Free The City Jungle by Felix Salten Page A

lay there. Everything grew a little hazy, and he fell asleep.
    Vasta had been there the first thing that morning to tell him the news.
    In the winter cage, she reported, there was a big box with something alive in it. They had just brought it in.
    Mibbel recollected that he had heard all kinds of noises behind the partition that divided the summer from the winter cage. But he felt no curiosity either then or upon hearing Vasta’s story. He no longer gave it a thought.
    But he bounded into the air when the trapdoor rattled behind him, and Brosso trotted leisurely in.
    An imposing and terrifying sight was Brosso.
    He had a huge flowing mane the dark brown locks of which were tinged with black. His head was held high, his proud and handsome face was distorted and horribly disfigured. In place of his right eye there was a big bloody gash, and the tears that constantly trickled down from it had wet the fine thick hairs on his face far down his cheek, so that they were black and clotted with blood and seemed to exaggerate his injury. The eye itself was closed. But at long intervals the lids would disclose a narrow slit, between which the amber-yellow pupils gleamed.
    Brosso walked slowly with the superior mien of the king of beasts. Yet the way in which he set down his feet was full of unutterably impotent sorrow. His gait lacked a lion’s springy grace, his joints seemed worn out, his muscles languid and all but flabby.
    Brosso wandered once around the cage, his head held high as when he came in. He made the same round a second time, his head lowered, his nose thrust forward, sniffing and investigating his new quarters. Then he stopped in the middle, lashing his flanks feebly with the tassel of his tail and muttering as if he were quite alone, “What next? What next?”
    Mibbel had sinuously avoided Brosso as he paraded the cage, but he never took his eyes off him. Overwhelmed and frightened, at first by Brosso’s august appearance, then by distrust and secret anxiety, he prepared to defend himself. But in the end he took a sudden liking to Brosso.
    Presently Mibbel advanced with the rolling gait of playfulness, and, lifting his paw, tapped Brosso in fun on the shoulder.
    â€œStop that,” growled Brosso in a tone of command, but without turning his head. Mibbel bounded timidly back.
    â€œStop it,” repeated Brosso more gently.
    Mibbel threw himself full length on the floor. “Where did you come from?” he purred.
    For a long time there was no answer. At last Brosso deigned to reply, but it sounded as if he were talking to himself. “I am sick. Very sick, indeed. Or is it rest that I need? Yes, yes, rest, rest, rest!” He peered intently into the zoological garden, turning his majestic head to the right and left, while the golden pupil of his right eye flashed as he stared around the cage. “How can it be? I must have been here before. Remarkable! Long ago, very long ago! But I must certainly have been here!”
    â€œI’ve lived here ever since I was born,” said Mibbel, “and I never set eyes on you before.”
    Brosso’s lips twitched scornfully. “Since you were born! Indeed! A young cub like you. . . .”
    Mibbel crept closer. “What’s the matter with your eye?”
    â€œI should have known it,” muttered Brosso. “After all that time I should have known. And I did know it, but . . .”
    â€œYou knew what?” asked Mibbel.
    â€œThat it was useless,” Brosso snorted. “But one always wants to, oh, how dreadfully one wants to. In the end I could think of nothing else. Waking or sleeping, it was always on my mind. At last one can hesitate no longer, one acts whether it means death or not. . . .”
    â€œI don’t understand,” Mibbel interrupted.
    â€œI leaped at him three times,” Brosso continued, “three times, and each time his whip caught me in the eye. Each time,