Виктор Мари Гюго
Toilers of the Sea
IV
CAPTAIN CLUBIN DISPLAYS ALL HIS GREAT QUALITIES
Everybody turned.
It was the captain calling to the helmsman.
Sieur Clubin's tone and manner evidenced that he was extremely angry, or that he wished to appear so.
A well-timed burst of anger sometimes removes responsibility, and sometimes shifts it on to other shoulders.
The captain, standing on the bridge between the two paddle-boxes, fixed his eyes on the helmsman. He repeated, between his teeth, "Drunkard." The unlucky Tangrouille hung his head.
The fog had made progress. It filled by this time nearly one-half of the horizon. It seemed to advance from every quarter at the same time. There is something in a fog of the nature of a drop of oil upon the water. It enlarged insensibly. The light wind moved it onward slowly and silently. By little and little it took possession of the ocean. It was coming chiefly from the north-west, dead ahead: the ship had it before her prow, like a line of cliff moving vast and vague. It rose from the sea like a wall. There was an exact point where the wide waters entered the fog, and were lost to sight.
This line of the commencement of the fog was still above half-a-league distant. The interval was visibly growing less and less. The Durande made way; the fog made way also. It was drawing nearer to the vessel, while the vessel was drawing nearer to it.
Clubin gave the order to put on more steam, and to hold off the coast.
Thus for some time they skirted the edge of the fog; but still it advanced. The vessel, meanwhile, sailed in broad sunlight.
Time was lost in these manœuvres, which had little chance of success. Nightfall comes quickly in February. The native of Guernsey was meditating upon the subject of this fog. He said to the St. Malo men:
"It will be thick!"
"An ugly sort of weather at sea," observed one of the St. Malo men.
The other added:
"A kind of thing which spoils a good passage."
The Guernsey passenger approached Clubin, and said:
"I'm afraid, Captain, that the fog will catch us."
Clubin replied:
"I wished to stay at St. Malo, but I was advised to go."
"By whom?"
"By some old sailors."
"You were certainly right to go," said the Guernsey man. "Who knows whether there will not be a tempest to-morrow? At this season you may wait and find it worse."
A few moments later, the Durande entered the fog bank.
The effect was singular. Suddenly those who were on the after-deck could not see those forward. A soft grey medium divided the ship in two.
Then the entire vessel passed into the fog. The sun became like a dull red moon. Everybody suddenly shivered. The passengers put on their overcoats, and the sailors their tarpaulins. The sea, almost without a ripple, was the more menacing from its cold tranquillity. All was pale and wan. The black funnel and the heavy smoke struggled with the dewy mist which enshrouded the vessel.
Dropping to westward was now useless. The captain kept the vessel's head again towards Guernsey, and gave orders to put on the steam.
The Guernsey passenger, hanging about the engine-room hatchway, heard the negro Imbrancam talking to his engineer comrade. The passenger listened. The negro said:
"This morning, in the sun, we were going half steam on; now, in the fog, we put on steam."
The Guernsey man returned to Clubin.
"Captain Clubin, a look-out is useless; but have we not too much steam on?"
"What can I do, sir? We must make up for time lost through the fault of that drunkard of a helmsman."
"True, Captain Clubin."
And Clubin added:
"I am anxious to arrive. It is foggy enough by day: it would be rather too much at night."
The Guernsey man rejoined his St. Malo fellow-passengers, and remarked:
"We have an excellent captain."
At intervals, great waves of mist bore down heavily upon them, and blotted out the sun; which again issued out of them pale and sickly. The little that could be seen of the heavens resembled the long strips of painted sky, dirty and smeared with oil, among the old scenery of a theatre.
The Durande passed close to a cutter which had cast anchor for safety. It was the Shealtiel of Guernsey. The master of the cutter remarked the high speed of the steam-vessel. It struck him also, that she was not in her exact course. She seemed to him to bear to westward too much. The apparition of this vessel under full steam in the fog surprised him.
Towards two o'clock the weather had become so thick that the captain was obliged to leave the bridge, and plant himself near the steersman. The sun had vanished, and all was fog. A sort of ashy darkness surrounded the ship. They were navigating in a pale shroud. They could see neither sky nor water.
There was not a breath of wind.
The can of turpentine suspended under the bridge, between the paddle-boxes, did not even oscillate.
The passengers had become silent.
