ociety? Hatred. And himself? A defeated man. In the depths of his soul
he cried. Society is the stepmother, Nature is the mother. Society is
the world of the body, Nature is the world of the soul. The one tends to
the coffin, to the deal box in the grave, to the earth-worms, and ends
there. The other tends to expanded wings, to transformation into the
morning light, to ascent into the firmament, and there revives into new
life.

By degrees a paroxysm came over him, like a sweeping surge. At the close
of events there is always a last flash, in which all stands revealed
once more.

He who judges meets the accused face to face. Gwynplaine reviewed all
that society and all that nature had done for him. How kind had nature
been to him! How she, who is the soul, had succoured him! All had been
taken from him, even his features. The soul had given him all back--all,
even his features; because there was on earth a heavenly blind girl made
expressly for him, who saw not his ugliness, and who saw his beauty.

And it was from this that he had allowed himself to be separated--from
that adorable girl, from his own adopted one, from her tenderness, from
her divine blind gaze, the only gaze on earth that saw him, that he had
strayed! Dea was his sister, because he felt between them the grand
fraternity of above--the mystery which contains the whole of heaven.
Dea, when he was a little child, was his virgin; because every child has
his virgin, and at the commencement of life a marriage of souls is
always consummated in the plenitude of innocence. Dea was his wife, for
theirs was the same nest on the highest branch of the deep-rooted tree
of Hymen. Dea was still more--she was his light, for without her all was
void, and nothingness; and for him her head was crowned with rays. What
would become of him without Dea? What could he do with all that was
himself? Nothing in him could live without her. How, then, could he have
lost sight of her for a moment? O unfortunate man! He allowed distance
to intervene between himself and his star and, by the unknown and
terrible laws of gravitation in such things, distance is immediate loss.

Where was she, the star? Dea! Dea! Dea! Dea! Alas! he had lost her
light. Take away the star, and what is the sky? A black mass. But why,
then, had all this befallen him? Oh, what happiness had been his! For
him God had remade Eden. Too close was the resemblance, alas! even to
allowing the serpent to enter; but