A macaw hoarsely cried the two syllables of its own name. The wild dogs growled from behind their bars, and the great white owl in his narrow cage stared at the two men with” his blond eyes.

“I don’t live here and I don’t keep a mistress, but this is the home of something strong enough for me to play with,” said André Marcueil, slowly.

They walked along the enclosure. Big black forms sprang up, each one following them on the other side of its bars, and as they walked along new forms appeared.

“Well now! He really is drunk,” said the general. “Funny place to look for pussy.”

The elephant trumpeted in his house, and his windowpanes rattled.

“Is he going to box with the kangaroos? But they used to do that in the circus thirty years ago, that’s nothing new! Come on, old fellow, let’s go, it’s quite enough that you climbed over the fence, the keepers will be after us: I know all about discipline!”

The sea-green aquarium rose up on their right. Marcueil turned to the left and the general breathed again, for there the animals’ enclosures came to an end and he need no longer fear any more drunken foolhardiness from his companion.

“Look, I’m going to kill the beast,” said Marcueil, very calmly.

“What beast? You’re drunk, old man. . . my young friend,” said the general.

“The beast,” said Marcueil.

In front of them, compact in the moonlight, an iron thing was squatting, with things that looked like elbows on its knees, and armored shoulders without a head.

“The dynamometer!” exclaimed the general gleefully.

“I’m going to kill it,” repeated Marcueil obstinately.

“My young friend,” said the general, “when I was your age, and even younger, when I was reading for the Ecole Polytechnique, I often unhooked shop signs, unscrewed street urinals, stole milk bottles and locked drunks in hallways. But I haven’t yet burgled a slot machine. You needn’t deny it, you think it’s a slot machine! Well, anyway, he’s drunk. . . But be careful, there’s nothing in it for you, my young friend!”

“It’s full, it’s full of strength, and full of numbers,” André Marcueil was saying to himself.

“Well,” the general condescended, “I don’t mind helping you break the thing, but how? With our feet, with our fists? You don’t want me to lend you my sword, do you, to cut it in half?”

“Break it? Oh, no,” said Marcueil. “I want to kill it.”

“Look out for the law, then, for defacing a public monument!” said the general.

“Kill. . . with a permit,” said Marcueil. And he fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a French ten-centime piece.

The dynamometer’s slot glistened vertically.

“It’s a female,” said Marcueil gravely, “. . .but a very strong one.”