o!_' said
the Consul, _poveretto_, who had nothing else to say--'and am I thus to
lose my lion, the only lion I ever killed, and such a fine lion too!' and
then he fell to abusing the Frenchman. 'I can't keep him here to show my
friends,' pursued he; 'for it is obvious, if I do, that instead of
admiring my courage, they will only ridicule me, and perhaps betray me
into the hands of that rogue _Pinelli_ as a fit subject for his
caricature.' We could not say they would not; so we recommended him, upon
the whole, as the best thing under the misfortune, to _re_-consult the
French artist. '_Scelarato porco!_ consult him about a lion? why the
commonest daub on a _Trattoria_ sign-board gives a better idea of the
noble animal than this." "It is difficult to stuff a lion," said the girl,
half apologetically: "one cost me a fortnight's hard work to prepare."
"Yes," added the mother eagerly--"yes, but he looked like a lion, he did."
Then turning to us, "Well, sir, at last, as we could not help the Consul,
he was obliged to have recourse to this Frenchman again, who admitted that
the bulk of the animal was in the wrong place, and _une idee trop large_,
and removed some of it accordingly. With respect to the hind-quarters, he
cleverly got rid of this difficulty, by inserting three-quarters of the
noble beast into a den, formed in a recess of the drawing-room, and hung
with a profusion of green paper, representing bushes falling across its
mouth, while beyond them protruded the head and open jaws of the lord of
the forest, as reconnoitring the ground previous to a sally upon the
guests; and there, doubtless, he is still exhibiting.".... Well did Cadet
herself avoid the errors she thus ridiculed. We possess one of her
animated groups, of which the subject is an eagle killing a snake, and the
execution is so true to nature, and so beautifully disposed for effect as
to render improvement impossible: from some such original did the Locrian
and Girgenti mints copy one of their finest reverses, and Virgil and
Ariosto their lively descriptions. Our bird, which lay, a month before, an
unsightly mass of blood-stained feathers, broken-winged, on the ground,
when he came into our possession, _stuffed_, looked not only alive but in
action. The talon which supported the body seemed to grasp the perch
beneath it so tightly, as to convey a very lively impression both of his
prehensile powers and of his weight; round the other, (embracing it as in
a v