acquired enough to stock a travelling wild beast show. Fortune seemed to smile upon him at last, and this venture was in a fair way to become a success, when his life was cut short in this sudden fashion.
My mother strove her utmost, for the sake of her little ones, to carry on the business; but what can a woman do alone at the head of a menagerie? how can she cope with coarse, rough grooms, and foul-tongued stable-men? She soon married again, a painter from Nantes, and for two years we lived very happily together, till he, too, died suddenly, and we were left a second time fatherless.
Thinking she was doing the best for us, she took a third husband, an Italian, named FaÏmali; hot-tempered and fretful, he was a real household tyrant. For some years I had the good fortune to escape from his ill-humours, being brought up by an uncle near Mayence, and educated by the monks; but, my education finished, I was obliged to return to my parents and travel about with the show, and then my miseries began. The ill-treatment I received at the hands of my step-father! the blows, the cuffs he bestowed on me! The chief cause of his displeasure was jealousy; having been early accustomed to go freely in and out among the animals I had lost all fear. I had served my apprenticeship amongst them, beginning with the wolf and ending with the lion, and passing through all the progressive stages—each less amiable than the preceding—of jackal, leopard, hyena and panther. I had learnt to look upon them all as friends, and where another would see a menace in quivering lips, curling over jaws bristling with white and shining teeth, I saw nothing but a smile of welcome.
Being then fearless, young, slight and active, I interested and attracted the public more than my step-father did, hence his ill-humour with me. When I appeared on the scene rounds of applause greeted me, to be repeated when I withdrew, the sounds following even into the
