The Zoological Gardens is a horrid place, where they lock up wild beasts
who have done no wrong and who are accustomed to walk about freely in
the distant foreign countries where they come from. The lion is there,
whom we have just heard roaring. He is so strong that he can kill a
policeman with one blow of his paw; he has great, haughty eyes and
awfully sharp teeth. He lives in Africa and, at night, when he roars,
all the other beasts tremble in their holes for fear. He is called the
king of beasts. They caught him one day in a cunning trap and bound him
and dragged him here and locked him up in a cage with iron bars to it.
The cage is no more than half as big as Petrine's room. And there the
king walks up and down, up and down, and gnashes his teeth with sorrow
and rage and roars so that you can hear him ever so far away. Outside
his cage stand cowardly people and laugh at him, because he can't get
out and eat them up, and poke their sticks through the rails and tease
him.
My little boy stands in front of me and looks at me with wide-open eyes:
"Would he eat them up, if he got out?" he asks.
"In a moment."
"But he can't get out, can he?"
"No. That's awfully sad. He can't get out."
"Father, let us go and look at the lion."
I pretend not to hear and go on to tell him of the strange birds there:
great eagles, which used to fly over every church-steeple and over the
highest trees and mountains and swoop down upon lambs and hares and
carry them up to their young in the nest. Now they are sitting in cages,
on a perch, like canaries, with clipped wings and blind eyes. I tell him
of gulls, which used to fly all day long over the stormy sea: now they
splash about in a puddle of water, screaming pitifully. I tell him of
wonderful blue and red birds, which, in their youth, used to live among
wonderful blue and red flowers, in balmy forests a thousand times bigger
than the Frederiksberg Park, where it was as dark as night under the
trees with the brightest sun shining down upon the tree-tops: now they
sit there in very small cages and hang their beaks while they stare at
tiresome boys in dark-blue suits and black stockings and waterproof
boots and sailor-hats.
"Are those birds really blue?" asks my little boy.
"Sky-blue," I answer. "And utterly broken-hearted."
"Father, can't we go and look at the birds?"