they brought him a sick man he cured him; he had cordials and beverages to prolong the lives of the old.  He put lame cripples on their legs again, and hurled this sarcasm at them, “There, you are on your paws once more; may you walk long in this valley of tears!” When he saw a poor man dying of hunger, he gave him all the pence he had about him, growling out, “Live on, you wretch! eat! last a long time!  It is not I who would shorten your penal servitude.”  After which, he would rub his hands and say, “I do men all the harm I can.”

Through the little window at the back, passers-by could read on the ceiling of the van these words, written within, but visible from without, inscribed with charcoal, in big letters,—­

URSUS, PHILOSOPHER.

ANOTHER PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.

THE COMPRACHICOS.

I.

Who now knows the word Comprachicos, and who knows its meaning?

The Comprachicos, or Comprapequenos, were a hideous and nondescript association of wanderers, famous in the 17th century, forgotten in the 18th, unheard of in the 19th.  The Comprachicos are like the “succession powder,” an ancient social characteristic detail.  They are part of old human ugliness.  To the great eye of history, which sees everything collectively, the Comprachicos belong to the colossal fact of slavery.  Joseph sold by his brethren is a chapter in their story.  The Comprachicos have left their traces in the penal laws of Spain and England.  You find here and there in the dark confusion of English laws the impress of this horrible truth, like the foot-print of a savage in a forest.

Comprachicos, the same as Comprapequenos, is a compound Spanish word signifying Child-buyers.

The Comprachicos traded in children.  They bought and sold them.  They did not steal them.  The kidnapping of children is another branch of industry.  And what did they make of these children?

Monsters.

Why monsters?

To laugh at.

The populace must needs laugh, and kings too.  The mountebank is wanted in the streets, the jester at the Louvre.  The one is called a Clown, the other a Fool.

The efforts of man to procure himself pleasure are at times worthy of the attention of the philosopher.

What are we sketching in these few preliminary pages?  A chapter in the most terrible of books; a book which might be entitled—­The farming of the unhappy by the happy.

II.

A child destined to be a plaything for men—­such a thing has existed; such a thing exists even now.  In simple and savage times such a thing constituted an especial trade.  The 17th century, called the great century, was of those times.  It was a century very Byzantine in tone.  It combined corrupt simplicity with delicate ferocity—­a curious variety of civilization.  A tiger with a simper.  Madame de Sevigne minces on the subject of the fagot and the wheel.  That century traded a good deal in children.  Flattering historians have concealed the sore, but have divulged the remedy, Vincent de Paul.