Nothing could be more
happily imagined, as a REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM of the
aristocratic principle, than the adventures of Gwynplaine,
the itinerant mountebank, snatched suddenly out of his little
way of life, and installed without preparation as one of the
hereditary legislators of a great country. It is with a very
bitter irony that the paper, on which all this depends, is
left to float for years at the will of wind and tide. What,
again, can be finer in conception than that voice from the
people heard suddenly in the House of Lords, in solemn
arraignment of the pleasures and privileges of its splendid
occupants? The horrible laughter, stamped for ever "by order
of the king" upon the face of this strange spokesman of
democracy, adds yet another feature of justice to the scene;
in all time, travesty has been the argument of oppression;
and, in all time, the oppressed might have made this answer:
"If I am vile, is it not your system that has made me so?"
This ghastly laughter gives occasion, moreover, for the one
strain of tenderness running through the web of this
unpleasant story: the love of the blind girl Dea, for the
monster. It is a most benignant providence that thus
harmoniously brings together these two misfortunes; it is one
of those compensations, one of those afterthoughts of a
relenting destiny, that reconcile us from time to time to the
evil that is in the world; the atmosphere of the book is
purified by the presence of this pathetic love; it seems to
be above the story somehow, and not of it, as the full moon
over the night of some foul and feverish city.
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