e tottering. The people are
suffering--they are suffering; and that which is on high totters, and
that which is below yawns. Darkness demands its change to light; the
damned discuss the elect. Behold! it is the coming of the people, the
ascent of mankind, the beginning of the end, the red dawn of the
catastrophe! Yes, all these things are in this laugh of mine, at which
you laugh to-day! London is one perpetual fete. Be it so. From one end
to the other, England rings with acclamation. Well! but listen. All that
you see is I. You have your fetes--they are my laugh; you have your
public rejoicings--they are my laugh; you have your weddings,
consecrations, and coronations--they are my laugh. The births of your
princes are my laugh. But above you is the thunderbolt--it is my laugh."

How could they stand such nonsense? The laughter burst out afresh; and
now it was overwhelming. Of all the lava which that crater, the human
mouth, ejects, the most corrosive is joy. To inflict evil gaily is a
contagion which no crowd can resist. All executions do not take place on
the scaffold; and men, from the moment they are in a body, whether in
mobs or in senates, have always a ready executioner amongst them, called
sarcasm. There is no torture to be compared to that of the wretch
condemned to execution by ridicule. This was Gwynplaine's fate. He was
stoned with their jokes, and riddled by the scoffs shot at him. He stood
there a mark for all. They sprang up; they cried, "Encore;" they shook
with laughter; they stamped their feet; they pulled each other's bands.
The majesty of the place, the purple of the robes, the chaste ermine,
the dignity of the wigs, had no effect. The lords laughed, the bishops
laughed, the judges laughed, the old men's benches derided, the
children's benches were in convulsions. The Archbishop of Canterbury
nudged the Archbishop of York; Henry Compton, Bishop of London, brother
of Lord Northampton, held his sides; the Lord Chancellor bent down his
head, probably to conceal his inclination to laugh; and, at the bar,
that statue of respect, the Usher of the Black Rod, was laughing also.

Gwynplaine, become pallid, had folded his arms; and, surrounded by all
those faces, young and old, in which had burst forth this grand Homeric
jubilee; in that whirlwind of clapping hands, of stamping feet, and of
hurrahs; in that mad buffoonery, of which he was the centre; in that
splendid overflow of hilarity; in the midst of that