Acrobats and Mountebanks

It is difficult to see how man would have fared if he had not compelled the animals to serve him. The science of animal-training must therefore date back to the earliest stages of the world’s history; and we may believe that artistic training is almost as old. The dwellers in caves had not yet invented the game of fox and geese, and they must have found some difficulty in amusing themselves in the long winter evenings; they therefore probably taught their dumb companions the art of leaping and showing off.

Now that animal-training has become a lucrative profession, competition has forced the trainers to rival each other, and their skill has obtained wonderful results. All the inmates of Noah’s Ark have passed under the whip, from minute insects to Jumbo himself. Men have tamed serpents, birds, cats, dogs, goats, monkeys, seals, and pigs. In their desire to grasp and conquer increasing difficulties, they have even [p108] taken the fleas from the animals they were training, have bridled the fleas themselves, and taught them to draw a carriage. Do you remember Virgil’s lines upon a stallion for the first time subject to the yoke? The poet dwells with rapture upon the vigorous bounds which wrench the plough from the furrows. What would he have said of the spring of a flea, which, at liberty, jumps one hundred and forty times its own height?

If you wish to know all the mysteries of animal-training, an art based upon definite rules which vary very little in their application to the instincts of the different pupils, I recommend you to read a book which will surprise you. It was written by Professor G. J. Romanes, secretary of the London Zoological Linnean Society, and has been translated into French for the “International Scientific Library.” It is called the Intelligence of Animals. You need only glance at the first volume, which refers to the intelligence of molluscs, ants, termites, white ants, spiders, scorpions, and the lower articulated animals. But you should carefully study the chapters in the second volume devoted to birds, the cat, dog, baboons, and elephant. I fancy that if any of you are partisans of the Cartesian doctrine, and hitherto only regarded animals as clocks with better regulated machinery than our own, you will leave off reading considerably shaken in your assurance.

The saltimbanque, who is not a creator of systems à priori, but whose philosophy is purely experimental, has, for a long time, observed the regularity with which animals follow the same habits. Upon this observation he has based his method of training them. [p109]

Whatever the animal may be which he wishes to train, he commences by watching it closely, endeavouring to discover not only the usual habits of the race, but the personal disposition of the individual in question. One specimen raises itself naturally upon its hind legs, another is born with a talent for jumping. . . . And this axiom prevails in every case under training: “Animals are never forced to execute, at the command and will of others, any movements which are not natural to them in a free state.” Monkeys love to swing in the tropical creepers: they are placed on a trapèze; a goat seeks for pointed rocks—he is a natural equilibrist: so he is taught to balance himself on the neck of a bottle; a dog instinctively rises on his hind legs to seize a morsel of sugar held out to him. He must learn to maintain himself in the same position.

[p110]

Guided by these remarks, a trainer enters upon his task. He will attain his end if he judiciously uses the triple forces of fear, greediness, and habit.

The first time that you make a dog stand on its hind legs you have to contend with the indolence which makes the animal wish to revert to its usual position. Practise the [p111] lesson every day, and each time reward the pupil with a lump of sugar. An association of ideas will be soon formed in the dog’s mind: the disagreeable sensation of walking on its hind legs will be inseparably linked in its memory with the pleasure of crunching sugar. And since the frequent repetition of the same movement lessens the fatigue of maintaining a vertical position, the dog will at last willingly perform the feat which it at first disliked. On the other hand, it must be remembered that the whip is always ready to punish any obstinacy or awkwardness, and you will readily understand that a poodle, finding itself in the dilemma of either walking upon its hind legs and receiving a dainty, or of not walking and receiving a blow, at once chooses the polka.

And here, in its simplicity, lies the whole secret of training animals. Patience and regularity from the man, habit and greediness in the animal. There is no other talisman. You have all seen a pigeon-charmer on foot or on horseback; it is [p112] one of the prettiest performances exhibited. A young woman is carried round the arena at full gallop by her steed; she raises herself or crouches down in graceful attitudes which show off the suppleness of her figure. Behind her, like a mantle streaming in the wind, the white flight of pigeons follows her movements. They alight on the arms, neck, and shoulders of their mistress, who recalls one of the young priestesses in the groves of Gnide, offering her rosy lips and soft white throat to the caresses of her doves.

