The Man Who Laughs

by Victor Hugo

  He approached the inn with as little noise as possible. He recognised the nook, the old dog kennel, where Govicum used to sleep. In it, contiguous to the lower room, was a window opening on to the field. Gwynplaine tapped softly at the pane. It would be enough to awaken Govicum, he thought.

  There was no sound in Govicum's room.

  "At his age," said Gwynplaine, "a boy sleeps soundly."

  With the back of his hand he knocked against the window gently. Nothing stirred.

  He knocked louder twice. Still nothing stirred. Then, feeling somewhat uneasy, he went to the door of the inn and knocked. No one answered. He reflected, and began to feel a cold shudder come over him.

  "Master Nicless is old, children sleep soundly, and old men heavily. Courage! louder!"

  He had tapped, he had knocked, he had kicked the door; now he flung himself against it.

  This recalled to him a distant memory of Weymouth, when, a little child, he had carried Dea, an infant, in his arms.

  He battered the door again violently, like a lord, which, alas! he was.

  The house remained silent. He felt that he was losing his head. He no longer thought of caution. He shouted:

  "Nicless! Govicum!"

  At the same time he looked up at the windows, to see if any candle was lighted. But the inn was blank. Not a voices not a sound, not a glimmer of light. He went to the gate and knocked at it, kicked against it, and shook it, crying out wildly:

  "Ursus! Homo!"

  The wolf did not bark.

  A cold sweat stood in drops upon his brow. He cast his eyes around. The night was dark; but there were stars enough to render the fair-green visible. He saw--a melancholy sight to him--that everything on it had vanished.

  There was not a single caravan. The circus was gone. Not a tent, not a booth, not a cart remained. The strollers with their thousand noisy cries, who had swarmed there, had given place to a black and sullen void.

  All were gone.

  The madness of anxiety took possession of him. What did this mean? What had happened? Was no one left? Could it be that life had crumbled away behind him? What had happened to them all? Good heavens! Then he rushed like a tempest against the house. He struck the small door, the gate, the windows, the window-shutters, the walls with fists and feet, furious with terror and agony of mind. He called Nicless, Govicum, Fibi, Vinos, Ursus, Homo. He tried every shout and every sound against this wall. At times he waited and listened; but the house remained mute and dead. Then, exasperated, he began again with blows, shouts, and repeated knockings, re-echoed all around. It might have been thunder trying to awake the grave.

  There is a certain stage of fright in which a man becomes terrible. He who fears everything fears nothing. He would strike the Sphinx. He defies the Unknown. Gwynplaine renewed the noise in every possible form, stopping, resuming, unwearying in the shouts and appeals lay which he assailed the tragic silence.

  He called a thousand times on the names of those who should have been there. He shrieked out every name except that of Dea, a precaution of which he could not have explained the reason himself, but which instinct inspired even in his distraction.

  Having exhausted calls and cries, nothing was left but to break in. "I must enter the house," he said to himself; "but how? He broke a pane of glass in Govicum's room by thrusting his hand through it, tearing the flesh; he drew the bolt of the sash and opened the window. Perceiving that his sword was in the way, he tore it off angrily, scabbard, blade, and belt, and flung it on the pavement. Then he raised himself by the inequalities in the wall, and, though the window was narrow, he was able to pass through it. He entered the inn.

  Govicum's bed, dimly visible in its nook, was there; but Govicum was not in it. If Govicum was not in his bed, it was evident that Nicless could not be in his. The whole house was dark. He felt in that shadowy interior the mysterious immobility of emptiness, and that vague fear which signifies--"There is no one here." Gwynplaine, convulsed with anxiety, crossed the lower room, knocking against the tables, upsetting the earthenware, throwing down the benches, sweeping against the jugs, and, striding over the furniture, reached the door leading into the court, and broke it open with one blow from his knee, which sprung the lock. The door turned on its hinges. He looked into the court. The Green Box was no longer there.

  * * *

  II

  THE DREGS

  GWYNPLAINE LEFT the house, and began to explore Tarrinzeau Field in every direction. He went to every place where, the day before, the tents and caravans had stood. He knocked at the stalls, though he knew well that they were uninhabited. He struck everything that looked like a door or a window. Not a voice arose from the darkness. Something like death had been there.

  The ant-hill had been razed. Some measures of police had apparently been carried out. There had been what, In our days, would be called a razzia. Tarrinzeau Field was worse than a desert, it had been scoured, and every corner of it scratched up, as it were, by pitiless claws. The pocket of the unfortunate fair-green had been turned inside out, and completely emptied.

  Gwynplaine, after having searched every yard of ground, left the green, struck into the crooked streets abutting on the site called East Point, and directed his steps toward the Thames.

