Part 47 (1/2)
Gwynplaine fled.
The next day the game was renewed, with variations.
It was a heavenly subsidence into that sweet abyss called love.
At such things heaven smiles philosophically.
CHAPTER VII.
BLINDNESS GIVES LESSONS IN CLAIRVOYANCE.
At times Gwynplaine reproached himself. He made his happiness a case of conscience. He fancied that to allow a woman who could not see him to love him was to deceive her.
What would she have said could she have suddenly obtained her sight? How she would have felt repulsed by what had previously attracted her! How she would have recoiled from her frightful loadstone! What a cry! What covering of her face! What a flight! A bitter scruple hara.s.sed him. He told himself that such a monster as he had no right to love. He was a hydra idolized by a star. It was his duty to enlighten the blind star.
One day he said to Dea,--
”You know that I am very ugly.”
”I know that you are sublime,” she answered.
He resumed,--
”When you hear all the world laugh, they laugh at me because I am horrible.”
”I love you,” said Dea.
After a silence, she added,--
”I was in death; you brought me to life. When you are here, heaven is by my side. Give me your hand, that I may touch heaven.”
Their hands met and grasped each other. They spoke no more, but were silent in the plenitude of love.
Ursus, who was crabbed, had overheard this. The next day, when the three were together, he said,--
”For that matter, Dea is ugly also.”
The word produced no effect. Dea and Gwynplaine were not listening.
Absorbed in each other, they rarely heeded such exclamations of Ursus.
Their depth was a dead loss.
This time, however, the precaution of Ursus, ”Dea is also ugly,”
indicated in this learned man a certain knowledge of women. It is certain that Gwynplaine, in his loyalty, had been guilty of an imprudence. To have said, _I am ugly_, to any other blind girl than Dea might have been dangerous. To be blind, and in love, is to be twofold blind. In such a situation dreams are dreamt. Illusion is the food of dreams. Take illusion from love, and you take from it its aliment. It is compounded of every enthusiasm, of both physical and moral admiration.
Moreover, you should never tell a woman a word difficult to understand.
She will dream about it, and she often dreams falsely. An enigma in a reverie spoils it. The shock caused by the fall of a careless word displaces that against which it strikes. At times it happens, without our knowing why, that because we have received the obscure blow of a chance word the heart empties itself insensibly of love. He who loves perceives a decline in his happiness. Nothing is to be feared more than this slow exudation from the fissure in the vase.