Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v2.djvu/71

Rh not. To fall in love with a passing light on the horizon, madness cannot reach to that pitch. To cast adoring glances at a star even, is not incomprehensible. It may be seen again, it reappears, it is fixed in the sky. But can any one be enamoured of a flash of lightning? Dreams came and went within him. The beautiful and majestic occupant of the box had imparted a strange radiance to his wandering thoughts. He thought of her, resolved to think of other things, then began to think of her again.

Gwynplaine was unable to sleep for several nights. Insomnia is as full of dreams as sleep. It is almost impossible to describe exactly the workings of the brain. The trouble with words is that they are more marked in form than in meaning. All ideas have indistinct boundary lines, words have not. Certain phases of the soul cannot be described. Expression has its limits, thought has not. The depths of our secret souls are so vast that Gwynplaine's dreams scarcely touched Dea. Dea reigned supreme in his inmost soul; nothing could approach her. Still (for such contradictions make up the soul of man), there was a conflict going on within him. Was he conscious of it? Scarcely. In his heart of hearts he was a prey to conflicting hopes and desires. We all have our moments of weakness. The nature of this conflict would have been clear to Ursus; but to Gwynplaine it was not. Two instincts—one the ideal, the other sexual—were struggling within him. Such contests occur between the angels of light and darkness on the edge of the abyss.

At length the angel of darkness was overthrown. One day Gwynplaine ceased to think of the unknown woman. A struggle between right and wrong—a duel between his earthly and his heavenly nature—had taken place within his soul, and at such a depth that he had