In entering that terrible cell at Southwark, Gwynplaine had expected the iron collar of a felon; they had placed on his head the coronet of a peer.  How could this be?  There had not been space of time enough between what Gwynplaine had feared and what had really occurred; it had succeeded too quickly—­his terror changing into other feelings too abruptly for comprehension.  The contrasts were too tightly packed one against the other.  Gwynplaine made an effort to withdraw his mind from the vice.

He was silent.  This is the instinct of great stupefaction, which is more on the defensive than it is thought to be.  Who says nothing is prepared for everything.  A word of yours allowed to drop may be seized in some unknown system of wheels, and your utter destruction be compassed in its complex machinery.

The poor and weak live in terror of being crushed.  The crowd ever expect to be trodden down.  Gwynplaine had long been one of the crowd.

A singular state of human uneasiness can be expressed by the words:  Let us see what will happen.  Gwynplaine was in this state.  You feel that you have not gained your equilibrium when an unexpected situation surges up under your feet.  You watch for something which must produce a result.  You are vaguely attentive.  We will see what happens.  What?  You do not know.  Whom?  You watch.

The man with the paunch repeated, “You are in your own house, my lord.”

Gwynplaine felt himself.  In surprises, we first look to make sure that things exist; then we feel ourselves, to make sure that we exist ourselves.  It was certainly to him that the words were spoken; but he himself was somebody else.  He no longer had his jacket on, or his esclavine of leather.  He had a waistcoat of cloth of silver; and a satin coat, which he touched and found to be embroidered.  He felt a heavy purse in his waistcoat pocket.  A pair of velvet trunk hose covered his clown’s tights.  He wore shoes with high red heels.  As they had brought him to this palace, so had they changed his dress.

The man resumed,—­

“Will your lordship deign to remember this:  I am called Barkilphedro; I am clerk to the Admiralty.  It was I who opened Hardquanonne’s flask and drew your destiny out of it.  Thus, in the ‘Arabian Nights’ a fisherman releases a giant from a bottle.”

Gwynplaine fixed his eyes on the smiling face of the speaker.

Barkilphedro continued:—­

“Besides this palace, my lord, Hunkerville House, which is larger, is yours.  You own Clancharlie Castle, from which you take your title, and which was a fortress in the time of Edward the Elder.  You have nineteen bailiwicks belonging to you, with their villages and their inhabitants.  This puts under your banner, as a landlord and a nobleman, about eighty thousand vassals and tenants.  At Clancharlie you are a judge—­judge of all, both of goods and of persons—­and you hold your baron’s court.  The king has no right which you have not,