ou are hanged."

Ursus looked out of the window again, and drawing a long breath, said,--

"Thank God! He has passed. He was not coming here."

Ursus was perhaps unreasonably alarmed about the indiscreet remark, and
the consequences likely to result from the unconsidered words of
Gwynplaine.

Master Nicless, who had heard them, had no interest in compromising the
poor inhabitants of the Green Box. He was amassing, at the same time as
the Laughing Man, a nice little fortune. "Chaos Vanquished" had
succeeded in two ways. While it made art triumph on the stage, it made
drunkenness prosper in the tavern.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MOUSE EXAMINED BY THE CATS.

Ursus was soon afterwards startled by another alarming circumstance.
This time it was he himself who was concerned. He was summoned to
Bishopsgate before a commission composed of three disagreeable
countenances. They belonged to three doctors, called overseers. One was
a Doctor of Theology, delegated by the Dean of Westminster; another, a
Doctor of Medicine, delegated by the College of Surgeons; the third, a
Doctor in History and Civil Law, delegated by Gresham College. These
three experts _in omni re scibili_ had the censorship of everything said
in public throughout the bounds of the hundred and thirty parishes of
London, the seventy-three of Middlesex, and, by extension, the five of
Southwark.

Such theological jurisdictions still subsist in England, and do good
service. In December, 1868, by sentence of the Court of Arches,
confirmed by the decision of the Privy Council, the Reverend Mackonochie
was censured, besides being condemned in costs, for having placed
lighted candles on a table. The liturgy allows no jokes.

Ursus, then, one fine day received from the delegated doctors an order
to appear before them, which was, luckily, given into his own hands, and
which he was therefore enabled to keep secret. Without saying a word, he
obeyed the citation, shuddering at the thought that he might be
considered culpable to the extent of having the appearance of being
suspected of a certain amount of rashness. He who had so recommended
silence to others had here a rough lesson. _Garrule, sana te ipsum_.

The three doctors, delegated and appointed overseers, sat at
Bishopsgate, at the end of a room on the ground floor, in three
armchairs covered with black leather, with three busts of Minos, AEacus,
and Rhadamanthus, in the wall above their heads, a table before t