Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v2.djvu/68



HE duchess did not return. She did not reappear in the theatre, but she reappeared in the recesses of Gwynplaine's memory.

Gwynplaine was, to a certain degree, troubled. It seemed to him that for the first time in his life he had seen a woman. He made that first stumble, a strange dream. We should beware of the nature of the reveries in which we indulge. Reverie is imbued with all the mystery and subtlety of an odour. It is to thought what perfume is to the tuberose. It is at times the exudation of a venomous idea, which penetrates like a vapour. You may poison yourself with reveries, as with flowers,—an intoxicating suicide, exquisite and malignant. The suicide of the soul is evil thought. In it lurks a deadly poison. Reverie entices, cajoles, lures, entwines, and finally makes you its accomplice. It makes you in part accountable for the trickeries which it plays on conscience. It charms; then it corrupts you. We may say of reverie as of play,—one begins by being a dupe, and ends by being a cheat.

Gwynplaine dreamed. He had never before seen Woman. He had seen the shadow in the women of the populace, and he had seen the soul in Dea. He had just seen the reality. A warm and living skin, under which one felt the circulation of passionate blood; a contour with the precision of marble and the undulation