around him; he who, a precocious warrior, had immediately, and from his

first steps out of the cradle, struggled breast to breast with destiny;

he, whose disproportion with strife had not discouraged from striving;

he who, perceiving in everything around him a frightful occultation of

the human race, had accepted that eclipse, and proudly continued his

journey; he who had known how to endure cold, thirst, hunger, valiantly;

he who, a pigmy in stature, had been a colossus in soul: this

Gwynplaine, who had conquered the great terror of the abyss under its

double form, Tempest and Misery, staggered under a breath--Vanity.

Thus, when she has exhausted distress, nakedness, storms, catastrophes,

agonies on an unflinching man, Fatality begins to smile, and her victim,

suddenly intoxicated, staggers.

The smile of Fatality! Can anything more terrible be imagined? It is the

last resource of the pitiless trier of souls in his proof of man. The

tiger, lurking in destiny, caresses man with a velvet paw. Sinister

preparation, hideous gentleness in the monster!

Every self-observer has detected within himself mental weakness

coincident with aggrandisement. A sudden growth disturbs the system, and

produces fever.

In Gwynplaine's brain was the giddy whirlwind of a crowd of new

circumstances; all the light and shade of a metamorphosis; inexpressibly

strange confrontations; the shock of the past against the future. Two

Gwynplaines, himself doubled; behind, an infant in rags crawling through

675

The Man Who Laughs