Виктор Мари Гюго
The Man Who Laughs
Ursus rushed at the wig, ruffled it, put it on, advanced softly, and holding his breath, his head bristled thus under the hand of Dea.
Then calling all his art to his aid, and copying Gwynplaine's voice, he sang with ineffable love the response of the monster to the call of the spirit. The imitation was so perfect that again the gipsies looked for Gwynplaine, frightened at hearing without seeing him.
Govicum, filled with astonishment, stamped, applauded, clapped his hands, producing an Olympian tumult, and himself laughed as if he had been a chorus of gods. This boy, it must be confessed, developed a rare talent for acting an audience.
Fibi and Vinos, being automatons of which Ursus pulled the strings, rattled their instruments, composed of copper and ass's skin – the usual sign of the performance being over and of the departure of the people.
Ursus arose, covered with perspiration. He said, in a low voice, to Homo, "You see it was necessary to gain time. I think we have succeeded. I have not acquitted myself badly – I, who have as much reason as any one to go distracted. Gwynplaine may perhaps return to-morrow. It is useless to kill Dea directly. I can explain matters to you."
He took off his wig and wiped his forehead.
"I am a ventriloquist of genius," murmured he. "What talent I displayed! I have equalled Brabant, the engastrimist of Francis I. of France. Dea is convinced that Gwynplaine is here."
"Ursus," said Dea, "where is Gwynplaine?"
Ursus started and turned round. Dea was still standing at the back of the stage, alone under the lamp which hung from the ceiling. She was pale, with the pallor of a ghost.
She added, with an ineffable expression of despair, —
"I know. He has left us. He is gone. I always knew that he had wings."
And raising her sightless eyes on high, she added, —
"When shall I follow?"
CHAPTER III.
COMPLICATIONS
Ursus was stunned.
He had not sustained the illusion.
Was it the fault of ventriloquism? Certainly not. He had succeeded in deceiving Fibi and Vinos, who had eyes, although he had not deceived Dea, who was blind. It was because Fibi and Vinos saw with their eyes, while Dea saw with her heart. He could not utter a word. He thought to himself, Bos in lingûa. The troubled man has an ox on his tongue.
In his complex emotions, humiliation was the first which dawned on him. Ursus, driven out of his last resource, pondered.
"I lavish my onomatopies in vain." Then, like every dreamer, he reviled himself. "What a frightful failure! I wore myself out in a pure loss of imitative harmony. But what is to be done next?"
He looked at Dea. She was silent, and grew paler every moment, as she stood perfectly motionless. Her sightless eyes remained fixed in depths of thought.
Fortunately, something happened. Ursus saw Master Nicless in the yard, with a candle in his hand, beckoning to him.
Master Nicless had not assisted at the end of the phantom comedy played by Ursus. Some one had happened to knock at the door of the inn. Master Nicless had gone to open it. There had been two knocks, and twice Master Nicless had disappeared. Ursus, absorbed by his hundred-voiced monologue, had not observed his absence.
On the mute call of Master Nicless, Ursus descended.
He approached the tavern-keeper. Ursus put his finger on his lips. Master Nicless put his finger on his lips.
The two looked at each other thus.
Each seemed to say to the other, "We will talk, but we will hold our tongues."
The tavern-keeper silently opened the door of the lower room of the tavern. Master Nicless entered. Ursus entered. There was no one there except these two. On the side looking on the street both doors and window-shutters were closed.
The tavern-keeper pushed the door behind him, and shut it in the face of the inquisitive Govicum.
Master Nicless placed the candle on the table.
A low whispering dialogue began.
"Master Ursus?"
"Master Nicless?"
"I understand at last."
"Nonsense!"
"You wished the poor blind girl to think that all going on as usual."
"There is no law against my being a ventriloquist."
"You are a clever fellow."
"No."
"It is wonderful how you manage all that you wish to do."
"I tell you it is not."
"Now, I have something to tell you."
"Is it about politics?"
