Ursus, taking the precaution of putting his voice between parentheses fashioned by adjusting the palms of his hands to his mouth, cried out to him,—­

“Sir! do as your boy is doing—­yelp, bark, howl.”

He re-ascended the steps of the Green Box, and said to the wolf,—­

“Talk as much as you can.”

Then, raising his voice,—­

“What a crowd there is!  We shall have a crammed performance.”

In the meantime Vinos played the tambourine.  Ursus went on,—­

“Dea is dressed.  Now we can begin.  I am sorry they have admitted so many spectators.  How thickly packed they are!—­Look, Gwynplaine, what a mad mob it is!  I will bet that to-day we shall take more money than we have ever done yet.—­Come, gipsies, play up, both of you.  Come here.—­Fibi, take your clarion.  Good.—­Vinos, drum on your tambourine.  Fling it up and catch it again.—­Fibi, put yourself into the attitude of Fame.—­Young ladies, you have too much on.  Take off those jackets.  Replace stuff by gauze.  The public like to see the female form exposed.  Let the moralists thunder.  A little indecency.  Devil take it! what of that?  Look voluptuous, and rush into wild melodies.  Snort, blow, whistle, flourish, play the tambourine.—­What a number of people, my poor Gwynplaine!”

He interrupted himself.

“Gwynplaine, help me.  Let down the platform.”  He spread out his pocket-handkerchief.  “But first let me roar in my rag,” and he blew his nose violently as a ventriloquist ought.  Having returned his handkerchief to his pocket, he drew the pegs out of the pulleys, which creaked as usual as the platform was let down.

“Gwynplaine, do not draw the curtain until the performance begins.  We are not alone.—­You two come on in front.  Music, ladies! turn, turn, turn.—­A pretty audience we have! the dregs of the people.  Good heavens!”

The two gipsies, stupidly obedient, placed themselves in their usual corners of the platform.  Then Ursus became wonderful.  It was no longer a man, but a crowd.  Obliged to make abundance out of emptiness, he called to aid his prodigious powers of ventriloquism.  The whole orchestra of human and animal voices which was within him he called into tumult at once.

He was legion.  Any one with his eyes closed would have imagined that he was in a public place on some day of rejoicing, or in some sudden popular riot.  A whirlwind of clamour proceeded from Ursus:  he sang, he shouted, he talked, he coughed, he spat, he sneezed, took snuff, talked and responded, put questions and gave answers, all at once.  The half-uttered syllables ran one into another.  In the court, untenanted by a single spectator, were heard men, women, and children.  It was a clear confusion of tumult.  Strange laughter wound, vapour-like, through the noise, the chirping of birds, the swearing of cats, the wailings of children at the breast.  The indistinct tones of drunken men were to be heard,