tortured. Here is the throne; there, the people. Here, James II.; there,

Gwynplaine. That confrontation, indeed, brought to light an outrage and

a crime. What was the outrage? Complaint. What was the crime? Suffering.

Let misery hide itself in silence, otherwise it becomes treason. And

those men who had dragged Gwynplaine on the hurdle of sarcasm, were they

wicked? No; but they, too, had their fatality--they were happy. They

were executioners, ignorant of the fact. They were good-humoured; they

saw no use in Gwynplaine. He opened himself to them. He tore out his

heart to show them, and they cried, "Go on with your play!" But,

sharpest sting! he had laughed himself. The frightful chain which tied

down his soul hindered his thoughts from rising to his face. His

disfigurement reached even his senses; and, while his conscience was

indignant, his face gave it the lie, and jested. Then all was over. He

was the laughing man, the caryatid of the weeping world. He was an agony

petrified in hilarity, carrying the weight of a universe of calamity,

and walled up for ever with the gaiety, the ridicule, and the amusement

of others; of all the oppressed, of whom he was the incarnation, he

partook the hateful fate, to be a desolation not believed in; they

jeered at his distress; to them he was but an extraordinary buffoon

lifted out of some frightful condensation of misery, escaped from his

prison, changed to a deity, risen from the dregs of the people to the

foot of the throne, mingling with the stars, and who, having once amused

the damned, now amused the elect. All that was in him of generosity, of

enthusiasm, of eloquence, of heart, of soul, of fury, of anger, of love,

of inexpressible grief, ended in--a burst of laughter! And he proved, as

he had told the lords, that this was not the exception; but that it was

the normal, ordinary, universal, unlimited, sovereign fact, so

891

The Man Who Laughs