The Man Who Laughs, Victor Hugo [best book clubs .txt] 📗

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Title: The Man Who Laughs

Author: Victor Hugo

Release Date: June 11, 2004 [eBook #12587]

Language: English

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The Man Who Laughs A Romance of English History By Victor Hugo

 

 

CONTENTS.

 

Preliminary Chapter.—Ursus Another Preliminary Chapter.—The Comprachicos

 

PART I.

 

BOOK THE FIRST.—NIGHT NOT SO BLACK AS MAN.

 

I.—Portland Bill II.—Left Alone III.—Alone IV.—Questions V.—The Tree of Human Invention VI.—Struggle between Death and Night VII.—The North Point of Portland

 

BOOK THE SECOND.—THE HOOKER AT SEA. I.—Superhuman Laws II.—Our First Rough Sketches Filled in III.—Troubled Men on the Troubled Sea IV.—A Cloud Different from the Others enters on the Scene V.—Hardquanonne VI.—They Think that Help is at Hand VII.—Superhuman Horrors VIII.—Nix et Nox IX.—The Charge Confided to a Raging Sea X.—The Colossal Savage, the Storm XI.—The Caskets XII.—Face to Face with the Rock XIII.—Face to Face with Night XIV.—Ortach XV.—Portentosum Mare XVI.—The Problem Suddenly Works in Silence XVII.—The Last Resource XVIII.—The Highest Resource

 

BOOK THE THIRD.—THE CHILD IN THE SHADOW.

 

I.—Chesil II.—The Effect of Snow III.—A Burden Makes a Rough Road Rougher IV.—Another Form of Desert V.—Misanthropy Plays Its Pranks VI.—The Awaking

 

PART II.

 

BOOK THE FIRST.—THE EVERLASTING PRESENCE OF THE PAST. MAN REFLECTS MAN.

 

I.—Lord Clancharlie II.—Lord David Dirry-Moir III.—The Duchess Josiana IV.—The Leader of Fashion V.—Queen Anne VI.—Barkilphedro VII.—Barkilphedro Gnaws His Way VIII.—Inferi IX.—Hate is as Strong as Love X.—The Flame which would be Seen if Man were Transparent XI.—Barkilphedro in Ambuscade XII.—Scotland, Ireland, and England

 

BOOK THE SECOND.—GWYNPLAINE AND DEA.

 

I.—Wherein we see the Face of Him of whom we have hitherto seen only the Acts II.—Dea III.—"Oculos non Habet, et Videt" IV.—Well-matched Lovers V.—The Blue Sky through the Black Cloud VI.—Ursus as Tutor, and Ursus as Guardian VII.—Blindness Gives Lessons in Clairvoyance VIII.—Not only Happiness, but Prosperity IX.—Absurdities which Folks without Taste call Poetry X.—An Outsider's View of Men and Things XI.—Gwynplaine Thinks Justice, and Ursus Talks Truth XII.—Ursus the Poet Drags on Ursus the Philosopher

 

BOOK THE THIRD.—THE BEGINNING OF THE FISSURE.

 

I.—The Tadcaster Inn II.—Open-Air Eloquence III.—Where the Passer-by Reappears IV.—Contraries Fraternize in Hate V.—The Wapentake VI.—The Mouse Examined by the Cats VII.—Why Should a Gold Piece Lower Itself by Mixing with a Heap of Pennies? VIII.—Symptoms of Poisoning IX.—Abyssus Abyssum Vocat

 

BOOK THE FOURTH.—THE CELL OF TORTURE.

 

I.—The Temptation of St. Gwynplaine II.—From Gay to Grave III.—Lex, Rex, Fex IV.—Ursus Spies the Police V.—A Fearful Place VI.—The Kind of Magistracy under the Wigs of Former Days VII.—Shuddering VIII.—Lamentation

 

BOOK THE FIFTH.—THE SEA AND FATE ARE MOVED BY THE SAME BREATH.

 

I.—The Durability of Fragile Things II.—The Waif Knows Its Own Course III.—An Awakening IV.—Fascination V.—We Think We Remember; We Forget

 

BOOK THE SIXTH.—URSUS UNDER DIFFERENT ASPECTS.

 

I.—What the Misanthrope said II.—What He did III.—Complications IV.—Moenibus Surdis Campana Muta V.—State Policy Deals with Little Matters as Well as with Great

 

BOOK THE SEVENTH.—THE TITANESS.

 

I.—The Awakening II.—The Resemblance of a Palace to a Wood III.—Eve IV.—Satan V.—They Recognize, but do not Know, Each Other

 

BOOK THE EIGHTH.—THE CAPITOL AND THINGS AROUND IT.

 

I.—Analysis of Majestic Matters II.—Impartiality III.—The Old Hall IV.—The Old Chamber V.—Aristocratic Gossip VI.—The High and the Low VII.—Storms of Men are Worse than Storms of Oceans VIII.—He would be a Good Brother, were he not a Good Son

 

BOOK THE NINTH.—IN RUINS.

