Inside the warm caravan, the philosopher Ursus carefully tends to the infants.
After feeding the newborn girl from a makeshift bottle and wrapping both children securely in his bear skin, he places a heavy book beneath her head for an pillow. Seeking answers about the baby’s origin, Ursus aggressively questions the young boy. The child reveals that he was abandoned by the sea, does not know his parents, and discovered the infant girl shivering on the chest of her dead mother in the snow an hour earlier. Leaving the children alone, Ursus takes his lantern and exits into the storm alongside his loyal wolf, Homo, to recover the mother's body. During his absence, the two innocent children sleep deeply and peacefully side by side.
At dawn, Ursus returns with Homo after successfully retrieving the corpse from the deep drifts. Reflecting on the tragedy, he officially resolves to adopt both children, designating himself as the father and Homo as the uncle. When daylight illuminates the caravan, Ursus is struck by the boy's face and fiercely demands to know why he is laughing. The boy insists he is not laughing and has always looked that way. Consulting a medical folio by Conquest, Ursus identifies the boy's perpetual, terrifying grin as the deliberate result of physical mutilation. Moments later, the infant girl awakens and turns toward the blinding red rays of the rising sun. Because her pupils and eyelids remain entirely frozen and motionless against the bright light, Ursus realizes with sorrow that the baby is completely blind.
The narrative shifts to the historical memory of Lord Linnaeus Clancharlie, a stubborn English peer from the era of Oliver Cromwell. While most aristocrats readily accepted the Restoration of 1660 and swore allegiance to King Charles II to reclaim their titles and wealth, Clancharlie remained stubbornly loyal to the dead republic. He chose voluntary exile in a desolate corner of Switzerland rather than participating in the prosperous, celebratory atmosphere of Restoration London. Public opinion viewed his rigid self-exile and refusal to honor the new monarchy with intense ridicule, dismissal, and anger, widely classifying his obstinate behavior as a form of ostentatious madness.
During the republic, Cromwell had expanded British maritime dominance, broken European thrones, and allowed free speech, but the nation ultimately embraced the Restoration as a return to sanity and proper social order. The prevailing political consensus dictated that ordinary citizens were too ignorant to govern themselves and were better suited as taxpayers and soldiers under the divine guidance of a monarch. This societal shift also marked a return to classical literary tastes, elevating Dryden while completely dismissing Shakespeare and Milton. Because Clancharlie bound himself to an outdated oath of fidelity to a republic without a king or lord, his friends ultimately abandoned him, unable to excuse his refusal to participate in the general happiness of his homeland.