Now would you like to know the secret of her charm? It is explained in an amusing vaudeville of the old style—Le Sourd, ou l’Auberge pleine.

“Would you like,” one of the characters in this farce remarks to his companion, “Would you like me to tell you an infallible method of catching birds? Well then, listen! You must strew some corn on your window-sill—the little birds will come and eat it. Put it there a second time—the little birds will come again. On the eighth day you need not put any. The birds will come open mouthed . . . and they will be caught.”

This is the whole secret of the pigeon-charmer. For seven days she strewed corn in the folds of her mantle. The eighth day the pigeons were charmed.

This is an almost mechanical movement; the certainty of success arises from the strength of instinct and the weakness of intelligence.

With superior animals like the dog, the chances of failure are much more numerous; but the same individual intelligence which renders obedience more doubtful, authorizes the trainer to exact an effort that surpasses intelligence from [p113] those picked performers which he selects from amongst the pack. And Munito, who played dominoes with his master, seems to have as much chance of being remembered by posterity as Archimedes the Syracusian. One of his companions, an unlucky mongrel, born in a gutter, caused all Paris to throng to the Folies Bergères last year. Amongst his compeers he had created the rôle of the clown Auguste.

This clever dog-clown would reach the springing-board at a gallop, then stop short before the bar, pass under the chairs when the hoop was held out to him, feign a sound and sonorous sleep when he was told to perform. But all this was only shamming, intended to evoke laughter from the audience. Suddenly the Merry-Andrew would free himself from his collar, bound upon the board, and cleave the air [p114] with such a wonderful spring that the greyhounds refused to follow him, and it was necessary to catch him on a mattress to prevent him from breaking his paws. Some months later he broke his back in London in a still more dangerous performance. The best doctors were sent for, but nothing could be done; he died after a short struggle of sobs and howls. I met his master some months afterwards, and spoke to him about his loss. He still wept when he mentioned the poor clown, whom he had cherished with human friendship. I listened to all his regrets, and his words reawakened a sympathetic pang in my own heart.

My lost favourite—a black poodle—was called Miette. She was not clever, for she never even learnt to stand on her hind legs, but we loved each other. At that time I lived on the banks of the Marne, between Nogent and Joinville-le-Pont, a terribly deserted and solitary district in winter. If Miette found that I did not return home by the last train, she would break her chain and go and wait for me near Reuilly, in the moats of Vincennes. She wished to escort me through the woods, which, she felt, were by night full of possible attacks and hidden peril. One day she was bitten by a mad dog. I did not suspect the nature of the illness that followed, and endeavoured to open her mouth and give her some medicine. She looked at me with mad, supplicating eyes, seeming to say, “Leave me, my master, I do not want to bite you.” When I knew what was the matter, I would not leave the task of killing her to a veterinary surgeon, who might have done it awkwardly perhaps. I led her into a thicket in that forest of Vincennes which we had so frequently crossed together on fine, silent, [p115] frosty nights, lighted only by the brilliance of the stars. My heart ached with the agony of a man about to commit a crime, who has led his friend into the corner of a wood [p116] intending to perpetrate a cowardly murder. But it was necessary that she should die. I made her lie down, put my revolver to her ear, and fired.

Oh, my poor Miette! the long reproachful look you gave me ere your eyes closed for ever—your loving, childlike eyes! I dug a hole and gently laid you in the grave. I took off your collar—it still lies in the drawer of my writing-table, my hand often touches it when I turn over the confusion of papers. The little curb rings like halfpence in a purse. And then I fancy that my poor Miette is moving round me; that I hear her clumsy gallop on the wooden staircase; that in a moment she will be scratching at the door.

