Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs - Cosmopolitan University 2

Flat beasts can get in everywhere. Louis XIV. had bugs in his bed and
Jesuits in his policy.
The incompatibility is nil.
In this world everything is a clock. To gravitate is to oscillate. One
pole is attracted to the other. Francis I. is attracted by Triboulet;
Louis XIV. is attracted by Lebel. There exists a deep affinity between
extreme elevation and extreme debasement.
It is abasement which directs. Nothing is easier of comprehension. It is
he who is below who pulls the strings. No position more convenient. He
is the eye, and has the ear. He is the eye of the government; he has the
ear of the king. To have the eye of the king is to draw and shut, at
one's whim, the bolt of the royal conscience, and to throw into that
conscience whatever one wishes. The mind of the king is his cupboard; if
he be a rag-picker, it is his basket. The ears of kings belong not to
kings, and therefore it is that, on the whole, the poor devils are not
altogether responsible for their actions. He who does not possess his
own thought does not possess his own deed. A king obeys--what? Any evil
spirit buzzing from outside in his ear; a noisome fly of the abyss.
This buzzing commands. A reign is a dictation.
The loud voice is the sovereign; the low voice, sovereignty. Those who
know how to distinguish, in a reign, this low voice, and to hear what it
whispers to the loud, are the real historians.
CHAPTER IX.
HATE IS AS STRONG AS LOVE.
Queen Anne had several of these low voices about her. Barkilphedro was
one.
Besides the queen, he secretly worked, influenced, and plotted upon Lady
Josiana and Lord David. As we have said, he whispered in three ears, one
more than Dangeau. Dangeau whispered in but two, in the days when,
thrusting himself between Louis XIV., in love with Henrietta, his
sister-in-law, and Henrietta, in love with Louis XIV., her
brother-in-law, he being Louis's secretary, without the knowledge of
Henrietta, and Henrietta's without the knowledge of Louis, he wrote the
questions and answers of both the love-making marionettes.
Barkilphedro was so cheerful, so accepting, so incapable of taking up
the defence of anybody, possessing so little devotion at bottom, so
ugly, so mischievous, that it was quite natural that a regal personage
should come to be unable to do without him. Once Anne had tasted
Barkilphedro she would have no other flatterer. He flattered her as they
flattered Louis the Great, by stinging her neighbours. "The king being
ignorant," says Madame de Montchevreuil, "one is obliged to mock at the
savants."