The Parisian, however, hummed between his teeth the song of Béranger – "Un jour le bon Dieu s'éveillant."
One of the St. Malo passengers addressed him:
"You are from Paris, sir?"
"Yes, sir. Il mit la tête à la fenêtre."
"What do they do in Paris?"
"Leur planète a péri, peut-être.– In Paris, sir, things are going on very badly."
"Then it's the same ashore as at sea."
"It is true; we have an abominable fog here."
"One which might involve us in misfortunes."
The Parisian exclaimed:
"Yes; and why all these misfortunes in the world? Misfortunes! What are they sent for, these misfortunes? What use do they serve? There was the fire at the Odéon theatre, and immediately a number of families thrown out of employment. Is that just? I don't know what is your religion, sir, but I am puzzled by all this."
"So am I," said the St. Malo man.
"Everything that happens here below," continued the Parisian, "seems to go wrong. It looks as if Providence, for some reason, no longer watched over the world."
The St. Malo man scratched the top of his head, like one making an effort to understand. The Parisian continued:
"Our guardian angel seems to be absent. There ought to be a decree against celestial absenteeism. He is at his country-house, and takes no notice of us; so all gets in disorder. It is evident that this guardian is not in the government; he is taking holiday, leaving some vicar – some seminarist angel, some wretched creature with sparrows'-wings – to look after affairs."
Captain Clubin, who had approached the speakers during this conversation, laid his hand upon the shoulder of the Parisian.
"Silence, sir," he said. "Keep a watch upon your words. We are upon the sea."
No one spoke again aloud.
After a pause of five minutes, the Guernsey man, who had heard all this, whispered in the ear of the St. Malo passenger:
"A religious man, our captain."
It did not rain, but all felt their clothing wet. The crew took no heed of the way they were making; but there was increased sense of uneasiness. They seemed to have entered into a doleful region. The fog makes a deep silence on the sea; it calms the waves, and stifles the wind. In the midst of this silence, the creaking of the Durande communicated a strange, indefinable feeling of melancholy and disquietude.
They passed no more vessels. If afar off, in the direction of Guernsey or in that of St. Malo, any vessels were at sea outside the fog, the Durande, submerged in the dense cloud, must have been invisible to them; while her long trail of smoke attached to nothing, looked like a black comet in the pale sky.
Suddenly Clubin roared out:
"Hang-dog! you have played us an ugly trick. You will have done us some damage before we are out of this. You deserve to be put in irons. Get you gone, drunkard!"
And he seized the helm himself.
The steersman, humbled, shrunk away to take part in the duties forward.
The Guernsey man said:
"That will save us."
The vessel was still making way rapidly.
Towards three o'clock, the lower part of the fog began to clear, and they could see the sea again.
A mist can only be dispersed by the sun or the wind. By the sun is well; by the wind is not so well. At three o'clock in the afternoon, in the month of February, the sun is always weak. A return of the wind at this critical point in a voyage is not desirable. It is often the forerunner of a hurricane.
If there was any breeze, however, it was scarcely perceptible.
Clubin with his eye on the binnacle, holding the tiller and steering, muttered to himself some words like the following, which reached the ears of the passengers:
"No time to be lost; that drunken rascal has retarded us."
His visage, meanwhile, was absolutely without expression.
The sea was less calm under the mist. A few waves were distinguishable. Little patches of light appeared on the surface of the water. These luminous patches attract the attention of the sailors. They indicate openings made by the wind in the overhanging roof of fog. The cloud rose a little, and then sunk heavier. Sometimes the density was perfect. The ship was involved in a sort of foggy iceberg. At intervals this terrible circle opened a little, like a pair of pincers; showed a glimpse of the horizon, and then closed again.
Meanwhile the Guernsey man, armed with his spyglass, was standing like a sentinel in the fore part of the vessel.
An opening appeared for a moment, and was blotted out again.
The Guernsey man returned alarmed.
"Captain Clubin!"
"What is the matter?"
"We are steering right upon the Hanways."
"You are mistaken," said Clubin, coldly.
The Guernsey man insisted.
"I am sure of it."
"Impossible."
"I have just seen the rock in the horizon."
"Where?"
"Out yonder."
"It is the open sea there. Impossible."
And Clubin kept the vessel's head to the point indicated by the passenger.
The Guernsey man seized his spyglass again.
A moment later he came running aft again.
"Captain!"
"Well."
"Tack about!"
