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amalgamated with the routine of life that they took no account of it.
The hungry pauper laughs, the beggar laughs, the felon laughs, the
prostitute laughs, the orphan laughs to gain his bread; the slave
laughs, the soldier laughs, the people laugh. Society is so constituted
that every perdition, every indigence, every catastrophe, every fever,
every ulcer, every agony, is resolved on the surface of the abyss into
one frightful grin of joy. Now he was that universal grin, and that grin
was himself. The law of heaven, the unknown power which governs, had
willed that a spectre visible and palpable, a spectre of flesh and bone,
should be the synopsis of the monstrous parody which we call the world;
and he was that spectre, immutable fate!
He had cried, "Pity for those who suffer." In vain! He had striven to
awake pity; he had awakened horror. Such is the law of apparitions.
But while he was a spectre, he was also a man; here was the heartrending
complication. A spectre without, a man within. A man more than any
other, perhaps, since his double fate was the synopsis of all humanity.
And he felt that humanity was at once present in him and absent from
him. There was in his existence something insurmountable. What was he? A
disinherited heir? No; for he was a lord. Was he a lord? No; for he was
a rebel. He was the light-bearer; a terrible spoil-sport. He was not
Satan, certainly; but he was Lucifer. His entrance, with his torch in
his hand, was sinister.
Sinister for whom? for the sinister. Terrible to whom? to the terrible.
Therefore they rejected him. Enter their order? be accepted by them?
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