had not refused to take the journey from Corleone Lodge to the House of Lords.  What we call rising in life is leaving the safe for the dangerous path.  Which is, thenceforth, the straight line?  Towards whom is our first duty?  Is it towards those nearest to ourselves, or is it towards mankind generally?  Do we not cease to belong to our own circumscribed circle, and become part of the great family of all?  As we ascend we feel an increased pressure on our virtue.  The higher we rise, the greater is the strain.  The increase of right is an increase of duty.  We come to many cross-ways, phantom roads perchance, and we imagine that we see the finger of conscience pointing each one of them out to us.  Which shall we take?  Change our direction, remain where we are, advance, go back?  What are we to do?  That there should be cross-roads in conscience is strange enough; but responsibility may be a labyrinth.  And when a man contains an idea, when he is the incarnation of a fact—­when he is a symbolical man, at the same time that he is a man of flesh and blood—­is not the responsibility still more oppressive?  Thence the care-laden docility and the dumb anxiety of Gwynplaine; thence his obedience when summoned to take his seat.  A pensive man is often a passive man.  He had heard what he fancied was the command of duty itself.  Was not that entrance into a place where oppression could be discussed and resisted the realization of one of his deepest aspirations?  When he had been called upon to speak—­he the fearful human scantling, he the living specimen of the despotic whims under which, for six thousand years, mankind has groaned in agony—­had he the right to refuse?  Had he the right to withdraw his head from under the tongue of fire descending from on high to rest upon him?

In the obscure and giddy debate of conscience, what had he said to himself?  This:  “The people are a silence.  I will be the mighty advocate of that silence; I will speak for the dumb; I will speak of the little to the great—­of the weak to the powerful.  This is the purpose of my fate.  God wills what He wills, and does it.  It was a wonder that Hardquanonne’s flask, in which was the metamorphosis of Gwynplaine into Lord Clancharlie, should have floated for fifteen years on the ocean, on the billows, in the surf, through the storms, and that all the raging of the sea did it no harm.  But I can see the reason.  There are destinies with secret springs.  I have the key of mine, and know its enigma.  I am predestined; I have a mission.  I will be the poor man’s lord; I will speak for the speechless with despair; I will translate inarticulate remonstrance; I will translate the mutterings, the groans, the murmurs, the voices of the crowd, their ill-spoken complaints, their unintelligible words, and those animal-like cries which ignorance and suffering put into men’s mouths.  The clamour of men is as inarticulate as the howling of the wind.  They cry out, but they are understood; so that cries become equivalent to silence, and silence with them means throwing down their arms.  This forced disarmament calls for help.  I will be their help; I will be the Denunciation; I will be the Word of the people.  Thanks to me, they shall be understood.  I will be the bleeding mouth from which the gag has been torn.  I will tell everything.  This will be great indeed.”