Is there a better world, a paradise for these faithful servants of mankind? I dare not assert that I believe so, and yet, in Dauphiné, I once knew a dog who certainly cherished the hope of it. He was a small curious-looking yellow mastiff, a dog of a divine race which the Emperor of China had given as a choice present to a French diplomat. He resembled a beast in heraldry, or one of those strange monsters that we see writhing and baying on painted vases and reliefs in bronze. Transported into France, the Chinese had crossed with every breed of dogs for ten leagues round, and had created a race of fantastic-looking animals which showed the curious type of the father blended with every variation of the canine form. Towards the end of his life, when I made his acquaintance, he had become a dreamer. He spent whole days with his head resting upon his paws, his eyes fixed, lost in his recollections. One autumn evening we went out upon a terrace to enjoy the brilliant night; we found him immovable upon a flagstone; his head was raised [p117] towards the sky, his eyes, shining like carbuncles, seemed to pierce the heavens, gazing upon a definite point beyond. His master was puzzled, and called him three times:

“Kiang! Kiang! Kiang!”

But he remained motionless, like a bronze chimera, soaring far above us in his ecstasy.

On the morrow he was found dead in his kennel.

I have often thought since that he had some presentiment of his approaching death, and that he heard the distant baying of Sirius’s hounds—of those dogs, sons of heaven, who hunt the Bear, and through all eternity assuage their divine thirst in the fountains of the Milky Way.

Although the grimaces of the monkey may be amusing, the dog’s capacity for affection has won a higher place in my esteem. I am wrong; for if a poodle be very near to us by its heart and its delicacy of feeling, a monkey is more closely akin to humanity through its gestures and form. Darwin has written very cleverly on this subject. A baby of four years old, whom I took to the Corvi Theatre the other day, [p118] and who had not read Darwin, cried out, when the dishonest cook appeared:

“Look! it’s a little negro!”

You all know the popular performance of The Roman Orgie by Couture. Behind a table well provided with biscuits and nuts, a company of baboons, ourang-outangs, and brown monks is seated. They are dressed like Peruvian generals, and each has a napkin tucked into his collar. A poor little monkey, tricked out in a town-crier’s old clothes, with a white cap and apron, waits upon his comrades, gambolling round the table. In his right hand he holds a lighted candle; in the left a basket, which he dances by its handle. Ah! yes, that head cook! he dances it by the handle morally and materially.6 You see, he is weighing his provisions on the sly, and seizing a mouthful whenever M. Corvi is not looking.

The same entertainment has gone on ever since our childhood, and since the infancy of your father and grandfather. And, as it would be difficult to believe that the head cook is a sexagenarian, we must conclude that a whole generation of actors have worn the apron and carried the candle without our remarking any change.

To satisfy myself on this point, I questioned M. Corvi himself on the subject.

“My show,” he kindly answered, “is really a permanent entertainment. As it entirely consists of scenes in which goats, monkeys, poodles, and ponies are the sole actors, I keep a reserve staff, behind the scenes, of understudies of [p119] every part. In the pantomime called The Deserter, you will no longer find one single artist belonging to the original caste. I have already replaced the judge, the gendarmes, the [p120] prisoner, and the gravediggers, just as consumption or gout made vacancies in my troupe. The actors pass, the play remains. No one here is absolutely necessary. If I lost my first leading gentleman to-morrow—he is a baboon named Coquelin aîné—the play would not be interrupted for one single day. We should replace him by his understudy—she is called Coquelin cadet—and neither the nurses nor the babies, who are our subscribers for Tuesdays, would ever discover the change of performer.”

M. Corvi is one of the last representatives of the old-fashioned trainers, who wore evening dress or a frock-coat, like M. Loyal, when they exhibited their pupils in the arena. Modern trainers prefer a clown’s dress, and their intentionally grotesque appearance is very effective when accompanied by ridiculous animals like the pig and the donkey.

The terrible Onos, compared by Homer to the divine Ajax, the ass himself, is now drawn by the ears into the arena by a clown. Perhaps you already know that the male ass is a dangerous animal. He may be chosen from a small race, but his bite will still be formidable, and therefore the halter, which only seems to decorate his head, is really a strong muzzle, and his hoofs are never shod. In spite of these precautions the clown must be very agile to evade the kicks showered full at his chest, and must be careful not to miss his spring over the bench when Master Aliboron charges at him across the arena like a bull rushing at a picador.