"Why?"
"I am certain of having seen a very high rock just ahead. It is the Great Hanway."
"You have seen nothing but a thicker bank of fog."
"It is the Great Hanway. Tack, in the name of Heaven!"
Clubin gave the helm a turn.
V
CLUBIN REACHES THE CROWNING-POINT OF GLORY
A crash was heard. The ripping of a vessel's side upon a sunken reef in open sea is the most dismal sound of which man can dream. The Durande's course was stopped short.
Several passengers were knocked down with the shock and rolled upon the deck.
The Guernsey man raised his hands to heaven:
"We are on the Hanways. I predicted it."
A long cry went up from the ship.
"We are lost."
The voice of Clubin, dry and short, was heard above all.
"No one is lost! Silence!"
The black form of Imbrancam, naked down to the waist, issued from the hatchway of the engine-room.
The negro said with self-possession:
"The water is gaining, Captain. The fires will soon be out."
The moment was terrible.
The shock was like that of a suicide. If the disaster had been wilfully sought, it could not have been more terrible. The Durande had rushed upon her fate as if she had attacked the rock itself. A point had pierced her sides like a wedge. More than six feet square of planking had gone; the stem was broken, the prow smashed, and the gaping hull drank in the sea with a horrible gulping noise. It was an entrance for wreck and ruin. The rebound was so violent that it had shattered the rudder pendants; the rudder itself hung unhinged and flapping. The rock had driven in her keel. Round about the vessel nothing was visible except a thick, compact fog, now become sombre. Night was gathering fast.
The Durande plunged forward. It was like the effort of a horse pierced through the entrails by the horns of a bull. All was over with her.
Tangrouille was sobered. Nobody is drunk in the moment of a shipwreck. He came down to the quarter-deck, went up again, and said:
"Captain, the water is gaining rapidly in the hold. In ten minutes it will be up to the scupper-holes."
The passengers ran about bewildered, wringing their hands, leaning over the bulwarks, looking down in the engine-room, and making every other sort of useless movement in their terror. The tourist had fainted.
Clubin made a sign with his hand, and they were silent. He questioned Imbrancam:
"How long will the engines work yet?"
"Five or six minutes, sir."
Then he interrogated the Guernsey passenger:
"I was at the helm. You saw the rock. On which bank of the Hanways are we?"
"On the Mauve. Just now, in the opening in the fog, I saw it clearly."
"If we're on the Mauve," remarked Clubin, "we have the Great Hanway on the port side, and the Little Hanway on the starboard bow; we are a mile from the shore."
The crew and passengers listened, fixing their eyes anxiously and attentively on the captain.
Lightening the ship would have been of no avail, and indeed would have been hardly possible. In order to throw the cargo overboard, they would have had to open the ports and increase the chance of the water entering. To cast anchor would have been equally useless: they were stuck fast. Besides, with such a bottom for the anchor to drag, the chain would probably have fouled. The engines not being injured, and being workable while the fires were not extinguished, that is to say, for a few minutes longer, they could have made an effort, by help of steam and her paddles, to turn her astern off the rocks; but if they had succeeded, they must have settled down immediately. The rock, indeed, in some degree stopped the breach and prevented the entrance of the water. It was at least an obstacle; while the hole once freed, it would have been impossible to stop the leak or to work the pumps. To snatch a poniard from a wound in the heart is instant death to the victim. To free the vessel from the rock would have been simply to founder.
The cattle, on whom the water was gaining in the hold, were lowing piteously.
Clubin issued orders:
"Launch the long boat."
Imbrancam and Tangrouille rushed to execute the order. The boat was eased from her fastenings. The rest of the crew looked on stupefied.
"All hands to assist," cried Clubin.
This time all obeyed.
Clubin, self-possessed, continued to issue his orders in that old sea dialect, which French sailors of the present day would scarcely understand.
"Haul in a rope – Get a cable if the capstan does not work – Stop heaving – Keep the blocks clear – Lower away there – Bring her down stern and bows – Now then, all together, lads – Take care she don't lower stern first – There's too much strain on there – Hold the laniard of the stock tackle – Stand by there!"
The long boat was launched.
At that instant the Durande's paddles stopped, and the smoke ceased – the fires were drowned.
The passengers slipped down the ladder, and dropped hurriedly into the long boat. Imbrancam lifted the fainting tourist, carried him into the boat, and then boarded the vessel again.
