"Ursus was a man, Homo a wolf": the former a travelling mountebank,
the latter his faithful companion. Gwynplaine was abducted as an
infant, and cruelly mutilated so that his face shows the permanent
smile of a clown. Abandoned by his abductors some years later,
Gwynplaine rescues a blind baby girl from the frozen corpse of her
mother at the foot of a gibbet. Time passes, and the young girl --
christened Dea -- comes to love Gwynplaine. Being blind, she is
unaware of his disfigurement, but from passing her fingers over his
face, assumes that he is always happy. Ursus and Homo meet up with
Gwynplaine and Dea, and travel around England performing at
funfairs. After some vicissitudes, Gwynplaine is, surprisingly,
summoned to the court of Queen Anne, where it is revealed that he
is in fact the missing heir of the murdered Lord Linnaeus
Clancharlie, Marquis of Corleone. He is, accordingly, installed as
an English peer; but when he addresses the House of Lords is
ridiculed for his clownish features. He renounces his peerage and
rejoins his companions, who resolve to abandon England forever.
During the voyage, while Ursus sleeps, Dea reveals to Gwynplaine
her secret passion for him, then dies. Gwynplaine drowns himself.
Victor Hugo's gothic tale has been the inspiration of numerous
plays, films (the first in 1909) novels and short stories.
Following a distinguished career as a civil servant, James Hogarth
acquired a reputation as a versatile and punctilious translator.
His translations span travel guides, archaeological texts, and
novels. In 2002 he won the French-American Foundation Translation
Prize for his English translation of Victor Hugo's Travailleurs de
la Mer. He died in 2006.
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