The Man Who Laughs | Page 2

Victor Hugo
he had also chosen his own name. Having found Ursus fit for
himself, he had found Homo fit for the beast. Man and wolf turned their
partnership to account at fairs, at village fêtes, at the corners of streets
where passers-by throng, and out of the need which people seem to feel
everywhere to listen to idle gossip and to buy quack medicine. The
wolf, gentle and courteously subordinate, diverted the crowd. It is a
pleasant thing to behold the tameness of animals. Our greatest delight is
to see all the varieties of domestication parade before us. This it is
which collects so many folks on the road of royal processions.
Ursus and Homo went about from cross-road to cross-road, from the
High Street of Aberystwith to the High Street of Jedburgh, from
country-side to country-side, from shire to shire, from town to town.
One market exhausted, they went on to another. Ursus lived in a small
van upon wheels, which Homo was civilized enough to draw by day
and guard by night. On bad roads, up hills, and where there were too
many ruts, or there was too much mud, the man buckled the trace round
his neck and pulled fraternally, side by side with the wolf. They had
thus grown old together. They encamped at haphazard on a common, in
the glade of a wood, on the waste patch of grass where roads intersect,
at the outskirts of villages, at the gates of towns, in market-places, in
public walks, on the borders of parks, before the entrances of churches.
When the cart drew up on a fair green, when the gossips ran up
open-mouthed and the curious made a circle round the pair, Ursus

harangued and Homo approved. Homo, with a bowl in his mouth,
politely made a collection among the audience. They gained their
livelihood. The wolf was lettered, likewise the man. The wolf had been
trained by the man, or had trained himself unassisted, to divers wolfish
arts, which swelled the receipts. "Above all things, do not degenerate
into a man," his friend would say to him.
Never did the wolf bite: the man did now and then. At least, to bite was
the intent of Ursus. He was a misanthrope, and to italicize his
misanthropy he had made himself a juggler. To live, also; for the
stomach has to be consulted. Moreover, this juggler-misanthrope,
whether to add to the complexity of his being or to perfect it, was a
doctor. To be a doctor is little: Ursus was a ventriloquist. You heard
him speak without his moving his lips. He counterfeited, so as to
deceive you, any one's accent or pronunciation. He imitated voices so
exactly that you believed you heard the people themselves. All alone he
simulated the murmur of a crowd, and this gave him a right to the title
of Engastrimythos, which he took. He reproduced all sorts of cries of
birds, as of the thrush, the wren, the pipit lark, otherwise called the gray
cheeper, and the ring ousel, all travellers like himself: so that at times
when the fancy struck him, he made you aware either of a public
thoroughfare filled with the uproar of men, or of a meadow loud with
the voices of beasts--at one time stormy as a multitude, at another fresh
and serene as the dawn. Such gifts, although rare, exist. In the last
century a man called Touzel, who imitated the mingled utterances of
men and animals, and who counterfeited all the cries of beasts, was
attached to the person of Buffon--to serve as a menagerie.
Ursus was sagacious, contradictory, odd, and inclined to the singular
expositions which we term fables. He had the appearance of believing
in them, and this impudence was a part of his humour. He read people's
hands, opened books at random and drew conclusions, told fortunes,
taught that it is perilous to meet a black mare, still more perilous, as
you start for a journey, to hear yourself accosted by one who knows not
whither you are going; and he called himself a dealer in superstitions.
He used to say: "There is one difference between me and the
Archbishop of Canterbury: I avow what I am." Hence it was that the

archbishop, justly indignant, had him one day before him; but Ursus
cleverly disarmed his grace by reciting a sermon he had composed
upon Christmas Day, which the delighted archbishop learnt by heart,
and delivered from the pulpit as his own. In consideration thereof the
archbishop pardoned Ursus.
As a doctor, Ursus wrought cures by some means or other. He made
use of aromatics; he was versed in simples; he made the most of the
immense power which lies in a heap of neglected plants, such as the
hazel, the catkin, the
Continue reading on your phone by scaning this QR Code

 / 261
Tip: The current page has been bookmarked automatically. If you wish to continue reading later, just open the Dertz Homepage, and click on the 'continue reading' link at the bottom of the page.