CHAPTER LXXIl. 



GERARD, THE LION-g LAYER. 



THE people of India, Turkey, and Arabia, who profess the Mahom- 

 niedan faith, are fatalists ; that is, they believe every thing that will 

 happen to them has been decreed beforehand by God, and that it is 

 therefore useless to resist misfortune, or in other words, to contend 

 against fate. Clinging to this creed, they are naturally indolent, 

 and comparatively helpless. They sink, whenever circumstances 

 permit, into habits of voluptuousness, and endeavoring to fill up life 

 with as much enjoyment and as little exertion as possible. They are 

 alike fanatics and cowards. Without energy to contend against a 

 sudden danger, their chief virtues are submission and resignation. 

 Thus, at the appearance of a royal tiger in India, the population will 

 retreat before him, abandoning their houses and harvests; and in 

 Africa the Arab trembles when he hears the roaring of the lion, 

 resistance is too frequently not thought of; one hides himself, and 

 another flies, and the monster reigns, a terror and scourge. 



.Such are the people amongst whom the hero of our story, Gerara, 

 the lion-slayer, has won his laurels, a man of delicate frame, but an 

 iron heart, poor in his fortunes and simple in his habits as the Arab 

 of the desert; like him living on nuts and Jates; drinking from the 

 game springs as the lion whose steps he tracks; exposing himself to 

 a thousand dangers, that he may be able to brave a peril greater than 

 all ; and this without noise or eclat, but with an unassuming modesty 

 that is the invariable accompaniment of true merit. Jules Gerard 

 is a native of Pignan, where he was born in 1817, and having em 



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