Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs - Cosmopolitan University 2

whom we love. They leave behind them a train of sorrows. Destiny amazes
us by a prolixity of unbearable suffering; who then can wonder that the
old are garrulous? It is despair that makes the dotard, old fellow!
Homo, the wind continues favourable. We can no longer see the dome of
St. Paul's. We shall pass Greenwich presently. That will be six good
miles over. Oh! I turn my back for ever on those odious capitals, full
of priests, of magistrates, and of people. I prefer looking at the
leaves rustling in the woods. Her forehead is still in perspiration. I
don't like those great violet veins in her arm. There is fever in them.
Oh! all this is killing me. Sleep, my child. Yes; she sleeps."
Here a voice spoke: an ineffable voice, which seemed from afar, and
appeared to come at once from the heights and the depths--a voice
divinely fearful, the voice of Dea.
All that Gwynplaine had hitherto felt seemed nothing. His angel spoke.
It seemed as though he heard words spoken from another world in a
heaven-like trance.
The voice said,--
"He did well to go. This world was not worthy of him. Only I must go
with him. Father! I am not ill; I heard you speak just now. I am very
well, quite well. I was asleep. Father, I am going to be happy."
"My child," said Ursus in a voice of anguish, "what do you mean by
that?"
The answer was,--
"Father, do not be unhappy."
There was a pause, as if to take breath, and then these few words,
pronounced slowly, reached Gwynplaine.
"Gwynplaine is no longer here. It is now that I am blind. I knew not
what night was. Night is absence."
The voice stopped once more, and then continued,--
"I always feared that he would fly away. I felt that he belonged to
heaven. He has taken flight suddenly. It was natural that it should end
thus. The soul flies away like a bird. But the nest of the soul is in
the height, where dwells the Great Loadstone, who draws all towards Him.
I know where to find Gwynplaine. I have no doubt about the way. Father,
it is yonder. Later on, you will rejoin us, and Homo, too."
Homo, hearing his name pronounced, wagged his tail softly against the
deck.
"Father!" resumed the voice, "you understand that once Gwynplaine is no
longer here, all is over. Even if I would remain, I could not, because
one must breathe. We must not ask for that which is impossible. I was
with Gwynplaine. It was quite natural, I lived. Now Gwynplaine is no
more, I die. The two things are alike: either he must come or I must go.
Since he cannot come back, I am going to him. It is good to die. It is
not at all difficult. Father, that which is extinguished here shall be