Among other attractions are circuses and menageries where hourly exhibitions of animals in training draw steady audiences. There is little attempt to decorate the interior of these menageries—a few kitchen chairs fronting a row of cages and standing room back of these furnish the necessary accommodation for the audience. As a rule, the animals in these small shows are well cared for and kept in unusually good condition.
The name Pezon in France is traditionally suggestive of the best animal show. Through three generations the Pezons have been animal trainers and maintained menageries throughout France. There is not one of this intrepid family who has not at some time been dragged bleeding from beneath some infuriated beast. One of the sons who still risks his life daily is minus an arm, having been mangled by a lion a few years ago.
AN OPEN AIR CHILDREN’S SHOW
I saw one veteran trainer in the Pezon show turn pale as he realized that an ugly lion he had forced into a corner had become unmanageable and blind with rage. Keepers ran to his help, and most of the audience rose in a panic and started to rush through the exit. The cage rocked as the lion sprang from side to side and the ground seemed to tremble beneath his snarling roar, but the man within the bars held his ground. He was a short, thick-set fellow with blond hair. Step by step he forced the lion back into its corner, and as firmly and slowly he conquered him until the crouching beast who could have killed him with a blow sprang panic-stricken out of his way. Then the little man turned to the audience, bowed with the air of a dancing-master and sprang through the safety door. Cheers of “Bravo!” rose from the audience who had remained as if hypnotized; but the man who had been so near death did not seem to notice them, for he shrugged his shoulders and smiled as if the episode were of little importance. Lighting a cigarette, he disappeared through a door in the rear.
A BALLOON ASCENSION
I once knew an old French trainer and owner of a menagerie, Champeaux by name, who came to grief in a different way. He was a jovial old fellow and when he was not training lions, hyenas, panthers, or bears, spent most of his time over the flowing bowl in some nearby café, telling stories and spreading the sunshine of geniality among his old cronies. He had been in the cages so much of his life and had such a host of friends, in fact he was such a popular old fellow and so jolly and genial withal, that I believe he grew to think that the animals he trained loved him too.
At one time having installed his animal show in the fête foraine at the Place du Trone, he attended the wedding festivities of a friend. It happened to be a bourgeois wedding, and the bride and groom and their guests made merry with champagne and congratulations in one of those Parisian restaurants where the second floor above the café is rented to wedding parties and banquets. The festivities kept up until the hour grew late. Champeaux was the most hilariously happy of the guests. He embraced the bride and groom and toasted the happy pair in numerous bumpers, and at last proudly zigzagged his way back to the menagerie. “All his lions should hear what a good time he had had,” he said to himself. As he reeled along, he imagined that he was twenty-one and a bridegroom; then somehow he dreamed that most of his lions had grown wings and had pink fur on their paws and that all his cages had turned to solid gold.
