61
AN ADVENTURE OF GÉRARD, THE
LION HUNTER
The great interest taken in animals by Alexandre Dumas is well known to all readers of the Animal Story Books, but the stories told in them refer generally to tame or tameable animals. The great novelist, however, was full of interest in every kind of beast, tame or wild, and delighted to hear thrilling stories of hunting adventures, and to write them down afterwards for the benefit of his readers.
He was dining with some friends one evening, when his servant asked to see him, and said: 'They have been waiting for you this half-hour, sir.'
Dumas sprang to his feet, and would have hurried from the room at once, but was stopped by the question:
'Who are waiting for you?'
'Gérard, the lion hunter, and his orderly Amida,' was the answer, as Dumas vanished through the doorway in great haste.
In ten minutes he was at home, and there he found the great hunter, and a few other friends all questioning and listening to him.
Gérard, who was an officer in one of the Algerian Regiments of Spahis, was about thirty years of age, with a quiet, gentle face, and clear blue eyes. Amida was a tall stately Arab, of five or six and twenty, and as he sat in one corner of the library, wrapped in his white burnous, he was a striking and picturesque figure.
