then," reiterated the other, "that you
never _saw_ a lion." When the Consular family assembled, it was worse
still; the children laughed in his face, and the lady said, "that but for
his mane and colour she should not have guessed what animal he
personated." It was a family misfortune. "Why did you trust a _Frenchman_
with it?" asked his affectionate spouse: "you recollect that Alfieri calls
them a nation of Charlatans, whose origin is _mud_,[4] and that all he
ever learned of them was, to be silent when they spoke." "But what's to be
done now?" demands the disconsolate man. "Send for the little women who
understand stuffing, and take their advice." "So we went," continued the
old woman, "and were personally introduced to this lion." "_Ah! che
Leone!_" interrupted the daughter, laughing at the recollection of the
quizzical beast. "A _lion_ indeed!" said the mother laughing, but less
boisterously than her daughter. "What a king of the forest!" said the
girl, going off again into inextinguishable merriment: "mother, do you
remember his eyes sunk in his head as if he had died of a decline, his
chest pinched in to correspond, his belly bulging out like the pouch of an
opossum, with all her family at home, his mouth twisted into a sardonic
grin, his teeth like some old dowager, one row overlapping the other, his
cheeks inflated as if his stomach was in his mouth, and then the position
of one of his fore-legs, evidently copied from that of the old bronze
_horse_ on the Capitol, while his tail wound three times and a half round
its own tip!" "_Basta, basta!_" said the old woman, "he _was_ a queer
lion, and looked easy enough to kill if you could only keep your gravity
while you attacked him." "And what said the Consul?" asked we, laughing
with them. "The Consul _cospettoed_ again and again, and was for knocking
him off his legs at once, and then giving him to us to re-arrange. 'You
and your daughter,' said he, 'will take him home and do what you can for
me;' but we told him plainly, that to expect a new birth, after such a
miscarriage as this, was only to indulge a vain hope, sure to issue in new
disappointment. Why, the very tail would have taken us a fortnight to
uncurl and make a _lion's_ tail of it; the ears were quite past
redemption; the _bustle_ might have been removed from behind, and the
wadding placed in front, where it was wanted; but the hide itself was
corrugated into plaits that nothing could have removed. '_Cospett