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tempted him, who had lived on the ideal. He had heard words of
voluptuousness like cries of rage; he had felt the clasp of a woman's
arms, like the convolutions of a snake; to the illumination of truth had
succeeded the fascination of falsehood; for it is not the flesh that is
real, but the soul. The flesh is ashes, the soul is flame. For the
little circle allied to him by the relationship of poverty and toil,
which was his true and natural family, had been substituted the social
family--his family in blood, but of tainted blood; and even before he
had entered it, he found himself face to face with an intended
fractricide. Alas! he had allowed himself to be thrown back into that
society of which Brantôme, whom he had not read, wrote: "The son has a
right to challenge his father!" A fatal fortune had cried to him, "Thou
art not of the crowd; thou art of the chosen!" and had opened the
ceiling above his head, like a trap in the sky, and had shot him up,
through this opening, causing him to appear, wild, and unexpected, in
the midst of princes and masters. Then suddenly he saw around him,
instead of the people who applauded him, the lords who cursed him.
Mournful metamorphosis! Ignominious ennobling! Rude spoliation of all
that had been his happiness! Pillage of his life by derision!
Gwynplaine, Clancharlie, the lord, the mountebank, torn out of his old
lot, out of his new lot, by the beaks of those eagles!
What availed it that he had commenced life by immediate victory over
obstacle? Of what good had been his early triumphs? Alas! the fall must
come, ere destiny be complete.
So, half against his will, half of it--because after he had done with
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