IV.
Ursus admired Homo. One admires one's like. It is a law. To be alwaysraging inwardly and grumbling outwardly was the normal condition ofUrsus. He was the malcontent of creation. By nature he was a man ever inopposition. He took the world unkindly; he gave his satisfecit to no oneand to nothing. The bee did not atone, by its honey-making, for itssting; a full-blown rose did not absolve the sun for yellow fever andblack vomit. It is probable that in secret Ursus criticized Providence agood deal. "Evidently," he would say, "the devil works by a spring, andthe wrong that God does is having let go the trigger." He approved ofnone but princes, and he had his own peculiar way of expressing hisapprobation. One day, when James II. made a gift to the Virgin in aCatholic chapel in Ireland of a massive gold lamp, Ursus, passing thatway with Homo, who was more indifferent to such things, broke out inadmiration before the crowd, and exclaimed, "It is certain that theblessed Virgin wants a lamp much more than these barefooted childrenthere require shoes."
Such proofs of his loyalty, and such evidences of his respect forestablished powers, probably contributed in no small degree to make themagistrates tolerate his vagabond life and his low alliance with a wolf.Sometimes of an evening, through the weakness of friendship, he allowedHomo to stretch his limbs and wander at liberty about the caravan. Thewolf was incapable of an abuse of confidence, and behaved in society,that is to say among men, with the discretion of a poodle. All the same,if bad-tempered officials had to be dealt with, difficulties might havearisen; so Ursus kept the honest wolf chained up as much as possible.
From a political point of view, his writing about gold, not veryintelligible in itself, and now become undecipherable, was but a smear,and gave no handle to the enemy. Even after the time of James II., andunder the "respectable" reign of William and Mary, his caravan mighthave been seen peacefully going its rounds of the little English countrytowns. He travelled freely from one end of Great Britain to the other,selling his philtres and phials, and sustaining, with the assistance ofhis wolf, his quack mummeries; and he passed with ease through themeshes of the nets which the police at that period had spread all overEngland in order to sift wandering gangs, and especially to stop theprogress of the Comprachicos.
This was right enough. Ursus belonged to no gang. Ursus lived withUrsus, a _tete-a-tete_, into which the wolf gently thrust his nose. IfUrsus could have had his way, he would have been a Caribbee; that beingimpossible, he preferred to be alone. The solitary man is a modifiedsavage, accepted by civilization. He who wanders most is most alone;hence his continual change of place. To remain anywhere long suffocatedhim with the sense of being tamed. He passed his life in passing on hisway. The sight of towns increased his taste for brambles, thickets,thorns, and holes in the rock. His home was the forest. He did not feelhimself much out of his element in the murmur of crowded streets, whichis like enough to the bluster of trees. The crowd to some extentsatisfies our taste for the desert. What he disliked in his van was itshaving a door and windows, and thus resembling a house. He would haverealized his ideal, had he been able to put a cave on four wheels andtravel in a den.
He did not smile, as we have already said, but he used to laugh;sometimes, indeed frequently, a bitter laugh. There is consent in asmile, while a laugh is often a refusal.
His great business was to hate the human race. He was implacable in thathate. Having made it clear that human life is a dreadful thing; havingobserved the superposition of evils, kings on the people, war on kings,the plague on war, famine on the plague, folly on everything; havingproved a certain measure of chastisement in the mere fact of existence;having recognized that, death is a deliverance--when they brought him asick man he cured him; he had cordials and beverages to prolong thelives of the old. He put lame cripples on their legs again, and hurledthis sarcasm at them, "There, you are on your paws once more; may youwalk long in this valley of tears!" When he saw a poor man dying ofhunger, he gave him all the pence he had about him, growling out, "Liveon, you wretch! eat! last a long time! It is not I who would shortenyour penal servitude." After which, he would rub his hands and say, "Ido men all the harm I can."
Through the little window at the back, passers-by could read on theceiling of the van these words, written within, but visible fromwithout, inscribed with charcoal, in big letters,--
URSUS, PHILOSOPHER.