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And folding his arms, he looked at the lords.
"
Who am I? I am wretchedness. My lords, I have a word to say to you."
A shudder ran through the House. Then all was silence. Gwynplaine
continued,--
"My lords, you are highly placed. It is well. We must believe that God
has His reasons that it should be so. You have power, opulence,
pleasure, the sun ever shining in your zenith; authority unbounded,
enjoyment without a sting, and a total forgetfulness of others. So be
it. But there is something below you--above you, it may be. My lords, I
bring you news--news of the existence of mankind."
Assemblies are like children. A strange occurrence is as a
Jack-in-the-Box to them. It frightens them; but they like it. It is as
if a spring were touched and a devil jumps up. Mirabeau, who was also
deformed, was a case in point in France.
Gwynplaine felt within himself, at that moment, a strange elevation. In
addressing a body of men, one's foot seems to rest on them; to rest, as
it were, on a pinnacle of souls--on human hearts, that quiver under
one's heel. Gwynplaine was no longer the man who had been, only the
night before, almost mean. The fumes of the sudden elevation which had
disturbed him had cleared off and become transparent, and in the state
in which Gwynplaine had been seduced by a vanity he now saw but a duty.
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