The crew made a rush after the passengers – the cabin boy was knocked down, and the others were trampling upon him.
Imbrancam barred their passage.
"Not a man before the lad," he said.
He kept off the sailors with his two black arms, picked up the boy, and handed him down to the Guernsey man, who was standing upright in the boat.
The boy saved, Imbrancam made way for the others, and said:
"Pass on!"
Meanwhile Clubin had entered his cabin, and had made up a parcel containing the ship's papers and instruments. He took the compass from the binnacle, handed the papers and instruments to Imbrancam, and the compass to Tangrouille, and said to them:
"Get aboard the boat."
They obeyed. The crew had taken their places before them.
"Now," cried Clubin, "push off."
A cry arose from the long boat.
"What about yourself, Captain?"
"I will remain here."
Shipwrecked people have little time to deliberate, and not much for indulging in tender feeling. Those who were in the long boat and in comparative safety, however, felt an emotion which was not altogether selfish. All the voices shouted together:
"Come with us, Captain."
"No: I remain here."
The Guernsey man, who had some experience of the sea, replied:
"Listen to me, Captain. You are wrecked on the Hanways. Swimming, you would have only a mile to cross to Pleinmont. In a boat you can only land at Rocquaine, which is two miles. There are breakers, and there is the fog. Our boat will not get to Rocquaine in less than two hours. It will be a dark night. The sea is rising – the wind getting fresh. A squall is at hand. We are now ready to return and bring you off; but if bad weather comes on, that will be out of our power. You are lost if you stay there. Come with us."
The Parisian chimed in:
"The long boat is full – too full, it is true, and one more will certainly be one too many; but we are thirteen – a bad number for the boat, and it is better to overload her with a man than to take an ominous number. Come, Captain."
Tangrouille added:
"It was all my fault – not yours, Captain. It isn't fair for you to be left behind."
"I have decided to remain here," said Clubin. "The vessel must inevitably go to pieces in the tempest to-night. I won't leave her. When the ship is lost, the captain is already dead. People shall not say I didn't do my duty to the end. Tangrouille, I forgive you."
Then, folding his arms, he cried:
"Obey orders! Let go the rope, and push off."
The long-boat swayed to and fro. Imbrancam had seized the tiller. All the hands which were not rowing were raised towards the captain – every mouth cried, "Cheers for Captain Clubin."
"An admirable fellow!" said the American.
"Sir," replied the Guernsey man, "he is one of the worthiest seamen afloat."
Tangrouille shed tears.
"If I had had the courage," he said, "I would have stayed with him."
The long-boat pushed away, and was lost in the fog.
Nothing more was visible.
The beat of the oars grew fainter, and died away.
Clubin remained alone.
VI
THE INTERIOR OF AN ABYSS SUDDENLY REVEALED
When Clubin found himself upon this rock, in the midst of the fog and the wide waters, far from all sound of human life, left for dead, alone with the tide rising around him, and night settling down rapidly, he experienced a feeling of profound satisfaction.
He had succeeded.
His dream was realised. The acceptance which he had drawn upon destiny at so long a date had fallen due at last.
With him, to be abandoned there was, in fact, to be saved.
He was on the Hanways, one mile from the shore; he had about him seventy-five thousand francs. Never was shipwreck more scientifically accomplished. Nothing had failed. It is true, everything had been foreseen. From his early years Clubin had had an idea to stake his reputation for honesty at life's gaming-table; to pass as a man of high honour, and to make that reputation his fulcrum for other things; to bide his time, to watch his opportunity; not to grope about blindly, but to seize boldly; to venture on one great stroke, only one; and to end by sweeping off the stakes, leaving fools behind him to gape and wonder. What stupid rogues fail in twenty times, he meant to accomplish at the first blow; and while they terminated a career on the gallows, he intended to finish with a fortune. The meeting with Rantaine had been a new light to him. He had immediately laid his plan – to compel Rantaine to disgorge; to frustrate his threatened revelations by disappearing; to make the world believe him dead, the best of all modes of concealment; and for this purpose to wreck the Durande. The shipwreck was necessary to his designs. Lastly, he had the satisfaction of vanishing, leaving behind him a great renown, the crowning point of his existence. As he stood meditating on these things amid the wreck, Clubin might have been taken for some demon in a pleasant mood.
He had lived a lifetime for the sake of this one minute.
