eir fault? Alas! no. It is their
law. Forgive them! To be moved would be to abdicate. Of lords and
princes expect nothing. He who is satisfied is inexorable. For those
that have their fill the hungry do not exist. The happy ignore and
isolate themselves. On the threshold of their paradise, as on the
threshold of hell, must be written, "Leave all hope behind."

Gwynplaine had met with the reception of a spectre entering the dwelling
of the gods.

Here all that was within him rose in rebellion. No, he was no spectre;
he was a man. He told them, he shouted to them, that he was Man.

He was not a phantom. He was palpitating flesh. He had a brain, and he
thought; he had a heart, and he loved; he had a soul, and he hoped.
Indeed, to have hoped overmuch was his whole crime.

Alas! he had exaggerated hope into believing in that thing at once so
brilliant and so dark which is called Society. He who was without had
re-entered it. It had at once, and at first sight, made him its three
offers, and given him its three gifts--marriage, family, and caste.
Marriage? He had seen prostitution on the threshold. Family? His brother
had struck him, and was awaiting him the next day, sword in hand. Caste?
It had burst into laughter in his face, at him the patrician, at him the
wretch. It had rejected, almost before it had admitted him. So that his
first three steps into the dense shadow of society had opened three
gulfs beneath him.

And it was by a treacherous transfiguration that his disaster had begun;
and catastrophe had approached him with the aspect of apotheosis!

Ascend had signified Descend!

His fate was the reverse of Job's. It was through prosperity that
adversity had reached him.

O tragical enigma of life! Behold what pitfalls! A child, he had
wrestled against the night, and had been stronger than it; a man, he had
wrestled against destiny, and had overcome it. Out of disfigurement he
had created success; and out of misery, happiness. Of his exile he had
made an asylum. A vagabond, he had wrestled against space; and, like the
birds of the air, he had found his crumb of bread. Wild and solitary, he
had wrestled against the crowd, and had made it his friend. An athlete,
he had wrestled against that lion, the people; and he had tamed it.
Indigent, he had wrestled against distress, he had faced the dull
necessity of living, and from amalgamating with misery every joy of his
heart, he had at length made riches out of povert