Bidel is not only one of the richest bourgeois of Asnières; he might be called the lord of the manor. Behind his gilded iron gate, ornamented with lions’ heads, with the porter’s lodge to the left, the stables to the right, and a fine expanse of turf, the red and white villa looks like a small castle. The dining-room is decorated with panels, on which Rosa Bonheur has painted some lions; but this is the only detail which could [p145] lead any one to suppose—unless previously warned—that he was visiting the house of a tamer of wild beasts.
I am sure, good people, that you would picture to yourselves a Bidel ending his life in a room encumbered with the spoils of the lion of Nemæa and Indian tigers. But you are far from the truth. Do you not know that an ironical law governs all the wishes of man, the wishes of lion-tamers as well as our own? It is called the law of contrasts. In virtue of this rule M. François Bidel has furnished his drawing-room in the purest Louis XV., and the ceiling, panels, and seats are covered with pastoral designs of shepherds; idylls and love flourish in all the four corners of the pretty room.
Mdlle. Bidel’s piano is the sole object bearing a different date.
Perhaps you may have seen this charming young girl with her mother in the ticket office on the day of some great performance. She has just enough romanichel blood in her [p146] veins to give a slightly exotic brilliancy to her brunette beauty. Naturally, this pretty girl is an heiress. Her education and accomplishments are perfect, and she has passed her examinations at the Hôtel de Ville.
“Of course our daughter has no intention of teaching,” Madame Bidel observed to me casually, “but her success was a satisfaction for her father.”
All this comfort and luxury have not been won without some dangerous encounters with the lions. Bidel, like Pezon, has passed under the mill of their claws, and they can both show the scars of serious wounds to those sceptics who may be inclined to deny the risk of their performances.
A number of chimerical stories are current about the lion-tamer’s secret. Here is one of them: that it is usual to mix narcotics with the animals’ food, or even to teach them those bad habits which led the celebrated Charlot to a premature death.
The truth is that a certain number—a very small percentage—of the wild beasts in a menagerie are considerably stupefied. Guy de Maupassant told me that in Rouen a tamer having lost his keeper, engaged a willing man from the port, to whom he confided the duty of cleaning the cages. On the morrow, when he went into the menagerie, the master paused aghast. His new servant had quietly entered the cage as though it were a stall, and was giving the lion some heavy blows with his broom handle to clean between his paws.
At the Folies Bergère a lioness was at one time exhibited by Colonel Bone, who was taking her round the world. This animal was so savage that it was necessary to chain her into [p147] the cage with an iron collar. When the colonel merely passed near the den she would fling herself against the bars with such fury that the whole car trembled. But one day one of the managers of the theatre was inspecting the side scenes and witnessed the following incident: the colonel’s servant was installed in the cage, quietly painting a background of savannah on a canvas stretched over the floor. The lioness was unchained and watched him as a dog watches a fisherman, stealthily licking the green paint from time to time; the result being an attack of colic which nearly sent her to roar in another world.