have been seen peacefully going its rounds of the little English country

towns. He travelled freely from one end of Great Britain to the other,

selling his philtres and phials, and sustaining, with the assistance of

his wolf, his quack mummeries; and he passed with ease through the

meshes of the nets which the police at that period had spread all over

England in order to sift wandering gangs, and especially to stop the

progress of the Comprachicos.

This was right enough. Ursus belonged to no gang. Ursus lived with

Ursus, a tête-à-tête, into which the wolf gently thrust his nose. If

Ursus could have had his way, he would have been a Caribbee; that being

impossible, he preferred to be alone. The solitary man is a modified

savage, accepted by civilization. He who wanders most is most alone;

hence his continual change of place. To remain anywhere long suffocated

him with the sense of being tamed. He passed his life in passing on his

way. The sight of towns increased his taste for brambles, thickets,

thorns, and holes in the rock. His home was the forest. He did not feel

himself much out of his element in the murmur of crowded streets, which

is like enough to the bluster of trees. The crowd to some extent

satisfies our taste for the desert. What he disliked in his van was its

having a door and windows, and thus resembling a house. He would have

realized his ideal, had he been able to put a cave on four wheels and

travel 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 a

smile, while a laugh is often a refusal.

The Man Who Laughs