His whole exterior was expressive of the two words, "At last." A devilish tranquillity reigned in that sallow countenance.
His dull eye, the depth of which generally seemed to be impenetrable, became clear and terrible. The inward fire of his dark spirit was reflected there.
Man's inner nature, like that external world about him, has its electric phenomena. An idea is like a meteor; at the moment of its coming, the confused meditations which preceded it open a way, and a spark flashes forth. Bearing within oneself a power of evil, feeling an inward prey, brings to some minds a pleasure which is like a sparkle of light. The triumph of an evil purpose brightens up their visages. The success of certain cunning combinations, the attainment of certain cherished objects, the gratification of certain ferocious instincts, will manifest themselves in sinister but luminous appearances in their eyes. It is like a threatening dawn, a gleam of joy drawn out of the heart of a storm. These flashes are generated in the conscience in its states of cloud and darkness.
Some such signs were then exhibiting themselves in the pupils of those eyes. They were like nothing else that can be seen shining either above or here below.
All Clubin's pent-up wickedness found full vent now.
He gazed into the vast surrounding darkness, and indulged in a low, irrepressible laugh, full of sinister significance.
He was rich at last! rich at last!
The unknown future of his life was at length unfolding; the problem was solved.
Clubin had plenty of time before him. The sea was rising, and consequently sustained the Durande, and even raised her at last a little. The vessel kept firmly in its place among the rocks; there was no danger of her foundering. Besides, he determined to give the long-boat time to get clear off – to go to the bottom, perhaps. Clubin hoped it might.
Erect upon the deck of the shipwrecked vessel, he folded his arms, apparently enjoying that forlorn situation in the dark night.
Hypocrisy had weighed upon this man for thirty years. He had been evil itself, yoked with probity for a mate. He detested virtue with the feeling of one who has been trapped into a hateful match. He had always had a wicked premeditation; from the time when he attained manhood he had worn the cold and rigid armour of appearances. Underneath this was the demon of self. He had lived like a bandit in the disguise of an honest citizen. He had been the soft-spoken pirate; the bond-slave of honesty. He had been confined in garments of innocence, as in oppressive mummy cloths; had worn those angel wings which the devils find so wearisome in their fallen state. He had been overloaded with public esteem. It is arduous passing for a shining light. To preserve a perpetual equilibrium amid these difficulties, to think evil, to speak goodness – here had been indeed a labour. Such a life of contradictions had been Clubin's fate. It had been his lot – not the less onerous because he had chosen it himself – to preserve a good exterior, to be always presentable, to foam in secret, to smile while grinding his teeth. Virtue presented itself to his mind as something stifling. He had felt, sometimes, as if he could have gnawed those finger-ends which he was compelled to keep before his mouth.
To live a life which is a perpetual falsehood is to suffer unknown tortures. To be premeditating indefinitely a diabolical act, to have to assume austerity; to brood over secret infamy seasoned with outward good fame; to have continually to put the world off the scent; to present a perpetual illusion, and never to be one's self – is a burdensome task. To be constrained to dip the brush in that dark stuff within, to produce with it a portrait of candour; to fawn, to restrain and suppress one's self, to be ever on the qui vive; watching without ceasing to mask latent crimes with a face of healthy innocence: to transform deformity into beauty; to fashion wickedness into the shape of perfection; to tickle, as it were, with the point of a dagger, to put sugar with poison, to keep a bridle on every gesture and keep a watch over every tone, not even to have a countenance of one's own – what can be harder, what can be more torturing. The odiousness of hypocrisy is obscurely felt by the hypocrite himself. Drinking perpetually of his own imposture is nauseating. The sweetness of tone which cunning gives to scoundrelism is repugnant to the scoundrel compelled to have it ever in the mouth; and there are moments of disgust when villainy seems on the point of vomiting its secret. To have to swallow that bitter saliva is horrible. Add to this picture his profound pride. There are strange moments in the history of such a life, when hypocrisy worships itself. There is always an inordinate egotism in roguery. The worm has the same mode of gliding along as the serpent, and the same manner of raising its head. The treacherous villain is the despot curbed and restrained, and only able to attain his ends by resigning himself to play a secondary part. He is summed-up littleness capable of enormities. The perfect hypocrite is a Titan dwarfed.
