Eagerly they sniffed at the crack of Vasta’s refuge. Heads down, they scratched impatiently at the bottom of the wall, whimpering, “Come out! Come on out!”

Vasta, however, declined the invitation. But she was unable to withstand the urgency of their pleadings, and presently piped politely, “I’m not here!”

Barri and Burri rushed to their mother. “She won’t come out,” Barri whispered in her ear.

Burri, who had squatted down on his hams, addressed himself to his mother with a very serious mien. “She says she’s not there!”

Thereupon Barri began to tug at his mother’s ear and neck while Burri at once applied himself to Hella’s full and beautiful jowl.

The lioness uttered deep, gurgling sounds of inward satisfaction and great tenderness. She interspersed them with growls of apparent crossness.

The cubs did not believe her for a moment. In fact they were delighted. This flirting with the fringes of maternal fury was the best fun in the world. They pressed upon their mother more furiously, sprang at her throat, shoved their big soft paws against her nose, her face, fastened their teeth in her neck, and were perfectly wild with joy because they imagined that they were stronger than she. Of course, she knew that this strength of theirs was pure fancy, but that did not diminish her joy.

With a roar of delight the lioness rolled over on one side. The tassel of her tail beat the floor softly. There was a wonderful supple grace in her powerful body as, yielding to the cubs’ impudence, she rolled now on her back, now on her flank.

Visitors to the zoological garden had crowded to the cage to watch this family scene. They chattered, and shouted various expressions of approval to the lioness. One youth beat his cane against the bars of the cage. It made a shrill metallic sound. Hella did not pay the slightest attention. She was accustomed to being stared at and was contemptuously indifferent. Only immediately after Burri’s and Barri’s appearance in the world had she been somewhat sensitive. But the curator, who knew the nervousness of animals that have just become mothers, had the front of her cage boarded up. Hella was alone with her children for a whole week, free from all disturbance.

Now she was perfectly unembarrassed in her delight in her cubs. Sometimes she flung them off, or pressed them to the floor, or drew them lovingly into her embrace or let herself be overpowered by Burri and Barri in sport.

But now, while he was still at a distance, she heard the keeper’s footstep.

She was expecting him, and at the first sign of his approach, interrupted the fun to sit erect, quieting the children, who tottered about confused until they perceived that their mother was aroused and waiting. Imitating her, they sat upright with old shrewd faces, but quite perplexed.

The lioness bared her teeth, drawing back her jowls and uttering a thin, piping sound. Suddenly she snapped her beautiful mouth shut and repeated the sound. Her tail kept twitching and waving. It was a sign of impatience, irritation. She rose and paced up and down the cage. At the bars she turned, tossing her head up, then down, in an eloquent gesture of powerlessness. She turned in an incredibly small space, slinking with all her restrained and terrible strength visible in her limbs, close to the bars, from one side of the cage to the other. Back again and back again and back again. Ten times, twenty times.

Finally she stopped in one corner as if rooted there, staring out intently, always in one direction, lashing her flanks softly with her constantly waving tail.