"I don't know."
"Because in that case I could not listen to you."
"Look here: whilst you were playing actors and audience by yourself, some one knocked at the door of the tavern."
"Some one knocked at the door?"
"Yes."
"I don't like that."
"Nor I, either."
"And then?"
"And then I opened it."
"Who was it that knocked?"
"Some one who spoke to me."
"What did he say?"
"I listened to him."
"What did you answer?"
"Nothing. I came back to see you play."
"And – ?"
"Some one knocked a second time."
"Who? the same person?"
"No, another."
"Some one else to speak to you?"
"Some one who said nothing."
"I like that better."
"I do not."
"Explain yourself, Master Nicless."
"Guess who called the first time."
"I have no leisure to be an Oedipus."
"It was the proprietor of the circus."
"Over the way?"
"Over the way."
"Whence comes all that fearful noise. Well?"
"Well, Master Ursus, he makes you a proposal."
"A proposal?"
"A proposal."
"Why?"
"Because – "
"You have an advantage over me, Master Nicless. Just now you solved my enigma, and now I cannot understand yours."
"The proprietor of the circus commissioned me to tell you that he had seen the cortège of police pass this morning, and that he, the proprietor of the circus, wishing to prove that he is your friend, offers to buy of you, for fifty pounds, ready money, your caravan, the Green Box, your two horses, your trumpets, with the women that blow them, your play, with the blind girl who sings in it, your wolf, and yourself."
Ursus smiled a haughty smile.
"Innkeeper, tell the proprietor of the circus that Gwynplaine is coming back."
The innkeeper took something from a chair in the darkness, and turning towards Ursus with both arms raised, dangled from one hand a cloak, and from the other a leather esclavine, a felt hat, and a jacket.
And Master Nicless said, "The man who knocked the second time was connected with the police; he came in and left without saying a word, and brought these things."
Ursus recognized the esclavine, the jacket, the hat, and the cloak of Gwynplaine.
CHAPTER IV.
MOENIBUS SURDIS CAMPANA MUTA
Ursus smoothed the felt of the hat, touched the cloth of the cloak, the serge of the coat, the leather of the esclavine, and no longer able to doubt whose garments they were, with a gesture at once brief and imperative, and without saying a word, pointed to the door of the inn.
Master Nicless opened it.
Ursus rushed out of the tavern.
Master Nicless looked after him, and saw Ursus run, as fast as his old legs would allow, in the direction taken that morning by the wapentake who carried off Gwynplaine.
A quarter of an hour afterwards, Ursus, out of breath, reached the little street in which stood the back wicket of the Southwark jail, which he had already watched so many hours. This alley was lonely enough at all hours; but if dreary during the day, it was portentous in the night. No one ventured through it after a certain hour. It seemed as though people feared that the walls should close in, and that if the prison or the cemetery took a fancy to embrace, they should be crushed in their clasp. Such are the effects of darkness. The pollard willows of the Ruelle Vauvert in Paris were thus ill-famed. It was said that during the night the stumps of those trees changed into great hands, and caught hold of the passers-by.
By instinct the Southwark folks shunned, as we have already mentioned, this alley between a prison and a churchyard. Formerly it had been barricaded during the night by an iron chain. Very uselessly; because the strongest chain which guarded the street was the terror it inspired.
Ursus entered it resolutely.
What intention possessed him? None.
He came into the alley to seek intelligence.
Was he going to knock at the gate of the jail? Certainly not. Such an expedient, at once fearful and vain, had no place in his brain. To attempt to introduce himself to demand an explanation. What folly! Prisons do not open to those who wish to enter, any more than to those who desire to get out. Their hinges never turn except by law. Ursus knew this. Why, then, had he come there? To see. To see what? Nothing. Who can tell? Even to be opposite the gate through which Gwynplaine had disappeared was something.
