"As I told you, there are reasons why I can't exploit it," answered the Proprietor. "I am counting upon it for my opening sensation at the Paris Hippodrome next winter, and I don't intend to discount it before a Coney Island audience. But to get back to my experience with her on the steamer. I found that she occupied the most expensive deck stateroom, and had a maid and a man servant traveling with her; so that I refused all of her renewed offers for the bear when I found the powerful fascination it had for her, and I finally consented to let her try the experiment of working with a group of animals. You know the class from which trainers are usually recruited, and you can imagine the interest I take in a woman who possesses an absolute fearlessness which is inherited from generations of ancestors who have never shown the white feather, in addition to education and intelligence. The only thing which puzzled me was her motive, and that I have not discovered yet, although the ambassador, who had received all sorts of communications about her from his own government, told me her history. It seems that she has always been noted for her eccentricity and her rebellion against the strict laws of convention which were supposed to control her life, and this is not the first time she has defied them. She had commissioned the artist—who, by the way, is one of the most celebrated men in Paris—to paint a portrait of her. At the same time he was painting an exhibition picture to be called the 'Dancing Bear,' and had purchased Mephisto for a model. The picture was to represent the bear dancing on its hind legs opposite a woman, to the music of a flageolet played by a man bear leader—such an exhibition as is commonly given at the country fairs throughout Europe. He had no difficulty in getting a male model, but he was in despair about the woman dancer. He tried model after model, and although they started in all right each one became so nervous after a sitting or two that they refused to continue. The bear was chained to the wall and they were posed safely out of reach, but each of them asserted that the animal was like a serpent and trying to charm them so that they would come close enough to be caught. They were all afraid that they might yield to the fascination and be seriously injured. Tramp, the cat, would probably have told the same story if he had been able to talk.
"As a matter of curiosity the artist experimented with men, but the bear appeared indifferent to them and the men made no complaint. It only seemed to exercise this strange hypnotic power over women—and cats—for the artist found two Persian felines, which had been studio pets, dead beside it; simply crushed, as were those which were killed by the bear at the Hippodrome. He mentioned the matter during one of the sittings for the portrait, and the lady, being curious to see the animal, came to his studio—and then the trouble commenced. She developed a most unaccountable attachment for Mephisto, and he was as gentle as a lamb with her. They would sit facing each other by the hour, and the artist swore they talked to each other and understood each other perfectly. The animal never attempted to harm her, but the artist became alarmed for fear there should be an accident, and believing that there was something uncanny about the brute, he decided to get rid of it and sold it to me.
"Well, I watched her with the bear on shipboard and since we landed, and I can't yet understand her control over it, for it does not control her in any way. There seems to be a sympathy between them which makes them absolutely understand each other, and through it she understands the other caged beasts. The act which I had framed for her when I found that she was absolutely in earnest was a dance to be given in the midst of a group of adult lions. The lady is absolutely fearless and approved the plan, but stipulated that she should select the lions.
"'I have means of knowing which ones will behave and which are such idiots that they can't be controlled if anything goes wrong,' she answered when I suggested that I was a better judge of the dispositions of the lions. 'I don't intend to have my beauty spoiled,' she said, 'and I only want beasts which are intelligent. No one can trust a fool.' Perhaps I have fallen under her influence, which according to her standard should indicate intelligence, for I have given way at every point and her judgment has proved correct, for in rehearsing the act she has perfect control over the animals, three of which I considered the most vicious in the menagerie. I let her take them in fear and trembling.
"For the past three days she has been anxious and uneasy about the bear and has insisted that it was rapidly going blind. She says that the bear is her teacher about things in the animal world, and that she can tell what it is thinking about. Its eyes look perfectly sound, and it is only for two days that we have noticed anything wrong with it. Mephisto knew its way about its old cage so well that it gave no evidence of blindness, and a bear is naturally clumsy in its movements, but when we moved it to a strange den it stumbled over everything. I experimented by bringing Tramp in front of its cage, but with the loss of sight the hypnotic power has apparently deserted it, and the cat paid no attention to it. Finally I called in the doctor and you heard him pronounce his verdict."
"But where is the great loss?" asked the Stranger.
"It is principally a loss in prospective profits," replied the Proprietor as he beckoned to the waiter. "I had the new act all planned out for Paris—the lady was to appear masked for her performance, but I knew her identity would be discovered and that it would be a tremendous sensation. I don't know how much of her desire to train animals is due to eccentricity and as a protest against the conventions which hedged in her former life, and how much to her strange infatuation for Mephisto, but since its blindness has developed she has lost interest and I suppose she will renege on the whole business."
"How do you account for it all—her infatuation for the bear and her intuitive knowledge of the dispositions of the lions?" asked the Stranger.
"I don't try to account for anything. It is one of the thousand things about animals and the million things about women which no mere man can understand," replied the Proprietor laughing. "I have simply given you the facts of the situation and you can draw your own conclusions, but the bear's blindness upsets my plans and possibly prevents a sensation in circles which approach royalty."
"Women are difficult to understand," agreed the Press Agent as the Proprietor paused to moisten his throat, "and a man who is in love with one of 'em is just about as unaccountable for his actions. I had that fact engraved upon the tablets of my memory when a guy named Merritt and myself were running a dime museum in Pittsburg. Merritt was a good, hard-headed business man as a rule and he made a first-class lecturer; but when I found that he was taking to 'dropping into poetry' and delivering his descriptions of the freaks in verse, I began to get leary about the condition of the contents of his head. The poetry was always extemporaneous and was pretty bad, but it amused the crowd when it wasn't too sentimental.