  He had threaded his way through a network of lanes, bounded only by walls and hedges, when he felt the fresh breeze from the water, heard the dull lapping of the river, and suddenly saw a parapet In front of him. It was the parapet of the Effroc stone.

  This parapet bounded a block of the quay, which was very short and very narrow. Under it the high wall, the Effroc stone, buried itself perpendicularly in the dark water below.

  Gwynplaine stopped at the parapet, and, leaning his elbows on it, laid his head in his hands and set to thinking, with the water beneath him.

  Did he look at the water? No. At what then? At the shadow; not the shadow without, but within him. In the melancholy night-bound landscape, which he scarcely marked--in the outer depths, which his eyes did not pierce, were the blurred sketches of masts and spars. Below the Effroc stone there was nothing on the river; but the quay sloped insensibly downward till, some distance off, it met a pier, at which several vessels were lying, some of which had just arrived, others which were on the point of departure. These vessels communicated with the shore by little jetties, constructed for the purpose, some of stone, some of wood, or by movable gangways. All of them, whether moored to the Jetties or at anchor, were wrapt in silence. There was neither voice nor movement on board, it being a good habit of sailors to sleep when they can, and awake only when wanted. If any of them were to sail during the night at high tide, the crews were not yet awake.

  The hulls, like large black bubbles, and the rigging, like threads mingled with ladders, were barely visible. All was livid and confused. Here and there a red cresset pierced the haze.

  Gwynplaine saw nothing of all this. What he was musing on was destiny.

  He was in a dream--a vision--giddy in presence of an inexorable reality.

  He fancied that he heard behind him something like an earthquake. It was the laughter of the lords.

  From that laughter he had just emerged. He had come out of it, having received a blow, and from whom?

  From his own brother!

  Flying from the laughter, carrying with him the blow, seeking refuge, a wounded bird, in his nest, rushing from hate and seeking love, what had he found?

  Darkness.

  No one.

  Everything gone.

  He compared that darkness to the dream he had indulged in.

  What a crumbling away!

  Gwynplaine had just reached that sinister bound--the void. The Green Box gone, was his universe vanished?

  His soul had been closed up.

  He reflected.

  What could have happened? Where were they? They had evidently been carried away. Destiny had given him, Gwynplaine, a blow, which was greatness; its reaction had struck them another, which was annihila
tion. It was clear that he would never see them again. Precautions had been taken against that. They had scoured the fair-green, beginning by Nicless and Govicum, so that he should gain no clew through them. Inexorable dispersion! That fearful social system, at the same time that it had pulverised him in the House of Lords, had crushed them in their little cabin. They were lost; Dea was lost--lost to him forever. Powers of heaven! where was she? And he had not been there to defend her!

  To have to make guesses as to the absent whom we love is to put one's self to the torture. He inflicted this torture on himself. At every thought that he fathomed, at every supposition which he made, he felt within him a moan of agony.

  Through a succession of bitter reflections he remembered a man who was evidently fatal to him, and who had called himself Barkilphedro. That man had inscribed on his brain a dark sentence which reappeared now, he had written it in such terrible ink that every letter had turned to fire; and Gwynplaine saw flaming at the bottom of his thought the enigmatical words, the meaning of which was at length solved: "Destiny never opens one door without closing another."

  All was over. The final shadows had gathered about him. In every man's fate there may be an end of the world for himself alone. It is called despair. The soul is full of falling stars.

  This, then, was what he had come to.

  A vapour had passed. He had been mingled with it. It had lain heavily on his eyes, it had disordered his brain. He had been outwardly blinded, intoxicated within. This had lasted the time of a passing vapour. Then everything melted away, the vapour and his life. Awaking from the dream, he found himself alone.

  All vanished, all gone, all lost. Night. Nothingness. Such was his horizon.

  He was alone.

  Alone has a synonym, which is Dead. Despair is an accountant. It sets itself to find its total, it adds up everything, even to the farthings. It reproaches Heaven with its thunderbolts and its pin-pricks. It seeks to find what it has to expect from fate. It argues, weighs, and calculates, outwardly cool, while the burning lava is still flowing on within.

  Gwynplaine examined himself, and examined his fate.

  The backward glance of thought; terrible recapitulation!

  When at the top of a mountain, we look down the precipice; when at the bottom, we look up at heaven, And we say, I was there.

  Gwynplaine was at the very bottom of misfortune. How sudden, too, had been his fall!

  Such is the hideous swiftness of misfortune, although it is so heavy that we might fancy it slow. But no! It would likewise appear that snow, from its coldness, ought to be the paralysis of winter, and, from its whiteness, the immobility of the winding-sheet. Yet this is contradicted by the avalanche.