Sometimes the blackest and most rugged of walls whispers, and some light escapes through a cranny. A vague glimmering is now and then to be perceived through solid and sombre piles of building. Even to examine the envelope of a fact may be to some purpose. The instinct of us all is to leave between the fact which interests us and ourselves but the thinnest possible cover. Therefore it was that Ursus returned to the alley in which the lower entrance to the prison was situated.
Just as he entered it he heard one stroke of the clock, then a second.
"Hold," thought he; "can it be midnight already?"
Mechanically he set himself to count.
"Three, four, five."
He mused.
"At what long intervals this clock strikes! how slowly! Six; seven!"
Then he remarked, —
"What a melancholy sound! Eight, nine! Ah! nothing can be more natural; it's dull work for a clock to live in a prison. Ten! Besides, there is the cemetery. This clock sounds the hour to the living, and eternity to the dead. Eleven! Alas! to strike the hour to him who is not free is also to chronicle an eternity. Twelve!"
He paused.
"Yes, it is midnight."
The clock struck a thirteenth stroke.
Ursus shuddered.
"Thirteen!"
Then followed a fourteenth; then a fifteenth.
"What can this mean?"
The strokes continued at long intervals. Ursus listened.
"It is not the striking of a clock; it is the bell Muta. No wonder I said, 'How long it takes to strike midnight!' This clock does not strike; it tolls. What fearful thing is about to take place?"
Formerly all prisons and all monasteries had a bell called Muta, reserved for melancholy occasions. La Muta (the mute) was a bell which struck very low, as if doing its best not to be heard.
Ursus had reached the corner which he had found so convenient for his watch, and whence he had been able, during a great part of the day, to keep his eye on the prison.
The strokes followed each other at lugubrious intervals.
A knell makes an ugly punctuation in space. It breaks the preoccupation of the mind into funereal paragraphs. A knell, like a man's death-rattle, notifies an agony. If in the houses about the neighbourhood where a knell is tolled there are reveries straying in doubt, its sound cuts them into rigid fragments. A vague reverie is a sort of refuge. Some indefinable diffuseness in anguish allows now and then a ray of hope to pierce through it. A knell is precise and desolating. It concentrates this diffusion of thought, and precipitates the vapours in which anxiety seeks to remain in suspense. A knell speaks to each one in the sense of his own grief or of his own fear. Tragic bell! it concerns you. It is a warning to you.
There is nothing so dreary as a monologue on which its cadence falls. The even returns of sound seem to show a purpose.
What is it that this hammer, the bell, forges on the anvil of thought?
Ursus counted, vaguely and without motive, the tolling of the knell. Feeling that his thoughts were sliding from him, he made an effort not to let them slip into conjecture. Conjecture is an inclined plane, on which we slip too far to be to our own advantage. Still, what was the meaning of the bell?
He looked through the darkness in the direction in which he knew the gate of the prison to be.
Suddenly, in that very spot which looked like a dark hole, a redness showed. The redness grew larger, and became a light.
There was no uncertainty about it. It soon took a form and angles. The gate of the jail had just turned on its hinges. The glow painted the arch and the jambs of the door. It was a yawning rather than an opening. A prison does not open; it yawns – perhaps from ennui. Through the gate passed a man with a torch in his hand.
The bell rang on. Ursus felt his attention fascinated by two objects. He watched – his ear the knell, his eye the torch. Behind the first man the gate, which had been ajar, enlarged the opening suddenly, and allowed egress to two other men; then to a fourth. This fourth was the wapentake, clearly visible in the light of the torch. In his grasp was his iron staff.
Following the wapentake, there filed and opened out below the gateway in order, two by two, with the rigidity of a series of walking posts, ranks of silent men.
This nocturnal procession stepped through the wicket in file, like a procession of penitents, without any solution of continuity, with a funereal care to make no noise – gravely, almost gently. A serpent issues from its hole with similar precautions.
The torch threw out their profiles and attitudes into relief. Fierce looks, sullen attitudes.
Ursus recognized the faces of the police who had that morning carried off Gwynplaine.
