Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs - Cosmopolitan University 2

ooks to the Lord Chancellor, who signed them. Having signed the two
registers, the Lord Chancellor rose.
"Fermain Lord Clancharlie, Baron Clancharlie, Baron Hunkerville, Marquis
of Corleone in Sicily, be you welcome among your peers, the lords
spiritual and temporal of Great Britain."
Gwynplaine's sponsors touched his shoulder.
He turned round.
The folds of the great gilded door at the end of the gallery opened.
It was the door of the House of Lords.
Thirty-six hours only had elapsed since Gwynplaine, surrounded by a
different procession, had entered the iron door of Southwark Jail.
What shadowy chimeras had passed, with terrible rapidity through his
brain--chimeras which were hard facts; rapidity, which was a capture by
assault!
CHAPTER II.
IMPARTIALITY.
The creation of an equality with the king, called Peerage, was, in
barbarous epochs, a useful fiction. This rudimentary political expedient
produced in France and England different results. In France, the peer
was a mock king; in England, a real prince--less grand than in France,
but more genuine: we might say less, but worse.
Peerage was born in France; the date is uncertain--under Charlemagne,
says the legend; under Robert le Sage, says history, and history is not
more to be relied on than legend. Favin writes: "The King of France
wished to attach to himself the great of his kingdom, by the magnificent
title of peers, as if they were his equals."
Peerage soon thrust forth branches, and from France passed over to
England.
The English peerage has been a great fact, and almost a mighty
institution. It had for precedent the Saxon wittenagemote. The Danish
thane and the Norman vavassour commingled in the baron. Baron is the
same as vir, which is translated into Spanish by _varon_, and which
signifies, _par excellence_, "Man." As early as 1075, the barons made
themselves felt by the king--and by what a king! By William the
Conqueror. In 1086 they laid the foundation of feudality, and its basis
was the "Doomsday Book." Under John Lackland came conflict. The French
peerage took the high hand with Great Britain, and demanded that the
king of England should appear at their bar. Great was the indignation of
the English barons. At the coronation of Philip Augustus, the King of
England, as Duke of Normandy, carried the first square banner, and the