this time it was the man who had been
tempted. He had been drawn without, and then, by a frightful snare, had
fallen into a chaos of murky laughter, which was hell. O grief! O grief!
How frightful seemed all that had fascinated him! That Josiana, fearful
creature!--half beast, half goddess! Gwynplaine was now on the reverse
side of his elevation, and he saw the other aspect of that which had
dazzled him. It was baleful. His peerage was deformed, his coronet was
hideous; his purple robe, a funeral garment; those palaces, infected;
those trophies, those statues, those armorial bearings, sinister; the
unwholesome and treacherous air poisoned those who breathed it, and
turned them mad. How brilliant the rags of the mountebank, Gwynplaine,
appeared to him now! Alas! where was the Green Box, poverty, joy, the
sweet wandering life--wandering together, like the swallows? They never
left each other then; he saw her every minute, morning, evening. At
table their knees, their elbows, touched; they drank from the same cup;
the sun shone through the pane, but it was only the sun, and Dea was
Love. At night they slept not far from each other; and the dream of Dea
came and hovered over Gwynplaine, and the dream of Gwynplaine spread
itself mysteriously above the head of Dea. When they awoke they could be
never quite sure that they had not exchanged kisses in the azure mists
of dreams. Dea was all innocence; Ursus, all wisdom. They wandered from
town to town; and they had for provision and for stimulant the frank,
loving gaiety of the people. They were angel vagabonds, with enough of
humanity to walk the earth and not enough of wings to fly away; and now
all had disappeared! Where was it gone? Was it possible that it was all
effaced? What wind from the tomb had swept over them? All was eclipsed!
All was lost! Alas! power, irresistible and deaf to appeal, which weighs
down the poor, flings its shadow over all, and is capable of anything.
What had been done to them? And he had not been there to protect them,
to fling himself in front of them, to defend them, as a lord, with his
title, his peerage, and his sword; as a mountebank, with his fists and
his nails!

And here arose a bitter reflection, perhaps the most bitter of all.
Well, no; he could not have defended them. It was he himself who had
destroyed them; it was to save him, Lord Clancharlie, from them; it was
to isolate his dignity from contact with them, that the infamous
omnipotenc