breast to breast with destiny; he, whose disproportion with strife had not discouraged from striving; he who, perceiving in everything around him a frightful occultation of the human race, had accepted that eclipse, and proudly continued his journey; he who had known how to endure cold, thirst, hunger, valiantly; he who, a pigmy in stature, had been a colossus in soul:  this Gwynplaine, who had conquered the great terror of the abyss under its double form, Tempest and Misery, staggered under a breath—­Vanity.

Thus, when she has exhausted distress, nakedness, storms, catastrophes, agonies on an unflinching man, Fatality begins to smile, and her victim, suddenly intoxicated, staggers.

The smile of Fatality!  Can anything more terrible be imagined?  It is the last resource of the pitiless trier of souls in his proof of man.  The tiger, lurking in destiny, caresses man with a velvet paw.  Sinister preparation, hideous gentleness in the monster!

Every self-observer has detected within himself mental weakness coincident with aggrandisement.  A sudden growth disturbs the system, and produces fever.

In Gwynplaine’s brain was the giddy whirlwind of a crowd of new circumstances; all the light and shade of a metamorphosis; inexpressibly strange confrontations; the shock of the past against the future.  Two Gwynplaines, himself doubled; behind, an infant in rags crawling through night—­wandering, shivering, hungry, provoking laughter; in front, a brilliant nobleman—­luxurious, proud, dazzling all London.  He was casting off one form, and amalgamating himself with the other.  He was casting the mountebank, and becoming the peer.  Change of skin is sometimes change of soul.  Now and then the past seemed like a dream.  It was complex; bad and good.  He thought of his father.  It was a poignant anguish never to have known his father.  He tried to picture him to himself.  He thought of his brother, of whom he had just heard.  Then he had a family!  He, Gwynplaine!  He lost himself in fantastic dreams.  He saw visions of magnificence; unknown forms of solemn grandeur moved in mist before him.  He heard flourishes of trumpets.

“And then,” he said, “I shall be eloquent.”

He pictured to himself a splendid entrance into the House of Lords.  He should arrive full to the brim with new facts and ideas.  What could he not tell them?  What subjects he had accumulated!  What an advantage to be in the midst of them, a man who had seen, touched, undergone, and suffered; who could cry aloud to them, “I have been near to everything, from which you are so far removed.”  He would hurl reality in the face of those patricians, crammed with illusions.  They should tremble, for it would be the truth.  They would applaud, for it would be grand.  He would arise amongst those powerful men, more powerful than they.  “I shall appear as a torch-bearer, to show them truth; and as a sword-bearer, to show them justice!” What a triumph!