The huge beasts obeyed him promptly as if eager to show how
much they loved him, and peace and quiet were thus restored.
Rosa Bonheur, whose pictures of animals are among the most famous in the
world, loved the wild creatures that she painted. At one time she had
for a model a fierce lion named Nero who, after a while, had to be taken
away to Paris.
The day came when he was to go. The horses that were to draw the great
beast's cage to the city shivered with dread at the odor of the flesh-
eater. Nero was quiet, but he looked sadly at his mistress, and his
gold-yellow eyes seemed full of reproach.
[Illustration: ROSA BONHEUR.]
Months later the artist went to see him in one of the gardens of Paris.
He was blind and dying.
"Oh, my poor Nero!" she said. "What have they done to you?"
The lion lifted up his huge head, and listened for a moment. Then,
slowly and with pain, he crawled close to the bars of his cage, where
she could stroke him. About the artist and her pet there were only rough
men and women and boys of the city streets, but every man's hat came
off, and there was not a dry eye in the crowd.
Rosa Bonheur did not confine her tenderness to dumb animals. In her
prosperity she was kind to many poor artists who were working under hard
and discouraging conditions.
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