  The avalanche is snow become a furnace. It remains frozen, but it devours. The avalanche had enveloped Gwynplaine. He had been torn like a rag, uprooted like a tree, precipitated like a stone. He recalled all the circumstances of his fall. He put himself questions, and returned answers. Grief is an examination. There is no judge so searching as conscience conducting its own trial.

  What amount of remorse was there in his despair? This he wished to find out, and dissected his conscience. Excruciating vivisection!

  His absence had caused a catastrophe. Had this absence depended on him? In all that had happened, had he been a free agent? No! He had felt himself captive. What was that which had arrested and detained him--a prison? No. A chain? No. What then? Sticky slime! He had sunk into the slough of greatness.

  To whom has it Not happened to be free in appearance yet to feel that his wings are hampered?

  There had been something like a snare spread for him. What is at first temptation, ends by captivity.

  Nevertheless (and his conscience pressed him on this point)--had he merely submitted to what had been offered him? No; he had accepted it.

  Violence and surprise had been used with him in a certain measure, it was true; but he, in a certain measure, had given in. To have allowed himself to be carried off, was not his fault; but to have allowed himself to be inebriated, was his weakness. There had been a moment--a decisive moment--when the question was proposed. This Barkilphedro had placed a dilemma before Gwynplaine, and had given him clear power to decide his fate by a word. Gwynplaine might have said, "No." He had said, "Yes."

  From that "Yes," uttered in a moment of dizziness, everything had sprung. Gwynplaine realised this now in the bitter aftertaste of that consent.

  Nevertheless--for he debated with himself--was it then so great a wrong to take possession of his right, of his patrimony, of his heritage, of his house; and, as a patrician, of the rank of his ancestors; as an orphan, of the name of his father? What had he accepted? A restitution. Made by whom? By Providence.

  Then his mind revolted. Senseless acceptance! What a bargain had he struck! what a foolish exchange! He had trafficked with Providence at a loss. How now! For an income of eighty thousand pounds a year; for seven or eight titles; for ten or twelve palaces; for houses in town, and castles in the country; for a hundred lackeys; for packs of hounds, and carriages and armorial bearings; to be a judge and legislator; for a coronet and purple robes, like a king; to be a baron and a marquis; to be a peer of England, he had given the hut of Ursus and the smile of Dea. For shipwreck and destruction in the surging immensity of greatness, he had bartered happiness. For the ocean he had given the pearl. O madman! O fool! O dolt! O dupe!

  Yet, nevertheless--and here the objection reappeared on firmer ground--in this fever of high fortune which had seized him, all had not been unwholesome. Perhaps there would have been selfishness in renunciation; perhaps he had done his duty in the acceptance. Suddenly transformed into a lord, what ought he to have done? The complication of events produces perplexity of mind. This had happened to him. Duty gave contrary orders. Duty on all sides at once, duty multiple and contradictory; this was the bewilderment which he had suffered. It was this that had paralysed him, especially when he had not refused to take the journey from Corleone Lodge to the House of Lords. What we call rising in life is leaving the safe for the dangerous path. Which is, thenceforth, the straight line? Toward whom is our first duty? Is it toward those nearest to ourselves, or is it toward mankind generally? Do we not cease to belong to our own circumscribed circle, and become part of the great family of all? As we ascend, we feel an increased pressure on our virtue. The higher we rise, the greater is the strain. The increase of right is an increase of duty. We come to many cross-ways, phantom roads perchance, and we imagine that we see the finger of conscience pointing each one of them out to us. Which shall we take? Change our direction, remain where we are, advance, go back? What are we to do? That there should be cross-roads in conscience is strange enough; but responsibility may be a labyrinth.

  And when a man contains an idea, when he is the incarnation of a fact--when he is a symbolical man, at the same time that he is a man of flesh and blood--is not the responsibility still more oppressive? Thence the care-laden docility and the dumb anxiety of Gwynplaine thence his obedience when summoned to take his seat. A pensive man is often a passive man. He had heard what he fancied was the command of duty itself. Was not that entrance into a place where oppression could be discussed and resisted the realisation of one of his deepest aspirations? When he had been called upon to speak he, the fearful human scantling, he, the living specimen of the despotic whims under which, for six thousand years, mankind has groaned in agony--had he the right to refuse? Had he the right to withdraw his head from under the tongue of fire descending from on high to rest upon hint?

