“For one day, when this man and his wife were in a better mood and had forgotten their poverty for an hour, there came to them in the carrier’s cart a parcel of wine sent them by a relative who had a vineyard. This may have been the turning of their luck: one cannot tell. Luck is above mankind. But, anyhow, they asked the carrier in and gave him wine. Now the carrier was a Mohammedan, and Mohammedans are treacherous, so when he saw two Lions walking about in a lonely house he did not call it witchcraft, as would a Christian man, but at once he offered a price for them; but the man and his wife had hearts so good they would not sell. Then the carrier changed his tune, and offered to hire them for one week and to pay for this fifty francs: this they gladly accepted. For the carrier and men like him are incapable of honour except in one small thing, which is the keeping of words and dates: in this they are most exact. So at the end of the week he brought back the Lions, and gave the man and his wife fifty francs. “But more was to come. For the carrier (and men like him) see profit where a Christian man would not see it, and he made a proposition to these people. He said: ‘Your Lions jump through hoops, they beg for sugar, and do other entertaining things: now I will travel with you and them, and half of all we earn shall go to you.’ The man and his wife were so simple and so necessitous that they accepted, and the tour began. But That Which Watches Over Us at last rewarded the man and his wife, for within a week the carrier died, and they went on up and down the country by themselves with their children, showing the Lions, till they began to earn incredible sums. They went to the great towns and to the sea coast. At last they became so rich that they went to Algiers, and there it is, as you may imagine, large rents but larger earnings. They lived in Algiers for one year, and became at last so rich that they crossed the sea and showed their Lions in Provence, in Lyons, and would have shown them in Paris but that, by the time they reached Tournus, they came to their own people and found themselves rich enough. There the man and his wife remained, but their children, who had been born in Africa, came back, and here they are now. They have friends to dinner every day, and all on account of Lions.” When he had done this story he added, “It is true.” Then we went on to Batna together without a word, but when we reached Batna we had dinner together and spoke of many other things, but I have space for nothing except this story of his about the lions. * * * * * [Sidenote: The Bargaining at Batna]