The only animals whose training the gypsy cares to undertake are the horse and bear. For the first he entertains a sort of respectful veneration, while the second he regards as an amusing _bajazzo_. He teaches a young bear to dance by placing it on a sheet of heated iron, playing the while on his fiddle a strongly accentuated piece of dance music. The bear, lifting up its legs alternately to escape the heat, unconsciously observes the time marked by the music. Later on, the heated iron is suppressed when the animal has learned its lesson, and whenever the Tzigane begins to play on the fiddle the young bear lifts its legs in regular time to the music. Of the tricks practised upon horses, in order to sell them at fairs, many stories are told of the gypsies. Sometimes, it is said, they will make an incision in the animal’s skin, and blow in air with the bellows in order to make it appear fat; or else they introduce a living eel into its body under the tail, which serves to give an appearance of liveliness to the hind-quarters. For the same reason live toads are forced down a donkey’s throat, which, moving about in the stomach, produce a sort of fever which keeps it lively for several days. The gypsies are attached to their children, but in a senseless animal fashion, alternately devouring them with caresses and violently ill-treating them. I have seen a father throw large, heavy stones at his ten-year-old daughter for some trifling misdemeanor—stones as large as good-sized turnips, any one of which would have been sufficient to kill her if it had happened to hit; and only her agility in dodging these missiles—which she did, grinning and chuckling as though it were the best joke in the world—saved her from serious injury. They are a singularly quarrelsome people, and the gypsy camp is the scene of many a pitched battle, in which men, women, children, and dogs indiscriminately take part with turbulent enjoyment. When in a passion all weapons are good that come to the gypsy’s hand, and, _faute de mieux_, unfortunate infants are sometimes bandied backward and forward as _improvisé_ cannon-balls. A German traveller mentions having been eye-witness to a quarrel between a Tzigane man and woman, the latter having a baby on the breast. Passing from words to blows, and seeing neither stick nor stone within handy reach, the man seized the baby by the feet, and with it belabored the woman so violently that when the by-standers were able to interpose the wretched infant had already given up the ghost. [Illustration: BEAR DRIVER.]