With the merry-andrews the reverends allied themselves.  The Laughing Man had inflicted a blow on the preachers.  There were empty places not only in the caravans, but in the churches.  The congregations in the churches of the five parishes in Southwark had dwindled away.  People left before the sermon to go to Gwynplaine.  “Chaos Vanquished,” the Green Box, the Laughing Man, all the abominations of Baal, eclipsed the eloquence of the pulpit.  The voice crying in the desert, vox clamantis in deserto, is discontented, and is prone to call for the aid of the authorities.  The clergy of the five parishes complained to the Bishop of London, who complained to her Majesty.

The complaint of the merry-andrews was based on religion.  They declared it to be insulted.  They described Gwynplaine as a sorcerer, and Ursus as an atheist.  The reverend gentlemen invoked social order.  Setting orthodoxy aside they took action on the fact that Acts of Parliament were violated.  It was clever.  Because it was the period of Mr. Locke, who had died but six months previously—­28th October, 1704—­and when scepticism, which Bolingbroke had imbibed from Voltaire, was taking root.  Later on Wesley came and restored the Bible, as Loyola restored the papacy.

Thus the Green Box was battered on both sides; by the merry-andrews, in the name of the Pentateuch, and by chaplains in the name of the police.  In the name of Heaven and of the inspectors of nuisances.  The Green Box was denounced by the priests as an obstruction, and by the jugglers as sacrilegious.

Had they any pretext?  Was there any excuse?  Yes.  What was the crime?  This:  there was the wolf.  A dog was allowable; a wolf forbidden.  In England the wolf is an outlaw.  England admits the dog which barks, but not the dog which howls—­a shade of difference between the yard and the woods.

The rectors and vicars of the five parishes of Southwark called attention in their petitions to numerous parliamentary and royal statutes putting the wolf beyond the protection of the law.  They moved for something like the imprisonment of Gwynplaine and the execution of the wolf, or at any rate for their banishment.  The question was one of public importance, the danger to persons passing, etc.  And on this point, they appealed to the Faculty.  They cited the opinion of the Eighty physicians of London, a learned body which dates from Henry VIII., which has a seal like that of the State, which can raise sick people to the dignity of being amenable to their jurisdiction, which has the right to imprison those who infringe its law and contravene its ordinances, and which, amongst other useful regulations for the health of the citizens, put beyond doubt this fact acquired by science; that if a wolf sees a man first, the man becomes hoarse for life.  Besides, he may be bitten.

Homo, then, was a pretext.

Ursus heard of these designs through the inn-keeper.  He was uneasy.  He was afraid of two claws—­the police and the justices.  To be afraid of the magistracy, it is sufficient to be afraid, there is no need to be guilty.  Ursus had no desire for contact with sheriffs, provosts, bailiffs, and coroners.  His eagerness to make their acquaintance amounted to nil.  His curiosity to see the magistrates was about as great as the hare’s to see the greyhound.