As he fled he mumbled,--

"I am well out of it. I am the savant untamed; they the savants
civilized. 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."

CHAPTER 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 gaiety. 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