The appearance even of the pig has the power of delighting the crowd, and who can resist laughing when the clown approaches his pupil and shouts:

“Come here, pig!” [p121]

“Eh?” asks M. Loyal.

“I’m not talking to you.”

Although the training of the pig may still seem imperfect, the education of this animal requires extreme patience from its teacher. An Irish proverb quoted to me by Billy Hayden says: “Beat your wife with a cudgel and your pig with a straw.” And, truly, the pig’s bristling skin is so sensitive that the least touch of the whip covers it with blisters, and disgusts the animal with all work for ever. Only coaxing and kindness must be used.

The elephant is, perhaps, the only beast yet stricter than the pig in regard to politeness. [p122]

This animal, which the trainer Corradini at the Hippodrome, and the brothers Lockhart in most places have exhibited with so much success, possesses all the passions and all the feelings of man.

I quite agree with you that some of the stories quoted to us about elephants require confirmation, and I always feel some distrust in reading the anecdote, related by Plutarch (De Solert. Anim. cap. xii.), of an elephant which had been punished for dancing badly, and was afterwards discovered practising its steps alone in the moonlight.

But there is scientific evidence of the magnanimity of the elephant, of its deep sense of duty and self-respect.

Griffiths, whose good faith cannot be doubted, quotes one very characteristic incident proving this self-respect. At the siege of Bhurtpore, after the English had been encamped for some time before the walls of the city, the dry winds set in and soon evaporated all the water in the reserved ponds; this led to great competition round the last well which contained any. One day two drivers were at the edge of the well with their elephants; one of the beasts, which was of remarkable size, seeing its companion use a pail to draw up the water, forcibly wrenched it away. Whilst the two keepers were joking, the victim, though conscious of the injury, restrained its resentment. But when the thief bent over the edge of the well to reach the water, the smaller elephant made a terrible spring, and throwing itself with lowered head upon its enemy, sent it rolling into the cistern.

This pride, when once overcome, is of great assistance to the trainer, but it sometimes produces a tragedy. When elephants are tamed, the presence of the monitor elephants [p123] can usually be dispensed with at the end of two months, and the prisoner is afterwards ridden by its keeper. At the end of three or four months it is sufficiently docile to work, but there is some danger in subjecting it to this ordeal too abruptly, for it frequently happens that an adult and perfectly [p124] healthy elephant will lie down and die after it has worn harness for the first time. The natives then say that it died of a broken heart; in any case, the death is not caused by either illness or wounds. (Sir E. Tennent, loc. cit. p. 216.)

I have also found, amongst the Memoirs of the actor, Charles Young, published by his son, the Rev. Julius Young, an anecdote which well illustrates the sagacity and affectionate sensibility of these huge pachyderms.

The newspapers had announced the arrival in England of the largest elephant that had ever been seen. Henry Harris, the manager of Covent Garden Theatre, at once purchased Chung—that was the animal’s name—for exhibition in a pantomime entitled Harlequin, which he had mounted very expensively. Harris paid 900 guineas for the beast. Mrs. Henry Johnston was to ride it, and Miss Parker was to act as columbine. But at the general rehearsal, when Chung reached a bridge over a cascade which he was expected to cross, he refused to step upon it, distrusting its solidity, and not without reason. In vain the angry keeper punished him by pricking him behind the ear with an iron goad. With lowered eyes and pendent ears, the enormous animal stood in a pool of blood, motionless as a wall.

The captain of the vessel which had brought Chung over, came in during the contest between the man and the elephant. He had become fond of the beast, and often fed it with dainties. The animal had scarcely recognized its friend when it approached him with a supplicating air, gently took his hand in its trunk and placed it in the bleeding wound, then held the hand up to the captain’s eyes. The gesture [p126] said as clearly as words: “See how they have made me suffer!”