 

I.—It is through Excess of Greatness that Man reaches Excess of Misery II.—The Dregs

 

CONCLUSION.—THE NIGHT AND THE SEA.

 

I.—A Watch-dog may be a Guardian Angel II.—Barkilphedro, having aimed at the Eagle, brings down the Dove III.—Paradise Regained Below IV.—Nay; on High!

 

 

 

THE LAUGHING MAN. A ROMANCE OF ENGLISH HISTORY.

 

 

 

PRELIMINARY CHAPTER. URSUS. I.

 

Ursus and Homo were fast friends. Ursus was a man, Homo a wolf. Their dispositions tallied. It was the man who had christened the wolf: probably he had also chosen his own name. Having found Ursus fit for himself, he had found Homo fit for the beast. Man and wolf turned their partnership to account at fairs, at village fêtes, at the corners of streets where passers-by throng, and out of the need which people seem to feel everywhere to listen to idle gossip and to buy quack medicine. The wolf, gentle and courteously subordinate, diverted the crowd. It is a pleasant thing to behold the tameness of animals. Our greatest delight is to see all the varieties of domestication parade before us. This it is which collects so many folks on the road of royal processions.

Ursus and Homo went about from cross-road to cross-road, from the High Street of Aberystwith to the High Street of Jedburgh, from country-side to country-side, from shire to shire, from town to town. One market exhausted, they went on to another. Ursus lived in a small van upon wheels, which Homo was civilized enough to draw by day and guard by night. On bad roads, up hills, and where there were too many ruts, or there was too much mud, the man buckled the trace round his neck and pulled fraternally, side by side with the wolf. They had thus grown old together. They encamped at haphazard on a common, in the glade of a wood, on the waste patch of grass where roads intersect, at the outskirts of villages, at the gates of towns, in market-places, in public walks, on the borders of parks, before the entrances of churches. When the cart drew up on a fair green, when the gossips ran up open-mouthed and the curious made a circle round the pair, Ursus harangued and Homo approved. Homo, with a bowl in his mouth, politely made a collection among the audience. They gained their livelihood. The wolf was lettered, likewise the man. The wolf had been trained by the man, or had trained himself unassisted, to divers wolfish arts, which swelled the receipts. "Above all things, do not degenerate into a man," his friend would say to him.

Never did the wolf bite: the man did now and then. At least, to bite was the intent of Ursus. He was a misanthrope, and to italicize his misanthropy he had made himself a juggler. To live, also; for the stomach has to be consulted. Moreover, this juggler-misanthrope, whether to add to the complexity of his being or to perfect it, was a doctor. To be a doctor is little: Ursus was a ventriloquist. You heard him speak without his moving his lips. He counterfeited, so as to deceive you, any one's accent or pronunciation. He imitated voices so exactly that you believed you heard the people themselves. All alone he simulated the murmur of a crowd, and this gave him a right to the title of Engastrimythos, which he took. He reproduced all sorts of cries of birds, as of the thrush, the wren, the pipit lark, otherwise called the gray cheeper, and the ring ousel, all travellers like himself: so that at times when the fancy struck him, he made you aware either of a public thoroughfare filled with the uproar of men, or of a meadow loud with the voices of beasts—at one time stormy as a multitude, at another fresh and serene as the dawn. Such gifts, although rare, exist. In the last century a man called Touzel, who imitated the mingled utterances of men and animals, and who counterfeited all the cries of beasts, was attached to the person of Buffon—to serve as a menagerie.

Ursus was sagacious, contradictory, odd, and inclined to the singular expositions which we term fables. He had the appearance of believing in them, and this impudence was a part of his humour. He read people's hands, opened books at random and drew conclusions, told fortunes, taught that it is perilous to meet a black mare, still more perilous, as you start for a journey, to hear yourself accosted by one who knows not whither you are going; and he called himself a dealer in superstitions. He used to say: "There is one difference between me and the Archbishop of Canterbury: I avow what I am." Hence it was that the archbishop, justly indignant, had him one day before him; but Ursus cleverly disarmed his grace by reciting a sermon he had composed upon Christmas Day, which the delighted archbishop learnt by heart, and delivered from the pulpit as his own. In consideration thereof the archbishop pardoned Ursus.

As a doctor, Ursus wrought cures by some means or other. He made use of aromatics; he was versed in simples; he made the most of the immense power which lies in a heap of neglected plants, such as the hazel, the catkin, the white alder, the white bryony, the mealy-tree, the traveller's joy, the buckthorn. He treated phthisis with the sundew; at opportune moments he would use the leaves of the spurge, which plucked at the bottom are a purgative and plucked at the top, an emetic. He cured sore throat by means of the vegetable excrescence called Jew's ear. He knew the rush which cures the ox and the mint which cures the horse. He was well acquainted with the beauties and virtues of the herb mandragora, which, as every one knows, is of both sexes. He had many recipes. He cured burns with the salamander wool, of which, according to Pliny, Nero had a napkin. Ursus possessed a retort and a flask; he effected transmutations; he sold panaceas. It was said of him that he had once been for a short time in Bedlam; they had done him the honour to take