“Hope springs eternal in a hungry heart.”
[165] ]It is only needful to add that this adventure was told me by one of the three. I have not been able to get leave to give the names; but that does not matter, for the leopard did not know the names himself. It was enough for him, and must be enough for us, to know that they were strong and healthy men, and their orderlies the same; and to the leopard the iron-shod horses may have appeared to be equally formidable. Yet, with just cause of offence and an empty stomach to stimulate him, he faced them all, and departed only because he saw it was useless to wait for them to pass. They would not go in front of him. Was ever leopard so honoured before? These men would not have deferred so much to a British lord, much less to an Italian pope or common emperor.
If leopards dealt in art, that would be a scene for a picture; and fain would I have sent the men’s photos to an R.A. of my acquaintance; but to ask them for that purpose would have been as hopeless as to ask leave to give their names. So any inspired artist who pictures this scene must paint the officers’ faces from his fancy. All that I am permitted to certify is the truth of the adventure.
Bravo, Mr Spots!!!
XXIV [166]
A DUMB APPEAL PUT INTO WORDS
The Griffin at Temple Bar, a lump of metal like a medieval nightmare, is one of multitudinous monstrosities such as Burns described:
“Forms like some Bedlam Statuary’s dream,
The crazed creation of misguided whim;
Forms might be worshipped on the bended knee,
And still the second dread command be free;