Poor Chung appeared so unhappy that every one was touched, even the cruel keeper. To win pardon the man ran out and bought some apples, which he offered to the elephant. But Chung disdainfully threw them away. The captain, who had also fetched some fruit from Covent Garden Market, came back immediately afterwards and held it out to Chung. He willingly accepted it, and after eating it, coiled his trunk gently round his protector’s waist.

Since no one has yet succeeded in exhibiting a learned whale, the elephant is the largest animal that has been taught obedience to man. Chung’s adventures would therefore seem a fitting close to this monograph on training.

Yet I wish to crown this chapter by an account of the training of an animal of very different size—the cat. And although this sequence may seem curious to you, it is chosen for at least two reasons; first, that the appearance of a trained domestic cat is the latest achievement of the trainer’s art; and secondly, that I am not sure whether the conquest of the cat is a triumph of training or of taming. There is, in fact, as much ground for regarding the cat as a wild beast, as for considering it a domestic animal.

Hitherto we have believed, on the authority of M. de Buffon, the systematic detractor of the cat, that it was an untamable animal. The great naturalist states that “it will not allow any one to influence its idle, thieving instincts.”

The cat has waited for nearly a century, but at last this slander can be refuted; its falsehood is clearly proved.

Nearly twenty years ago a child was born in a Dutch [p127] village, who, from an early age, showed unusual skill in taming and training animals.

When the youth was seventeen—his name is Bonnetty—he introduced learned rabbits, hares, and guinea pigs, into the arena, so wonderfully trained that even the Dutch, who are not, as a rule, easy to move, were much astonished. However Bonnetty was not going to stop yet. Tempted by the great difficulty of the feat, he determined to prove that M. de Buffon was unjust to the cat, and with rare patience he devoted himself to the education of that animal.

He chose two subjects, both Dutch, like himself, cats from Hooren—M. Bonnetty had remarked, after much [p128] observation, that the cats from that district are particularly docile—and he spent some months in training them; then one by one he added comrades to them, until he had twenty; the instinct of imitation assisted the later recruits to learn more rapidly.

The first exercise consisted in making the cat jump at the word of command.

“Vooruit!” cries M. Bonnetty, who speaks nothing but Dutch.

The cat does not vooruit all at once. It pauses undecided; very often it does not understand. But Bonnetty never loses patience. With a gentle hand, which resembles velvet in its touch, he softly caresses the cat’s spine, quite determined not to be angry, yet equally decided not to yield the point. At last the cat realizes what is required of it, and jumps.

This first step gained, the after-work of education proceeds more quickly. The animal gets used to walking on the backs of chairs and the necks of bottles, or to leaping over flaming circles. But there is one decisive trial to pass through—that of appearing before the public.

M. Bonnetty has had some cats, perfectly obedient in rehearsal, which could not be induced to perform to the sound of music before a crowd of spectators. They coiled themselves up in a corner of their little house, returning suddenly to a wild state.

“I cannot treat them as I would dogs,” M. Bonnetty observed to me, “by interpreting my wishes through a whip. All violence is useless with them; I can only count upon what it pleases them to do; and my cats and I always treat each other with the utmost courtesy.” [p129]

And in a moment of effusion his eyes suddenly filled with tears, and the cat-tamer related to me the story of an incomparable cat that he had lost in Brussels last May.

“Ah! monsieur, he was a cat that I can never replace. He would leap over fourteen chairs with one bound, at more than a yard and a half high.

“But you know what artists are: great children, all of them. On the very evening that we reached Brussels, I went to see my animals an hour before the performance. I found that Thommech had made his escape. The poor fellow was high on the tiles rushing after a Brussels cat that had turned his head. He tried to leap from one roof to another on the opposite side of the [p130] street. He fell, and when I picked him up from the pavement he was dying.

“Since then, monsieur,” continued M. Bonnetty, after a moment’s sorrowful silence, “I have made one great resolution: I have now only sultanas in my troupe, and the keepers of the harem.”

Like Bidel, who introduced a sheep into the cage with his lions, M. Bonnetty has forced his cats to live in harmony with mice and birds.

