prison and churchyard. Formerly it had been barricaded during the night by an iron chain. Very uselessly; because th strongest chain which guarded the street was the terror it inspired.

  Ursus entered it resolutely.

  What intention possessed him? None.

  He came into the alley to seek intelligence.

  Was he going to knock at the gate of the jail? Certainly not. Such an expedient, at once fearful and vain, had no place in his brain. To attempt to introduce himself to demand an explanation. What folly! Prisons do not open to those who wish to enter, any more than to those who desire to get out. Their hinges never turn except by law. Ursus knew this. Why, then, had he come there? To see. To see what? Nothing. Wh
o can tell? Even to be opposite the gate through which Gwynplaine had disappeared, was something.

  Sometimes the blackest and most rugged of walls whispers, and some light escapes through a cranny. A vague glimmering is now and then to be perceived through solid and sombre piles of building. Even to examine the envelope of a fact may be to some purpose. The instinct of us all is to leave between the fact which interests us and ourselves but the thinnest possible cover. Therefore it was that Ursus returned to the alley in which the lower entrance to the prison was situated.

  Just as he entered it he heard one stroke of the clock, then a second.

  "Hold," thought he; "can it be midnight already?"

  Mechanically he set himself to count:

  "Three, four, five."

  He mused.

  "At what long intervals this clock strikes!--how slowly! Six; seven!"

  Then he remarked:

  "What a melancholy sound! Eight, nine! Ah! nothing can be more natural; it's dull work for a clock to live in a prison. Ten! Besides, there is the cemetery. This clock sounds the hour to the living, and eternity to the dead. Eleven! Alas! to strike the hour to him who is not free is also to chronicle an eternity! Twelve!"

  He paused.

  "Yes, it is midnight."

  The clock struck a thirteenth stroke.

  Ursus shuddered.

  "Thirteen!"

  Then followed a fourteenth; then a fifteenth.

  "What can this mean?"

  The strokes continued at long intervals. Ursus listened.

  "It is not the striking of a clock, it is the bell Muta. No wonder I said, How long it takes to strike midnight. This clock does not strike: it tolls. What fearful thing is about to take place?"

  Formerly all prisons, and all monasteries, had a bell called Muta, reserved for melancholy occasions. La Muta (the mute) was a bell which struck very low, as if doing its best not to be heard.

  Ursus had reached the corner which he had found so convenient for his watch and whence he had been able, during a great part of the day, to keep his eye on the prison.

  The strokes followed each other at lugubrious intervals.

  A knell makes an ugly punctuation in space. It breaks the preoccupation of the mind into funereal paragraphs. A knell, like a man's death-rattle, notifies an agony. If in the houses about the neighbourhood where a knell is tolled there are reveries straying in doubt, its sound cuts them into rigid fragments. A vague reverie is a sort of refuge. Some indefinable diffuseness in anguish allows now and then a ray of hope to pierce through it. A knell is precise and desolating. It concentrates this diffusion of thought, and precipitates the vapours in which anxiety seeks to remain in suspense. A knell speaks to each one in the sense of his own grief or of his own fear. Tragic bell! it concerns you. It is a warning to you. There is nothing so dreary as a monologue on which its cadence falls. The even returns of sound seem to show purpose. What is it that this hammer, the bell, forges on to anvil of thought?

  Ursus counted, vaguely and without motive, the tolling of the knell. Feeling that his thoughts were sliding fro him, he made an effort not to let them slip into conjecture. Conjecture is an inclined plane, on which we slip too far to be to our own advantage. Still, what was the meaning of the bell?

  He looked through the darkness in the direction in which he knew the gate of the prison to be.

  Suddenly, in that very spot which looked like a dark hole, a redness showed. The redness grew larger, and became a light.

  There was no uncertainty about it. It soon took a form and angles. The gate of the jail had just turned on its hinges. The glow painted the arch and the jambs of the door. It was a yawning rather than an opening. A prison does not open; it yawns--perhaps from ennui. Through the gate passed a man with a torch in his hand.

  The bell rang on. Ursus felt his attention fascinate by two objects. He watched--his ear the knell, his eye the torch. Behind the first man the gate, which had been ajar, enlarged the opening suddenly, and allowed egress to two other men; then to a fourth. This fourth was the wapentake, clearly visible in the light of the torch. In his grasp was his Iron staff.

  Following the wapentake, there filed and opened out b low the gateway in order, two by two, with the rigidity a series of walking posts, ranks of silent men.

  This nocturnal procession stepped through the wick in file, like a procession of penitents, without any solution of continuity, with a funereal care to make no noise, gravely--almost gently; a serpent issues from its hole with similar precautions.

