To accuse is useless. To state is sufficient. Gwynplaine, meditating on

the limits of his destiny, proved the total uselessness of his effort.

He proved the deafness of high places. The privileged have no hearing on

the side next the disinherited. Is it their fault? Alas! no. It is their

law. Forgive them! To be moved would be to abdicate. Of lords and

princes expect nothing. He who is satisfied is inexorable. For those

that have their fill the hungry do not exist. The happy ignore and

isolate themselves. On the threshold of their paradise, as on the

threshold of hell, must be written, "Leave all hope behind."

Gwynplaine had met with the reception of a spectre entering the dwelling

of the gods.

Here all that was within him rose in rebellion. No, he was no spectre;

he was a man. He told them, he shouted to them, that he was Man.

He was not a phantom. He was palpitating flesh. He had a brain, and he

thought; he had a heart, and he loved; he had a soul, and he hoped.

Indeed, to have hoped overmuch was his whole crime.

Alas! he had exaggerated hope into believing in that thing at once so

brilliant and so dark which is called Society. He who was without had

re-entered it. It had at once, and at first sight, made him its three

offers, and given him its three gifts--marriage, family, and caste.

Marriage? He had seen prostitution on the threshold. Family? His brother

had struck him, and was awaiting him the next day, sword in hand. Caste?

It had burst into laughter in his face, at him the patrician, at him the

894

The Man Who Laughs