Then the stage was cleared of the gentle cats and the wire cage containing Hephaestus was pushed forward by Quast.  He showed off the ferocious beast’s quality by making it dash itself against the wires, arch its huge back, and shoot out venomous claws.  Lola commanded him by sign to open the cage.  He approached in simulated terror, Hephaestus uttering blood-curdling howls, and every time he touched the handle of the door Hephaestus sprang at him like a tiger with the tomcat’s hateful hiss.  At last, amid the laughter of the audience (for this was prearranged business), Quast suddenly refused to obey his mistress any more, and went and sat on the floor in the corner of the stage.  Then Lola, with a glance of contempt at him for his poltroonery and a glance of confidence at the audience, opened the cage door and dragged the gigantic and malevolent brute out by the scruff of its neck and held it up like a rabbit, as she had done in Anastasius’s cattery.

Suddenly her iron grip seemed to relax; she made one or two ineffectual efforts to retain it and the brute dropped to the ground.  She looked at it for a second disconcerted as if she had lost her nerve, and then, in a horrible flash, the beast sprang at her face.  She uttered piercing screams.  The blood spurted from the ghastly claws.  Quick as lightning Quast leapt forward and dragged it off.  Lola clapped both hands to her eyes, and reeled and tottered to the wings, where I saw a man’s two arms receive her.  The last thing I saw was Quast kneeling on the beast on the floor mastering him by some professional clutch.  Then there rang out a sharp whistle and the curtain went down with a run.

I rose, sick with horror, barely conscious of the gasping excitement that prevailed around me, and blindly groped my path through the crowded rows of folk towards the door.  I had only proceeded half-way when a sudden silence made me turn, and I saw a man addressing the audience from the stage.  Apparently it was the manager.  He regretted to have to inform the audience that Madame Papadopoulos would not be able to conclude her most interesting performance that evening as she had unfortunately received injuries of a very grave nature.  Then he signalled to the orchestra, who crashed into a loud and vulgar march with clanging brass and thundering drum.  It sounded so cynically and hideously inhuman that I trampled recklessly over people in my mad rush to the exit.

I found the stage-door, where a knot of the performers were assembled, talking of the horrible accident.  I pushed my way shiveringly through them, and tried to rush into the building, but was checked by a burly porter.  I explained incoherently in my rusty German.  I came for news of Madame Papadopoulos.  I was her Verlobter I declared, with a gush of inspiration.  Whether he believed that I was her affianced I know not, but he bade me wait, and disappeared with my card.  I became at once the object of the curiosity of the loungers.  I heard them whispering together as they pointed me out and pitying me.  The cat had torn her face away said one woman.  I put my hands over my ears so as not to hear.  Presently the porter returned with a stout person in authority, who drew me into the stage-doorkeeper’s box.