everything to produce ugliness. A Hottentot profile cannot be changed

into a Roman outline, but out of a Grecian nose you may make a

Calmuck's. It only requires to obliterate the root of the nose and to

flatten the nostrils. The dog Latin of the Middle Ages had a reason for

its creation of the verb denasare. Had Gwynplaine when a child been

so worthy of attention that his face had been subjected to

transmutation? Why not? Needed there a greater motive than the

speculation of his future exhibition? According to all appearance,

industrious manipulators of children had worked upon his face. It seemed

evident that a mysterious and probably occult science, which was to

surgery what alchemy was to chemistry, had chiselled his flesh,

evidently at a very tender age, and manufactured his countenance with

premeditation. That science, clever with the knife, skilled in obtusions

and ligatures, had enlarged the mouth, cut away the lips, laid bare the

gums, distended the ears, cut the cartilages, displaced the eyelids and

the cheeks, enlarged the zygomatic muscle, pressed the scars and

cicatrices to a level, turned back the skin over the lesions whilst the

face was thus stretched, from all which resulted that powerful and

profound piece of sculpture, the mask, Gwynplaine.

Man is not born thus.

However it may have been, the manipulation of Gwynplaine had succeeded

admirably. Gwynplaine was a gift of Providence to dispel the sadness of

man.

Of what providence? Is there a providence of demons as well as of God?

401

The Man Who Laughs