If he had seen her lying thus imprisoned in a cage, the Provencal would have admired the creature’s grace, and the strong contrasts of vivid color which gave to her robe an imperial splendor; but as it was, his sight was jaundiced by sinister forebodings.  The presence of the panther, though she was still asleep, had the same effect upon his mind as the magnetic eyes of a snake produce, we are told, upon the nightingale.  The soldier’s courage oozed away in presence of this silent peril, though he was a man who gathered nerve before the mouths of cannon belching grape-shot.  And yet, ere long, a bold thought entered his mind, and checked the cold sweat which was rolling from his brow.  Roused to action, as some men are when, driven face to face with death, they defy it and offer themselves to their doom, he saw a tragedy before him, and he resolved to play his part with honor to the last.

“Yesterday,” he said, “the Arabs might have killed me.”

Regarding himself as dead, he waited bravely, but with anxious curiosity, for the waking of his enemy.  When the sun rose, the panther suddenly opened her eyes; then she stretched her paws violently, as if to unlimber them from the cramp of their position.  Presently she yawned and showed the frightful armament of her teeth, and her cloven tongue, rough as a grater.

“She is like a dainty woman,” thought the Frenchman, watching her as she rolled and turned on her side with an easy and coquettish movement.  She licked the blood from her paws, and rubbed her head with a reiterated movement full of grace.

“Well done! dress yourself prettily, my little woman,” said the Frenchman, who recovered his gayety as soon as he had recovered his courage.  “We are going to bid each other good-morning;” and he felt for the short poniard which he had taken from the Maugrabins.

At this instant the panther turned her head towards the Frenchman and looked at him fixedly, without moving.  The rigidity of her metallic eyes and their insupportable clearness made the Provencal shudder.  The beast moved towards him; he looked at her caressingly, with a soothing glance by which he hoped to magnetize her.  He let her come quite close to him before he stirred; then with a touch as gentle and loving as he might have used to a pretty woman, he slid his hand along her spine from the head to the flanks, scratching with his nails the flexible vertebrae which divide the yellow back of a panther.  The creature drew up her tail voluptuously, her eyes softened, and when for the third time the Frenchman bestowed this self-interested caress, she gave vent to a purr like that with which a cat expresses pleasure:  but it issued from a throat so deep and powerful that the sound echoed through the grotto like the last chords of an organ rolling along the roof of a church.  The Provencal, perceiving the value of his caresses, redoubled them until they had completely soothed and lulled the imperious courtesan.