Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs - Cosmopolitan University 2

It was a heavenly subsidence into that sweet abyss called love.
At such things heaven smiles philosophically.
CHAPTER VII.
BLINDNESS GIVES LESSONS IN CLAIRVOYANCE.
At times Gwynplaine reproached himself. He made his happiness a case of
conscience. He fancied that to allow a woman who could not see him to
love him was to deceive her.
What would she have said could she have suddenly obtained her sight? How
she would have felt repulsed by what had previously attracted her! How
she would have recoiled from her frightful loadstone! What a cry! What
covering of her face! What a flight! A bitter scruple harassed him. He
told himself that such a monster as he had no right to love. He was a
hydra idolized by a star. It was his duty to enlighten the blind star.
One day he said to Dea,--
"You know that I am very ugly."
"I know that you are sublime," she answered.
He resumed,--
"When you hear all the world laugh, they laugh at me because I am
horrible."
"I love you," said Dea.
After a silence, she added,--
"I was in death; you brought me to life. When you are here, heaven is by
my side. Give me your hand, that I may touch heaven."
Their hands met and grasped each other. They spoke no more, but were
silent in the plenitude of love.
Ursus, who was crabbed, had overheard this. The next day, when the three
were together, he said,--
"For that matter, Dea is ugly also."
The word produced no effect. Dea and Gwynplaine were not listening.
Absorbed in each other, they rarely heeded such exclamations of Ursus.
Their depth was a dead loss.
This time, however, the precaution of Ursus, "Dea is also ugly,"
indicated in this learned man a certain knowledge of women. It is
certain that Gwynplaine, in his loyalty, had been guilty of an
imprudence. To have said, _I am ugly_, to any other blind girl than Dea