The Erckmann-Chatrian MEGAPACK ®. Emile Erckmann

long fluttering ribbons, some grave, some laughing, others queer and grotesque-looking; the hay-loft high up under the roof; stables, pigsties, cowsheds, all in picturesque confusion attract and confound your attention. It is a strange sight!

      For fifty years not a hammer has been lifted against this venerable ruin. You would think it was left for the special accommodation of rats! And when the glowing autumn sun, red as fire, showers golden rain upon the decaying walls and timbers; when, as daylight fades into evening, the angular projections stand out more boldly, and the shadows deepen; when all the tavern rings with songs, and shouts, and roars of laughter; when fat Sébaldus, in leathern apron, runs to and from the cellar with the big jug in his hand; when his wife Gredel throws up the kitchen window, and with her long knife, well hacked along the edge, cleans the fish, or cuts the necks of hens, ducks, or geese which struggle and gurgle in their own blood; when pretty Fridoline, with her rosy little mouth and her long fair hair, leans out of her window to tend the honeysuckle, and over her head the neighbour’s tabby cat is gently swaying her tail and watching, with her cunning green eyes, the swallow circling in the deepening purple—I do assure you that a man must be utterly devoid of taste for the picturesque not to stop and contemplate in ecstasy and listen to the murmuring sounds, or the louder din, or the falling whispers, and observe with an artist’s eye the trembling lights, the flying shadows, and whisper to himself, “Is not this beautiful?”

      But you should see Maître Sébaldus’s tavern on a great occasion, when all the jovial folks of Bergzabern crowd into the immense public room—some day when a cock-fight is going on, or a dog-fight, or a magic-lantern.

      Last autumn, on a Saturday—and it was Michaelmas Day—we were all sitting round the oaken table, between one and two o’clock in the afternoon; old Doctor Melchior, Eisenloffel the blacksmith, and his old wife, old Berbel Rasimus, Johannes the capuchin monk, Borves Fritz the clarionet-player at the Pied de Boeuf, and half a hundred more, laughing, singing, drinking, playing at youker, draining jugs and glasses, eating puddings and andouilles.

      Mother Gredel was coming and going; the pretty maid-servants, Heinrichen and Lotté, were flying up and down the kitchen stairs like squirrels, and outside, under the broad archway, was the booming, and banging, and jingling of the big drum and the cymbals, while the exciting proclamation was being made: “Ho! ho! hi! Great battle to come off! The Asturian bear, Beppo, and Baptist, the Savoyard bear, against all dogs that may come. Boom! boom! Walk in, ladies! Walk in, gentlemen! Here’s the buffalo from Calabria, and the onagra of the desert! Walk in, walk in! Don’t be frightened! All walk in!”

      And they did come in, in crowds.

      Sébaldus, barring the passage with his burly form, as Horatius guarded the bridge in the brave days of old, shouted to all—

      “Your five kreutzers, friends and neighbours! Five kreutzers for admittance! Pay, or I’ll throttle you!”

      It was an awful confusion; people climbed over each other’s backs to get in faster, until Bridget Kéra lost a stocking and Anna Seiler half her petticoat.

      About two, the bear-leader, a tall, rough-looking fellow, with red ragged hair and beard, and mounting a high sugar-loafed hat, pushed the door ajar, and cried, looking in—

      “Just going to begin the fight!”

      In an instant all the tables were emptied, many an untasted glass being left upon it. I ran to the hay-loft, climbed up the ladder four steps at a time, and drew it up after me. There, seated all alone upon a bundle of hay, just inside the little skylight, I had a capital view.

      What a throng! The old galleries were bending under their weight, the roofs were visibly swaying. I shuddered to think of what might happen. It seemed inevitable that they would all come down together like grapes in the wine-press, heaped up in a sea of heads.

      They were hanging in clusters on the wooden pillars; yet higher in the gutters along the roof; yet higher about the pigeon-cote; higher still over the skylights in the roof of the mairie; yet higher in the spire of St. Christopher’s; and all this multitude were howling and shouting—

      “The bears! the bears!”

      When I had sufficiently admired and wondered at the immense crowd, looking down I saw in the middle of the court a poor, wretched, depressed-looking donkey, lean and ragged, his sleepy eyes half-closed, his ears hanging down. This dreadful object was to open the sports.

      “What fools some people are!” I thought.

      Minutes were passing away, the tumult increased, impatience was waxing into anger, when the great red scoundrel, with his immense sugar-loaf hat, advanced carelessly into the middle of the open space, and cried solemnly, with his fist upon his hips—

      “The onagra of the desert against any dog in the town!”

      There was a silence of astonishment. Daniel, the butcher, with staring eyes and gaping mouth, asks—

      “Where is the onagra?”

      “There she stands!”

      “That! why, it’s an ass!”

      “It’s an onagra.”

      “Well, let us see what it is,” cried the butcher, laughing.

      He whistled his dog to come, and, pointing to the ass, cried—

      “Foux, catch him!”

      But, strange to say, as soon as the ass saw the dog running to the attack, he turned nimbly round, and launched out with the whole length of his leg—so well aimed a kick that the dog fell back as if struck by lightning, with his jaw fractured!

      Loud laughter rang all round, while the poor dog fled with a piteous yell of pain.

      The bear-leader smiled at the butcher, and asked—

      “Well, what’s your opinion? Is my onagra an ass?”

      “No,” said Daniel, rather ashamed, “it is an onagra.”

      “All right! all right! any more dogs coming to fight my desert-born, desert-bred onagra? Come on, the onagra is ready!”

      But no one came forward; and the bear-leader shouted in vain in his shrill tones—

      “Gentlemen! ladies! are you all afraid? afraid of the onagra? The dogs of your town ought to be ashamed of themselves. Come on! courage, gentlemen! courage, ladies!”

      But no one was inclined to risk his dog’s life or limbs against so dangerous an animal, and the cries for the bears were beginning again.

      “The bears! the bears! bring out the bears!”

      After waiting a quarter of an hour the fellow saw that his onagra was not likely to get any more customers, so, putting the beast up in the stable, he approached the pigsty, opened it, and drew out by his chain Baptiste, the Savoy bear, an old brute with a brown mangy-looking coat, as sulky and ashamed as a sweep coming down a chimney. For all he was not handsome the shouts of applause rang out, and the fighting dogs themselves, shut into the tavern porch, smelling a wild beast, set up a tragic howl that made your hair stand on end. The miserable bear was led quietly enough to a stake firmly driven in the ground, to which he was chained, all the time slowly surveying the excited crowd with a melancholy eye.

      “Poor old traveller!” I cried to myself, “would anybody have told you ten years ago, when grave, terrible, and solitary you were traversing from side to side the high glaciers in Switzerland, in the gloomy glens of the Unterwald, and your deep growls made the old oaks tremble in every leaf—who could have told you that the day would come when, sad and resigned, with an iron collar round your throat, you would be tied to a post and devoured by dogs to amuse a mob at Bergzabern? Alas! Sic transit gloria mundi!”

      As these meditations were occupying my thoughts, noticing that everybody was bending forward to see, I did like the rest, and I soon saw the possibility of warm work.

      A pair of boar-hounds, belonging to old Heinrich, were being led to the other end of the court. Struggling in the chain, these ferocious creatures