d her
through that labyrinth called blindness. Gwynplaine was her brother,
friend, guide, support; the personification of heavenly power; the
husband, winged and resplendent. Where the multitude saw the monster,
Dea recognized the archangel. It was that Dea, blind, perceived his
soul.

CHAPTER IV.

WELL-MATCHED LOVERS.

Ursus being a philosopher understood. He approved of the fascination of
Dea. He said, The blind see the invisible. He said, Conscience is
vision. Then, looking at Gwynplaine, he murmured, Semi-monster, but
demi-god.

Gwynplaine, on the other hand, was madly in love with Dea.

There is the invisible eye, the spirit, and the visible eye, the pupil.
He saw her with the visible eye. Dea was dazzled by the ideal;
Gwynplaine, by the real. Gwynplaine was not ugly; he was frightful. He
saw his contrast before him: in proportion as he was terrible, Dea was
sweet. He was horror; she was grace. Dea was his dream. She seemed a
vision scarcely embodied. There was in her whole person, in her Grecian
form, in her fine and supple figure, swaying like a reed; in her
shoulders, on which might have been invisible wings; in the modest
curves which indicated her sex, to the soul rather than to the senses;
in her fairness, which amounted almost to transparency; in the august
and reserved serenity of her look, divinely shut out from earth; in the
sacred innocence of her smile--she was almost an angel, and yet just a
woman.

Gwynplaine, we have said, compared himself and compared Dea.

His existence, such as it was, was the result of a double and unheard-of
choice. It was the point of intersection of two rays--one from below and
one from above--a black and a white ray. To the same crumb, perhaps
pecked at at once by the beaks of evil and good, one gave the bite, the
other the kiss. Gwynplaine was this crumb--an atom, wounded and
caressed. Gwynplaine was the product of fatality combined with
Providence. Misfortune had placed its finger on him; happiness as well.
Two extreme destinies composed his strange lot. He had on him an
anathema and a benediction. He was the elect, cursed. Who was he? He
knew not. When he looked at himself, he saw one he knew not; but this
unknown was a monster. Gwynplaine lived as it were beheaded, with a face
which did not belong to him. This face was frightful, so frightful that
it was absurd. It caused as much fear as laughter. It was a
hell-concocted absurdity. It was the shipwreck o