There was no doubt about it. They were the same. They were reappearing.
Of course, Gwynplaine would also reappear. They had led him to that place; they would bring him back.
It was all quite clear.
Ursus strained his eyes to the utmost. Would they set Gwynplaine at liberty?
The files of police flowed from the low arch very slowly, and, as it were, drop by drop. The toll of the bell was uninterrupted, and seemed to mark their steps. On leaving the prison, the procession turned their backs on Ursus, went to the right, into the bend of the street opposite to that in which he was posted.
A second torch shone under the gateway, announcing the end of the procession.
Ursus was now about to see what they were bringing with them. The prisoner – the man.
Ursus was soon, he thought, to see Gwynplaine.
That which they carried appeared.
It was a bier.
Four men carried a bier, covered with black cloth.
Behind them came a man, with a shovel on his shoulder.
A third lighted torch, held by a man reading a book, probably the chaplain, closed the procession.
The bier followed the ranks of the police, who had turned to the right.
Just at that moment the head of the procession stopped.
Ursus heard the grating of a key.
Opposite the prison, in the low wall which ran along the other side of the street, another opening was illuminated by a torch passing beneath it.
This gate, over which a death's-head was placed, was that of the cemetery.
The wapentake passed through it, then the men, then the second torch. The procession decreased therein, like a reptile entering his retreat.
The files of police penetrated into that other darkness which was beyond the gate; then the bier; then the man with the spade; then the chaplain with his torch and his book, and the gate closed.
There was nothing left but a haze of light above the wall.
A muttering was heard; then some dull sounds. Doubtless the chaplain and the gravedigger – the one throwing on the coffin some verses of Scripture, the other some clods of earth.
The muttering ceased; the heavy sounds ceased. A movement was made. The torches shone. The wapentake reappeared, holding high his weapon, under the reopened gate of the cemetery; then the chaplain with his book, and the gravedigger with his spade. The cortège reappeared without the coffin.
The files of men crossed over in the same order, with the same taciturnity, and in the opposite direction. The gate of the cemetery closed. That of the prison opened. Its sepulchral architecture stood out against the light. The obscurity of the passage became vaguely visible. The solid and deep night of the jail was revealed to sight; then the whole vision disappeared in the depths of shadow.
The knell ceased. All was locked in silence. A sinister incarceration of shadows.
A vanished vision; nothing more.
A passage of spectres, which had disappeared.
The logical arrangement of surmises builds up something which at least resembles evidence. To the arrest of Gwynplaine, to the secret mode of his capture, to the return of his garments by the police officer, to the death bell of the prison to which he had been conducted, was now added, or rather adjusted – portentous circumstance – a coffin carried to the grave.
"He is dead!" cried Ursus.
He sank down upon a stone.
"Dead! They have killed him! Gwynplaine! My child! My son!"
And he burst into passionate sobs.
CHAPTER V.
STATE POLICY DEALS WITH LITTLE MATTERS AS WELL AS WITH GREAT
Ursus, alas! had boasted that he had never wept. His reservoir of tears was full. Such plentitude as is accumulated drop on drop, sorrow on sorrow, through a long existence, is not to be poured out in a moment. Ursus wept alone.
The first tear is a letting out of waters. He wept for Gwynplaine, for Dea, for himself, Ursus, for Homo. He wept like a child. He wept like an old man. He wept for everything at which he had ever laughed. He paid off arrears. Man is never nonsuited when he pleads his right to tears.
The corpse they had just buried was Hardquanonne's; but Ursus could not know that.
The hours crept on.
Day began to break. The pale clothing of the morning was spread out, dimly creased with shadow, over the bowling-green. The dawn lighted up the front of the Tadcaster Inn. Master Nicless had not gone to bed, because sometimes the same occurrence produces sleeplessness in many.
Troubles radiate in every direction. Throw a stone in the water, and count the splashes.
