Heaven with its thunderbolts and its pinpricks. It seeks
to find what it has to expect from fate. It argues, weighs, and
calculates, outwardly cool, while the burning lava is still flowing on
within.

Gwynplaine examined himself, and examined his fate.

The backward glance of thought; terrible recapitulation!

When at the top of a mountain, we look down the precipice; when at the
bottom, we look up at heaven. And we say, "I was there."

Gwynplaine was at the very bottom of misfortune. How sudden, too, had
been his fall!

Such is the hideous swiftness of misfortune, although it is so heavy
that we might fancy it slow. But no! It would likewise appear that snow,
from its coldness, ought to be the paralysis of winter, and, from its
whiteness, the immobility of the winding-sheet. Yet this is contradicted
by the avalanche.

The avalanche is snow become a furnace. It remains frozen, but it
devours. The avalanche had enveloped Gwynplaine. He had been torn like a
rag, uprooted like a tree, precipitated like a stone. He recalled all
the circumstances of his fall. He put himself questions, and returned
answers. Grief is an examination. There is no judge so searching as
conscience conducting its own trial.

What amount of remorse was there in his despair? This he wished to find
out, and dissected his conscience. Excruciating vivisection!

His absence had caused a catastrophe. Had this absence depended on him?
In all that had happened, had he been a free agent? No! He had felt
himself captive. What was that which had arrested and detained him--a
prison? No. A chain? No. What then? Sticky slime! He had sunk into the
slough of greatness.

To whom has it not happened to be free in appearance, yet to feel that
his wings are hampered?

There had been something like a snare spread for him. What is at first
temptation ends by captivity.

Nevertheless--and his conscience pressed him on this point--had he
merely submitted to what had been offered him? No; he had accepted it.

Violence and surprise had been used with him in a certain measure, it
was true; but he, in a certain measure, had given in. To have allowed
himself to be carried off was not his fault; but to have allowed himself
to be inebriated was his weakness. There had been a moment--a decisive
moment--when the question was proposed. This Barkilphedro had placed a
dilemma before Gwynplaine, and had given him clear power to decide his
fate by a word. Gwynplaine might