A flock of Dutch canaries is perched upon a cord stretched across the circus; near them some white mice and dappled grey rats are quietly resting. The tamer then opens the door of the cats’ palace, and in Indian file all the band of artists, Thiber, Jano, Moor, Edward, Paris, Brussel, Boulanger, Djeh, Brutus, and César, march slowly out [p131] striding over the rodents and birds, some of which fly off and fearlessly return, alighting on the heads of the cats.

The first interviews between a new rat and a new cat are really amusing. M. Bonnetty delicately holds each of his pupils by the skin of the neck, and forces them to look at each other, at first holding them at a respectful distance, but afterwards gradually drawing them nearer together, until at last they can touch each other’s nose.

“This proves,” M. Bonnetty said to me, “that the worst enemies are always interested in knowing each other.”

I remember that we parted after this philosophic reflection.

I went home and found my own cat lying before the smouldering fire. He was asleep, crouched in his usual sphinx-like attitude. I approached him gently and said:

“My friend, hitherto I have misunderstood you. I beg your pardon.

“The friendship of so many great men who, from Théophile Gautier to Sylvestre Bonnard, have venerated you as a god, might have warned me that I was wrong to distrust you.

“Forgive me. Bonnetty has proved to me that you are neither indocile nor cruel; henceforth I will live with you in greater intimacy, on terms of confidential affection.”

And whilst pussy purred loudly in the warmth of the dying embers, I bent over him and softly murmured, like a religious invocation, the beautiful sonnet written by Jules Lemaître, the gentle friend of cats and of myself: [p132]

The tamer’s performance is certainly one of those exhibitions which give the most valuable evidence of the superiority of man over animals.

Some morose spirits have put forth the lion’s claims to royalty in rivalry to the supremacy of Adam. In the [p134] menagerie the two candidates meet each other. The lion has formidable jaws and claws; the man has only a pair of boots and a whip. Yet it is the lion that obeys! The great feline’s spring through a paper hoop settles the disputed question in favour of humanity. One leaves the theatre with uplifted head and heart swollen with pride.

And besides this philosophic satisfaction, a visit to a menagerie is one of the most delightful amusements you can choose. You enter a dark booth, impregnated with a strong odour of carrion. At first the eyes can scarcely distinguish the strange sphinx-like forms extended behind the iron bars of the cages, crouching in dreamy, sleepy attitudes. Suddenly the gas-burner is lighted. Two keepers enter, covered with blood like the headsman’s assistants; they bear a handbarrow laden with great quarters of horseflesh; a third person accompanies them carrying a hook.

“The animals are now to be fed,” he cries in a showman’s voice. “The supper consists of more than 600 lbs. of meat. Those persons who wish to see the food distributed are begged to stand a little to the right.”

You follow the hook, the barrow, and the people.

Apparently some whisper of rebellion has passed through the menagerie, but just now resting and sleepy. A howl is raised, which echoes every note of the desert. The keepers add to the animals’ excitement by holding out the empty hook; the lions savagely throw themselves upon it, not seeing that they are deceived. With the gestures of a cat, they glide their paws between the bars to seize their prey, and crush their muzzles and their manes against them. As they pant with rage, their breath rises in clouds of smoke, [p135] scattering the sawdust of their litter. They roar and dribble with hunger. At last the meat is within their reach, and they drag the huge pieces towards their jaws, too large to pass through the bars at first, there is a moment’s struggle, and then the great lumps are triumphantly drawn in. When the booty is held, before rending it, the beasts lie down upon it, with little spasmodic rattles—the expression of satisfaction after rage. [p136]

By the side of the lions the wolf is dancing, uttering lamentable howls. The tigers prowl to and fro in their agitation like phantoms with lapiz gleams in their eyes. The bear waits for his piece of bread in silence. And as the growls of enjoyment slowly, gradually subside, the menagerie resumes its usual quiet aspect, and the beasts lie drowsily on their sawdust beds, lazily licking their jaws with sighs of repletion.

This is the time selected by the tamers to enter the dens.

The women go in with bare arms and necks; the men hesitate between a gentleman’s evening-dress and the red uniform of the Horse Guards.

