The Man Who Laughs


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In her dead look there was a celestial earnestness. She was the night,  
and from the irremediable darkness with which she was amalgamated she  
came out a star.  
Ursus, with his mania for Latin names, had christened her Dea. He had  
taken his wolf into consultation. He had said to him, "You represent  
man, I represent the beasts. We are of the lower world; this little one  
shall represent the world on high. Such feebleness is all-powerful. In  
this manner the universe shall be complete in our hut in its three  
orders--human, animal, and Divine." The wolf made no objection.  
Therefore the foundling was called Dea.  
As to Gwynplaine, Ursus had not had the trouble of inventing a name for  
him. The morning of the day on which he had realized the disfigurement  
of the little boy and the blindness of the infant he had asked him,  
"Boy, what is your name?" and the boy had answered, "They call me  
Gwynplaine." "Be Gwynplaine, then," said Ursus.  
Dea assisted Gwynplaine in his performances. If human misery could be  
summed up, it might have been summed up in Gwynplaine and Dea. Each  
seemed born in a compartment of the sepulchre; Gwynplaine in the  
horrible, Dea in the darkness. Their existences were shadowed by two  
different kinds of darkness, taken from the two formidable sides of  
night. Dea had that shadow in her, Gwynplaine had it on him. There was a  
phantom in Dea, a spectre in Gwynplaine. Dea was sunk in the mournful,  
Gwynplaine in something worse. There was for Gwynplaine, who could see,  
408  


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406 407 408 409 410

Quick Jump
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