“You are hideous; I am beautiful.  You are a player; I am a duchess.  I am the highest; you are the lowest.  I desire you!  I love you!  Come!”

BOOK THE FOURTH.

THE CELL OF TORTURE.

CHAPTER I.

THE TEMPTATION OF ST. GWYNPLAINE.

One jet of flame hardly makes a prick in the darkness; another sets fire to a volcano.

Some sparks are gigantic.

Gwynplaine read the letter, then he read it over again.  Yes, the words were there, “I love you!”

Terrors chased each other through his mind.

The first was, that he believed himself to be mad.

He was mad; that was certain:  He had just seen what had no existence.  The twilight spectres were making game of him, poor wretch!  The little man in scarlet was the will-o’-the-wisp of a dream.  Sometimes, at night, nothings condensed into flame come and laugh at us.  Having had his laugh out, the visionary being had disappeared, and left Gwynplaine behind him, mad.

Such are the freaks of darkness.

The second terror was, to find out that he was in his right senses.

A vision?  Certainly not.  How could that be?  Had he not a letter in his hand?  Did he not see an envelope, a seal, paper, and writing?  Did he not know from whom that came?  It was all clear enough.  Some one took a pen and ink, and wrote.  Some one lighted a taper, and sealed it with wax.  Was not his name written on the letter—­“To Gwynplaine?” The paper was scented.  All was clear.

Gwynplaine knew the little man.  The dwarf was a page.  The gleam was a livery.  The page had given him a rendezvous for the same hour on the morrow, at the corner of London Bridge.

Was London Bridge an illusion?

No, no.  All was clear.  There was no delirium.  All was reality.  Gwynplaine was perfectly clear in his intellect.  It was not a phantasmagoria, suddenly dissolving above his head, and fading into nothingness.  It was something which had really happened to him.  No, Gwynplaine was not mad, nor was he dreaming.  Again he read the letter.

Well, yes!  But then?

That then was terror-striking.

There was a woman who desired him!  If so, let no one ever again pronounce the word incredible!  A woman desire him!  A woman who had seen his face!  A woman who was not blind!  And who was this woman?  An ugly one?  No; a beauty.  A gipsy?  No; a duchess!

What was it all about, and what could it all mean?  What peril in such a triumph!  And how was he to help plunging into it headlong?

What! that woman!  The siren, the apparition, the lady in the visionary box, the light in the darkness!  It was she!  Yes; it was she!

The crackling of the fire burst out in every part of his frame.  It was the strange, unknown lady, she who had previously so troubled his thoughts; and his first tumultuous feelings about this woman returned, heated by the evil fire.  Forgetfulness is nothing but a palimpsest:  an incident happens unexpectedly, and all that was effaced revives in the blanks of wondering memory.