The Man Who Laughs
Page 35
Ursus, then, one fine day received from the delegated doctors an order to appear before them, which was, luckily, given into his own hands, and which he was therefore enabled to keep secret. Without saying a word, he obeyed the citation, shuddering at the thought that he might be considered culpable to the extent of having the appearance of being suspected of a certain amount of rashness. He who had so recommended silence to others had here a rough lesson. Garrule, sana te ipsum.
The three doctors, delegated and appointed overseers, sat at Bishopsgate, at the end of a room on the ground floor in three arm-chairs covered with black leather, with three busts of Minos, Æacus, and Rhadamanthus, in the wall above their heads, a table before them, and at their feet a form for the accused.
Ursus, introduced by a tipstaff, of placid but severe expression, entered, perceived the doctors, and immediately in his own mind gave to each of them the name of the judge of the infernal regions represented by the bust placed above his head.
Minos, the president, the representative of theology, made him a sign to sit down on the form.
Ursus made a proper bow--that is to say, bowed to the ground; and knowing that bears are charmed by honey, and doctors by Latin, he said, keeping his body still bent respectfully:
"Tres faciunt capitulum."
Then, with head inclined (for modesty disarms), he sat down on the form.
Each of the three doctors had before him a bundle of papers, of which he was turning the leaves.
Minos began.
"You speak in public?"
"Yes," replied Ursus.
"By what right?"
"I am a philosopher."
"That gives no right."
"I am also a mountebank," said Ursus.
"That is a different thing."
Ursus breathed again, but with humility. Minos resumed:
"As a mountebank, you may speak; as a philosopher, you must keep silence."
"I will try," said Ursus.
Then he thought to himself. "I may speak, but I must be silent. How complicated."
He was much alarmed.
The same overseer continued:
"You say things which do not sound right. You insult religion. You deny the most evident truths. You propagate revolting errors. For instance, you have said that the fact of virginity excludes the possibility of maternity."
Ursus lifted his eyes meekly:
"I did not say that. I said that the fact of maternity excludes the possibility of virginity."
Minos was thoughtful, and mumbled, "True, that is the contrary."
It was really the same thing. But Ursus had parried the first blow.
Minos, meditating on the answer just given by Ursus, sank into the depths of his own imbecility and kept silent.
The overseer of history, or, as Ursus called him, Rhadamanthus, covered the retreat of Minos by this interpolation:
"Accused! your audacity and your errors are of two sorts. You have denied that the battle of Pharsalia would have been lost because Brutus and Cassius had met a negro."
"I said," murmured Ursus, "that there was something in the fact that Cæsar was the better captain."
The man of history passed, without transition, to mythology.
"You have excused the infamous acts of Actæon."
"I think," said Ursus, insinuatingly, "that a man is not dishonoured by having seen a naked woman."
"Then you are wrong," said the judge, severely. Rhadamanthus returned to history.
"Apropos of the accidents which happened to the cavalry of Mithridates, you have contested the virbles of herbs and plants. You have denied that a herb, like the securiduca, could make the shoes of horses fall off."
"Pardon me," replied Ursus. "I said that the power existed only in the herb sferra cavallo. I never denied the virtue of any herb."
And he added, in a low voice:
"Nor of any woman."
By this extraneous addition to his answer Ursus proved to himself that, anxious as he was, he was not disheartened. Ursus was a compound of terror and presence of mind.
"To continue," resumed Rhadamanthus; "you have declared that it was folly in Scipio, when he wished to open the gates of Carthage, to use as a key the herb æthiopis, because the herb æthiopis has not the property of breaking locks."
"I merely said that he would have done better to have used the herb lunaria."
"That is a matter of opinion," murmured Rhadamanthus, touched in his turn. And the man of history was silent.
The theologian, Minos, having returned to consciousness, questioned Ursus anew. He had had time to consult his notes.
"You have classed orpiment among the products of arsenic, and you have said that it is a poison. The Bible denies this."
