he went on,--

"Noche, quita te de alli!
El alba canta hallali."[14]

As she sang, the man raised himself by degrees; instead of lying he was
now kneeling, his hands elevated towards the vision, his knees resting
on the beasts, which lay motionless, and as if thunder-stricken.

She continued, turning towards him,--

"Es menester a cielos ir,
Y tu que llorabas reir."[15]

And approaching him with the majesty of a star, she added,--

"Gebra barzon;
Deja, monstruo,
A tu negro
Caparazon."[16]

And she put hot hand on his brow. Then another voice arose, deeper, and
consequently still sweeter--a voice broken and enwrapt with a gravity
both tender and wild. It was the human chant responding to the chant of
the stars. Gwynplaine, still in obscurity, his head under Dea's hand, and
kneeling on the vanquished bear and wolf, sang,--

"O ven! ama!
Eres alma,
Soy corazon."[17]

And suddenly from the shadow a ray of light fell full upon Gwynplaine.
Then, through the darkness, was the monster full exposed.

To describe the commotion of the crowd is impossible.

A sun of laughter rising, such was the effect. Laughter springs from
unexpected causes, and nothing could be more unexpected than this
termination. Never was sensation comparable to that produced by the ray
of light striking on that mask, at once ludicrous and terrible. They
laughed all around his laugh. Everywhere--above, below, behind, before,
at the uttermost distance; men, women, old gray-heads, rosy-faced
children; the good, the wicked, the gay, the sad, everybody. And even in
the streets, the passers-by who could see nothing, hearing the laughter,
laughed also. The laughter ended in clapping of hands and stamping of
feet. The curtain dropped: Gwynplaine was recalled with frenzy. Hence an
immense success. Have you seen "Chaos Vanquished?" Gwynplaine was run
after. The listless came to laugh, the melancholy came to laugh, evil
consciences came to laugh--a laugh so irresistible that it seemed almost
an epidemic. But there is a pestilence from which men do not fly, and
that is the contagion of joy. The success, it must be admitted, did not
rise higher than the populace. A great crowd means a crowd of nobodies.
"Chaos Vanquished" could be seen for a penny. Fashionable people never
go where the price of admission is a penny.

Ursus thought a good deal of his work, which he had brooded over for a
long time. "It is in the style of one Shake