e pelisse carefully buttoned,
he took in his hand a long bar of iron, white-hot, set in a wooden
handle.

Though long ago daunted by the skill and energy of the Prophet, his
tiger Cain, his lion Judas, and his black panther Death, had sometimes
attempted, in a moment of rebellion, to try their fangs and claws on
his person; but, thanks to the armor concealed beneath his pelisse, they
blunted their claws upon a skin of steel, and notched their fangs upon
arms or legs of iron, whilst a slight touch of their master's metallic
wand left a deep furrow in their smoking, shrivelled flesh.

Finding the inutility of their efforts, and endowed with strong memory,
the beasts soon learned that their teeth and claws were powerless
when directed against this invulnerable being. Hence, their terrified
submission reached to such a point that, in his public representations,
their master could make them crouch and cower at his feet by the least
movement of a little wand covered with flame-colored paper.

The Prophet, thus armed with care, and holding in his hand the iron made
hot by Goliath, descended by the trapdoor of the loft into the large
shed beneath, in which were deposited the cages of his animals. A mere
wooden partition separated this shed from the stable that contained his
horses.

A lantern, with a reflector, threw a vivid light on the cages. They were
four in number. A wide iron grating formed their sides, turning at one
end upon hinges like a door, so as to give ingress to the animal; the
bottom of each den rested on two axle-trees and four small iron castors,
so that they could easily be removed to the large covered wagon in which
they were placed during a journey. One of them was empty; the other
three contained, as already intimated, a panther, a tiger, and a lion.

The panther, originally from Java, seemed to merit the gloomy name
of Death, by her grim, ferocious aspect. Completely black, she lay
crouching and rolled up in the bottom of her cage, and her dark hues
mingling with the obscurity which surrounded her, nothing was distinctly
visible but fixed and glaring eyes--yellow balls of phosphoric light,
which only kindled, as it were, in the night-time; for it is the nature
of all the animals of the feline species to enjoy entire clearness of
vision but in darkness.

The Prophet entered the stable in silence: the dark red of his long
pelisse contrasted with the pale yellow of his straight hair and beard;
the lan