The Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869)/Chapter 65
CHAPTER VIII.
SYMPTOMS OF POISONING.
THE 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 of the wave; a haughty and impassive mien, combining coldness with provocation, and evidently content in its own glory; hair the colour of the reflection from a furnace; a splendour of adornment producing in herself and in others a thrill of voluptuousness; the half-revealed nudity betraying a disdainful desire to be coveted at a distance by the crowd; an inextinguishable coquetry; the charm of impenetrability; a temptation heightened by the zest which always attaches to that which is forbidden; a promise to the senses and a menace to the soul, and a two-fold fascination,—one desire; the other, fear: he had just seen all these things. He had just seen Woman. The mystery of sex had just been revealed to him.
And where? On inaccessible heights. At an infinite distance. mocking destiny! The soul, that celestial essence, he possessed; he had it in his grasp,—it was Dea. Sex, that thing of the earth earthy, he perceived in the heights of heaven,—in that woman. A duchess! "More than a goddess," Ursus had said. What a precipice. Even dreams recoiled before such a wild flight as this.
Was Gwynplaine going to commit the folly of dreaming about the unknown beauty? He debated with himself. He recalled all that Ursus had said of these almost royal personages. The philosopher's disquisitions, which had hitherto seemed so useless, now became subjects for meditation. A very thin layer of forgetfulness often coats our memory, through which at times we catch a glimpse of all beneath it. His fancy ran on that august world, the peerage, to which the lady belonged, and which was placed so immeasurably above the inferior world, the common people, of which he was one. And was he one of the common people even? Was not he, the mountebank, below the lowest of the low? For the first time since he had arrived at the age of reflection, he felt his heart oppressed by a consciousness of his baseness,—or rather of that which we nowadays call abasement. The descriptions and enumerations of Ursus, his lyrical inventories, his rhapsodies over castles, parks, fountains, and colonnades, his catalogues of art treasures and estates, all recurred vividly to Gwynplaine's mind. He was possessed with the image of this zenith. That a man should be a lord!—it seemed chimerical. It was so, however. Incredible thing! There were lords! But were they of flesh and blood, like himself? It seemed doubtful. He felt that he was in the depths of shadow, encompassed by a wall, but he could just discern in the distance above his head, through the mouth of the pit, that dazzling confusion of azure, of figures and of rays, which constitutes Olympus. In the midst of this glory the duchess shone resplendent.
Gwynplaine felt for this woman a strange, inexpressible longing, combined with a conviction of the impossibility of attainment. This poignant contradiction recurred to his mind again and again, notwithstanding every effort. He saw near to him, even within his reach, in close and tangible reality, the soul; and in the unattainable,—in the depths of the ideal world,—the flesh. None of these thoughts attained definite shape. They were like a vapour within him, changing every instant in form, and floating away. Luckily for him, he did not form even in his dreams any hope of reaching the heights where the duchess dwelt. The vibration of such ladders of fancy, if ever we set our foot upon them, may unsettle our brains forever; intending to scale Olympus, we reach Bedlam. Any distinct feeling of actual desire would have terrified Gwynplaine however. He entertained none of that nature. Besides, was he likely ever to see the lady again? Most probably 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 understood it but dimly. One thing was certain,—he had never for one moment ceased to adore Dea. He had been attacked by a violent disorder, his blood had been fevered; but it was over. Dea was his only thought now. Gwynplaine would have been much astonished had any one told him that Dea had been in danger, even for a moment; and in a week or two the phantom which had threatened the souls of both had faded away.
Besides, we have just said that "the duchess" did not return. Ursus thought that very natural. "The lady with the gold piece" is a phenomenon. She enters, pays, and vanishes. It would be too much joy were she to return.
As for Dea, she made no allusion to the woman who had appeared only to disappear. She was sufficiently enlightened, perhaps, by the sighs of Ursus, and now and then by some significant exclamation, such as, "One does not get ounces of gold every day." She never spoke of "that woman." This showed deep instinct. The soul takes many precautions in secrets which it does not even admit to be secrets. To be silent about any one seems to keep them afar off. One seems to fear that questions may call them back. We put silence between us, as if we were shutting a door.
So the incident sank into oblivion. Was it anything, after all? Had it ever occurred? Could it be said that a shadow had floated between Gwynplaine and Dea? Dea did not know it, nor did Gwynplaine. No; nothing had occurred. The duchess herself was blurred in the distant perspective like an illusion. It had been but a momentary dream, out of which Gwynplaine had speedily wakened. When it fades away, a reverie, like mist, leaves no trace behind; and when the cloud has passed, love shines out as brightly in the heart as the sun in the sky.