He had tasted the golden fruit.  He was now spitting out the ashes to which it turned.

Lamentable result!  Defeat, failure, fall into ruin, insolent expulsion of all his hopes, frustrated by ridicule.  Immeasurable disillusion!  And what was there for him in the future?  If he looked forward to the morrow, what did he see?  A drawn sword, the point of which was against his breast, and the hilt in the hand of his brother.  He could see nothing but the hideous flash of that sword.  Josiana and the House of Lords made up the background in a monstrous chiaroscuro full of tragic shadows.

And that brother seemed so brave and chivalrous!  Alas! he had hardly seen the Tom-Jim-Jack who had defended Gwynplaine, the Lord David who had defended Lord Clancharlie; but he had had time to receive a blow from him and to love him.

He was crushed.

He felt it impossible to proceed further.  Everything had crumbled about him.  Besides, what was the good of it?  All weariness dwells in the depths of despair.

The trial had been made.  It could not be renewed.

Gwynplaine was like a gamester who has played all his trumps away, one after the other.  He had allowed himself to be drawn to a fearful gambling-table, without thinking what he was about; for, so subtle is the poison of illusion, he had staked Dea against Josiana, and had gained a monster; he had staked Ursus against a family, and had gained an insult; he had played his mountebank platform against his seat in the Lords; for the applause which was his he had gained insult.  His last card had fallen on that fatal green cloth, the deserted bowling-green.  Gwynplaine had lost.  Nothing remained but to pay.  Pay up, wretched man!

The thunder-stricken lie still.  Gwynplaine remained motionless.  Anybody perceiving him from afar, in the shadow, stiff, and without movement, might have fancied that he saw an upright stone.

Hell, the serpent, and reverie are tortuous.  Gwynplaine was descending the sepulchral spirals of the deepest thought.

He reflected on that world of which he had just caught a glimpse with the icy contemplation of a last look.  Marriage, but no love; family, but no brotherly affection; riches, but no conscience; beauty, but no modesty; justice, but no equity; order, but no equilibrium; authority, but no right; power, but no intelligence; splendour, but no light.  Inexorable balance-sheet!  He went throughout the supreme vision in which his mind had been plunged.  He examined successively destiny, situation, society, and himself.  What was destiny?  A snare.  Situation?  Despair.  Society?  Hatred.  And himself?  A defeated man.  In the depths of his soul he cried.  Society is the stepmother, Nature is the mother.  Society is the world of the body, Nature is the world of the soul.  The one tends to the coffin, to the deal box in the grave, to the earth-worms, and ends there.  The other tends to expanded wings, to transformation into the morning light, to ascent into the firmament, and there revives into new life.