As the emotions of the audience must be gradually and skilfully roused, the performance usually opens by the exercises with the white bear. An attendant with a hook slips back the protecting partition. The tamer receives the creature, whip in hand.

“Come in, Pierrot.” (Every white bear has been called Pierrot ever since the North Pole was invented.) “Come, you lazy fellow, jump! Show yourself off! That’s right! Once more! A bar for Pierrot! Well! I am waiting for you! Higher, Pierrot, higher!” (The strange creature sways its serpent-like neck and gives a sudden spring.) “Very well done! Now, Pierrot, we are going to see if you are a coward. Ready! Fire!” (The tamer fires a pistol. The bear moves its head uneasily.) “That will do, my friend; you can go. Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one thing which Pierrot cannot endure, that is the smell of powder.” [p137]

Now it is the turn of Sarah the hyena, which comes in with its hobbling step and the suspicious glances of the birds of darkness. It smells the master’s boots, and takes a piece of sugar in its teeth. It soon retires into a corner, whilst Mignonne the panther appears. Mignonne performs with all the grace of a ballet-dancer. She passes from right to left, over the back of the tamer; allows him to raise her from the ground by the ears, and kisses her master’s throat near the nape of the neck.

But this is all child’s play, trifles to commence with; the appearance of the lion is the event of the evening that we are all waiting for.

He enters with all the dignity of the leading performer, almost openly impatient to show himself. His mate follows him. The couple must have been worth seeing in their African solitude in their wild courtship.

Now it is accepted slavery. Rebellion and hope are both over. The lion looks at his master; he seems to say—“What do you want me to do? Show my claws? Here they are then. Feign to be dead? Would to God I were really so! You lie down upon me as though I were a bed; you invite Aïda to come and share your rest. Sleep side by side. When I was free I tore a black-maned lion to pieces for prowling round our den. And now do as you like, whether in darkness or in light. Fire your pistol, your barrel of sparks. I do not dread fire now any more than I feared a battle before my loins were broken in the snare in which I was caught for you.”

Since it is absolutely necessary to raise some laughter and vary this tragic monologue, the lion-tamer calls his usual [p138] buffoon, a poor little Savoyard bear, the delight of nurses and children.

The proximity of the lion is unendurable to the bear. It is willing to dance, to say yes or no, to carry arms, but it shrinks from an interview with the desert king, who has a fancy for receiving it with a loud roar. But we have plenty of time to observe its caution and to ascertain its tastes.

The tamer, already impatient at its delay, calls and scolds it.

“Come in, then, your highness; come in, my little friend. You are always the first after all the others. Look a little more lively then, a little more amiable. You are in society. We have been looking forward to your visit. Here is your comrade Sultan, who wishes for nothing better than to play with you a little.” (Here the tamer takes the bear by the ear and drags it towards the lion, who paws the ground with threatening claws.) “Eh, but what is the matter then? Your highness beginning to tremble? Don’t be frightened, my good fellow. See how well behaved Sultan is; he is always smiling.”

I sincerely pity those persons who are not amused by this comical bear. I, who thoroughly appreciate the delicacy of its performance, can assert that I have never passed a menagerie without entering the office. This is why I am now on such good terms with all the lion-tamers—Bidel, Pezon, Nouma-Hava, and Co. It is already two or three years since I made the acquaintance of Pezon. It was at the wedding of one of his daughters with a young man whose name I cannot recollect, but who had already received his [p139] baptism of blood in the cages. The marriage-dinner was held at Saint Mandé, in the Salon des Familles. All the tamers in the kingdom, male and female, had been invited to this festival. They had not felt it a duty—and I secretly regretted the fact—to wear either their trunk-hose or their riding-boots, but were all in evening dress and lavender kid gloves. We sat down, thirty to dinner, including myself. On my right was a very dark man with a moustache like that of Victor Emmanuel; he has since been eaten in a fair in the south of France. I can affirm that this lion-tamer, as well as his comrades, had an excellent appetite, and I should not have cared to find myself between his teeth. [p140]

Neither leg of bear nor chaud-froid of lion was served at the wedding feast, but the wine flowed abundantly, and, at dessert, all tongues were liberated.

