sying," said Gwynplaine.

The laughter exploded anew; and below this laughter, anger growled its
continued bass. One of the minors, Lionel Cranfield Sackville, Earl of
Dorset and Middlesex, stood upon his seat, not smiling, but grave as
became a future legislator, and, without saying a word, looked at
Gwynplaine with his fresh twelve-year old face, and shrugged his
shoulders. Whereat the Bishop of St. Asaph's whispered in the ear of the
Bishop of St. David's, who was sitting beside him, as he pointed to
Gwynplaine, "There is the fool;" then pointing to the child, "there is
the sage."

A chaos of complaint rose from amidst the confusion of exclamations:--

"Gorgon's face!"--"What does it all mean?"--"An insult to the
House!"--"The fellow ought to be put out!"--"What a madman!"--"Shame!
shame!"--"Adjourn the House!"--"No; let him finish his speech!"--"Talk
away, you buffoon!"

Lord Lewis of Duras, with his arms akimbo, shouted,--

"Ah! it does one good to laugh. My spleen is cured. I propose a vote of
thanks in these terms: 'The House of Lords returns thanks to the Green
Box.'"

Gwynplaine, it may be remembered, had dreamt of a different welcome.

A man who, climbing up a steep and crumbling acclivity of sand above a
giddy precipice, has felt it giving way under his hands, his nails, his
elbows, his knees, his feet; who--losing instead of gaining on his
treacherous way, a prey to every terror of the danger, slipping back
instead of ascending, increasing the certainty of his fall by his very
efforts to gain the summit, and losing ground in every struggle for
safety--has felt the abyss approaching nearer and nearer, until the
certainty of his coming fall into the yawning jaws open to receive him,
has frozen the marrow of his bones;--that man has experienced the
sensations of Gwynplaine.

He felt the ground he had ascended crumbling under him, and his audience
was the precipice.

There is always some one to say the word which sums all up.

Lord Scarsdale translated the impression of the assembly in one
exclamation,--

"What is the monster doing here?"

Gwynplaine stood up, dismayed and indignant, in a sort of final
convulsion. He looked at them all fixedly.

"What am I doing here? I have come to be a terror to you! I am a
monster, do you say? No! I am the people! I am an exception? No! I am
the rule; you are the exception! You are the chimera; I am the reality!
I am the frightful man who laughs! Who laughs a