as it were, himself unmuzzling the shadowy monsters in ambush
around him; he who, a precocious warrior, had immediately, and from his
first steps out of the cradle, struggled breast to breast with destiny;
he, whose disproportion with strife had not discouraged from striving;
he who, perceiving in everything around him a frightful occultation of
the human race, had accepted that eclipse, and proudly continued his
journey; he who had known how to endure cold, thirst, hunger, valiantly;
he who, a pigmy in stature, had been a colossus in soul: this
Gwynplaine, who had conquered the great terror of the abyss under its
double form, Tempest and Misery, staggered under a breath--Vanity.

Thus, when she has exhausted distress, nakedness, storms, catastrophes,
agonies on an unflinching man, Fatality begins to smile, and her victim,
suddenly intoxicated, staggers.

The smile of Fatality! Can anything more terrible be imagined? It is the
last resource of the pitiless trier of souls in his proof of man. The
tiger, lurking in destiny, caresses man with a velvet paw. Sinister
preparation, hideous gentleness in the monster!

Every self-observer has detected within himself mental weakness
coincident with aggrandisement. A sudden growth disturbs the system, and
produces fever.

In Gwynplaine's brain was the giddy whirlwind of a crowd of new
circumstances; all the light and shade of a metamorphosis; inexpressibly
strange confrontations; the shock of the past against the future. Two
Gwynplaines, himself doubled; behind, an infant in rags crawling through
night--wandering, shivering, hungry, provoking laughter; in front, a
brilliant nobleman--luxurious, proud, dazzling all London. He was
casting off one form, and amalgamating himself with the other. He was
casting the mountebank, and becoming the peer. Change of skin is
sometimes change of soul. Now and then the past seemed like a dream. It
was complex; bad and good. He thought of his father. It was a poignant
anguish never to have known his father. He tried to picture him to
himself. He thought of his brother, of whom he had just heard. Then he
had a family! He, Gwynplaine! He lost himself in fantastic dreams. He
saw visions of magnificence; unknown forms of solemn grandeur moved in
mist before him. He heard flourishes of trumpets.

"And then," he said, "I shall be eloquent."

He pictured to himself a splendid entrance into the House of Lords. He
should arrive full to the brim with