Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs - Cosmopolitan University 2

"What do you think of it all?"
"Many different things."
"My Lord Cholmondeley, what will be the rank of this young Lord
Clancharlie in the House?"
"My Lord Bishop, the interruption of the Republic having displaced
ancient rights of precedence, Clancharlie now ranks in the peerage
between Barnard and Somers, so that should each be called upon to speak
in turn, Lord Clancharlie would be the eighth in rotation."
"Really! he--a mountebank from a public show!"
"The act, _per se_, does not astonish me, my Lord Bishop. We meet with
such things. Still more wonderful circumstances occur. Was not the War
of the Roses predicted by the sudden drying up of the river Ouse, in
Bedfordshire, on January 1st, 1399. Now, if a river dries up, a peer
may, quite as naturally, fall into a servile condition. Ulysses, King of
Ithaca, played all kinds of different parts. Fermain Clancharlie
remained a lord under his player's garb. Sordid garments touch not the
soul's nobility. But taking the test and the investiture outside the
sitting, though strictly legal, might give rise to objections. I am of
opinion that it will be necessary to look into the matter, to see if
there be any ground to question the Lord Chancellor in Privy Council
later on. We shall see in a week or two what is best to be done."
And the Bishop added,--
"All the same. It is an adventure such as has not occurred since Earl
Gesbodus's time."
Gwynplaine, the Laughing Man; the Tadcaster Inn; the Green Box; "Chaos
Vanquished;" Switzerland; Chillon; the Comprachicos; exile; mutilation;
the Republic; Jeffreys; James II.; the _jussu regis_; the bottle opened
at the Admiralty; the father, Lord Linnæus; the legitimate son, Lord
Fermain; the bastard son, Lord David; the probable lawsuits; the Duchess
Josiana; the Lord Chancellor; the Queen;--all these subjects of
conversation ran from bench to bench.
Whispering is like a train of gunpowder.
They seized on every incident. All the details of the occurrence caused
an immense murmur through the House. Gwynplaine, wandering in the depths
of his reverie, heard the buzzing, without knowing that he was the cause
of it. He was strangely attentive to the depths, not to the surface.
Excess of attention becomes isolation.
The buzz of conversation in the House impedes its usual business no more
than the dust raised by a troop impedes its march. The judges--who in
the Upper House were mere assistants, without the privilege of
speaking, except when questioned--had taken their places on the second
woolsack; and the three Secretaries of State theirs on the third.
The heirs to peerages flowed into their compartment, at once without and
within the House, at the back of the throne.