Master Nicless felt himself impeached. It is very disagreeable that such things should happen in one's house. Master Nicless, uneasy, and foreseeing misfortunes, meditated. He regretted having received such people into his house. Had he but known that they would end by getting him into mischief! But the question was how to get rid of them? He had given Ursus a lease. What a blessing if he could free himself from it! How should he set to work to drive them out?
Suddenly the door of the inn resounded with one of those tumultuous knocks which in England announces "Somebody." The gamut of knocking corresponds with the ladder of hierarchy.
It was not quite the knock of a lord; but it was the knock of a justice.
The trembling innkeeper half opened his window. There was, indeed, the magistrate. Master Nicless perceived at the door a body of police, from the head of which two men detached themselves, one of whom was the justice of the quorum.
Master Nicless had seen the justice of the quorum that morning, and recognized him.
He did not know the other, who was a fat gentleman, with a waxen-coloured face, a fashionable wig, and a travelling cloak. Nicless was much afraid of the first of these persons, the justice of the quorum. Had he been of the court, he would have feared the other most, because it was Barkilphedro.
One of the subordinates knocked at the door again violently.
The innkeeper, with great drops of perspiration on his brow, from anxiety, opened it.
The justice of the quorum, in the tone of a man who is employed in matters of police, and who is well acquainted with various shades of vagrancy, raised his voice, and asked, severely, for
"Master Ursus!"
The host, cap in hand, replied, —
"Your honour; he lives here."
"I know it," said the justice.
"No doubt, your honour."
"Tell him to come down."
"Your honour, he is not here."
"Where is he?"
"I do not know."
"How is that?"
"He has not come in."
"Then he must have gone out very early?"
"No; but he went out very late."
"What vagabonds!" replied the justice.
"Your honour," said Master Nicless, softly, "here he comes."
Ursus, indeed, had just come in sight, round a turn of the wall. He was returning to the inn. He had passed nearly the whole night between the jail, where at midday he had seen Gwynplaine, and the cemetery, where at midnight he had heard the grave filled up. He was pallid with two pallors – that of sorrow and of twilight.
Dawn, which is light in a chrysalis state, leaves even those forms which are in movement in the uncertainty of night. Ursus, wan and indistinct, walked slowly, like a man in a dream. In the wild distraction produced by agony of mind, he had left the inn with his head bare. He had not even found out that he had no hat on. His spare, gray locks fluttered in the wind. His open eyes appeared sightless. Often when awake we are asleep, and as often when asleep we are awake.
Ursus looked like a lunatic.
"Master Ursus," cried the innkeeper, "come; their honours desire to speak to you."
Master Nicless, in his endeavour to soften matters down, let slip, although he would gladly have omitted, this plural, "their honours" – respectful to the group, but mortifying, perhaps, to the chief, confounded therein, to some degree, with his subordinates.
Ursus started like a man falling off a bed, on which he was sound asleep.
"What is the matter?" said he.
He saw the police, and at the head of the police the justice. A fresh and rude shock.
But a short time ago, the wapentake, now the justice of the quorum. He seemed to have been cast from one to the other, as ships by some reefs of which we have read in old stories.
The justice of the quorum made him a sign to enter the tavern. Ursus obeyed.
Govicum, who had just got up, and who was sweeping the room, stopped his work, got into a corner behind the tables, put down his broom, and held his breath. He plunged his fingers into his hair, and scratched his head, a symptom which indicated attention to what was about to occur.
The justice of the quorum sat down on a form, before a table. Barkilphedro took a chair. Ursus and Master Nicless remained standing. The police officers, left outside, grouped themselves in front of the closed door.
The justice of the quorum fixed his eye, full of the law, upon Ursus. He said, —
"You have a wolf."
Ursus answered, —
"Not exactly."
"You have a wolf," continued the justice, emphasizing "wolf" with a decided accent.
Ursus answered, —
"You see – "
And he was silent.
"A misdemeanour!" replied the justice.
