ir help; I will be the Denunciation; I will be the Word of the
people. Thanks to me, they shall be understood. I will be the bleeding
mouth from which the gag has been torn. I will tell everything. This
will be great indeed."

Yes; it is fine to speak for the dumb, but to speak to the deaf is sad.
And that was his second part in the drama.

Alas! he had failed irremediably. The elevation in which he had
believed, the high fortune, had melted away like a mirage. And what a
fall! To be drowned in a surge of laughter!

He had believed himself strong--he who, during so many years, had
floated with observant mind on the wide sea of suffering; he who had
brought back out of the great shadow so touching a cry. He had been
flung against that huge rock the frivolity of the fortunate. He believed
himself an avenger; he was but a clown. He thought that he wielded the
thunderbolt; he did but tickle. In place of emotion, he met with
mockery. He sobbed; they burst into gaiety, and under that gaiety he had
sunk fatally submerged.

And what had they laughed at? At his laugh. So that trace of a hateful
act, of which he must keep the mark for ever--mutilation carved in
everlasting gaiety; the stigmata of laughter, image of the sham
contentment of nations under their oppressors; that mask of joy produced
by torture; that abyss of grimace which he carried on his features; the
scar which signified _Jussu regis_, the attestation of a crime committed
by the king towards him, and the symbol of crime committed by royalty
towards the people;--that it was which had triumphed over him; that it
was which had overwhelmed him; so that the accusation against the
executioner turned into sentence upon the victim. What a prodigious
denial of justice! Royalty, having had satisfaction of his father, had
had satisfaction of him! The evil that had been done had served as
pretext and as motive for the evil which remained to be done. Against
whom were the lords angered? Against the torturer? No; against the
tortured. Here is the throne; there, the people. Here, James II.; there,
Gwynplaine. That confrontation, indeed, brought to light an outrage and
a crime. What was the outrage? Complaint. What was the crime? Suffering.
Let misery hide itself in silence, otherwise it becomes treason. And
those men who had dragged Gwynplaine on the hurdle of sarcasm, were they
wicked? No; but they, too, had their fatality--they were happy. They
were executioners, ignorant