LONDON BEARS 
201 
most of the London police magistrates. Its popu- 
larity was such, that whenever exhibited it instantly 
became the centre of a crowd, which increased until 
the police constable on duty felt it incompatible with 
his position not to take it into custody. Then came 
the scene in the dock next morning, and the “ dismissal 
with a caution ” as a sequence. Meantime the bear 
had usually held a reception in the police-station the 
night before ; and so much did its endearing ways win 
the hearts of the “ force,” that on one occasion the 
constable who had run it in made a collection for its 
benefit the moment the case was dismissed. 
This was a small Pyrenean bear, about three years 
old, with a rough coat the colour of a dusty cocoa-nut 
fibre door-mat, and though it had a strong steel 
muzzle of apparently needless severity fixed round the 
base of its nose, the genial Provencal who owned it, 
and whose bed it usually shared at night in the 
quarters of the foreign artists in street music and ice- 
creams in which he dwelt when not employed in ex- 
hibiting his pet before royalty, or elsewhere, declared 
that it was a “ brave bete , douoc comme un enfant , et 
done' de traits de charactere tout a fait remar quables.” 
The behaviour of the street urchins to the brave bete 
was perhaps a reminiscence of the days when bear- 
baiting was looked upon as an exhibition calculated to 
maintain the pugnacious character of the true-bred 
Englishman ; for, once assured that it would not hurt 
them, they stamped on its toes as occasion offered, 
until the bear rose on its hind legs and assumed an 
