‘Let’s go and lie down in the meadow for a while,’ said the Princess.

‘Did you see that, Karlchen,’ I said, ‘the woman’s hair was standing on end! I’ve never seen anything like it . . .’

‘You can put as much make-up as you like on your bum, but you can’t turn it into a face. That woman . . .’

‘Quiet!’ said the Princess. We listened. From the house, some distance away now, came the sound of a high scolding voice. We couldn’t hear what was being said, we could only hear someone shouting angrily. My blood rose. Perhaps she was beating the child.

‘Pah!’ muttered Karlchen. The meadow disappeared and the Princess’ deep alto reached me as through a haze.

‘We’ll go straight to the house afterwards . . . we have to . . .’

An enormous oval ring, under a stone vaulting, taut red cloths; at the bottom, the arena, then a high stone wall, and over that the first rows of spectators, tier upon tier of them, thousands of heads until they blurred into the brown light at the back. Down in the middle was a man on a cross; a panther was leaping up at him, and tearing away one piece of flesh after another . . . The man didn’t scream, his head had lolled onto his left shoulder, he was probably already unconscious. Dust and the roar of the crowd . . . A small lattice door opened: a couple of men in leather aprons pushed some trembling figures, four men and a woman, ahead of them into the ring. Three of the men were in rags; the woman was half-naked, and the last man wore makeup and – a hideous mask and tinsel crown: an actor in his own death scene. The little lattice door was closed from inside. The men stayed behind it, professional spectators. A few animals had been lying in the sand off to one side, a tiger, a lion. When they saw the people being driven into the arena, they got up, lazy and evil. One of the four had a weapon – a curved sword. The panther had abandoned the man on the cross; he now lay, chewing a torn-off arm. The blood dripped.

Suddenly the lion tensed to leap; he was enraged, because somebody from a safe place above him had dropped a burning ember on his head. The lion roared. The gladiator approached.