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Gwynplaine, we have said, compared himself and compared Dea.
His existence, such as it was, was the result of a double and unheard-of
choice. It was the point of intersection of two rays--one from below and
one from above--a black and a white ray. To the same crumb, perhaps
pecked at at once by the beaks of evil and good, one gave the bite, the
other the kiss. Gwynplaine was this crumb--an atom, wounded and
caressed. Gwynplaine was the product of fatality combined with
Providence. Misfortune had placed its finger on him; happiness as well.
Two extreme destinies composed his strange lot. He had on him an
anathema and a benediction. He was the elect, cursed. Who was he? He
knew not. When he looked at himself, he saw one he knew not; but this
unknown was a monster. Gwynplaine lived as it were beheaded, with a face
which did not belong to him. This face was frightful, so frightful that
it was absurd. It caused as much fear as laughter. It was a
hell-concocted absurdity. It was the shipwreck of a human face into the
mask of an animal. Never had been seen so total an eclipse of humanity
in a human face; never parody more complete; never had apparition more
frightful grinned in nightmare; never had everything repulsive to woman
been more hideously amalgamated in a man. The unfortunate heart, masked
and calumniated by the face, seemed for ever condemned to solitude under
it, as under a tombstone.
Yet no! Where unknown malice had done its worst, invisible goodness had
lent its aid. In the poor fallen one, suddenly raised up, by the side of
the repulsive, it had placed the attractive; on the barren shoal it had
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