unmeasured gaiety,
he felt that the sepulchre was within him. All was over. He could no
longer master the face which betrayed nor the audience which insulted
him.

That eternal and fatal law by which the grotesque is linked with the
sublime--by which the laugh re-echoes the groan, parody rides behind
despair, and seeming is opposed to being--had never found more terrible
expression. Never had a light more sinister illumined the depths of
human darkness.

Gwynplaine was assisting at the final destruction of his destiny by a
burst of laughter. The irremediable was in this. Having fallen, we can
raise ourselves up; but, being pulverized, never. And the insult of
their sovereign mockery had reduced him to dust. From thenceforth
nothing was possible. Everything is in accordance with the scene. That
which was triumph in the Green Box was disgrace and catastrophe in the
House of Lords. What was applause there, was insult here. He felt
something like the reverse side of his mask. On one side of that mask he
had the sympathy of the people, who welcomed Gwynplaine; on the other,
the contempt of the great, rejecting Lord Fermain Clancharlie. On one
side, attraction; on the other, repulsion; both leading him towards the
shadows. He felt himself, as it were, struck from behind. Fate strikes
treacherous blows. Everything will be explained hereafter, but, in the
meantime, destiny is a snare, and man sinks into its pitfalls. He had
expected to rise, and was welcomed by laughter. Such apotheoses have
lugubrious terminations. There is a dreary expression--to be sobered;
tragical wisdom born of drunkenness! In the midst of that tempest of
gaiety commingled with ferocity, Gwynplaine fell into a reverie.

An assembly in mad merriment drifts as chance directs, and loses its
compass when it gives itself to laughter. None knew whither they were
tending, or what they were doing. The House was obliged to rise,
adjourned by the Lord Chancellor, "owing to extraordinary
circumstances," to the next day. The peers broke up. They bowed to the
royal throne and departed. Echoes of prolonged laughter were heard
losing themselves in the corridors.

Assemblies, besides their official doors, have--under tapestry, under
projections, and under arches--all sorts of hidden doors, by which the
members escape like water through the cracks in a vase. In a short time
the chamber was deserted. This takes place quickly and almost
imperceptibly, and those places,