A historical novel built upon the questions Can a good action be a bad action? Does not he who spares the wolf kill the sheep? centers on revolutionary France; just as the plot is an abstract judicial difficulty, the hero is an abstract historical force.

Ursus was a man, Homo a wolf: the former a travelling mountebank, the latter his faithful companion. Gwynplaine was abducted as an infant, and cruelly mutilated so that his face shows the permanent smile of a clown. Abandoned by his abductors some years later, Gwynplaine rescues a blind baby girl from the frozen corpse of her mother at the foot of a gibbet. Time passes, and the young girl -- christened Dea -- comes to love Gwynplaine. Being blind, she is unaware of his disfigurement, but from passing her fingers over his face, assumes that he is always happy. Ursus and Homo meet up with...