In each town, Gwynplaine gives a stage performance in which the crowds are provoked to laughter when Gwynplaine reveals his grotesque face. Gwynplaine keeps the lower half of his face concealed. Ursus and his surrogate children earn a meagre living in the fairs of southern England. By touching his face, Dea concludes that Gwynplaine is perpetually happy. The girl, now named Dea, is blind, and has grown into a beautiful and innocent young woman. Fifteen years later, Gwynplaine has grown into a strong young man, attractive except for his distorted visage. Gwynplaine's mouth has been mutilated into a perpetual grin Ursus is initially horrified, then moved to pity, and he takes them in. They meet an itinerant carnival vendor who calls himself Ursus, and his pet wolf, Homo. In late 17th-century England, a homeless boy named Gwynplaine rescues an infant girl during a snowstorm, her mother having frozen to death whilst feeding her. Hugo's working title for this book was On the King's Command, but a friend suggested The Man Who Laughs. Hugo wrote The Man Who Laughs, or the Laughing Man, over a period of fifteen months while he was living in the Channel Islands, having been exiled from his native France because of the controversial political content of his previous novels.
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