Человек, который смеется / The Man Who Laughs. Уровень 4

Ursus was sagacious, contradictory, odd, and inclined to the fables. 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 the archbishop was justly indignant.

But Ursus cleverly disarmed his grace by reciting a sermon he had composed upon Christmas Day. The archbishop pardoned Ursus.

As a doctor, Ursus wrought cures by some means or other. He used the hazel, the catkin, the white alder, the white bryony, the mealy-tree, the traveller’s joy, the buckthorn. He treated phthisis with the sundew. He cured sore throat by means of the vegetable excrescence called Jew’s ear. He knew the rush which cures the ox and the mint which cures the horse.

He was well acquainted with the beauties and virtues of the herb mandragora. He had many recipes. He cured burns with the salamander wool. Ursus possessed a retort and a flask; he effected transmutations; he sold panaceas. He had once been for a short time in Bedlam; they had set him free because he was only a poet. This story was probably not true.

The fact is, Ursus was a savant, a man of taste, and a poet. He could compose Jesuit tragedies. He had peculiar figures of speech, and a whole family of classical metaphors.

So much knowledge could only end in starvation. The school of Salerno says, “Eat little and often.” Ursus ate little and seldom.

Ursus used to say: “The wolf is comforted by its howl, the sheep by its wool, the forest by its finch, woman by her love, and the philosopher by his epiphonema.”

Ursus composed comedies, which he all acted; this helped to sell the drugs. Among other works, he composed a pastoral in honour of Sir Hugh Middleton.

Ursus was great in soliloquy. He was unsociable and talkative, desiring to see no one, yet wishing to converse with someone. So he talked to himself. It was, as is well known, a custom of Socrates; he declaimed to himself. Luther did the same. Ursus questioned himself, answered himself, praised himself, blamed himself. You heard him in the street soliloquizing in his van. The passers-by used to say: “He is an idiot.