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Victor Hugos The Man Who Laughs (first published under the French title LHomme qui Rit in April 1869) is a sad and sordid tale -- not the sort of tale of the moment Hugo was known for. It starts on the night of January 29, 1690, a ten-year-old boy abandoned -- the stern men whove kept him since infancy have wearied of him. The boy wanders, barefoot and starving, through a snowstorm to reach a gibbet bearing the corpse of a hanged criminal. Beneath the gibbet is a ragged woman, frozen to death. The boy is about to move onward when he hears a sound within the womans garments: He discovers an infant girl, barely alive, clutching the womans breast. A single drop of frozen milk, resembling a pearl, is on the womans lifeless breast...