“I merely said that he would have done better to have used the herb lunaria.”

“That is a matter of opinion,” murmured Rhadamanthus, touched in his turn.  And the man of history was silent.

The theologian, Minos, having returned to consciousness, questioned Ursus anew.  He had had time to consult his notes.

“You have classed orpiment amongst the products of arsenic, and you have said that it is a poison.  The Bible denies this.”

“The Bible denies, but arsenic affirms it,” sighed Ursus.

The man whom Ursus called AEacus, and who was the envy of medicine, had not yet spoken, but now looking down on Ursus, with proudly half-closed eyes, he said,—­

“The answer is not without some show of reason.”

Ursus thanked him with his most cringing smile.  Minos frowned frightfully.  “I resume,” said Minos.  “You have said that it is false that the basilisk is the king of serpents, under the name of cockatrice.”

“Very reverend sir,” said Ursus, “so little did I desire to insult the basilisk that I have given out as certain that it has a man’s head.”

“Be it so,” replied Minos severely; “but you added that Poerius had seen one with the head of a falcon.  Can you prove it?”

“Not easily,” said Ursus.

Here he had lost a little ground.

Minos, seizing the advantage, pushed it.

“You have said that a converted Jew has not a nice smell.”

“Yes.  But I added that a Christian who becomes a Jew has a nasty one.”

Minos lost his eyes over the accusing documents.

“You have affirmed and propagated things which are impossible.  You have said that Elien had seen an elephant write sentences.”

“Nay, very reverend gentleman!  I simply said that Oppian had heard a hippopotamus discuss a philosophical problem.”

“You have declared that it is not true that a dish made of beech-wood will become covered of itself with all the viands that one can desire.”

“I said, that if it has this virtue, it must be that you received it from the devil.”

“That I received it!”

“No, most reverend sir.  I, nobody, everybody!”

Aside, Ursus thought, “I don’t know what I am saying.”

But his outward confusion, though extreme, was not distinctly visible.  Ursus struggled with it.

“All this,” Minos began again, “implies a certain belief in the devil.”

Ursus held his own.

“Very reverend sir, I am not an unbeliever with regard to the devil.  Belief in the devil is the reverse side of faith in God.  The one proves the other.  He who does not believe a little in the devil, does not believe much in God.  He who believes in the sun must believe in the shadow.  The devil is the night of God.  What is night?  The proof of day.”

Ursus here extemporized a fathomless combination of philosophy and religion.  Minos remained pensive, and relapsed into silence.