“There are those who have said hard things of me even in the old days,” said La Goulue, “but they lied. I am a good girl with a good heart (je suis une bonne fille),” she cried, looking me straight in the eye. “It was the life that was bad, not I, monsieur.”
There is great risk to life and limb in training and showing these animals; the lion Bob a while ago closed his jaws upon “M. La Goulue,” crunching half through the shoulder. Yet it is the injury to others that the Goulues fear the most.
One of the panthers tore the arm from a child during a performance in Rouen. It was an expensive accident for La Goulue.
At the time I saw this small menagerie wintering in a corner of the earth, La Goulue was waiting for an engagement in a coming fête foraine. As yet the letter had not arrived, and I believe the bear knew it.
“M. La Goulue” did not smile, and spoke but rarely. You felt his absolute domination and fearlessness. He took the hyena by the throat, then stroked its ears kindly. When he rolled Alice, the lioness, over on her back, he did so with gentleness and firmness; when she rebelled and struck at him viciously, he cuffed her ears and stood talking to her as to a disobedient child.
Photo by F. Berkeley Smith
LA GOULUE’S ANIMAL SHOW WINTERING
I felt that this man with the steel-gray eyes regarded the world in general in the same manner—with ease and a cool head.
The Avenue de Neuilly in June is suddenly transformed into a glittering bedlam. Shows line both sides of the broad avenue for nearly a mile.