Her eyes were phosphorescent. Then her rigidly shut expression distorted itself into a furious snarl, which grew louder and louder.

The keeper was standing in front of the cage.

“There, there,” he called to Hella, “don’t get worked up. I’ll bring them back to you. You know I will. I’m not stealing them. Don’t get upset, old girl.”

It did not calm Hella in the least. She struck at the man with her terrible paw so that all the bars reverberated.

Meanwhile the keeper, with the help of his prod, had raised the small door to the empty adjoining cage and was enticing the cubs.

Barri slunk over.

The lioness bounded into the air, clutching at him with her paws, and growling, “Stay here!”

But the confused and faithless cub did not listen.

Burri was wavering. The keeper thrust the long ironshod pole into Hella’s cage, trying to poke him out. “Come on, boy,” he kept urging, “come along! We’ll go out in the fields and get some sun!”

Hella attacked the pole in a white rage. The keeper laughed. “You don’t mean that, mother. You don’t begrudge the little fellows their fun. You’ll get them back again.”

Hella bit at the iron that was prodding Burri, threw the whole weight of her body against it and forced it to the floor.

The keeper was patient. “Come on,” he said to her, “always the same old antic.”

Burri meanwhile had crept beside his brother. The keeper withdrew the pole, closing the little low door with it. Opening the empty cage in which the cubs were now squatting, he climbed in and gathered them up in his arms.

The lioness stood with lowered head, panting. A shudder passed over her spine and flanks. When she saw her cubs in human hands a pitiable howl broke from her chest.

The keeper turned to her. “Be easy, be easy, I’ll bring them back to you. My word of honor.”

A peal of laughter rose from the crowd of spectators.

The lioness lay down again and was silent. But her mouth hung open, her tongue lolled, and it was plain to see from her heaving flanks how upset and anxious she was. But she betrayed it by no other sign. She lay motionless and quiet as the keeper climbed out into freedom with Burri and Barri. Nor did she stir as he set the cubs on the floor and walked off with them. All the spectators followed.

Vasta emerged from her crack.

“I’m surprised,” she said meekly, “really surprised at the way you take on every time.”

There began one of those conversations which are constantly occurring between creature and creature. Humans heed only the sounds that animals make. Hence their observations remain superficial. Man pays no attention at all to those expressions, gestures, motions that go to make up the language of the beasts, so that he almost never understands them, although one would think that, after thousands of years, he might have learned something about them, even with his atrophied instincts. That is why the tiny brothers by whom we are surrounded remain speechless as far as man is concerned, and why we think it a considerable advance if he even begins to regard them as ­brothers. In no other way is it possible to explain, if not to understand, how human beings can perpetrate such tortures, such incredible, inhuman tortures, upon living ­creatures—spiritual as well as physical sufferings and tragedies that deprive life of its joy and torment the dreams of all who are conscious of them.

Hella the lioness rested her beautiful head on her outstretched forepaws.