a picker up of pence from the chinks in the pavement, and Dea would perhaps not have had bread every day.  It was with deep and tender pride that he felt himself the protector of the helpless and heavenly creature.  Night, solitude, nakedness, weakness, ignorance, hunger, and thirst—­seven yawning jaws of misery—­were raised around her, and he was the St. George fighting the dragon.  He triumphed over poverty.  How?  By his deformity.  By his deformity he was useful, helpful, victorious, great.  He had but to show himself, and money poured in.  He was a master of crowds, the sovereign of the mob.  He could do everything for Dea.  Her wants he foresaw; her desires, her tastes, her fancies, in the limited sphere in which wishes are possible to the blind, he fulfilled.  Gwynplaine and Dea were, as we have already shown, Providence to each other.  He felt himself raised on her wings; she felt herself carried in his arms.  To protect the being who loves you, to give what she requires to her who shines on you as your star, can anything be sweeter?  Gwynplaine possessed this supreme happiness, and he owed it to his deformity.  His deformity had raised him above all.  By it he had gained the means of life for himself and others; by it he had gained independence, liberty, celebrity, internal satisfaction and pride.  In his deformity he was inaccessible.  The Fates could do nothing beyond this blow in which they had spent their whole force, and which he had turned into a triumph.  This lowest depth of misfortune had become the summit of Elysium.  Gwynplaine was imprisoned in his deformity, but with Dea.  And this was, as we have already said, to live in a dungeon of paradise.  A wall stood between them and the living world.  So much the better.  This wall protected as well as enclosed them.  What could affect Dea, what could affect Gwynplaine, with such a fortress around them?  To take from him his success was impossible.  They would have had to deprive him of his face.  Take from him his love.  Impossible.  Dea could not see him.  The blindness of Dea was divinely incurable.  What harm did his deformity do Gwynplaine?  None.  What advantage did it give him?  Every advantage.  He was beloved, notwithstanding its horror, and perhaps for that very cause.  Infirmity and deformity had by instinct been drawn towards and coupled with each other.  To be beloved, is not that everything?  Gwynplaine thought of his disfigurement only with gratitude.  He was blessed in the stigma.  With joy he felt that it was irremediable and eternal.  What a blessing that it was so!  While there were highways and fairgrounds, and journeys to take, the people below and the sky above, they would be sure to live, Dea would want nothing, and they should have love.  Gwynplaine would not have changed faces with Apollo.  To be a monster was his form of happiness.

Thus, as we said before, destiny had given him all, even to overflowing.  He who had been rejected had been preferred.