“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 Shakespeare,” he said modestly.

The juxtaposition of Dea added to the indescribable effect produced by Gwynplaine.  Her white face by the side of the gnome represented what might have been called divine astonishment.  The audience regarded Dea with a sort of mysterious anxiety.  She had in her aspect the dignity of a virgin and of a priestess, not knowing man and knowing God.  They saw that she was blind, and felt that she could see.  She seemed to stand on the threshold of the supernatural.  The light that beamed on her seemed half earthly and half heavenly.  She had come to work on earth, and to work as heaven works, in the radiance of morning.  Finding a hydra, she formed a soul.  She seemed like a creative power, satisfied but astonished at the result of her creation; and the audience fancied that they could see in the divine surprise of that face desire of the cause and wonder at the result.  They felt that she loved this monster.  Did she know that he was one?  Yes; since she touched him.  No; since she accepted him.  This depth of night and this glory of day united, formed in the mind of the spectator a chiaroscuro in which appeared endless perspectives.  How much divinity exists in the germ, in what manner the penetration of the soul into matter is accomplished, how the solar ray is an umbilical cord, how the disfigured is transfigured, how the deformed becomes heavenly—­all these glimpses of mysteries added an almost cosmical emotion to the convulsive hilarity produced by Gwynplaine.  Without going too deep—­for spectators do not like the fatigue of seeking below the surface—­something more was understood than was perceived.  And this strange spectacle had the transparency of an avatar.