He had the loquacity of a charlatan, the leanness of a prophet, the irascibility of a charged mine: such was Ursus.

In his youth he had been a philosopher in the house of a lord.
This was 180 years ago, when men were more like wolves than they are now.
Not so very much though.
II.
Homo was no ordinary wolf.

From his appetite for medlars and potatoes he might have been taken for a prairie wolf; from his dark hide, for a lycaon; and from his howl prolonged into a bark, for a dog of Chili.

But no one has as yet observed the eyeball of a dog of Chili sufficiently to enable us to determine whether he be not a fox, and Homo was a real wolf.

He was five feet long, which is a fine length for a wolf, even in Lithuania; he was very strong; he looked at you askance, which was not his fault; he had a soft tongue, with which he occasionally licked Ursus; he had a narrow brush of short bristles on his backbone, and he was lean with the wholesome leanness of a forest life.