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But you should see Maitre Sebaldus’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 Lotte, 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.

Sebaldus, 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 Kera 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.