“O monster!” she cried.  She grew wild.

Suddenly she seized his hands.

“Gwynplaine, I am the throne; you are the footstool.  Let us join on the same level.  Oh, how happy I am in my fall!  I wish all the world could know how abject I am become.  It would bow down all the lower.  The more man abhors, the more does he cringe.  It is human nature.  Hostile, but reptile; dragon, but worm.  Oh, I am as depraved as are the gods!  They can never say that I am not a king’s bastard.  I act like a queen.  Who was Rodope but a queen loving Pteh, a man with a crocodile’s head?  She raised the third pyramid in his honour.  Penthesilea loved the centaur, who, being now a star, is named Sagittarius.  And what do you say about Anne of Austria?  Mazarin was ugly enough!  Now, you are not only ugly; you are deformed.  Ugliness is mean, deformity is grand.  Ugliness is the devil’s grin behind beauty; deformity is the reverse of sublimity.  It is the back view.  Olympus has two aspects.  One, by day, shows Apollo; the other, by night, shows Polyphemus.  You—­you are a Titan.  You would be Behemoth in the forests, Leviathan in the deep, and Typhon in the sewer.  You surpass everything.  There is the trace of lightning in your deformity; your face has been battered by the thunderbolt.  The jagged contortion of forked lightning has imprinted its mark on your face.  It struck you and passed on.  A mighty and mysterious wrath has, in a fit of passion, cemented your spirit in a terrible and superhuman form.  Hell is a penal furnace, where the iron called Fatality is raised to a white heat.  You have been branded with it.  To love you is to understand grandeur.  I enjoy that triumph.  To be in love with Apollo—­a fine effort, forsooth!  Glory is to be measured by the astonishment it creates.  I love you.  I have dreamt of you night after night.  This is my palace.  You shall see my gardens.  There are fresh springs under the shrubs; arbours for lovers; and beautiful groups of marble statuary by Bernini.  Flowers! there are too many—­during the spring the place is on fire with roses.  Did I tell you that the queen is my sister?  Do what you like with me.  I am made for Jupiter to kiss my feet, and for Satan to spit in my face.  Are you of any religion?  I am a Papist.  My father, James II., died in France, surrounded by Jesuits.  I have never felt before as I feel now that I am near you.  Oh, how I should like to pass the evening with you, in the midst of music, both reclining on the same cushion, under a purple awning, in a gilded gondola on the soft expanse of ocean!  Insult me, beat me, kick me, cuff me, treat me like a brute!  I adore you.”