five parishes of Southwark called
attention in their petitions to numerous parliamentary and royal
statutes putting the wolf beyond the protection of the law. They moved
for something like the imprisonment of Gwynplaine and the execution of
the wolf, or at any rate for their banishment. The question was one of
public importance, the danger to persons passing, etc. And on this
point, they appealed to the Faculty. They cited the opinion of the
Eighty physicians of London, a learned body which dates from Henry
VIII., which has a seal like that of the State, which can raise sick
people to the dignity of being amenable to their jurisdiction, which has
the right to imprison those who infringe its law and contravene its
ordinances, and which, amongst other useful regulations for the health
of the citizens, put beyond doubt this fact acquired by science; that if
a wolf sees a man first, the man becomes hoarse for life. Besides, he
may be bitten.

Homo, then, was a pretext.

Ursus heard of these designs through the inn-keeper. He was uneasy. He
was afraid of two claws--the police and the justices. To be afraid of
the magistracy, it is sufficient to be afraid, there is no need to be
guilty. Ursus had no desire for contact with sheriffs, provosts,
bailiffs, and coroners. His eagerness to make their acquaintance
amounted to nil. His curiosity to see the magistrates was about as great
as the hare's to see the greyhound.

He began to regret that he had come to London. "'Better' is the enemy of
'good,'" murmured he apart. "I thought the proverb was ill-considered. I
was wrong. Stupid truths are true truths."

Against the coalition of powers--merry-andrews taking in hand the cause
of religion, and chaplains, indignant in the name of medicine--the poor
Green Box, suspected of sorcery in Gwynplaine and of hydrophobia in
Homo, had only one thing in its favour (but a thing of great power in
England), municipal inactivity. It is to the local authorities letting
things take their own course that Englishmen owe their liberty. Liberty
in England behaves very much as the sea around England. It is a tide.
Little by little manners surmount the law. A cruel system of legislation
drowned under the wave of custom; a savage code of laws still visible
through the transparency of universal liberty: such is England.

The Laughing Man, "Chaos Vanquished," and Homo might have mountebanks,
preachers, bishops, the House of Commons, the House of Lords,