The Man Who Laughs

In 1855, Victor Hugo began a 15-year-long exile on the island of Guernsey, where he completed his longest and most famous work, "Les Misirables" and also "The Man Who Laughs" (L'Homme qui rit; 1869), also known as "By Order of the King," a historic novel with fictional characters, set in England 1688-1705: Nothing could be more happily imagined 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 can be finer in conception than that voice from the people heard suddenly in the House of Lords? The mask--a horrible laughter--stamped for ever "by order of the king" upon the face of this strange spokesman of democracy, adds another feature of justice to the scene.