Читать книгу Человек, который смеется / The Man Who Laughs. Уровень 4 - Виктор Мари Гюго, Clara Inés Bravo Villarreal - Страница 20

Thus lived these unfortunate creatures together – Dea and Gwynplaine. These orphans were all in all to each other, the feeble and the deformed. An inexpressible thanksgiving arose out of their distress. They were grateful. To whom? To the obscure immensity. Be grateful in your own hearts. That suffices.

Gwynplaine and Dea were grateful. Deformity is expulsion. Blindness is a precipice. Gwynplaine was no longer deformed. He was beloved. The abjection of the disfigured man was exalted and dilated into intoxication, into delight, into belief; and a hand was stretched out towards the melancholy hesitation of the blind girl, to guide her in her darkness.

The rejected found a refuge in each other. They held together by what they lacked: in that in which one was poor, the other was rich. The misfortune of the one made the treasure of the other. Had Dea not been blind, would she have chosen Gwynplaine? Had Gwynplaine not been disfigured, would he have preferred Dea? What happiness for Dea that Gwynplaine was hideous! What good fortune for Gwynplaine that Dea was blind! Gwynplaine saved Dea. Dea saved Gwynplaine.

Gwynplaine had a thought – “What should I be without her?” Dea had a thought – “What should I be without him?” The exile of each made a country for both. They belonged to each other; they knew themselves. They were inexpressibly happy. In their hell they had created heaven. Such was your power, O Love! Dea heard Gwynplaine’s laugh; Gwynplaine saw Dea’s smile. Thus the mysterious problem of happiness was solved; and by whom? By two outcasts.

For Gwynplaine, Dea was splendour. For Dea, Gwynplaine was presence. Gwynplaine was the religion of Dea. Sometimes, lost in her sense of love towards him, she knelt, like a beautiful priestess.

These happy creatures dwelt in the ideal world. They were spouses in it at distances as opposite as the spheres. Their kisses were the kisses of souls.

They had always lived a common life. They knew themselves only in each other’s society. The infancy of Dea had coincided with the youth of Gwynplaine. They had grown up side by side. For a long time they had slept in the same bed, for the hut was not a large bedchamber. They lay on the chest, Ursus on the floor; that was the arrangement. One fine day, whilst Dea was still very little, Gwynplaine felt himself grown up. He said to Ursus,

“I will also sleep on the floor.”

And at night he stretched himself, with the old man, on the bear skin. Then Dea wept. She cried; but Gwynplaine, become restless because he had begun to love, decided to remain where he was. From that time he always slept by the side of Ursus on the planks. In the summer, when the nights were fine, he slept outside with Homo.

Such was the idyll blooming in a tragedy. Ursus said to them, -

“Old brutes, adore each other!”