As to Dea, what she felt cannot be expressed by human words.  She knew that she was in the midst of a crowd, and knew not what a crowd was.  She heard a murmur, that was all.  For her the crowd was but a breath.  Generations are passing breaths.  Man respires, aspires, and expires.  In that crowd Dea felt herself alone, and shuddering as one hanging over a precipice.  Suddenly, in this trouble of innocence in distress, prompt to accuse the unknown, in her dread of a possible fall, Dea, serene notwithstanding, and superior to the vague agonies of peril, but inwardly shuddering at her isolation, found confidence and support.  She had seized her thread of safety in the universe of shadows; she put her hand on the powerful head of Gwynplaine.

Joy unspeakable! she placed her rosy fingers on his forest of crisp hair.  Wool when touched gives an impression of softness.  Dea touched a lamb which she knew to be a lion.  Her whole heart poured out an ineffable love.  She felt out of danger—­she had found her saviour.  The public believed that they saw the contrary.  To the spectators the being loved was Gwynplaine, and the saviour was Dea.  What matters? thought Ursus, to whom the heart of Dea was visible.  And Dea, reassured, consoled and delighted, adored the angel whilst the people contemplated the monster, and endured, fascinated herself as well, though in the opposite sense, that dread Promethean laugh.

True love is never weary.  Being all soul it cannot cool.  A brazier comes to be full of cinders; not so a star.  Her exquisite impressions were renewed every evening for Dea, and she was ready to weep with tenderness whilst the audience was in convulsions of laughter.  Those around her were but joyful; she was happy.

The sensation of gaiety due to the sudden shock caused by the rictus of Gwynplaine was evidently not intended by Ursus.  He would have preferred more smiles and less laughter, and more of a literary triumph.  But success consoles.  He reconciled himself every evening to his excessive triumph, as he counted how many shillings the piles of farthings made, and how many pounds the piles of shillings; and besides, he said, after all, when the laugh had passed, “Chaos Vanquished” would be found in the depths of their minds, and something of it would remain there.

Perhaps he was not altogether wrong:  the foundations of a work settle down in the mind of the public.  The truth is, that the populace, attentive to the wolf, the bear, to the man, then to the music, to the howlings governed by harmony, to the night dissipated by dawn, to the chant releasing the light, accepted with a confused, dull sympathy, and with a certain emotional respect, the dramatic poem of “Chaos Vanquished,” the victory of spirit over matter, ending with the joy of man.

Such were the vulgar pleasures of the people.

They sufficed them.  The people had not the means of going to the noble matches of the gentry, and could not, like lords and gentlemen, bet a thousand guineas on Helmsgail against Phelem-ghe-madone.