“What is this?” roared the Elephant as soon as he could speak. “That is the portrait of a rat, and you presume to say it is me? You are joking, my friend” (the laughter still continued), “why,” continued the king after silence had been restored, his tone getting gradually more and more severe, “it is owing to my great size and strength that I have been chosen king. Were I to exhibit this miserable portrait to my subjects they would imagine I was an insect, a weak, hardly {173} perceptible, creature, only fit to be dethroned and crushed. The interest of the State, sir, forbids my taking this course,” saying which, he hurled the plate at the artist, who bowed down to the ground, not so much from humility as to escape a shock that would have been fatal to {174} him. “I should have tested the truth of the stories so freely circulated about you.” The king and his ministers were becoming furious. “Ugh! you are one of the hawkers of inventions and secrets, one of those innovators we have heard so much of, who prowl about seeking what good old institution they can devour; fellows who would bring down our constitution, and heaven itself about our ears, with their infernal machines. Bah!” Here the mighty king stepped over the still prostrate body of the artist, and approaching the innocent machine—in his eyes big with the darkest plots ever brewed in the heart of a State—full of a no less legitimate wrath than Don Quixote, when breaking the marionettes of Master Peter, he raised his formidable foot, and crushed the camera to atoms. Adieu fortune, honour, fame, civilisation! Adieu art! adieu artist! At the sound of the smashing which announced his doom, Topaz sprang to his feet, and starting off like a man, ended his sorrows in the waters of the Amazon. He who became his heir and confidant was Ebony, the poor black Sapajo, who came over to Europe and studied at one of the universities, in order to qualify himself to write this history. [Illustration] {175} JOURNEY OF AN AFRICAN LION TO PARIS, AND WHAT CAME OF IT. In which the political reasons for the visit of Prince Leo shall be fully discussed. [Illustration] At the foot of the Atlas, on its desert side, there reigns an old Lion. Much of his youth was spent in travelling. He had visited the Mountains of the Moon, lived in Barbary, Timbuctoo, in the land of the Hottentots, among the republicans of Tangier, and among Troglodytes. From his universal benevolence he acquired the name of Cosmopolite, or friend of all the world. Once on the throne, it became his policy to justify the jurisprudence of the lions; carrying this beautiful axiom into practice—“To take is to learn.” He passed for one of the most erudite monarchs of his time, and, strange as it may seem, he utterly detested letters and learning. “They muddle still more what was muddled before.” This was a saying in which he took peculiar delight.