288 THE PARIS ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS IN 
Kanguroo , begging them, “with emotion,” to observe 
the contrast of the animal, which always carried its 
infant in its pocket, with the indifference of “ les 
femmes aristo ” to their babies ! The republican zeal 
for improving the occasion is typical of the frame 
of mind to which the average Parisian can always 
bring himself and his audience over any political 
or patriotic question, on the most trifling occasion, 
a kind of conscious insincerity which his hearers 
agree to share in order to enjoy the sentiment of the 
moment. But the time and occasion are not often 
so comical. The observer of the scene, M. de 
Goncourt, a writer steeped in the literary life of Paris, 
a life which the siege had starved and crushed, leaving 
the poor man in a state of acute mental starvation 
very curiously shown in his journal of the siege, 
declared that the animals which had survived the first 
siege, or had been introduced to the Gardens after 
the Prussian occupation, were almost as bored by the 
loss of their “ public ” as he was at the loss of his. 
“The animals,” he says, “are silent. The elephant, 
abandonne de son public , leaning indolently against 
the wall, was eating his hay with the air of a man 
compelled to dine alone. 
In the first siege, the animals of the Paris Zoo 
which could by any means be classed as “ game ” 
or venison early found their way into the butchers’ 
and game-dealers’ shops. As early as October 3 
two large stags were exposed for sale ; at the 
same time big tame carps, which had adorned the 
