Free The City Jungle by Felix Salten Page B

three times, one after the other. . . .”
    â€œI don’t understand you at all,” Mibbel repeated.
    â€œDidn’t they drive you through a long tunnel?” asked Brosso.
    â€œWhat for?”
    â€œInto an enormously big barred room?”
    Mibbel looked his astonishment.
    â€œSometimes hundreds of those two-legged beasts are sitting outside in a circle. At other times it is all empty. . . .”
    â€œGo on!” urged Mibbel.
    â€œYou’ve never been through it?” asked Brosso.
    Mibbel shook his head. “I don’t understand you.”
    With a discreet stroke of his paw Brosso rubbed his injured eye and cheek. “It hardly bothers me,” he said, “but I have difficulty in seeing. Not that it makes any difference! That two-legged beast! If I had caught him . . . But the whip cut so terribly! It was impos­sible. But if I had caught him!” He lowered his head and roared. It was so thunderous, so wrathful, and Brosso roared so long, that presently the other lions, tigers and panthers began too.
    Mibbel sprang to his feet, and standing beside Brosso, with his head lowered, roared too with might and main.
    But there was no rage in his roar, nor in the roaring of the others—merely grumbling and noise. In Brosso’s roar alone was that vengeful white-hot anger, the result of his bitter experience. His roars resounded with primal power above those of all the rest.
    Suddenly Mibbel stopped roaring, and pushing ­Brosso’s side gently with his forehead, whispered, “You’re out of your mind!”
    Mibbel noticed with pity that Brosso swayed at the slight push. He observed also that his new companion had lost a lower fang.
    Gradually Brosso quieted down. He had to stretch out on the floor.
    â€œHave you never had to hop up on a narrow little thing,” he asked after a pause, “where there’s no room to sit, much less to stand?”
    â€œNever!” Mibbel declared solemnly.
    â€œAnd yet you have to sit and stand. Then the hoops! Sometimes they’re burning, sometimes they’re covered with paper. But in any case you have to jump through. Through the hoop—it cuts of course. Or through the fire. That singes your hair and makes it smell.”
    A shudder passed over his back and flanks. He was trembling with indignation.
    â€œI can’t imagine why the two-legged beasts are so crazy about such things, or why they torment us so. They have their dogs to do such tricks! That tribe even enjoys doing them. I can’t understand that either!”
    Mibbel sat quite perplexed. “I have never heard of such things before,” he said shyly.
    Brosso stared at him. “No? That’s good news to me. Perhaps I’ll find some rest here at last. And it certainly does you no harm to hear them. Who knows but they may be coming for you tomorrow?”
    He pricked up his ears and his tail began to beat the floor. “They’re coming now,” he growled.
    With a supple cowering spring, Mibbel fled to the farthest corner and lay down, pressing himself in mortal fear against the wall.
    The curator, an assistant and a keeper appeared. Not to fetch Mibbel, however. They needed him for breeding purposes and had no thought of selling him to a circus. They merely wanted to examine the old lion.
    â€œHello, old fellow,” called the curator, “do you still know me, eh?”
    But Brosso did not recognize him. He had traveled about the world for twelve years with the circus. He had a hazy recollection of the zoological garden, but of nothing else. Those twelve years had changed a feeling of indifference and strangeness toward humankind into a feeling of bitter hatred.
    He lashed his tail wildly, snarling furiously at the three men as he trotted back and forth, pushing with his head against the bars.
    The curator watched him for a while.
    â€œShall we call a doctor?” asked the assistant. “His eye