Page:Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869) v2.djvu/86

66 princes in plenty, and she could have taken a prince; nobles, and she could have taken a noble; there were handsome, charming, and magnificent men, and she could have taken an Adonis: but whom had she chosen? Gnafron! She could have the mighty, six-winged seraphim, but she chose the larva crawling in the slime. On one side were royal highnesses and peers, grandeur, opulence, and glory; on the other, a mountebank,—but the mountebank won the day! What kind of scales could there be in the heart of this woman? By what measure did she weigh her love? She took off her ducal coronet and flung it at the feet of a clown! She took from her brow the Olympian aureole and placed it on the bristling head of a gnome! The world was turned topsy-turvy. The insects swarmed on high, the stars were scattered below, while the wonder-stricken Gwynplaine, overwhelmed by a flood of light and lying in the dust, was enshrined in glory. One all-powerful, indifferent to beauty and splendour, gave herself to a creature of night,—preferred Gwynplaine to Antinoüs. Impelled by curiosity, she entered the slums and even descended into them, and from this abdication of goddess-ship resulted this wonderful exaltation of the wretched. "You are hideous. I love you." These words touched Gwynplaine in the ugly spot of pride. Pride is the heel in which all heroes are vulnerable. Gwynplaine was flattered in his vanity as a monster. He was loved for his deformity. He, too, was the exception, as much, and perhaps more, than the Jupiters and the Apollos. He felt superhuman, and so much a monster as to be a god. Fearful bewilderment!

But who was this woman? What did he know about her? Everything and nothing. She was a duchess, that he knew; he knew, too, that she was beautiful and rich; that she had liveries, lackeys, pages, and footmen