ed himself.

"Yes," he said.

Barkilphedro, smiling, bowed, placed the casket under his cloak, and
left the room.

CHAPTER V.

WE THINK WE REMEMBER; WE FORGET.

Whence arise those strange, visible changes which occur in the soul of
man?

Gwynplaine had been at the same moment raised to a summit and cast into
an abyss.

His head swam with double giddiness--the giddiness of ascent and
descent. A fatal combination.

He felt himself ascend, and felt not his fall.

It is appalling to see a new horizon.

A perspective affords suggestions,--not always good ones.

He had before him the fairy glade, a snare perhaps, seen through opening
clouds, and showing the blue depths of sky; so deep, that they are
obscure.

He was on the mountain, whence he could see all the kingdoms of the
earth. A mountain all the more terrible that it is a visionary one.
Those who are on its apex are in a dream.

Palaces, castles, power, opulence, all human happiness extending as far
as eye could reach; a map of enjoyments spread out to the horizon; a
sort of radiant geography of which he was the centre. A perilous mirage!

Imagine what must have been the haze of such a vision, not led up to,
not attained to as by the gradual steps of a ladder, but reached without
transition and without previous warning.

A man going to sleep in a mole's burrow, and awaking on the top of the
Strasbourg steeple; such was the state of Gwynplaine.

Giddiness is a dangerous kind of glare, particularly that which bears
you at once towards the day and towards the night, forming two
whirlwinds, one opposed to the other.

He saw too much, and not enough.

He saw all, and nothing.

His state was what the author of this book has somewhere expressed as
the blind man dazzled.

Gwynplaine, left by himself, began to walk with long strides. A bubbling
precedes an explosion.

Notwithstanding his agitation, in this impossibility of keeping still,
he meditated. His mind liquefied as it boiled. He began to recall things
to his memory. It is surprising how we find that we have heard so
clearly that to which we scarcely listened. The declaration of the
shipwrecked men, read by the sheriff in the Southwark cell, came back to
him clearly and intelligibly. He recalled every word, he saw under it
his whole infancy.

Suddenly he stopped, his hands clasped behind his back, looking up to
the ceilings--the sky--no matter what--whatever was above him.

"Quits!