“However, nothing is yet settled.  A man cannot be made a peer of England without his own consent.  All can be annulled and disappear, unless you acquiesce.  An event nipped in the bud ere it ripens often occurs in state policy.  My lord, up to this time silence has been preserved on what has occurred.  The House of Lords will not be informed of the facts until to-morrow.  Secrecy has been kept about the whole matter for reasons of state, which are of such importance that the influential persons who alone are at this moment cognizant of your existence, and of your rights, will forget them immediately should reasons of state command their being forgotten.  That which is in darkness may remain in darkness.  It is easy to wipe you out; the more so as you have a brother, the natural son of your father and of a woman who afterwards, during the exile of your father, became mistress to King Charles II., which accounts for your brother’s high position at court; for it is to this brother, bastard though he be, that your peerage would revert.  Do you wish this?  I cannot think so.  Well, all depends on you.  The queen must be obeyed.  You will not quit the house till to-morrow in a royal carriage, and to go to the House of Lords.  My lord, will you be a peer of England; yes or no?  The queen has designs for you.  She destines you for an alliance almost royal.  Lord Fermain Clancharlie, this is the decisive moment.  Destiny never opens one door without shutting another.  After a certain step in advance, to step back is impossible.  Whoso enters into transfiguration, leaves behind him evanescence.  My lord, Gwynplaine is dead.  Do you understand?”

Gwynplaine trembled from head to foot.

Then he recovered himself.

“Yes,” he said.

Barkilphedro, smiling, bowed, placed the casket under his cloak, and left the room.

CHAPTER V.

WE THINK WE REMEMBER; WE FORGET.

Whence arise those strange, visible changes which occur in the soul of man?

Gwynplaine had been at the same moment raised to a summit and cast into an abyss.

His head swam with double giddiness—­the giddiness of ascent and descent.  A fatal combination.

He felt himself ascend, and felt not his fall.

It is appalling to see a new horizon.

A perspective affords suggestions,—­not always good ones.

He had before him the fairy glade, a snare perhaps, seen through opening clouds, and showing the blue depths of sky; so deep, that they are obscure.

He was on the mountain, whence he could see all the kingdoms of the earth.  A mountain all the more terrible that it is a visionary one.  Those who are on its apex are in a dream.

Palaces, castles, power, opulence, all human happiness extending as far as eye could reach; a map of enjoyments spread out to the horizon; a sort of radiant geography of which he was the centre.  A perilous mirage!