Victor Marie Hugo - Человек, который смеется / The Man Who Laughs. Уровень 4

Barkilphedro had other qualities. He was discreet, secret, concrete. He was liked by those whom he amused, and hated by all others. He felt that he was disdained by those who hated him, and despised by those who liked him. He restrained himself. He was indignant. To swallow everything was his talent.

He was kind, prompt, easy, amiable, obliging. Never mind to whom, never mind where, he bowed. Barkilphedro’s body was obese and his face lean. A fat bust and a bony countenance. His nose, long, sharp, and flabby, nearly met his mouth. Patience, temperance, continence, reserve, self-control, amenity, deference, gentleness, politeness, sobriety, chastity, completed and finished Barkilphedro. In a short time Barkilphedro took a foothold at court [28] took a foothold at court – прочно обосновался при дворе .

Besides the queen, Barkilphedro secretly worked, influenced, and plotted upon Lady Josiana and Lord David. Barkilphedro became a necessity. Many great people honoured him with their confidence.

Josiana reposed such confidence in him that she had entrusted him with one of the keys of her apartments, by means of which he was able to enter them at any hour. This was in fashion in the seventeenth century. It was called “giving the key.” Josiana had given two of these confidential keys – Lord David had one, Barkilphedro the other.

To find the vulnerable spot in Josiana, and to strike her there, was the imperturbable determination of Barkilphedro. But how? That was the question.

With Barkilphedro the ground was Queen Anne. Barkilphedro approached the queen, and so close that sometimes he fancied he heard the monologues of her Majesty. How did the queen feel towards the Duchess Josiana? Did she wish her good or evil?

Here was the problem. Barkilphedro set himself to solve it. Divers chances served Barkilphedro.

Anne was, on her husband’s side, slightly related to the new Queen of Prussia. One day, in the presence of Barkilphedro, Anne asked the ambassador some question about this Drika.

“They say she is rich?”

“Very rich.”

“She has palaces?”

“More magnificent than those of her sister, the queen.”

“Whom will she marry?”

“A great lord, the Count Gormo.”

“Pretty?”

“Charming.”

“Is she young?”

“Very young.”

“As beautiful as the queen?”

The ambassador lowered his voice, and replied, -

“More beautiful.”

“That is insolent,” murmured Barkilphedro.

The queen was silent; then she exclaimed, -

“Those bastards!”

Another time, when the queen was leaving the chapel, Barkilphedro kept pretty close to her Majesty, behind the two grooms. Lord David Dirry-Moir made a sensation by his handsome appearance. As he passed there was an explosion of feminine exclamations.

“How elegant! How gallant! What a noble air! How handsome!”

“How disagreeable!” grumbled the queen.

Barkilphedro overheard this. He could hurt the duchess without displeasing the queen. The first problem was solved; but now the second presented itself.

What could he do to harm the duchess?

One day Lady Josiana asked Lord David, -

“What can drive my spleen away?”

Lord David stopped, looked at Josiana, shut his mouth, and inflated his cheeks, which signified attention, and said to the duchess, -

“For spleen there is but one remedy.”

“What is it?”

“Gwynplaine.”

The duchess asked, -

“And who is Gwynplaine?”

Nature had bestowed on Gwynplaine a mouth opening to his ears, ears folding over to his eyes, a shapeless nose to support the spectacles, and a face that no one could look upon without laughing.

Gwynplaine was a mountebank. He showed himself on the platform. Hypochondriacs were cured by the sight of him alone. He was avoided by folks in mourning, because they were compelled to laugh when they saw him. One day the executioner came, and Gwynplaine made him laugh. He spoke, and the people rolled on the ground.

It was Gwynplaine’s laugh which created the laughter of others, yet he did not laugh himself. His face laughed; his thoughts did not. The extraordinary face which chance or a special and weird industry had fashioned for him, laughed alone. Gwynplaine had nothing to do with it. The outside did not depend on the interior. The laugh which he had not placed, himself, on his brow, on his eyelids, on his mouth, he could not remove.

On seeing Gwynplaine, all laughed. When they had laughed they turned away their heads. Women especially shrank from him with horror. The man was frightful. Gwynplaine was intolerable for a woman to see, and impossible to contemplate. But he was tall, well made, and agile, and no way deformed, excepting in his face.

This led to the presumption that Gwynplaine was rather a creation of art than a work of nature. Gwynplaine, beautiful in figure, had probably been beautiful in face. At his birth he had no doubt resembled other infants.

Behind his laugh there was a soul, dreaming, as all our souls dream. However, his laugh was to Gwynplaine quite a talent. He could do nothing with it. By means of it he gained his living.

Gwynplaine, as you have doubtless already guessed, was the child abandoned one winter evening on the coast of Portland, and received into a poor caravan at Weymouth.

That boy was at this time a man. Fifteen years had elapsed. It was in 1705. Gwynplaine was twenty-five years old.

Ursus had kept the two children with him. They were a group of wanderers. Ursus and Homo had aged. Ursus had become quite bald. The wolf was growing gray.

The little girl found on the dead woman was now a tall creature of sixteen, with brown hair, slight, fragile, admirably beautiful, her eyes full of light, yet blind. That fatal winter had killed the mother and blinded the child. Her eyes, large and clear, had a strange quality: to others they were brilliant. They were mysterious torches lighting only the outside. They gave light.

In her dead look there was a celestial earnestness. She was the night, she was a star. Ursus, with his mania for Latin names, had christened her Dea. He had taken his wolf into consultation. He had said to him,

“You represent man, I represent the beasts. We are of the lower world; this little one will represent the world. Human, animal, and Divine.”

The wolf made no objection. Therefore the girl was called Dea.

As to Gwynplaine, Ursus had not had the trouble of inventing a name for him. He had asked him,

“Boy, what is your name?” and the boy had answered,

“They call me Gwynplaine.”

“Be Gwynplaine, then,” said Ursus.

Dea assisted Gwynplaine in his performances. Mankind was for Gwynplaine, as for Dea, an exterior fact. She was alone, he was alone. The isolation of Dea was funereal, she saw nothing; that of Gwynplaine sinister, he saw all things. Nothing was infinite to her but darkness. For Gwynplaine to live was to have the crowd for ever before him and outside him. They had reached the depth of possible calamity; they had sunk into it, both of them. And they were in a Paradise. They were in love. Gwynplaine adored Dea. Dea idolized Gwynplaine.

“How handsome you are!” she would say to him.

Only one woman on earth saw Gwynplaine. It was the blind girl. She had learned what Gwynplaine had done for her, from Ursus, to whom he had related his rough journey from Portland to Weymouth, and the many sufferings which he had endured. He had given her his rags, because she was cold; he had given her food and drink. Dea knew that as a child he had done this, and that now as a man, he was strength to her weakness, riches to her poverty, healing to her sickness, and sight to her blindness. Through the mist of the unknown, she distinguished clearly his devotion, his abnegation, his courage. Dea quivered with certainty and gratitude, her anxiety changed into ecstasy. Kindness is the sun; and Gwynplaine dazzled Dea.