"The Bible denies, but arsenic affirms it," sighed Ursus. The man whom Ursus called Æacus, and who was the envoy of medicine, had not yet spoken, but now looking down on Ursus, with proudly half-closed eyes, he said: "The answer is not without some show of reason."
Ursus thanked him with his most cringing smile.
Minos frowned frightfully.
"I resume," said Minos. "You have said that it is false that the basilisk is the king of serpents, under the name of cockatrice."
"Very reverend sir," said Ursus, "so little did I desire to insult the basilisk that I have given out as certain that it has a man's head."
"Be it so," replied Minos, severely; "but you added that Poerius had seen one with the head of a falcon. Can you prove it?"
"Not easily," said Ursus.
Here he had lost a little ground.
Minos, seizing the advantage, pushed it.
"You have said that a converted Jew has not a nice smell."
"Yes. But I added that a Christian who becomes a Jew has a nasty one."
Minos cast his eyes over the accusing documents.
"You have affirmed and propagated things which are impossible. You have said that Elien had seen an elephant write sentences."
"Nay, very reverend gentlemen! I simply said that Oppian had heard a hippopotamus discuss a philosophical problem."
"You have declared that it is not true that a dish made of beech-wood will become covered of itself with all the viands that one can desire."
"I said that if it has this virtue it must be that you received it from the devil."
"That I received it!"
"No, most reverend sir. I, nobody, everybody!"
Aside, Ursus thought, "I don't know what I am saying."
But his outward confusion, though extreme, was not distinctly visible. Ursus struggled with it.
"All this," Minos began again, "implies a certain belief in the devil."
Ursus held his own.
"Very reverend sir, I am not an unbeliever with regard to the devil. Belief in the devil is the reverse side of faith in God. The one proves the other. He who does not believe a little in the devil does not believe much in God. He who believes in the sun must believe in the shadow. The devil is the night of God. What is night? The proof of day."
Ursus here extemporised a fathomless combination of philosophy and religion. Minos remained pensive, and relapsed into silence.
Ursus breathed afresh.
A sharp onslaught now took place. Æacus, the medical delegate, who had disdainfully protected Ursus against the theologian, now turned suddenly from auxiliary into assailant. He placed his closed fist on his bundle of papers, which was large and heavy. Ursus received this apostrophe full in the breast:
"It is proved that crystal is sublimated ice, and that the diamond is sublimated crystal. It is averred that ice becomes crystal in a thousand years, and crystal diamond in a thousand ages. You have denied this."
"Nay," replied Ursus, with sadness. "I only said that in a thousand years ice had time to melt, and that a thousand ages were difficult to count."
The examination went on; questions and answers clashed like swords.
"You have denied that plants can talk."
"Do you own that the mandragora cries?"
"No; but it sings."
"You have denied that the fourth finger of the left hand has a cordial virtue."
"I only said that to sneeze to the left was a bad sign."
"You have spoken rashly and disrespectfully of the ph�nix.
"Learned judge, I merely said that when he wrote that the brain of the ph�nix was a delicate morsel, but that it produced headache, Plutarch was a little out of his reckoning, inasmuch as the ph�nix never existed."
"A detestable speech! The cinnamalker which makes its nest with sticks of cinnamon, the rhintacus that Parysatis used in the manufacture of his poisons, the manucodiatas which is the bird of paradise, and the semenda, which has a threefold beak, have been mistaken for the ph�nix; but the ph�nix has existed."
"I do not deny it."
"You are a stupid ass."
"I desire to be thought no better."
"You have confessed that the elder tree cures the quinsy, but you added that it was not because it has in its root a fairy excrescence."
"I said it was because Judas hanged himself on an elder tree."
"A plausible opinion," growled the theologian, glad to strike his little blow at Æacus.
Arrogance repulsed soon turns to anger. Æacus was enraged.
