Without knowing anything about calendars, the lions at least knew when it was Wednesday and Sunday. On those two days they paced up and down their cages even more than usual. Whether they were each in their own box, or all together in the big round cage, on Sunday and Wednesday they twitched nervously, maddened by hunger. When they saw a buzzard circling in the sky, or a goat or cat running in the distance, or caught the scent of the flock grazing in the pasture because of the direction of the wind, they would stare into space, obsessing over the thought of the prey that was not being offered to them, and they would roar. In their heads they would howl with rage and devour the prey, killing it with a snap of their jaws. In their dreams they swallowed that goat, cat or buzzard that continued to live in front of them. Then they would lie down on the fresh ground, coldly resigned to submission, to leaving everything up to that man who spoke louder than the blood lust rising in them.

Although all lions think about is eating, they do not think of eating humans, unless they’re too old to hunt real prey. Of all kinds of prey that tries to escape, humans run the slowest, so make a conquest that is so ignoble that only old or injured lions lower themselves to attack them. As for eating children, they might do that in a frenzy of savagery, or if they had been hungry for a very long time, or maybe to get their revenge for all those years spent being taunted by children at the circus, children with their unbearable frightened or laughing faces, children who sometimes threw stones at them. In those cases the lions did not react; they pretended not to see them, staring past them through the bars. To lions therefore there was no reason to eat children, unless to make them pay for the silliness of others. Other than that, lions were not the least bit attracted to these fresh-faced creatures, with their unformed scent and salt-less sweat. To gobble up a kid would be to bite into little muscles and swallow blood with no taste. Quite the opposite of the thick meat seasoned with the taste of conquest, of those buffaloes whose flavour was enhanced by the struggle. To a lion, a child was no kind of meal.