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decreases. Gwynplaine was like a man with his eyes open and fixed in a
dream, as if trying to see what may be within it. He dispersed the mist.
Then he reshaped it. He had intermittances of wandering. He underwent
that oscillation of the mind in the unforeseen which alternately pushes
us in the direction in which we understand, and then throws us back in
that which is incomprehensible. Who has not at some time felt this
pendulum in his brain?
By degrees his thoughts dilated in the darkness of the event, as the
pupil of his eye had done in the underground shadows at Southwark. The
difficulty was to succeed in putting a certain space between accumulated
sensations. Before that combustion of hazy ideas called comprehension
can take place, air must be admitted between the emotions. There air was
wanting. The event, so to speak, could not be breathed.
In entering that terrible cell at Southwark, Gwynplaine had expected the
iron collar of a felon; they had placed on his head the coronet of a
peer. How could this be? There had not been space of time enough between
what Gwynplaine had feared and what had really occurred; it had
succeeded too quickly--his terror changing into other feelings too
abruptly for comprehension. The contrasts were too tightly packed one
against the other. Gwynplaine made an effort to withdraw his mind from
the vice.
He was silent. This is the instinct of great stupefaction, which is more
on the defensive than it is thought to be. Who says nothing is prepared
for everything. A word of yours allowed to drop may be seized in some
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