In 1663, Louis XIV decided to build a menagerie in the park of Versailles, intended to accommodate exotic animals received as gifts.
The festivals follow one another, the ladies admire the elephant offered by the regent of Portugal, the tigress of the ambassadors of Morocco, the lama of the Andes.
But the king grew weary of this expensive pleasure.
The menagerie without illustrious visitors falls asleep and the animals sink into melancholy.
A century later, and 2000 leagues away, a young lion is found orphaned.
His mother has just been killed by M. de Galéa, manager of the counter in Saint-Louis and a fine marksman.
Eager to entertain his young children, the administrator takes the barely weaned lion cub to his residence near the port where he raises a few spaniels for hunting.
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In front of his frightened native servants, he places the feline against the sides of a bitch which has just given birth.
The fusion is instantaneous, the lion cub, sated with another breast milk, falls asleep between the paws of its new mother
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