I. L’Homme qui Rit.
“In England, everything is great, even that which is not good, even oligarchy itself!” Thought profound and sublime of the Master; apothegm initiatory and bitter of the Man who Laughs—who laughs, but who can also bite.
For Genius, as for Ambition—for Prometheus who thinks, as for Prometheus who wields the great battalions—seems it not that there is reserved, by the derisive irony of Fate, an expiatory rock, an island exile?
For Victor Hugo, this rock, expiatory but glorious, calls itself Guernsey.
For Napoleon, it had two names; it was Elba, and it was Ste. Hélène.
Patience, Master! Watching the brumous clouds, tainted with Britannic fogs, that roll around the Islands of the Sleeve in the crepusculary sadness of an English spring—listening to the breeze, keen, acute, Arctic, Polar, which groans, which growls, which howls, which whistles menacing but impuissant, around the walls of Hauteville House—remember thyself, Master, that History, as for Ambition, so for Genius, repeats herself, in moments, for the one of remorse, for the other of caprice!
After Elba, the Hundred Days.
After Ste. Hélène, the voyage of the Belle-Poule.
“He laughs best who laughs last,” says the Proverb.
Proverbs are the wisdom of nations.