Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v2.djvu/119

Rh the presence of justice. Why? Is it because the justice of man works in twilight, and the judge gropes his way? Gwynplaine remembered what Ursus had told him of the necessity for silence. He wished to see Dea again; he felt some discretionary instinct, which urged him not to irritate. Sometimes, to wish to be enlightened is to make matters worse; but on the other hand, the weight of the adventure was so overwhelming that he gave way at length and could not restrain a question.

"Gentlemen," said he, "whither are you taking me?"

They made no answer. It was the law of silent capture, and the Norman text is formal,—A silentiariis ostio, præpositis introducti sunt.

This silence froze Gwynplaine. Up to that moment he had believed himself to be firm and self-sufficing. To be self-sufficing is to be powerful. He had lived isolated from the world, and imagined that being alone he was unassailable; and now all at once he felt himself under the pressure of a hideous collective force. How was he to combat that horrible anonyma, the law? He felt faint under the perplexity; a fear of an unknown nature had found a fissure in his armour; besides, he had not slept, he had not eaten, he had scarcely moistened his lips with a cup of tea. The whole night had been passed in a kind of delirium, and the fever was still upon him. He was thirsty, perhaps hungry; and the craving of the stomach disorders everything. Since the previous evening all kinds of incidents had befallen him. The emotions which had tormented had sustained him. Without the storm a sail would be a rag. But his was the excessive feebleness of the rag, which the wind inflates till it tears it. He felt himself sinking. Was he about to fall unconscious on the pavement? To faint is the resource of a woman, and the humiliation of a man. He hardened himself, but he trembled nevertheless.