f a human face into the
mask of an animal. Never had been seen so total an eclipse of humanity
in a human face; never parody more complete; never had apparition more
frightful grinned in nightmare; never had everything repulsive to woman
been more hideously amalgamated in a man. The unfortunate heart, masked
and calumniated by the face, seemed for ever condemned to solitude under
it, as under a tombstone.

Yet no! Where unknown malice had done its worst, invisible goodness had
lent its aid. In the poor fallen one, suddenly raised up, by the side of
the repulsive, it had placed the attractive; on the barren shoal it had
set the loadstone; it had caused a soul to fly with swift wings towards
the deserted one; it had sent the dove to console the creature whom the
thunderbolt had overwhelmed, and had made beauty adore deformity. For
this to be possible it was necessary that beauty should not see the
disfigurement. For this good fortune, misfortune was required.
Providence had made Dea blind.

Gwynplaine vaguely felt himself the object of a redemption. Why had he
been persecuted? He knew not. Why redeemed? He knew not. All he knew was
that a halo had encircled his brand. When Gwynplaine had been old enough
to understand, Ursus had read and explained to him the text of Doctor
Conquest _de Denasatis_, and in another folio, Hugo Plagon, the passage,
_Naves habensmutilas_; but Ursus had prudently abstained from
"hypotheses," and had been reserved in his opinion of what it might
mean. Suppositions were possible. The probability of violence inflicted
on Gwynplaine when an infant was hinted at, but for Gwynplaine the
result was the only evidence. His destiny was to live under a stigma.
Why this stigma? There was no answer.

Silence and solitude were around Gwynplaine. All was uncertain in the
conjectures which could be fitted to the tragical reality; excepting the
terrible fact, nothing was certain. In his discouragement Dea intervened
a sort of celestial interposition between him and despair. He perceived,
melted and inspirited by the sweetness of the beautiful girl who turned
to him, that, horrible as he was, a beautified wonder affected his
monstrous visage. Having been fashioned to create dread, he was the
object of a miraculous exception, that it was admired and adored in the
ideal by the light; and, monster that he was, he felt himself the
contemplation of a star.

Gwynplaine and Dea were united, and these two suffering h