“What fools some people are!” I thought.

Minutes were passing away, the tumult increased, impatience was waxing into anger, when the great red scoundrel, with his immense sugar-loaf hat, advanced carelessly into the middle of the open space, and cried solemnly, with his fist upon his hips—­

“The onagra of the desert against any dog in the town!”

There was a silence of astonishment.  Daniel, the butcher, with staring eyes and gaping mouth, asks—­

“Where is the onagra?”

“There she stands!”

“That! why, it’s an ass!”

“It’s an onagra.”

“Well, let us see what it is,” cried the butcher, laughing.

He whistled his dog to come, and, pointing to the ass, cried—­

“Foux, catch him!”

But, strange to say, as soon as the ass saw the dog running to the attack, he turned nimbly round, and launched out with the whole length of his leg—­so well aimed a kick that the dog fell back as if struck by lightning, with his jaw fractured!

Loud laughter rang all round, while the poor dog fled with a piteous yell of pain.

The bear-leader smiled at the butcher, and asked—­

“Well, what’s your opinion?  Is my onagra an ass?”

“No,” said Daniel, rather ashamed, “it is an onagra.”

“All right! all right! any more dogs coming to fight my desert-born, desert-bred onagra?  Come on, the onagra is ready!”

But no one came forward; and the bear-leader shouted in vain in his shrill tones—­

“Gentlemen! ladies! are you all afraid? afraid of the onagra?  The dogs of your town ought to be ashamed of themselves.  Come on! courage, gentlemen! courage, ladies!”

But no one was inclined to risk his dog’s life or limbs against so dangerous an animal, and the cries for the bears were beginning again.

“The bears! the bears! bring out the bears!”

After waiting a quarter of an hour the fellow saw that his onagra was not likely to get any more customers, so, putting the beast up in the stable, he approached the pigsty, opened it, and drew out by his chain Baptiste, the Savoy bear, an old brute with a brown mangy-looking coat, as sulky and ashamed as a sweep coming down a chimney.  For all he was not handsome the shouts of applause rang out, and the fighting dogs themselves, shut into the tavern porch, smelling a wild beast, set up a tragic howl that made your hair stand on end.  The miserable bear was led quietly enough to a stake firmly driven in the ground, to which he was chained, all the time slowly surveying the excited crowd with a melancholy eye.

“Poor old traveller!” I cried to myself, “would anybody have told you ten years ago, when grave, terrible, and solitary you were traversing from side to side the high glaciers in Switzerland, in the gloomy glens of the Unterwald, and your deep growls made the old oaks tremble in every leaf—­who could have told you that the day would come when, sad and resigned, with an iron collar round your throat, you would be tied to a post and devoured by dogs to amuse a mob at Bergzabern?  Alas! Sic transit gloria mundi!”