From that moment, however, cross and fantastic with Djezzar, she had no longer for him those soft caresses, nor those melodious songs, nor those intoxicating dances which accompanied the clicking noise of her castinets, and appeared to open the gates of the seventh heaven. She finished by irritating him so much by her redoubled whims, caprices, and refusals, that he left her in a fury, and remained for three whole days without wishing to speak to her. On the third day, the attendants came to him to inform him that a terrible noise was heard in the apartments of the favorite, the cries of a woman mingled with the roarings of the lion. Djezzar sent thither, but was unwilling to go himself. When they hastened to the assistance of the Mingrelian, they found her shut up alone with Haïder. The rich carpet of Khorassan, which adorned the floor of her chamber, was in places rent to pieces, and all strewed over with bits of switches of the cherry. These shreds and fragments pointed out the places where the strife had taken place between the lion and the odalisk. After having drawn him into her pavilion, Baïla had shut him off from all retreat, and careless of the result to herself, armed with a light bunch of rods, she had struck him redoubled blows, resolutely renewing every stick which was broken on the body of her terrible antagonist. The latter, accustomed to obey the voice that scolded him, and the arm that struck him, without thinking of defending himself, bounded from one side of the chamber to the other, tearing up a strip of carpet with his curled talons at each bound; but finally his patience and long endurance exhausted, irritated by grief, groaning and palpitating, lying half on his croupe and his back, raising up one of his monstrous paws, he extended his glittering talons, and became in his turn threatening, when suddenly the bostangis and footmen of the pacha entered, armed with boar-spears. The door being opened, the lion fled through it in disgrace, not before the new comers, but from the Mingrelian, who still pursued him with her last cherry-stick. On the evening of the day in which Baïla had excited the royal anger of the lion against herself, that terrible animal, broken and degraded by his domestic habits, came, like a well-trained dog, confused and repentant, to couch at the feet of his mistress, imploring pardon. On the following day Djezzar did the same. The favorite saw him approach her, humble, and laden with presents. The contest of Baïla with Haïder, of which a full account had been given to him, filled him with a singular admiration for the former. Baïla received the two conquered with a cold dignity, which might pass for some remains of rigor.