My curiosity led me into a strange scene to-day. I had observed for some time among the placards upon the walls an advertisement of an exhibition of "fighting animals," at the _Barriére du Combat_. I am disposed to see almost any sight _once_, particularly where it is, like this, a regular establishment, and, of course, an exponent of the popular taste. The place of the "_Combats des Animaux_," is in one of the most obscure suburbs, outside the walls, and I found it with difficulty. After wandering about in dirty lanes for an hour or two, inquiring for it in vain, the cries of the animals directed me to a walled place, separated from the other houses of the suburb, at the gate of which a man was blowing a trumpet. I purchased a ticket of an old woman who sat shivering in the porter's lodge; and, finding I was an hour too early for the fights, I made interest with a savage-looking fellow, who was carrying in tainted meat, to see the interior of the establishment. I followed him through a side gate, and we passed into a narrow alley, lined with stone kennels, to each of which was confined a powerful dog, with just length of chain enough to prevent him from reaching the tenant of the opposite hole. There were several of these alleys, containing, I should think, two hundred dogs in all. They were of every breed of strength and ferocity, and all of them perfectly frantic with rage or hunger, with the exception of a pair of noble-looking black dogs, who stood calmly at the mouths of their kennels; the rest struggled and howled incessantly, straining every muscle to reach us, and resuming their fierceness toward each other when we had passed by. They all bore, more or less, the marks of severe battles; one or two with their noses split open, and still unhealed; several with their necks bleeding and raw, and galled constantly with the iron collar, and many with broken legs, but all apparently so excited as to be insensible to suffering. After following my guide very unwillingly through the several alleys, deafened with the barking and howling of the savage occupants, I was taken to the department of wild animals. Here were all the tenants of the menagerie, kept in dens, opening by iron doors upon the pit in which they fought. Like the dogs, they were terribly wounded; one of the bears especially, whose mouth was torn all off from his jaws, leaving his teeth perfectly exposed, and red with the continually exuding blood. In one of the dens lay a beautiful deer, with one of his haunches severely mangled, who, the man told me, had been hunted round the pit by the dogs but a day or two before. He looked up at us, with his large soft eye, as we passed, and, lying on the damp stone floor, with his undressed wounds festering in the chilly atmosphere of mid-winter, he presented a picture of suffering which made me ashamed to the soul of my idle curiosity.