Clubin had a genuine faith that he had been ill-used. Why had not he the right to have been born rich? It was from no fault of his that it was otherwise. Deprived as he had been of the higher enjoyments of life, why had he been forced to labour – in other words, to cheat, to betray, to destroy? Why had he been condemned to this torture of flattering, cringing, fawning; to be always labouring for men's respect and friendship, and to wear night and day a face which was not his own? To be compelled to dissimulate was in itself to submit to a hardship. Men hate those to whom they have to lie. But now the disguise was at an end. Clubin had taken his revenge.
On whom? On all! On everything!
Lethierry had never done him any but good services; so much the greater his spleen. He was revenged upon Lethierry.
He was revenged upon all those in whose presence he had felt constraint. It was his turn to be free now. Whoever had thought well of him was his enemy. He had felt himself their captive long enough.
Now he had broken through his prison walls. His escape was accomplished. That which would be regarded as his death, would be, in fact, the beginning of his life. He was about to begin the world again. The true Clubin had stripped off the false. In one hour the spell was broken. He had kicked Rantaine into space; overwhelmed Lethierry in ruin; human justice in night, and opinion in error. He had cast off all humanity; blotted out the whole world.
The name of God, that word of three letters, occupied his mind but little.
He had passed for a religious man. What was he now?
There are secret recesses in hypocrisy; or rather the hypocrite is himself a secret recess.
When Clubin found himself quite alone, that cavern in which his soul had so long lain hidden, was opened. He enjoyed a moment of delicious liberty. He revelled for that moment in the open air. He gave vent to himself in one long breath.
The depth of evil within him revealed itself in his visage. He expanded, as it were, with diabolical joy. The features of Rantaine by the side of his at that moment would have shown like the innocent expression of a new-born child.
What a deliverance was this plucking off of the old mask. His conscience rejoiced in the sight of its own monstrous nakedness, as it stepped forth to take its hideous bath of wickedness. The long restraint of men's respect seemed to have given him a peculiar relish for infamy. He experienced a certain lascivious enjoyment of wickedness. In those frightful moral abysses so rarely sounded, such natures find atrocious delights – they are the obscenities of rascality. The long-endured insipidity of the false reputation for virtue gave him a sort of appetite for shame. In this state of mind men disdain their fellows so much that they even long for the contempt which marks the ending of their unmerited homage. They feel a satisfaction in the freedom of degradation, and cast an eye of envy at baseness, sitting at its ease, clothed in ignominy and shame. Eyes that are forced to droop modestly are familiar with these stealthy glances at sin. From Messalina to Marie-Alacoque the distance is not great. Remember the histories of La Cadière and the nun of Louviers. Clubin, too, had worn the veil. Effrontery had always been the object of his secret admiration. He envied the painted courtesan, and the face of bronze of the professional ruffian. He felt a pride in surpassing her in artifices, and a disgust for the trick of passing for a saint. He had been the Tantalus of cynicism. And now, upon this rock, in the midst of this solitude, he could be frank and open. A bold plunge into wickedness – what a voluptuous sense of relief it brought with it. All the delights known to the fallen angels are summed up in this; and Clubin felt them in that moment. The long arrears of dissimulations were paid at last. Hypocrisy is an investment; the devil reimburses it. Clubin gave himself up to the intoxication of the idea, having no longer any eye upon him but that of Heaven. He whispered within himself, "I am a scoundrel," and felt profoundly satisfied.
Never had human conscience experienced such a full tide of emotions.
He was glad to be entirely alone, and yet would not have been sorry to have had some one there. He would have been pleased to have had a witness of his fiendish joy; gratified to have had opportunity of saying to society, "Thou fool."
The solitude, indeed, assured his triumph; but it made it less.
He was not himself to be spectator of his glory. Even to be in the pillory has its satisfaction, for everybody can see your infamy.
To compel the crowd to stand and gape is, in fact, an exercise of power. A malefactor standing upon a platform in the market-place, with the collar of iron around his neck, is master of all the glances which he constrains the multitude to turn towards him. There is a pedestal on yonder scaffolding. To be there – the centre of universal observation – is not this, too, a triumph? To direct the pupil of the public eye, is this not another form of supremacy? For those who worship an ideal wickedness, opprobrium is glory. It is a height from whence they can look down; a superiority at least of some kind; a pre-eminence in which they can display themselves royally. A gallows standing high in the gaze of all the world is not without some analogy with a throne. To be exposed is, at least, to be seen and studied.
