The Man Who Laughs
Copyright© 2025 by Victor Hugo
Chapter 2: FROM GAY TO GRAVE
How simple is a miracle! It was breakfast hour in the Green Box, and Dea had merely come to see why Gwynplaine had not joined their little breakfast table.
“It is you!” exclaimed Gwynplaine; and he had said everything. There was no other horizon, no vision for him now but the heavens where Dea was. His mind was appeased—appeased in such a manner as he alone can understand who has seen the smile spread swiftly over the sea when the hurricane had passed away. Over nothing does the calm come so quickly as over the whirlpool. This results from its power of absorption. And so it is with the human heart. Not always, however.
Dea had but to show herself, and all the light that was in Gwynplaine left him and went to her, and behind the dazzled Gwynplaine there was but a flight of phantoms. What a peacemaker is adoration! A few minutes afterwards they were sitting opposite each other, Ursus between them, Homo at their feet. The teapot, hung over a little lamp, was on the table. Fibi and Vinos were outside, waiting.
They breakfasted as they supped, in the centre compartment. From the position in which the narrow table was placed, Dea’s back was turned towards the aperture in the partition which was opposite the entrance door of the Green Box. Their knees were touching. Gwynplaine was pouring out tea for Dea. Dea blew gracefully on her cup. Suddenly she sneezed. Just at that moment a thin smoke rose above the flame of the lamp, and something like a piece of paper fell into ashes. It was the smoke which had caused Dea to sneeze.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Nothing,” replied Gwynplaine.
And he smiled. He had just burnt the duchess’s letter.
The conscience of the man who loves is the guardian angel of the woman whom he loves.
Unburdened of the letter, his relief was wondrous, and Gwynplaine felt his integrity as the eagle feels its wings.
It seemed to him as if his temptation had evaporated with the smoke, and as if the duchess had crumbled into ashes with the paper.
Taking up their cups at random, and drinking one after the other from the same one, they talked. A babble of lovers, a chattering of sparrows! Child’s talk, worthy of Mother Goose or of Homer! With two loving hearts, go no further for poetry; with two kisses for dialogue, go no further for music.
“Do you know something?”
“No.”
“Gwynplaine, I dreamt that we were animals, and had wings.”
“Wings; that means birds,” murmured Gwynplaine.
“Fools! it means angels,” growled Ursus.
And their talk went on.
“If you did not exist, Gwynplaine?”
“What then?”
“It could only be because there was no God.”
“The tea is too hot; you will burn yourself, Dea.”
“Blow on my cup.”
“How beautiful you are this morning!”
“Do you know that I have a great many things to say to you?”
“Say them.”
“I love you.”
“I adore you.”
And Ursus said aside, “By heaven, they are polite!”
Exquisite to lovers are their moments of silence! In them they gather, as it were, masses of love, which afterwards explode into sweet fragments.
“Do you know! In the evening, when we are playing our parts, at the moment when my hand touches your forehead—oh, what a noble head is yours, Gwynplaine!—at the moment when I feel your hair under my fingers, I shiver; a heavenly joy comes over me, and I say to myself, In all this world of darkness which encompasses me, in this universe of solitude, in this great obscurity of ruin in which I am, in this quaking fear of myself and of everything, I have one prop; and he is there. It is he—it is you.”
“Oh! you love me,” said Gwynplaine. “I, too, have but you on earth. You are all in all to me. Dea, what would you have me do? What do you desire? What do you want?”
Dea answered, —
“I do not know. I am happy.”
“Oh,” replied Gwynplaine, “we are happy.”
Ursus raised his voice severely, —
“Oh, you are happy, are you? That’s a crime. I have warned you already. You are happy! Then take care you aren’t seen. Take up as little room as you can. Happiness ought to stuff itself into a hole. Make yourselves still less than you are, if that can be. God measures the greatness of happiness by the littleness of the happy. The happy should conceal themselves like malefactors. Oh, only shine out like the wretched glowworms that you are, and you’ll be trodden on; and quite right too! What do you mean by all that love-making nonsense? I’m no duenna, whose business it is to watch lovers billing and cooing. I’m tired of it all, I tell you; and you may both go to the devil.”
And feeling that his harsh tones were melting into tenderness, he drowned his emotion in a loud grumble.
“Father,” said Dea, “how roughly you scold!”
“It’s because I don’t like to see people too happy.”
Here Homo re-echoed Ursus. His growl was heard from beneath the lovers’ feet.
Ursus stooped down, and placed his hand on Homo’s head.
“That’s right; you’re in bad humour, too. You growl. The bristles are all on end on your wolf’s pate. You don’t like all this love-making. That’s because you are wise. Hold your tongue, all the same. You have had your say and given your opinion; be it so. Now be silent.”
The wolf growled again. Ursus looked under the table at him.
“Be still, Homo! Come, don’t dwell on it, you philosopher!”
But the wolf sat up, and looked towards the door, showing his teeth.
“What’s wrong with you now?” said Ursus. And he caught hold of Homo by the skin of the neck.
Heedless of the wolf’s growls, and wholly wrapped up in her own thoughts and in the sound of Gwynplaine’s voice, which left its after-taste within her, Dea was silent, and absorbed by that kind of esctasy peculiar to the blind, which seems at times to give them a song to listen to in their souls, and to make up to them for the light which they lack by some strain of ideal music. Blindness is a cavern, to which reaches the deep harmony of the Eternal.
While Ursus, addressing Homo, was looking down, Gwynplaine had raised his eyes. He was about to drink a cup of tea, but did not drink it. He placed it on the table with the slow movement of a spring drawn back; his fingers remained open, his eyes fixed. He scarcely breathed.
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