Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs - Cosmopolitan University 2

threshold of hell, must be written, "Leave all hope behind."
Gwynplaine had met with the reception of a spectre entering the dwelling
of the gods.
Here all that was within him rose in rebellion. No, he was no spectre;
he was a man. He told them, he shouted to them, that he was Man.
He was not a phantom. He was palpitating flesh. He had a brain, and he
thought; he had a heart, and he loved; he had a soul, and he hoped.
Indeed, to have hoped overmuch was his whole crime.
Alas! he had exaggerated hope into believing in that thing at once so
brilliant and so dark which is called Society. He who was without had
re-entered it. It had at once, and at first sight, made him its three
offers, and given him its three gifts--marriage, family, and caste.
Marriage? He had seen prostitution on the threshold. Family? His brother
had struck him, and was awaiting him the next day, sword in hand. Caste?
It had burst into laughter in his face, at him the patrician, at him the
wretch. It had rejected, almost before it had admitted him. So that his
first three steps into the dense shadow of society had opened three
gulfs beneath him.
And it was by a treacherous transfiguration that his disaster had begun;
and catastrophe had approached him with the aspect of apotheosis!
Ascend had signified Descend!
His fate was the reverse of Job's. It was through prosperity that
adversity had reached him.
O tragical enigma of life! Behold what pitfalls! A child, he had
wrestled against the night, and had been stronger than it; a man, he had
wrestled against destiny, and had overcome it. Out of disfigurement he
had created success; and out of misery, happiness. Of his exile he had
made an asylum. A vagabond, he had wrestled against space; and, like the
birds of the air, he had found his crumb of bread. Wild and solitary, he
had wrestled against the crowd, and had made it his friend. An athlete,
he had wrestled against that lion, the people; and he had tamed it.
Indigent, he had wrestled against distress, he had faced the dull
necessity of living, and from amalgamating with misery every joy of his
heart, he had at length made riches out of poverty. He had believed
himself the conqueror of life. Of a sudden he was attacked by fresh
forces, reaching him from unknown depths; this time, with menaces no
longer, but with smiles and caresses. Love, serpent-like and sensual,
had appeared to him, who was filled with angelic love. The flesh had
tempted him, who had lived on the ideal. He had heard words of
voluptuousness like cries of rage; he had felt the clasp of a woman's
arms, like the convolutions of a snake; to the illumination of truth had
succeeded the fascination of falsehood; for it is not the flesh that is
real, but the soul. The flesh is ashes, the soul is flame. For the
little circle allied to him by the relationship of poverty and toil,
which was his true and natural family, had been substituted the social
family--his family in blood, but of tainted blood; and even before he
had entered it, he found himself face to face with an intended
fractricide. Alas! he had allowed himself to be thrown back into that
society of which Brantôme, whom he had not read, wrote: "_The son has a