I meant--because
it was cruel."
He smiled.
"Cruel? Do you mean to the hunchback?"
"I mean---- Of course the man himself was
quite indifferent; no doubt, it is to him just a way
of getting a living, like the circus-rider's way or
the columbine's. But the thing makes one feel
unhappy. It is humiliating; it is the degradation
of a human being."
"He probably is not any more degraded than
he was to start with. Most of us are degraded in
one way or another."
"Yes; but this--I dare say you will think it
an absurd prejudice; but a human body, to me, is
a sacred thing; I don't like to see it treated
irreverently and made hideous."
"And a human soul?"
He had stopped short, and was standing with
one hand on the stone balustrade of the embankment,
looking straight at her.
"A soul?" she repeated, stopping in her turn
to look at him in wonder.
He flung out both hands with a sudden, passionate gesture.
"Has it never occurred to you that that miserable
clown may have a soul--a living, struggling,
human soul, tied down into that crooked hulk of
a body and forced to slave for it? You that are so
tender-hearted to everything--you that pity the
body in its fool's dress and bells--have you never
thought of the wretched soul that has not even
motley to cover its horrible nakedness? Think
of it shivering with cold, stilled with shame and
misery, before all those people--feeling their jeers
that cut like a whip--their laughter, that burns
like red-hot iron on the bare flesh! Think of it
looking round--so helpless before them all--for
the mountains that will not fall on it--for the rocks
that have not the heart to cover it--envying the
rats that can creep into some hole in the earth
and hide; and remember that a soul is dumb--it
has no voice to cry out--it must endure, and endure,
and endure.
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