  In the obscure and giddy debate of conscience, what had he said to himself? This: "The people are a silence. I will be the mighty advocate of that silence; I will speak for the dumb; I will speak of the little to the great,--of the weak to the powerful. This is the purpose of my fate. God wills what He wills, and does it. It was a wonder that Hardquanonne's flask, in which was the metamorphosis of Gwynplaine into Lord Clancharlie should have floated for fifteen years on the ocean, on t
he billows, in the surf, through the storms, and that all the raging of the sea did it no harm. But I can see the reason. There are destinies with secret springs. I have the key of mine, and know its enigma. I am predestined; I have a mission; I will be the poor man's lord; I will speak for the speechless with despair; I will translate inarticulate remonstrance; I will translate the mutterings, the groans, the murmurs, the voices of the crowd, their ill-spoken complaints, their unintelligible words, and those animal-like cries which ignorance and suffering put into men's mouths. The clamour of men is as inarticulate as the howling of the wind. They cry out, but they are understood; so that cries become equivalent to silence, and silence with them means throwing down their arms. This forced disarmament calls for help. I will be their help; I will be the Denunciation; I will be the Word of the people. Thanks to me, they shall be understood. I will be the bleeding mouth from which the gag has been torn. I will tell everything. This will be great, indeed."

  Yes; it is fine to speak for the dumb; but to speak to the deaf is sad. And that was his second part in the drama.

  Alas! he had failed irremediably.

  The elevation in which he had believed, the high fortune, had melted away like a mirage.

  And what a fall! To be drowned in a surge of laughter!

  He had believed himself strong, he who, during so many years, had floated with observant mind on the wide sea of suffering; he who had brought back out of the great shadow so touching a cry. He had been flung against that huge rock, the frivolity of the fortunate. He believed himself an avenger; he was but a clown. He thought that he wielded the thunderbolt; he did but tickle. In place of emotion, he met with mockery. He sobbed; they burst into gayety; and, under that gayety, he had sunk fatally submerged.

  And what had they laughed at? At his laugh.

  So, that trace of a hateful act, of which he must keep the mark forever;--mutilation carved in everlasting gayety; the stigmata of laughter, image of the sham contentment of nations under their oppressors; that mask of joy produced by torture; that abyss of grimace which he carried on his features; the scar which signified jussu regis, the attestation of a crime committed by the king toward him, and the symbol of crime committed by royalty toward the people;--that it was which had triumphed over him--that it was which had overwhelmed him; so that the accusation against the executioner turned into sentence upon the victim. What a prodigious denial of justice! Royalty, having had satisfaction of his father, had had satisfaction of him! The evil that had been done had served as pretext and as motive for the evil which remained to be done. Against whom were the Lords angered? Against the torturer? No. Against the tortured. Here is the throne; there, the people. Here, James II; there, Gwynplaine. That confrontation, indeed brought to light an outrage and a crime. What was the outrage? Complaint. What was the crime? Suffering. Let misery hide itself in silence, otherwise it becomes treason. And those men who had dragged Gwynplaine on the hurdle of sarcasm, were they wicked? No; but they, too, had their fatality: they were happy. They were executioners, ignorant of the fact. They were good-humoured; they saw no use in Gwynplaine. He opened himself to them. He tore out his heart to show them, and they cried, "Go on with your play!" But, sharpest sting! he had laughed himself. The frightful chain which tied down his soul hindered his thoughts front rising to his face. His disfigurement reached even his senses; and, while his conscience was indignant, his face gave it the lie, and jested. Then all was over. He was the laughing man, the caryatid of the weeping world. He was an agony petrified in hilarity, carrying the weight of a universe of calamity, and walled up forever with the gayety, the ridicule, and the amusement of others; of all the Oppressed, of whom he was the Incarnation, he partook the hateful fate, to be a desolation not believed in; they jeered at his distress; to them he was but an extraordinary buffoon lifted out of some frightful condensation of misery, escaped from his prison, changed to a deity, risen from the dregs of the people to the foot of the throne, mingling with the stars, and who, having once amused the damned, now amused the elect. All that was in him of generosity, of enthusiasm, of eloquence, of heart, of soul, of fury, of anger, of love, of inexpressible grief, ended in--a burst of laughter! And he proved, as he had told the Lords, that this was not the exception; but that it was the normal, ordinary, universal, unlimited, sovereign fact, so amalgamated with the routine of life, that they took no account of it. The hungry pauper laughs, the beggar laughs, the felon laughs, the prostitute laughs, the orphan laughs to gain his bread; the slave laughs, the soldier laughs, the people laugh. Society is so constituted, that every perdition, every indigence, every catastrophe, every fever, every ulcer, every agony, is resolved on the surface of the abyss into one frightful grin of joy. Now, he was that universal grin, and that grin was himself. The law of Heaven, the unknown power which governs, had willed that a spectre visible and palpable, a spectre of flesh and bone, should be the synopsis of the monstrous parody which we call the world; and he was that spectre.