Ursus hazarded an excuse, —
"He is my servant."
The justice placed his hand flat on the table, with his fingers spread out, which is a very fine gesture of authority.
"Merry-andrew! to-morrow, by this hour, you and your wolf must have left England. If not, the wolf will be seized, carried to the register office, and killed."
Ursus thought, "More murder!" but he breathed not a syllable, and was satisfied with trembling in every limb.
"You hear?" said the justice.
Ursus nodded.
The justice persisted, —
"Killed."
There was silence.
"Strangled, or drowned."
The justice of the quorum watched Ursus.
"And yourself in prison."
Ursus murmured, —
"Your worship!"
"Be off before to-morrow morning; if not, such is the order."
"Your worship!"
"What?"
"Must we leave England, he and I?"
"Yes."
"To-day?"
"To-day."
"What is to be done?"
Master Nicless was happy. The magistrate, whom he had feared, had come to his aid. The police had acted as auxiliary to him, Nicless. They had delivered him from "such people." The means he had sought were brought to him. Ursus, whom he wanted to get rid of, was being driven away by the police, a superior authority. Nothing to object to. He was delighted. He interrupted, —
"Your honour, that man – "
He pointed to Ursus with his finger.
"That man wants to know how he is to leave England to-day. Nothing can be easier. There are night and day at anchor on the Thames, both on this and on the other side of London Bridge, vessels that sail to the Continent. They go from England to Denmark, to Holland, to Spain; not to France, on account of the war, but everywhere else. To-night several ships will sail, about one o'clock in the morning, which is the hour of high tide, and, amongst others, the Vograat of Rotterdam."
The justice of the quorum made a movement of his shoulder towards Ursus.
"Be it so. Leave by the first ship – by the Vograat."
"Your worship," said Ursus.
"Well?"
"Your worship, if I had, as formerly, only my little box on wheels, it might be done. A boat would contain that; but – "
"But what?"
"But now I have got the Green Box, which is a great caravan drawn by two horses, and however wide the ship might be, we could not get it into her."
"What is that to me?" said the justice. "The wolf will be killed."
Ursus shuddered, as if he were grasped by a hand of ice.
"Monsters!" he thought. "Murdering people is their way of settling matters."
The innkeeper smiled, and addressed Ursus.
"Master Ursus, you can sell the Green Box."
Ursus looked at Nicless.
"Master Ursus, you have the offer."
"From whom?"
"An offer for the caravan, an offer for the two horses, an offer for the two gipsy women, an offer – "
"From whom?" repeated Ursus.
"From the proprietor of the neighbouring circus."
Ursus remembered it.
"It is true."
Master Nicless turned to the justice of the quorum.
"Your honour, the bargain can be completed to-day. The proprietor of the circus close by wishes to buy the caravan and the horses."
"The proprietor of the circus is right," said the justice, "because he will soon require them. A caravan and horses will be useful to him. He, too, will depart to-day. The reverend gentlemen of the parish of Southwark have complained of the indecent riot in Tarrinzeau field. The sheriff has taken his measures. To-night there will not be a single juggler's booth in the place. There must be an end of all these scandals. The honourable gentleman who deigns to be here present – "
The justice of the quorum interrupted his speech to salute Barkilphedro, who returned the bow.
"The honourable gentleman who deigns to be present has just arrived from Windsor. He brings orders. Her Majesty has said, 'It must be swept away.'"
Ursus, during his long meditation all night, had not failed to put himself some questions. After all, he had only seen a bier. Could he be sure that it contained Gwynplaine? Other people might have died besides Gwynplaine. A coffin does not announce the name of the corpse, as it passes by. A funeral had followed the arrest of Gwynplaine. That proved nothing. Post hoc, non propter hoc, etc. Ursus had begun to doubt.
Hope burns and glimmers over misery like naphtha over water. Its hovering flame ever floats over human sorrow. Ursus had come to this conclusion, "It is probable that it was Gwynplaine whom they buried, but it is not certain. Who knows? Perhaps Gwynplaine is still alive."
