“Tres faciunt capitulum!”

Then, with head inclined (for modesty disarms) he sat down on the form.

Each of the three doctors had before him a bundle of papers, of which he was turning the leaves.

Minos began.

“You speak in public?”

“Yes,” replied Ursus.

“By what right?”

“I am a philosopher.”

“That gives no right.”

“I am also a mountebank,” said Ursus.

“That is a different thing.”

Ursus breathed again, but with humility.

Minos resumed,—­

“As a mountebank, you may speak; as a philosopher, you must keep silence.”

“I will try,” said Ursus.

Then he thought to himself.

“I may speak, but I must be silent.  How complicated.”

He was much alarmed.

The same overseer continued,—­

“You say things which do not sound right.  You insult religion.  You deny the most evident truths.  You propagate revolting errors.  For instance, you have said that the fact of virginity excludes the possibility of maternity.”

Ursus lifted his eyes meekly, “I did not say that.  I said that the fact of maternity excludes the possibility of virginity.”

Minos was thoughtful, and mumbled, “True, that is the contrary.”

It was really the same thing.  But Ursus had parried the first blow.

Minos, meditating on the answer just given by Ursus, sank into the depths of his own imbecility, and kept silent.

The overseer of history, or, as Ursus called him, Rhadamanthus, covered the retreat of Minos by this interpolation, “Accused! your audacity and your errors are of two sorts.  You have denied that the battle of Pharsalia would have been lost because Brutus and Cassius had met a negro.”

“I said,” murmured Ursus “that there was something in the fact that Caesar was the better captain.”

The man of history passed, without transition, to mythology.

“You have excused the infamous acts of Actaeon.”

“I think,” said Ursus, insinuatingly, “that a man is not dishonoured by having seen a naked woman.”

“Then you are wrong,” said the judge severely.  Rhadamanthus returned to history.

“Apropos of the accidents which happened to the cavalry of Mithridates, you have contested the virtues of herbs and plants.  You have denied that a herb like the securiduca, could make the shoes of horses fall off.”

“Pardon me,” replied Ursus.  “I said that the power existed only in the herb sferra cavallo.  I never denied the virtue of any herb,” and he added, in a low voice, “nor of any woman.”

By this extraneous addition to his answer Ursus proved to himself that, anxious as he was, he was not disheartened.  Ursus was a compound of terror and presence of mind.

“To continue,” resumed Rhadamanthus; “you have declared that it was folly in Scipio, when he wished to open the gates of Carthage, to use as a key the herb aethiopis, because the herb aethiopis has not the property of breaking locks.”