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Updated: June 12, 2025
Since they had been at Southwark, Gwynplaine had made it his habit, after the performance and the supper of both family and horses when Ursus and Dea had gone to bed in their respective compartments to breathe a little the fresh air of the bowling-green, between eleven o'clock and midnight. A certain vagrancy in our spirits impels us to take walks at night, and to saunter under the stars.
Master Nicless looked after him, and saw Ursus run, as fast as his old legs would allow, in the direction taken that morning by the wapentake who carried off Gwynplaine. A quarter of an hour afterwards, Ursus, out of breath, reached the little street in which stood the back wicket of the Southwark jail, which he had already watched so many hours.
Here Gwynplaine turned towards the kneeling under-clerks, who were writing on the fourth woolsack. "Who are those fellows kneeling down? What are you doing? Get up; you are men." These words, suddenly addressed to inferiors whom a lord ought not even to perceive, increased the merriment to the utmost. They had cried, "Bravo!" Now they shouted, "Hurrah!"
Gwynplaine heard close to him a noise of which only a Chinese gong could give an idea; something like a blow struck against the diaphragm of the abyss. It was the wapentake striking his wand against a sheet of iron. That sheet of iron was a door. Not a door on hinges, but a door which was raised and let down. Something like a portcullis.
The barrier-keeper lifted the wooden arm which, pivoting on a hinge, formed the entrance to the far side of the Painted Chamber, where stood the long table, covered with green cloth, reserved for peers. A branch of lighted candles stood on the table. Gwynplaine, preceded by the Usher of the Black Rod, Garter King-at-Arms, and Blue Mantle, penetrated into this privileged compartment.
Gwynplaine, with the same care to make no noise as he would have taken in a sickroom, took his hat and cloak from the hook on the partition, wrapped himself up to the eyes in the cloak, and pushed his hat over his forehead. Not having been to bed, he had his working clothes still on, and his leather esclavin round his neck. Once more he looked at Dea.
Both the lords endeavoured to distinguish his face as he sat between Lord Fitzwalter and Lord Arundel, but with no better success than Lord Eure and Lord Annesley. Gwynplaine, either by chance or by the arrangement of his sponsors, forewarned by the Lord Chancellor, was so placed in shadow as to escape their curiosity. "Who is it? Where is he?"
This was a throne the throne of Great Britain. Gwynplaine, himself a peer of England, was in the House of Lords. How Gwynplaine's introduction to the House of Lords came about, we will now explain. Throughout the day, from morning to night, from Windsor to London, from Corleone Lodge to Westminster Hall, he had step by step mounted higher in the social grade. At each step he grew giddier.
In cities he went out only at night, disguised in a large, slouched hat, so as not to exhibit his face in the street. His face was to be seen uncovered only on the stage. The Green Box had frequented cities but little. Gwynplaine at twenty-four had never seen towns larger than the Cinque Ports. His renown, however, was increasing.
His name, however, was to be read on a large placard in front of the Green Box, which offered the crowd the following narrative composed by Ursus: "Here is to be seen Gwynplaine, deserted at the age of ten, on the night of the 29th of January, 1690, by the villainous Comprachicos, on the coast of Portland.
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