  The torch threw out their profiles and attitudes in relief. Fierce looks, sullen attitudes.

  Ursus recognised the faces of the police who had that morning carried off Gwynplaine.

  There was no doubt about it. They were the same. They were reappearing.

  Of course, Gwynplaine would also reappear. They had led him to that place. They would bring him back.

  It was all quite clear.

  Ursus strained his eyes to the utmost. Would they set Gwynplaine at liberty?

  The files of police flowed from the low arch very slowly, and, as it were, drop by drop. The toll of the bell was uninterrupted, and seemed to mark their steps. On leaving the prison, the procession turned their backs on Ursus, went to the right, into the bend of the street opposite to that in which he was posted.

  A second torch shone under the gateway, announcing the end of the procession.

  Ursus was now about to see what they were bringing with them. The prisoner. The man.

  Ursus was soon, he thought, to see Glwynplaine.

  That which they carried appeared.

  It was a bier.

  Four men carried a bier, covered with black cloths.

  Behind them came a man, with a shovel on his shoulder.

  A third lighted torch, held by a man reading a book, probably the chaplain, closed the procession.

  The bier followed the ranks of the police, who had turned to the right.

  Just at that moment the head of the procession stopped.

  Ursus heard the grating of a key.

  Opposite the prison, in the low wall which ran along the other side of the street, another opening was illuminated by a torch passing beneath it.

  This gate, over which a death's-head was placed, was that of the cemetery.

  The wapentake passed through it, then the men, then the second torch. The procession decreased therein, like a reptile entering his retreat.

  The files of police penetrated into that other darkness which was beyond the gate; then the bier; then the man with the spade; then the chaplain with his torch and his book, and the gate closed.

  There was nothing left but a haze of light above the wall.

  A muttering was heard. Then some dull sounds. Doubtless the chaplain and the gravedigger. The one throwing on the coffin some verses of Scripture, the other some clods of earth.

  The muttering ceased; the heavy sounds ceased. A movement was made. The torches shone. The wapentake reappeared, holding high his weapon, under the reopened gate of the cemetery; then the chaplain with his book, an the gravedigger with his spade. The cortège reappeared without the coffin.

  The files of men crossed over in the same order, with the same taciturnity, and in the opposite direction. The gate of the cemetery closed. That of the prison opened. Its sepulchral architecture stood out against the light. The obscurity of the passage became vaguely visible. The solid and deep night of the jail was revealed to sight; then the whole vision disappeared in the depths of shadow.

  The knell ceased. All was locked in silence. A sinister incarceration of shadows.

  A vanished vision; nothing more.

  A passage of spectres, which had disappeared.

  The logical arrangement of surmises builds up some thing which at least resembles evidence. To the arrest of Gwynplaine, to the secret mode of his capture, to the return of his garments by the police officer, to the death bell of the prison to which he had been conducted, was now added, or rath
er adjusted-portentous circumstance-a coffin carried to the grave.

  "He is dead!" cried Ursus.

  He sank down upon a stone.

  "Dead! They have killed him! Gwynplaine! My child! My son!"

  And he burst into passionate sobs.

  * * *

  V

  STATE POLICY DEALS WITH LITTLE MATTERS AS WELL AS WITH GREAT

  URSUS, ALAS! had boasted that he had never wept. His reservoir of tears was full. Such plenitude as is accumulated drop on drop, sorrow on sorrow, through a long existence Is not to be poured out in a moment. Ursus wept long.

  The first tear is a letting out of waters. He wept for Gwynplaine, for Dea, for himself, Ursus, for Homo. He wept like a child. He wept like an old man. He wept for everything at which he had ever laughed. He paid off! arrears. Man is never nonsuited when he pleads his right to tears.

  The corpse they had just buried was Hardquanonne's; but Ursus could not know that.

  The hours crept on.

  Day began to break. The pale clothing of the morning was spread out, dimly creased with shadow, over the bowling-green. The dawn lighted up the front of the Tadcaster Inn. Master Nicless had not gone to bed, because sometimes the same occurrence produces sleeplessness in many.

  Troubles radiate in every direction. Throw a stone in water, and count the splashes.

  Master Nicless felt himself impeached. It is very disagreeable that such things should happen in one's house. Master Nicless, uneasy, and foreseeing misfortunes, meditated. He regretted having received such people into his house. Had he but known that they would end by getting him into mischief! But the question was how to get rid of them? He had given Ursus a lease. What a blessing if he could free himself from it. How should he set to work to drive them out?

  Suddenly the door of the inn resounded with ones of those tumultuous knocks which in England announces "Somebody." The gamut of knocking corresponds with the ladder of hierarchy.