I had, therefore, an excellent opportunity of proving that these powerful men are in domestic life the most amiable of mankind. I never received so many fraternal embraces in my life as at this wedding, where the guests followed the example of Homer’s heroes and heroines, whose last representatives they certainly are.

Judge for yourself:

Besides a bag of gold crowns that glittered brilliantly in the sunshine, the youthful bride entered the new menagerie—I beg pardon, the new home—with a dowry of four lions. A friend of the family had offered her a small panther from Java as a wedding present.

Her godfather had given her two rattlesnakes, and the bridegroom’s brother had added to these gifts an adult rabbit without any hair, a curiosity never met with before.

. . . You, who seek for some means of securing eternal youth in your limbs, should devote a little time to lion-taming, the foam of their rage must be the real fountain of eternal youth.

Look at Jean-Baptiste Pezon: he is more than sixty-three years old, and yet one would say that roots, knotty oak roots, started from his boots and fastened him to the ground, enabling him to stand so firmly on his sturdy hips. And not one single grey hair is to be found in the curious black tresses which fall to his shoulders, worn in the same fashion as that of his contemporary Cladel, whom Jean-Baptiste somewhat resembles. Yet the mask of the lion-tamer is cast in quite [p141] a different mould from that of the literary man. At most Cladel has the appearance of a shepherd; whilst Pezon looks like a wolf-driver.

In fact Jean-Baptiste commenced his life of adventure in that capacity. Born in Lozère, he worked in the mines during his childhood, and was there initiated in rude muscular labour at a very early age: but he cherished the dream of [p142] leading a wandering life. He longed for unlimited space before his sturdy legs, the heavens for roof over his head. He therefore quitted his subterranean employment and became a plough-boy. For some years he was celebrated through all the country side as a tamer of savage animals; dangerous cows, horses, and bulls were submissive in his hands, and he forced the beasts to obey him as much by his audacity as by his strength. He was also a hunter. One day he snared a living wolf, and it suddenly occurred to him to leave his servile employment and travel through the world with this strange companion. The wolf learnt to “carry arms,” to walk on its hind legs, and to carry a wooden bowl round to the audience. When enough money had been acquired by these collections, Jean-Baptiste obtained another wolf, then a bear, and a bull, which he harnessed to his cart; and with this equipage he made—to quote his own words—“the tour of France and the great powers.”

A little later the tamer bought his first lion at Bordeaux. It was an animal with a superb mane, but his hind quarters had been injured by the trap that caught him. At three o’clock in the morning Jean-Baptiste appeared on board the vessel belonging to the captain from whom he had bought the lion, to take possession of his new acquisition.

“But how will you take it away?” asked the sailor, slipping his two hundred louis into his pocket. “You have not brought a cage?”

“I have a collar and a chain,” replied Pezon.

He shackled the beast like a small Savoyard bear, and led him home with a leash. [p143]

Now Pezon owns at least thirty lions—as many adults as cubs. He has built a good house at Montreuil, and is thinking of giving his farewell performance.

The success of M. Bidel, Pezon’s comrade and rival, was even more rapidly attained. At fifty years old he had reached the summit of wealth and honour. His visiting card, now lying before me, recapitulates the series of lucky events which have placed the tamer in this unique position much better than I could do:

And in the left corner of the card, where you would put your address, the single word Propriétaire (house-owner).

Do not smile at this; Bidel has the right to be proud of his villa at Asnières. To him, after so many years spent in [p144] moving round the world, the word propriétaire signifies the anchor dropped, the harbour won. It is a genuine certificate of bourgeoisie.

Bidel is not only one of the richest bourgeois of Asnières; he might be called the lord of the manor. Behind his gilded iron gate, ornamented with lions’ heads, with the porter’s lodge to the left, the stables to the right, and a fine expanse of turf, the red and white villa looks like a small castle. The dining-room is decorated with panels, on which Rosa Bonheur has painted some lions; but this is the only detail which could [p145] lead any one to suppose—unless previously warned—that he was visiting the house of a tamer of wild beasts.