When one comes to a fresh place, how is one to know anything about it?

Father, do you remember that one day there was a woman in the great box;

you said: 'It is a duchess.' I felt sad. I think it might have been

better had we kept to the little towns. Gwynplaine has done right,

withal. Now my turn has come. Besides, you have told me yourself, that

when I was very little, my mother died, and that I was lying on the

ground with the snow falling upon me, and that he, who was also very

little then, and alone, like myself, picked me up, and that it was thus

that I came to be alive; so you cannot wonder that now I should feel it

absolutely necessary to go and search the grave to see if Gwynplaine be

in it. Because the only thing which exists in life is the heart; and

after life, the soul. You take notice of what I say, father, do you not?

What is moving? It seems as if we are in something that is moving, yet I

do not hear the sound of the wheels."

After a pause the voice added,--

"I cannot exactly make out the difference between yesterday and to-day.

I do not complain. I do not know what has occurred, but something must

have happened."

These words, uttered with deep and inconsolable sweetness, and with a

sigh which Gwynplaine heard, wound up thus,--

"I must go, unless he should return."

Ursus muttered gloomily: "I do not believe in ghosts."

The Man Who Laughs