Quits!" he cried.

He felt like one whose head rises out of the water. It seemed to him

that he saw everything--the past, the future, the present--in the

accession of a sudden flash of light.

Oh!" he cried, for there are cries in the depths of thought. "Oh! it

was so, was it! I was a lord. All is discovered. They stole, betrayed,

destroyed, abandoned, disinherited, murdered me! The corpse of my

destiny floated fifteen years on the sea; all at once it touched the

earth, and it started up, erect and living. I am reborn. I am born. I

felt under my rags that the breast there palpitating was not that of a

wretch; and when I looked on crowds of men, I felt that they were the

flocks, and that I was not the dog, but the shepherd! Shepherds of the

people, leaders of men, guides and masters, such were my fathers; and

what they were I am! I am a gentleman, and I have a sword; I am a baron,

and I have a casque; I am a marquis, and I have a plume; I am a peer,

and I have a coronet. Lo! they deprived me of all this. I dwelt in

light, they flung me into darkness. Those who proscribed the father,

sold the son. When my father was dead, they took from beneath his head

the stone of exile which he had placed for his pillow, and, tying it to

my neck, they flung me into a sewer. Oh! those scoundrels who tortured

my infancy! Yes, they rise and move in the depths of my memory. Yes; I

see them again. I was that morsel of flesh pecked to pieces on a tomb by

a flight of crows. I bled and cried under all those horrible shadows.

Lo! it was there that they precipitated me, under the crush of those who

670

The Man Who Laughs