"Wandering mountebank! you wander as much in mind as with your feet. Your tendencies are out of the way and suspicious. You approach the bounds of sorcery. You have dealings with unknown animals. You speak to the populace of things that exist but for you alone, and the nature of which is unknown, such as the hoemorrhoüs." The hoemorrhoüs is a viper which was seen by Tremellius. This repartee produced a certain disorder in the irritated science of Doctor Æacus.
Ursus added:
"The existence of the hoemorrhoüs is quite as true as that of the odoriferous hyena, and of the civet described by Castellus."
Æacus got out of the difficulty by charging home.
"Here are your own words, and very diabolical words they are. Listen."
With his eye on his notes, Abacus read:
"Two plants, the thalagssigle and the aglaphotis, are luminous in the evening, flowers by day, stars by night"; and, looking steadily at Ursus:
"What have you to say to that?"
Ursus answered:
"Every plant is a lamp. Its perfume is its light."
Æacus turned over other pages.
"You have denied that the vesicles of the otter are equivalent to castoreum."
"I merely said that perhaps it may be necessary to receive the teaching of Ætius on this point with some reserve."
Æacus became furious.
"You practice medicine?"
"I practice medicine," sighed Ursus, timidly.
"On living things?"
"Rather than on dead ones," said Ursus.
Ursus defended himself stoutly, but dully; an admirable mixture, in which meekness predominated. He spoke with such gentleness that Doctor Abacus felt that he must insult him.
"What are you murmuring there?" said he, rudely.
Ursus was amazed, and restricted himself to saying:
"Murmurings are for the young, and moans for the aged. Alas, I moan!"
Æacus replied: "Be assured of this--if you attend a sick person, and he dies, you will be punished by death."
Ursus hazarded a question.
"And if he gets well?"
"In that case," said the doctor, softening his voice, "you will be punished by death."
"There is little difference," said Ursus.
The doctor replied:
"If death ensues, we punish gross ignorance; if recovery, we punish presumption. The gibbet in either case."
"I was ignorant of the circumstance," murmured Ursus. "I thank you for teaching me. One does not know all the beauties of the law."
"Take care of yourself."
"Religiously," said Ursus.
"We know what you are about."
"As for me," thought tarsus, "that is more than I always know myself."
"We could send you to prison."
"I see that perfectly, gentlemen."
"You can not deny your infractions nor your encroachments."
"My philosophy asks pardon."
"Great audacity has been attributed to you.
"That is quite a mistake."
"It is said that you have cured the sick."
"I am the victim of calumny."
The three pairs of eyebrows which were so horribly fixed on Ursus contracted. The three wise faces drew near to each other and whispered. Ursus had the vision of a vague fool's cap sketched out above those three empowered heads. The low and requisite whispering of the trio was of some minutes' duration, during which time Ursus felt all the ice and all the scorch of agony. At length Minos, who was president, turned to him and said, angrily:
"Go away!"
Ursus felt something like Jonas when he was leaving the belly of the whale.
Minos continued: "You are discharged."
Ursus said to himself:
"They won't catch me at this again. Good-by, medicine!" And he added, in his innermost heart:
"From henceforth I will carefully allow them to die."
Bent double, he bowed everywhere; to the doctors, to the busts, the tables, the walls, and retiring backward through the door, disappeared almost as a shadow melting into air.
He left the hall slowly, like an innocent man, and rushed from the street rapidly, like a guilty one. The officers of justice are so singular and obscure in their ways that, even when acquitted, one flies from them.
As he fled he mumbled:
"I am well out of it. I am the savant untamed; they the savant civilised. Doctors cavil at the learned. False science is the excrement of the true and is employed to the destruction of philosophers. Philosophers, as they produce sophists, produce their own scourge. Of the dung of the thrush is born the mistletoe with which is made birdlime, with which the thrush is captured. Turdus sibi malum cacat."
We do not represent Ursus as a refined man. He was imprudent enough to use words which expressed his thoughts. He had no more taste than Voltaire.
