, probably contributed in no small degree to make the
magistrates tolerate his vagabond life and his low alliance with a wolf.
Sometimes of an evening, through the weakness of friendship, he allowed
Homo to stretch his limbs and wander at liberty about the caravan. The
wolf 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 have
arisen; so Ursus kept the honest wolf chained up as much as possible.

From a political point of view, his writing about gold, not very
intelligible in itself, and now become undecipherable, was but a smear,
and gave no handle to the enemy. Even after the time of James II., and
under the "respectable" reign of William and Mary, his caravan might
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 _tete-a-tete_, 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.