Ursus bowed to the justice.
"Honourable judge, I will go away, we will go away, all will go away, by the Vograat of Rotterdam, to-day. I will sell the Green Box, the horses, the trumpets, the gipsies. But I have a comrade, whom I cannot leave behind – Gwynplaine."
"Gwynplaine is dead," said a voice.
Ursus felt a cold sensation, such as is produced by a reptile crawling over the skin. It was Barkilphedro who had just spoken.
The last gleam was extinguished. No more doubt now. Gwynplaine was dead. A person in authority must know. This one looked ill-favoured enough to do so.
Ursus bowed to him.
Master Nicless was a good-hearted man enough, but a dreadful coward. Once terrified, he became a brute. The greatest cruelty is that inspired by fear.
He growled out, —
"This simplifies matters."
And he indulged, standing behind Ursus, in rubbing his hands, a peculiarity of the selfish, signifying, "I am well out of it," and suggestive of Pontius Pilate washing his hands.
Ursus, overwhelmed, bent down his head.
The sentence on Gwynplaine had been executed – death. His sentence was pronounced – exile. Nothing remained but to obey. He felt as in a dream.
Some one touched his arm. It was the other person, who was with the justice of the quorum. Ursus shuddered.
The voice which had said, "Gwynplaine is dead," whispered in his ear, —
"Here are ten guineas, sent you by one who wishes you well."
And Barkilphedro placed a little purse on a table before Ursus. We must not forget the casket that Barkilphedro had taken with him.
Ten guineas out of two thousand! It was all that Barkilphedro could make up his mind to part with. In all conscience it was enough. If he had given more, he would have lost. He had taken the trouble of finding out a lord; and having sunk the shaft, it was but fair that the first proceeds of the mine should belong to him. Those who see meanness in the act are right, but they would be wrong to feel astonished. Barkilphedro loved money, especially money which was stolen. An envious man is an avaricious one. Barkilphedro was not without his faults. The commission of crimes does not preclude the possession of vices. Tigers have their lice.
Besides, he belonged to the school of Bacon.
Barkilphedro turned towards the justice of the quorum, and said to him, —
"Sir, be so good as to conclude this matter. I am in haste. A carriage and horses belonging to her Majesty await me. I must go full gallop to Windsor, for I must be there within two hours' time. I have intelligence to give, and orders to take."
The justice of the quorum arose.
He went to the door, which was only latched, opened it, and, looking silently towards the police, beckoned to them authoritatively. They entered with that silence which heralds severity of action.
Master Nicless, satisfied with the rapid dénouement which cut short his difficulties, charmed to be out of the entangled skein, was afraid, when he saw the muster of officers, that they were going to apprehend Ursus in his house. Two arrests, one after the other, made in his house – first that of Gwynplaine, then that of Ursus – might be injurious to the inn. Customers dislike police raids.
Here then was a time for a respectful appeal, suppliant and generous. Master Nicless turned toward the justice of the quorum a smiling face, in which confidence was tempered by respect.
"Your honour, I venture to observe to your honour that these honourable gentlemen, the police officers, might be dispensed with, now that the wolf is about to be carried away from England, and that this man, Ursus, makes no resistance; and since your honour's orders are being punctually carried out, your honour will consider that the respectable business of the police, so necessary to the good of the kingdom, does great harm to an establishment, and that my house is innocent. The merry-andrews of the Green Box having been swept away, as her Majesty says, there is no longer any criminal here, as I do not suppose that the blind girl and the two women are criminals; therefore, I implore your honour to deign to shorten your august visit, and to dismiss these worthy gentlemen who have just entered, because there is nothing for them to do in my house; and, if your honour will permit me to prove the justice of my speech under the form of a humble question, I will prove the inutility of these revered gentlemen's presence by asking your honour, if the man, Ursus, obeys orders and departs, who there can be to arrest here?"