When Ursus returned to the Green Box, he told Master Nicless that he had been delayed by following a pretty woman, and let not a word escape him concerning his adventure.
Except in the evening when he said in a low voice to Homo:
"See here, I have vanquished the three heads of Cerberus."
* * *
VII
WHY SHOULD A GOLD PIECE LOWER ITSELF BY MIXING WITH A HEAP OF PENNIES?
AN EVENT HAPPENED.
The Tadcaster Inn became more and more a furnace of joy and laughter. Never was there more resonant gayety. The landlord and his boy were become insufficient to draw the ale, stout, and porter. In the evening in the lower room, with its windows all aglow, there was not a vacant table. They sang, they shouted, the great old hearth, vaulted like an oven, with its iron bars piled with coals, shone out brightly. It was like a house of fire and noise.
In the yard--that is to say, in the theatre--the crowd was greater still.
Crowds as great as the suburb of Southwark could supply so thronged the performances of "Chaos Vanquished" that directly the curtain was raised--that is to say. the platform of the Green Box was lowered--every place was filled. The windows were alive with spectators, the balcony was crammed. Not a single paving-stone in the paved yard was to be seen. It seemed paved with faces.
Only the compartment for the nobility remained empty.
There was thus a space in the centre of the balcony, a black hole, called in metaphorical slang an oven. No one there. Crowds everywhere except in that one spot.
One evening it was occupied.
It was on a Saturday, a day on which the English make all haste to amuse themselves before the ennui of Sunday. The hall
was full. We say hall. Shakespeare for a long time had to use the yard of an inn for a theatre, and he called it hall.
Just as the curtain rose on the prologue of Chaos Vanquished, with Ursus, Homo, and Gwynplaine on the stage, Ursus, from habit, cast a look at the audience, and felt a sensation.
The compartment for the nobility was occupied. A lady was sitting alone in the middle of the box, on the Utrecht velvet arm-chair. She was alone, and she filled the box. Certain beings seem to give out light. This lady, like Dea, had a light in herself, but a light of a different character.
Dea was pale, this lady was pink. Dea was the twilight, this lady, Aurora. Dea was beautiful, this lady was superb. Dea was innocence, candour, fairness, alabaster--this woman was of the purple, and one felt that she did not fear the blush. Her irradiation overflowed the box, she sat in the midst of it, immovable, in the spreading majesty of an idol.
Amid the sordid crowd she shone out grandly, as with the radiance of a carbuncle. She inundated it with so much light that she drowned it in shadow, and all the mean faces in it underwent eclipse. Her splendour blotted out all else.
Every eye was turned toward her.
Tom-Jim-Jack was in the crowd. He was lost like the rest in the nimbus of this dazzling creature.
The lady at first absorbed the whole attention of the public, who had crowded to the performance, thus somewhat diminishing the opening effects of Chaos Vanquished.
Whatever might be the air of dreamland about her, for those who were near she was a woman; perchance, too much a woman. She was tall and amply formed, and showed as much as possible of her magnificent person. She wore heavy ear-rings of pearls, with which were mixed those whimsical jewels called "keys of England." Her upper dress was of Indian muslin, embroidered all over with gold--a great luxury, because those muslin dresses then cost six hundred crowns. A large diamond brooch closed her chemise, the which she wore so as to display her shoulders and bosom, in the immodest fashion of the time; the chemisette was made of that lawn of which Anne of Austria had sheets so fine that they could be passed through a ring. She wore what seemed like a cuirass of rubies--some uncut, but polished, and precious stones were sewn all over the body of her dress. Then, her eyebrows were blackened with Indian ink; and her arms, elbows, shoulders, chin, and nostrils, with the top of her eyelids, the lobes of her ears, the palms of her hands, the tips of her fingers, were tinted with a glowing and provoking touch of colour. Above all, she wore an expression of implacable determination to be beautiful. This reached the point of ferocity. She was like a panther, with the power of turning cat at will, and caressing. One of her eyes was blue, the other black.