There were fourteen of them, curled up in large cages standing against the walls.  The place was lit by a skylight and warmed by a stove.  The floor, like a stage, was fitted up with miniature acrobatic paraphernalia and properties.  There were little five-barred gates, and trapezes, and tight-ropes, and spring-boards, and a trestle-table, all the metal work gleaming like silver.  A heavy, uncouth German lad, whom the professor introduced as his pupil and assistant, Quast, was in attendance.  Mr. Papadopoulos polyglotically acknowledged the honour I had conferred upon him.  He is very like the late Emperor of the French; but his forehead is bulgier.

With a theatrical gesture and the remark that I should see, he opened some cages and released half a dozen cats—­a Persian, a white Angora, and four commonplace tabbies, who all sprang on to the table with military precision.  Madame Brand began to caress them.  I, wishing to show interest in the troupe, prepared to do the same; but the dwarf scurried up with a screech from the other end of the room.

"Ne touchez pas—­ne touchez pas!"

I refrained, somewhat wonderingly, from touching.  Madame Brandt explained.

“He thinks you would spoil the magnetic influence.  It is a superstition of his.”

“But you are touching.”

“He believes I have his magnetism—­whatever that may be,” she said, with a smile.  “Would you like to see an experiment?  Anastasius!”

“Carissima.”

“Is that the untamed Persian you were telling me of?” she asked, pointing to a cage from which a ferocious gigantic animal more like a woolly tiger than a tom-cat looked out with expressionless yellow eyes.  “Will you let Mr. de Gex try to make friends with it?”

“Your will is law, meine Konigin,” replied Professor Papadopoulos, bowing low.  “But Hephaestus is as fierce as the flames of hell.”

“See what he’ll do,” laughed Lola Brandt.

I approached the cage with an ingratiating, “Puss, puss!” and a hideous growl welcomed me.  I ventured my hand towards the bars.  The beast bristled in demoniac wrath, spat with malignant venom, and shot out its claws.  If I had touched it my hand would have been torn to shreds.  I have never seen a more malevolent, fierce, spiteful, ill-conditioned brute in my life.  My feelings being somewhat hurt, and my nerves a bit shaken, I retreated hastily.

“Now look,” said Lola Brandt.

With absolute fearlessness she went up to the cage, opened it, took the unresisting thing out by the scruff of its neck, held it up like a door-mat, and put it on her shoulder, where it forthwith began to purr like any harmless necessary cat and rub its head against her cheek.  She put it on the floor; it arched its back and circling sideways rubbed itself against her skirts.

She sat down, and taking the brute by its forepaws made it stand on its hind legs.  She pulled it on to her lap and it curled round lazily.  Then she hoisted it on to her shoulder again, and, rising, crossed the room and bowed to the level of the cage, when the beast leaped in purring thunderously in high good humour.  Mr. Papadopoulos sang out in breathless delight: