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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Private Menagerie, by Theophile Gautier
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: My Private Menagerie
+       from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19
+
+Author: Theophile Gautier
+
+Editor: F. C. de Sumichrast
+
+Translator: F. C. de Sumichrast
+
+Release Date: December 26, 2009 [EBook #30760]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Linda McKeown, Joseph Cooper, Nick Wall, Julia
+Miller, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Note
+
+Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. A list of corrections
+is found at the end of the text. Oe ligatures have been expanded.
+
+
+
+
+  THE WORKS OF
+  THÉOPHILE GAUTIER
+
+  VOLUME NINETEEN
+
+  TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY
+  PROFESSOR F. C. DE SUMICHRAST
+  _Department of French, Harvard University_
+
+  CAPTAIN FRACASSE
+
+  PART THREE
+
+  MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE
+
+  THE ATHENAEUM SOCIETY
+  NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+  _Copyright, 1902, by_
+  GEORGE D. SPROUL
+
+
+  UNIVERSITY PRESS · JOHN WILSON
+  AND SON · CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+_Contents_
+
+
+MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE
+
+
+
+    I  ANTIQUITY           _Page_ 283
+
+   II  THE WHITE DYNASTY      “   294
+
+  III  THE BLACK DYNASTY      “   305
+
+   IV  THIS SIDE FOR DOGS     “   318
+
+    V  MY HORSES              “   336
+
+
+
+
+_My Private Menagerie_
+
+
+
+
+MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ANTIQUITY
+
+
+I have often been caricatured in Turkish dress seated upon cushions, and
+surrounded by cats so familiar that they did not hesitate to climb upon
+my shoulders and even upon my head. The caricature is truth slightly
+exaggerated, and I must own that all my life I have been as fond of
+animals in general and of cats in particular as any brahmin or old maid.
+The great Byron always trotted a menagerie round with him, even when
+travelling, and he caused to be erected, in the park of Newstead Abbey,
+a monument to his faithful Newfoundland dog Boatswain, with an
+inscription in verse of his own inditing. I cannot be accused of
+imitation in the matter of our common liking for dogs, for that love
+manifested itself in me at an age when I was yet ignorant of the
+alphabet.
+
+A clever man being at this time engaged in preparing a “History of
+Animals of Letters,” I jot down these notes in which he may find, so far
+as my own animals are concerned, trustworthy information.
+
+The earliest remembrance of this sort that I have goes back to the time
+of my arrival in Paris from Tarbes. I was then three years old, so that
+it is difficult to credit the statement made by Mirecourt and Vapereau,
+who affirm that I “proved but an indifferent pupil” in my native town.
+Home-sickness of a violence that no one would credit a child with being
+capable of experiencing, fell upon me. I spoke our local dialect only,
+and people who talked French “were not mine own people.” I would wake in
+the middle of the night and inquire whether we were not soon to start on
+our return to our own land.
+
+No dainty tempted me, no toy could amuse me. Drums and trumpets equally
+failed to relieve my gloom. Among the objects and beings I regretted
+figured a dog called Cagnotte, whom it had been found impossible to
+bring with us. His absence told on me to such an extent that one
+morning, having first chucked out of the window my little tin soldiers,
+my German village with its painted houses, and my bright red fiddle, I
+was about to take the same road to return as speedily as possible to
+Tarbes, the Gascons, and Cagnotte. I was grabbed by the jacket in the
+nick of time, and Josephine, my nurse, had the happy thought to tell me
+that Cagnotte, tired of waiting for us, was coming that very day by the
+stage-coach. Children accept the improbable with artless faith; nothing
+strikes them as impossible; only, they must not be deceived, for there
+is no impairing the fixity of a settled idea in their brains. I kept
+asking, every fifteen minutes, whether Cagnotte had not yet come. To
+quiet me, Josephine bought on the Pont-Neuf a little dog not unlike the
+Tarbes specimen. I did not feel sure of its identity, but I was told
+that travelling changed dogs very much. I was satisfied with the
+explanation and accepted the Pont-Neuf dog as being the authentic
+Cagnotte. He was very gentle, very amiable, and very well behaved. He
+would lick my cheeks, and indeed his tongue was not above licking also
+the slices of bread and butter cut for my afternoon tea. We lived on the
+best of terms with each other.
+
+Presently, however, the supposed Cagnotte became sad, troubled, and his
+movements lost their freedom. He found it difficult to curl himself up,
+lost his jolly agility, breathed hard and could not eat. One day, while
+caressing him, I felt a seam that ran down his stomach, which was much
+swelled and very tight. I called my nurse. She came, took a pair of
+scissors cut the thread, and Cagnotte, freed of a sort of overcoat made
+of curled lambskin, in which he had been tricked out by the Pont-Neuf
+dealers to make him look like a poodle, appeared in all the wretched
+guise and ugliness of a street cur, a worthless mongrel. He had grown
+fat, and his scant garment was choking him. Once he was rid of his
+carapace, he wagged his ears, stretched his limbs, and started romping
+joyously round the room, caring nothing about being ugly so long as he
+was comfortable. His appetite returned, and he made up by his moral
+qualities for his lack of beauty. In Cagnotte’s company I gradually
+lost, for he was a genuine child of Paris, my remembrance of Tarbes and
+of the high mountains visible from our windows; I learned French and I
+also became a thorough-paced Parisian.
+
+The reader is not to suppose that this is a story I have invented for
+the sole purpose of entertaining him. It is literally true, and proves
+that the dog-dealers of that day were quite as clever as horse-coupers
+in the art of making up their animals and taking in purchasers.
+
+After Cagnotte’s death, my liking was rather for cats, on account of
+their being more sedentary and fonder of the fireplace. I shall not
+attempt to relate their history in detail. Dynasties of felines, as
+numerous as the dynasties of Egyptian kings, succeeded each other in our
+home. Accident, flight, or death accounted for them in turns. They were
+all beloved and regretted; but life is made up of forgetfulness, and the
+remembrance of cats passes away like the remembrance of men.
+
+It is a sad thing that the life of these humble friends, of these
+inferior brethren, should not be proportionate to that of their masters.
+
+I shall do no more than mention an old gray cat that used to side with
+me against my parents, and bit my mother’s ankles when she scolded me or
+seemed about to punish me, and come at once to Childebrand, a cat of the
+Romanticist period. The name suffices to let my reader understand the
+secret desire I felt to run counter to Boileau, whom I disliked then,
+but with whom I have since made my peace. It will be remembered that
+Nicolas says:--
+
+    “Oh! ridiculous notion of poet ignorant
+    Who, of so many heroes, chooses Childebrand!”
+
+It seemed to me that the man was not so ignorant after all, since he had
+selected a hero no one knew anything of; and, besides, Childebrand
+struck me as a most long-haired, Merovingian, mediæval, and Gothic name,
+immeasurably preferable to any Greek name, such as Agamemnon, Achilles,
+Idomeneus, Ulysses, or others of that sort. These were the ways of our
+day, so far as the young fellows were concerned, at least: for never, to
+quote the expression that occurs in the account of Kaulbach’s frescoes
+on the outer walls of the Pinacothek at Munich, never did the hydra of
+“wiggery” (_perruquinisme_) erect its heads more fiercely, and no doubt
+the Classicists called their cats Hector, Patrocles, or Ajax.
+
+Childebrand was a splendid gutter-cat, short-haired, striped black and
+tan, like the trunks worn by Saltabadil in “le Roi s’amuse.” His great
+green eyes with their almond-shaped pupils, and his regular velvet
+stripes, gave him a distant tigerish look that I liked. “Cats are the
+tigers of poor devils,” I once wrote. Childebrand enjoyed the honour of
+entering into some verses of mine, again because I wanted to tease
+Boileau:--
+
+“Then shall I describe to you that picture by Rembrandt, that pleased me
+so much; and my cat Childebrand, as is his habit, on my knees resting,
+and anxiously up at me gazing, shall follow the motions of my finger as
+in the air it sketches the story to make it clear.”
+
+Childebrand came in well by way of a rime to Rembrandt, for the verses
+were meant for a Romanticist profession of faith addressed to a friend,
+since deceased, and in those days as enthusiastic an admirer of Victor
+Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and Alfred de Musset as I was.
+
+I am compelled to say of my cats what Don Ruy Gomez de Silva said to Don
+Carlos, when the latter became impatient at the enumeration of the
+former’s ancestors, beginning with Don Silvius “who thrice was Consul of
+Rome,” that is, “I pass over a number, and of the greatest,” and I shall
+come to Madame-Théophile, a red cat with white breast, pink nose, and
+blue eyes, so called because she lived with me on a footing of conjugal
+intimacy. She slept on the foot of my bed, snoozed on the arm of my
+chair while I was writing, came down to the garden and accompanied me
+on my walks, sat at meals with me and not infrequently appropriated the
+morsels on their way from my plate to my mouth.
+
+One day a friend of mine, who was going out of town for a few days,
+intrusted his parrot to me with the request that I would take care of it
+during his absence. The bird, feeling strange in my house, had climbed,
+helping himself with his beak, to the very top of his perch, and looking
+pretty well bewildered, rolled round his eyes, that resembled the gilt
+nails on arm-chairs, and wrinkled the whitish membrane that served him
+for eyelids. Madame-Théophile had never seen a parrot, and she was
+evidently much puzzled by the strange bird. Motionless as an Egyptian
+mummy cat in its net-work of bands, she gazed upon it with an air of
+profound meditation, and put together whatever she had been able to pick
+up of natural history on the roofs, the yard, and the garden. Her
+thoughts were reflected in her shifting glance, and I was able to read
+in it the result of her examination: “It is unmistakably a chicken.”
+
+Having reached this conclusion, she sprang from the table on which she
+had posted herself to make her investigations, and crouched down in one
+corner of the room, flat on her stomach, her elbows out, her head low,
+her muscular backbone on the stretch, like the black panther in Gérome’s
+painting, watching gazelles on their way to the drinking-place.
+
+The parrot followed her movements with feverish anxiety, fluffing out
+its feathers, rattling its chain, lifting its foot, and moving its
+claws, and sharpening its beak upon the edge of its seed-box. Its
+instinct warned it that an enemy was preparing to attack it.
+
+The eyes of the cat, fixed upon the bird with an intensity that had
+something of fascination in it, plainly said in a language well
+understood of the parrot and absolutely intelligible: “Green though it
+is, that chicken must be good to eat.”
+
+I watched the scene with much interest, prepared to interfere at the
+proper time. Madame-Théophile had gradually crawled nearer; her pink
+nose was working, her eyes were half closed, her claws were protruded
+and then drawn in. She thrilled with anticipation like a gourmet sitting
+down to enjoy a truffled pullet; she gloated over the thought of the
+choice and succulent meal she was about to enjoy, and her sensuality was
+tickled by the idea of the exotic dish that was to be hers.
+
+Suddenly she arched her back like a bow that is being drawn, and a swift
+leap landed her right on the perch. The parrot, seeing the danger upon
+him, unexpectedly called out in a deep, sonorous bass voice: “Have you
+had your breakfast, Jack?”
+
+The words filled the cat with indescribable terror; and she leapt back.
+The blast of a trumpet, the smash of a pile of crockery, or a
+pistol-shot fired by her ear would not have dismayed the feline to such
+an extent. All her ornithological notions were upset.
+
+“And what did you have?--A royal roast,” went on the bird.
+
+The cat’s expression clearly meant: “This is not a bird; it’s a man; it
+speaks.”
+
+    “When of claret I’ve drunk my fill,
+    The pot-house whirls and is whirling still,”
+
+sang out the bird with a deafening voice, for it had at once perceived
+that the terror inspired by its speech was its surest means of defence.
+
+The cat looked at me questioningly, and my reply proving unsatisfactory,
+she sneaked under the bed, and refused to come out for the rest of the
+day.
+
+Those of my readers who have not been in the habit of having animals to
+keep them company, and who see in them, as did Descartes, merely
+machines, will no doubt think I am attributing intentions to the bird
+and the quadruped, but as a matter of fact, I have merely translated
+their thoughts into human speech. The next day, Madame-Théophile, having
+somewhat overcome her fright, made another attempt, and was routed in
+the same fashion. That was enough for her, and henceforth she remained
+convinced that the bird was a man.
+
+This dainty and lovely creature adored perfumes. She would go into
+ecstasies on breathing in the patchouli and vetiver used for Cashmere
+shawls. She had also a taste for music. Nestling upon a pile of scores,
+she would listen most attentively and with every mark of satisfaction to
+the singers who came to perform at the critic’s piano. But high notes
+made her nervous, and she never failed to close the singer’s mouth with
+her paw if the lady sang the high A. We used to try the experiment for
+the fun of the thing, and it never failed once. It was quite impossible
+to fool my dilettante cat on that note.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE WHITE DYNASTY
+
+
+Let me come to more recent times. A cat brought from Havana by Mlle.
+Aïta de la Penuela, a young Spanish artist whose studies of white angora
+cats used to adorn and still adorn the show-windows of the
+print-sellers, gave birth to the daintiest little kitten, exactly like
+the puffs used for the application of face powder, which kitten was
+presented to me. Its immaculate whiteness caused it to be named Pierrot,
+and this appellation, when it grew up, developed into Don Pierrot of
+Navarre, which was infinitely more majestic and smacked of a grandee of
+Spain.
+
+Don Pierrot, like all animals that are fondled and petted, became
+delightfully amiable, and shared the life of the household with that
+fulness of satisfaction cats derive from close association with the
+fireside. Seated in his customary place, close to the fire, he really
+looked as if he understood the conversation and was interested in it.
+He followed the speakers with his eyes, and every now and then would
+utter a little cry, exactly as if to object and give his own opinion
+upon literature, which formed the staple of our talks. He was very fond
+of books, and when he found one open on the table, he would lie down by
+it, gaze attentively at the page and turn the leaves with his claws;
+then he ended by going to sleep, just as if he had really been reading a
+fashionable novel. As soon as I picked up my pen, he would leap upon the
+desk, and watch attentively the steel nib scribbling away on the paper,
+moving his head every time I began a new line. Sometimes he endeavoured
+to collaborate with me, and would snatch the pen out of my hand, no
+doubt with the intention of writing in his turn, for he was as æsthetic
+a cat as Hoffmann’s Murr. Indeed, I strongly suspect that he was in the
+habit of inditing his memoirs, at night, in some gutter or another, by
+the light of his own phosphorescent eyes. Unfortunately, these
+lucubrations are lost.
+
+Don Pierrot of Navarre always sat up at night until I came home, waiting
+for me on the inside of the door, and as soon as I stepped into the
+antechamber he would come rubbing himself against my legs, arching his
+back and purring in gladsome, friendly fashion. Then he would start to
+walk in front of me, preceding me like a page, and I am sure that if I
+had asked him to do so, he would have carried my candle. In this way he
+would escort me to my bedroom, wait until I had undressed, jump up on
+the bed, put his paws round my neck, rub his nose against mine, lick me
+with his tiny red tongue, rough as a file, and utter little inarticulate
+cries by way of expressing unmistakably the pleasure he felt at seeing
+me again. When he had sufficiently caressed me and it was time to sleep
+he used to perch upon the backboard of his bed and slept there like a
+bird roosting on a branch. As soon as I woke in the morning, he would
+come and stretch out beside me until I rose.
+
+Midnight was the latest time allowed for my return home. On this point
+Pierrot was as inflexible as a janitor. Now, at that time I had founded,
+along with a few friends, a little evening reunion called “The Four
+Candles Society,” the place of meeting happening to be lighted by four
+candles stuck in silver candlesticks placed at each corner of the table.
+Occasionally the conversation became so absorbing that I would forget
+the time, even at the risk of seeing, like Cinderella, my carriage turn
+into a pumpkin and my coachman into a big rat. Twice or thrice Pierrot
+sat up for me until two o’clock in the morning, but presently he took
+offence at my conduct and went to bed without waiting for me. I was
+touched by this mute protest against my innocently disorderly way of
+life, and thereafter I regularly returned home at midnight. Pierrot,
+however, proved hard to win back; he wanted to make sure that my
+repentance was no mere passing matter, but once he was convinced that I
+had really reformed, he deigned to restore me to his good graces and
+again took up his nightly post in the antechamber.
+
+It is no easy matter to win a cat’s love, for cats are philosophical,
+sedate, quiet animals, fond of their own way, liking cleanliness and
+order, and not apt to bestow their affection hastily. They are quite
+willing to be friends, if you prove worthy of their friendship, but they
+decline to be slaves. They are affectionate, but they exercise free
+will, and will not do for you what they consider to be unreasonable.
+Once, however, they have bestowed their friendship, their trust is
+absolute, and their affection most faithful. They become one’s
+companions in hours of solitude, sadness, and labour. A cat will stay on
+your knees a whole evening, purring away, happy in your company and
+careless of that of its own species. In vain do mewings sound on the
+roofs, inviting it to one of the cat parties where red herring brine
+takes the place of tea; it is not to be tempted and spends the evening
+with you. If you put it down, it is back in a jiffy with a kind of
+cooing that sounds like a gentle reproach. Sometimes, sitting up in
+front of you, it looks at you so softly, so tenderly, so caressingly,
+and in so human a way that it is almost terrifying, for it is impossible
+to believe that there is no mind back of those eyes.
+
+Don Pierrot of Navarre had a mate of the same breed just as white as
+himself. All the expressions I have accumulated in the “Symphony in
+White Major” for the purpose of rendering the idea of snowy whiteness
+would be insufficient to give an idea of the immaculate coat of my cat,
+by the side of which the ermine’s fur would have looked yellow. I called
+her Séraphita, after Balzac’s Swedenborgian novel. Never did the heroine
+of that wondrous legend, when ascending with Minna the snow-covered
+summits of the Falberg, gleam more purely white. Séraphita was of a
+dreamy and contemplative disposition. She would remain for hours on a
+cushion, wide-awake and following with her eyes, with intensest
+attention, sights invisible to ordinary mortals. She liked to be petted,
+but returned caresses in a very reserved way, and only in the case of
+persons whom she honoured with her approbation, a most difficult thing
+to obtain. She was fond of luxury, and we were always sure to find her
+curled up in the newest arm-chair or on the piece of stuff that best set
+off her swan’s-down coat. She spent endless time at her toilet; every
+morning she carefully smoothed out her fur. She used her paws to wash
+herself, and every single hair of her fur, having been brushed out with
+her rosy tongue, shone like brand-new silver. If any one touched her,
+she at once removed the traces of the touch, for she could not bear to
+be rumpled. Her elegance and stylishness suggested that she was an
+aristocrat, and among her own kind she must have been a duchess at the
+very least. She delighted in perfumes, stuck her little nose into
+bouquets, and bit with little spasms of pleasure at handkerchiefs on
+which scent had been put; she walked upon the dressing-table among the
+scent-bottles, smelling the stoppers, and if she had been allowed to do
+so would no doubt have used powder. Such was Séraphita, and never did a
+cat bear a poetic name more worthily.
+
+At about this time a couple of those sham sailors who sell striped rugs,
+handkerchiefs of pine-apple fibre and other exotic products, happened to
+pass through the Rue de Longchamps, where I was living. They had in a
+little cage a pair of white Norway rats with red eyes, as pretty as
+pretty could be. Just then I had a fancy for white creatures, and my
+hen-run was inhabited by white fowls only. I bought the two rats, and a
+big cage was built for them, with inner stairs leading to the different
+stories, eating-places, bedrooms, and trapezes for gymnastics. They were
+unquestionably happier and better off there than La Fontaine’s rat in
+his Dutch cheese.
+
+The gentle creatures, which, I really do not know why, inspire puerile
+repulsion, became astonishingly tame as soon as they found out that no
+harm was intended them. They allowed themselves to be petted just like
+cats, and would catch my finger in their ideally delicate little rosy
+hands, and lick it in the friendliest way. They used to be let out at
+the end of our meals, and would clamber up the arms, the shoulders, and
+the heads of the guests, emerging from the sleeves of coats and
+dressing-gowns with marvellous skill and agility. All these
+performances, carried out very prettily, were intended to secure
+permission to forage among the remains of the dessert. They were then
+placed on the table, and in a twinkling the male and female had put away
+the nuts, filberts, raisins, and lumps of sugar. It was most amusing to
+watch their quick, eager ways, and their astonishment when they reached
+the edge of the table. Then, however, we would hold out to them a strip
+of wood reaching to their cage, and they stored away their gains in
+their pantry.
+
+The pair multiplied rapidly, and numerous families, as white as their
+progenitors, ran up and down the little ladders in the cage, so that ere
+long I found myself the owner of some thirty rats so very tame that when
+the weather was cold they were in the habit of nestling in my pockets in
+order to keep warm, and remained there perfectly still. Sometimes I used
+to have the doors of my City of Rats thrown open, and, after having
+ascended to the topmost story of my house, I whistled in a way very
+familiar to my pets. Then the rats, which find it difficult to ascend
+steps, climbed up the balusters, got on to the rail, and proceeding in
+Indian file while keeping their equilibrium like acrobats, ascended that
+narrow road not infrequently descended astride by schoolboys, and came
+to me uttering little squeaks and manifesting the liveliest joy. And
+now I must confess to a piece of stupidity on my part. I had so often
+been told that a rat’s tail looked like a red worm and spoiled the
+creature’s pretty looks, that I selected one of the younger generation
+and cut off the much criticised caudal appendage with a red-hot shovel.
+The little rat bore the operation very well, grew apace, and became an
+imposing fellow with mustaches. But though he was the lighter for the
+loss of his tail, he was much less agile than his comrades; he was very
+careful about trying gymnastics and fell very often. He always brought
+up the rear when the company ascended the balusters, and looked like a
+tight-rope dancer trying to do without a balancing-pole. Then I
+understood the usefulness of a tail in the case of rats: it aids them to
+maintain their equilibrium when scampering along cornices and narrow
+ledges. They swing it to the right or the left by way of counterpoise
+when they lean over to the one side or the other; hence the constant
+switching which appears so causeless. When one observes Nature
+carefully, one readily comes to the conclusion that she does nothing
+that is unnecessary, and that one ought to be very careful in attempting
+to improve upon her.
+
+No doubt my reader wonders how cats and rats, two races so hostile to
+each other, and the one of which is the prey of the other, can manage to
+live together. The fact is that mine got on wonderfully harmoniously
+together. The cats were good as gold to the rats, which had lost all
+fear of them. The felines were never perfidious, and the rats never had
+to mourn the loss of a single comrade. Don Pierrot of Navarre was
+uncommonly fond of them; he would lie down by their cage and spend hours
+watching them at play. When by chance the door of the room was closed,
+he would scratch and miaoul gently until it was opened and he could join
+his little white friends, which often came and slept by him. Séraphita,
+who was more stand-off and who disliked the strong odour of musk given
+out by the rats, did not take part in their sports, but she never harmed
+them, and allowed them to pass quietly in front of her without ever
+unsheathing her claws.
+
+The end of these rats was strange. One heavy, stormy summer’s day, when
+the mercury was nearly up to a hundred degrees, their cage had been put
+in the garden, in an arbour covered with creepers, as they seemed to
+feel the heat greatly. The storm burst with lightnings, rain, thunder,
+and squalls of wind. The tall poplars on the river bank bent like reeds.
+Armed with an umbrella, which the wind turned inside out, I was just
+starting to fetch in my rats, when a dazzling flash of lightning, which
+seemed to tear open the very depths of heaven, stopped me on the
+uppermost of the steps leading from the terrace to the garden.
+
+A terrific thunder-clap, louder than the report of a hundred guns,
+followed almost instantaneously upon the flash, and the shock was so
+violent that I was nearly thrown to the ground.
+
+The storm passed away shortly after that frightful explosion, but, on
+reaching the arbour, I found the thirty-two rats, toes up, killed by the
+one and same stroke of lightning. No doubt the iron wires of their cage
+had attracted the electric fluid and acted as a conductor.
+
+Thus died together, as they had lived, the thirty-two Norway rats,--an
+enviable death, not often vouchsafed by fate!
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE BLACK DYNASTY
+
+
+Don Pierrot of Navarre, being a native of Havana, required a hot-house
+temperature, and he enjoyed it in the house; round the dwelling,
+however, stretched great gardens, separated by open fences through which
+a cat could easily make its way, and rose great trees in which
+twittered, warbled, and sang whole flocks of birds; so that sometimes
+Pierrot, profiting by a door left open, would go out at night and start
+on a hunt, rambling through the grass and flowers wet with dew. In such
+cases he would have to await daylight to be let in, for although he
+would come and miaoul under our windows, his appeals did not always
+awaken the sleepers in the house. He had a delicate chest, and one
+night, when it was colder than usual, he caught a cold which soon turned
+into consumption. After coughing for a whole year poor Pierrot became
+thin and emaciated, and his coat, formerly so silky, had the mat
+whiteness of a shroud. His great transparent eyes had become the most
+important feature in his poor shrunken face; his red nose had turned
+pale, and he walked with slow steps, in a melancholy fashion, by the
+sunny side of the wall, watching the yellow autumn leaves whirling and
+twisting. One could have sworn he was reciting to himself Millevoye’s
+elegy. A sick animal is a very touching object, for it bears suffering
+with such gentle and sad resignation. We did all we could to save him; I
+called in a very skilful physician who tested his chest and felt his
+pulse. Ass’s milk was prescribed, and the poor little creature drank it
+willingly enough out of his tiny china saucer. He would remain for hours
+at a time stretched out on my knee like the shadow of a sphinx; I could
+feel his vertebræ like the grains of a chaplet, and he would try to
+acknowledge my caresses with a feeble purr that sounded like a
+death-rattle. On the day he died, he lay on his side gasping, but got
+himself up by a supreme effort, came to me, and opening wide his eyes,
+fixed upon me a glance that called for help with intense supplication.
+He seemed to say to me, “You are a man; do save me.” Then he staggered,
+his eyes already glazed, and fell to the ground, uttering so woeful, so
+despairing, so anguished a cry that it filled me with mute horror. He
+was buried at the foot of the garden, under a white rosebush that still
+marks the place of his tomb.
+
+Séraphita died two or three years later, of croup, which the physician
+was unable to master. She rests not far from Pierrot.
+
+With her ended the White Dynasty, but not the family. From that pair of
+snow-white cats had sprung three coal-black kittens, a mystery the
+solution of which I leave to others. Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables” were
+then all the rage, and the names of the characters in the novel were in
+every one’s mouth. The two little male cats were called Enjolras and
+Gavroche, and the female Eponine. They were the sweetest of kittens, and
+we trained them to fetch and carry pieces of paper thrown at a distance
+just as a dog would do. We got so far as to throw the paper ball on the
+top of wardrobes, or to hide it behind boxes or in tall vases, and they
+would retrieve it very prettily with their paws. On attaining years of
+discretion, they forsook these frivolous sports and resumed the dreamy,
+philosophical calm which is the real characteristic of cats.
+
+All negroes are alike to people who land in a slave-owning country in
+America, and it is impossible for them to tell one from another. So, to
+those who do not care for them, three black cats are three black cats
+and nothing more. But an observing eye makes no such mistake. The
+physiognomies of animals are as different as those of men, and I could
+always tell to which particular cat belonged the black face, as black as
+Harlequin’s mask, and lighted by emerald disks with golden gleams.
+
+Enjolras, who was by far the handsomest of the three, was marked by his
+big lion-like head and well whiskered cheeks, by his muscular shoulders,
+his long back, and his splendid tail, fluffy as a feather duster. There
+was something theatrical and grandiloquent about him, and he seemed to
+pose like an actor who attracts admiration. His motions were slow,
+undulating, and full of majesty; he seemed to be always stepping on a
+table covered with china ornaments and Venetian glass, so circumspectly
+did he select the place where he put down his foot. He was not much of a
+Stoic, and exhibited a liking for food which his namesake would have had
+reason to blame. No doubt Enjolras, the pure and sober youth, would have
+said to him, as the angel did to Swedenborg, “You eat too much.” We
+rather encouraged this amusing voracity, analogous to that of monkeys,
+and Enjolras grew to a size and weight very uncommon among domestic
+cats. Then I bethought myself of having him shaved in the style of
+poodles, in order to bring out completely his leonine appearance. He
+retained his mane and a long tuft of hair at the end of the tail, and I
+would not swear that his thighs were not adorned with mutton-chop
+whiskers like those Munito used to wear. Thus trimmed, he resembled, I
+must confess, a Japanese monster much more than a lion of the Atlas
+Mountains or the Cape. Never was a more extravagant fancy carried out on
+the body of a living animal; his closely clipped coat allowed the skin
+to show through, and its bluish tones, most curious to note, contrasted
+strangely with his black mane.
+
+Gavroche was a cat with a sharp, satirical look, as if he intended to
+recall his namesake in the novel. Smaller than Enjolras, he was endowed
+with abrupt and comical agility, and in the stead of the puns and slang
+of the Paris street-Arab, he indulged in the funniest capers, leaps, and
+attitudes. I am bound to add that, yielding to his street instincts,
+Gavroche was in the habit of seizing every opportunity of leaving the
+drawing-room and going off to join, in the court, and even in the public
+streets, numbers of wandering cats, “of unknown blood and lineage low,”
+with whom he took part in performances of doubtful taste, completely
+forgetful of his dignified rank as a Havana cat, the son of the
+illustrious Don Pierrot of Navarre, a grandee of Spain of the first
+class, and of the Marchioness Séraphita, noted for her haughty and
+aristocratic manners.
+
+Sometimes he would bring in to his meals, in order to treat them,
+consumptive friends of his, so starved that every rib in their body
+showed, having nothing but skin and bones, whom he had picked up in the
+course of his excursions and wanderings, for he was a kind-hearted
+fellow. The poor devils, their ears laid back, their tails between their
+legs, their glance restless, dreading to be driven from their free meal
+by a housemaid armed with a broom, swallowed the pieces two, three, and
+four at a time, and like the famous dog, _Siete Aguas_ (Seven Waters),
+of Spanish posadas, would lick the platter as clean as if it had been
+washed and scoured by a Dutch housekeeper who had served as model to
+Mieris or Gerard Dow. Whenever I saw Gavroche’s companions, I
+remembered the lettering under one of Gavarni’s drawings: “A nice lot,
+the friends you are capable of proceeding with!” But after all it was
+merely a proof of Gavroche’s kindness of heart, for he was quite able to
+polish off the plateful himself.
+
+The cat who bore the name of the interesting Eponine was more lissome
+and slender in shape than her brothers. Her mien was quite peculiar to
+herself, owing to her somewhat long face, her eyes slanting slightly in
+the Chinese fashion, and of a green like that of the eyes of Pallas
+Athene, on whom Homer invariably bestows the title of γλαυκῶπις, her
+velvety black nose, of as fine a grain as a Perigord truffle, and her
+incessantly moving whiskers. Her coat, of a superb black, was always in
+motion and shimmered with infinite changes. There never was a more
+sensitive, nervous, and electric animal. If she were stroked two or
+three times, in the dark, blue sparks came crackling from her fur. She
+attached herself to me in particular, just as in the novel Eponine
+becomes attached to Marius. As I was less taken up with Cosette than
+that handsome youth, I accepted the love of my affectionate and devoted
+cat, who is still the assiduous companion of my labours and the delight
+of my hermitage on the confines of the suburbs. She trots up when she
+hears the bell ring, welcomes my visitors, leads them into the
+drawing-room, shows them to a seat, talks to them--yes, I mean it, talks
+to them--with croonings and cooings and whimpers quite unlike the
+language cats make use of among themselves, and which simulate the
+articulate speech of man. You ask me what it is she says? She says, in
+the plainest possible fashion: “Do not be impatient; look at the
+pictures or chat with me, if you enjoy that. My master will be down in a
+minute.” And when I come in she discreetly retires to an arm-chair or on
+top of the piano, and listens to the conversation without breaking in
+upon it, like a well-bred animal that is used to society.
+
+Sweet Eponine has given us so many proofs of intelligence, kindly
+disposition, and sociability that she has been promoted, by common
+consent, to the dignity of a _person_, for it is plain that a higher
+order of reason than instinct guides her actions. This dignity entails
+the right of eating at table like a person, and not from a saucer in a
+corner, like an animal. So Eponine’s chair is placed beside mine at
+lunch and dinner, and on account of her size she is allowed to rest her
+fore paws upon the edge of the table. She has her own place set, without
+fork or spoon, but with her glass. She eats of every course that is
+brought on, from the soup to the dessert, always waiting for her turn to
+be served and behaving with a discretion and decency that it is to be
+wished were more frequently met with in children. She turns up at the
+first sound of the bell, and when we enter the dining-room we are sure
+to find her already in her place, standing on her chair, her paws on the
+edge of the table, and holding up her little head to be kissed, like a
+well-bred young lady who is polite and affectionate towards her parents
+and her elders.
+
+The sun has its spots, the diamond its flaws, and perfection itself its
+little weak points. Eponine, it must be owned, has an overmastering
+fondness for fish, a taste she shares in common with all her race. The
+Latin proverb, _Catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantas_, to the
+contrary notwithstanding, she is always ready to pop her paw into the
+water to fish out a blay, a small carp, or a trout. Fish makes her
+well-nigh delirious, and like children eagerly looking for the dessert,
+she is apt to object to the soup, when the preliminary investigations
+she has carried on in the kitchen have enabled her to ascertain that the
+fish has duly come in and that there is no reason why Vatel should run
+himself through with his sword. In such cases we do not help her to
+fish, and I remark to her, in a cold tone, “A lady who has no appetite
+for soup cannot have any appetite for fish,” and the dish is
+remorselessly sent past her. Then seeing that it is no joking matter,
+dainty Eponine bolts her soup in hot haste, licks up the very last drop
+of the bouillon, puts away the minutest crumb of bread or Italian paste,
+and turns round to me with the proud look of one conscious of being
+without fear or reproach and of having fulfilled her duty. Her share of
+the fish is handed to her, and she despatches it with every mark of
+extreme satisfaction. Then, having tasted a little of every dish, she
+winds up her meal by drinking one-third of a glassful of water.
+
+If we happen to have guests at dinner, Eponine does not need to have
+seen them enter to be aware that there is to be company. She simply
+looks at her place, and if she sees a knife, fork, and spoon laid there,
+she makes off at once and perches on the piano stool, her usual place of
+refuge in such cases. Those who deny reasoning powers to animals may
+explain this fact, so simple apparently, yet so suggestive, as best they
+may. That judicious and observant cat of mine deduces from the presence
+by her plate of utensils which man alone understands how to use that she
+must give up her position for that day to a guest, and she forthwith
+does so. Never once has she made a mistake. Only, when she is well
+acquainted with the particular guest, she will climb upon his knee and
+seek, by her graceful ways and her caresses, to induce him to bestow
+some tit-bit upon her.
+
+But enough of this; I must not weary my readers, and stories of cats are
+less attractive than stories about dogs. Yet I deem that I ought to tell
+of the deaths of Enjolras and Gavroche. In the Latin Rudiments there is
+a rule stated thus: _Sua eum perdidit ambitio._ Of Enjolras it may be
+said: _Sua eum perdidit pinguitudo_, that is, his admirable condition
+was the cause of his death. He was killed by idiotic fanciers of jugged
+hare. His murderers, however, perished before the end of the year in the
+most painful manner; for the death of a black cat, an eminently
+cabalistic animal, never goes unavenged.
+
+Gavroche, seized with a frantic love of freedom, or rather with a
+sudden attack of vertigo, sprang out of the window one day, crossed the
+street, climbed the fence of the Parc Saint-James, which faces our
+house, and vanished. In spite of our utmost endeavours, we never managed
+to hear of him again, and a shadow of mystery hangs over his fate; so
+that the only survivor of the Black Dynasty is Eponine, who is still
+faithful to her master and has become a thorough cat of letters.
+
+Her companion now is a magnificent angora cat, whose gray and silver fur
+recalls Chinese spotted porcelain. He is called Zizi, alias “Too
+Handsome to Work.” The handsome fellow lives in a sort of contemplative
+_kief_, like a theriaki under the influence of the drug, and makes one
+think of “The Ecstasies of Mr. Hochenez.” Zizi is passionately fond of
+music, and, not satisfied with listening to it, he indulges in it
+himself. Sometimes, in the dead of night, when everybody is asleep, a
+strange, fantastic melody, which the Kreislers and the musicians of the
+future might well envy, breaks in upon the silence. It is Zizi walking
+upon the key-board of the piano which has been left open, and who is at
+once astonished and delighted at hearing the keys sing under his tread.
+
+It would be unjust not to link with this branch Cleopatra, Eponine’s
+daughter, whose shy disposition keeps her from mingling in society. She
+is of a tawny black, like Mummia, Atta-Croll’s hairy companion, and her
+two green eyes look like huge aqua-marines. She generally stands on
+three legs, her fourth lifted up like a classical lion that has lost its
+marble ball.
+
+These be the chronicles of the Black Dynasty. Enjolras, Gavroche, and
+Eponine recall to me the creations of a beloved master; only, when I
+re-read “Les Misérables,” the chief characters in the novel seem to me
+to be taken by black cats, a fact that in no wise diminishes the
+interest I take in it.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THIS SIDE FOR DOGS
+
+
+I have often been charged with not being fond of dogs; a charge which
+does not at first sight appear to be very serious, but which I
+nevertheless desire to clear myself of, for it implies a certain amount
+of dislike. People who prefer cats are thought by many to be cruel,
+sensuous, and treacherous, while dog-lovers are credited with being
+frank, loyal, and open-hearted,--in a word, possessed of all the
+qualities attributed to the canine race. I in no wise deny the merits of
+Médor, Turk, Miraut, and other engaging animals, and I am prepared to
+acknowledge the truth of the axiom formulated by Charlet,--“The best
+thing about man is his dog.” I have been the owner of several, and I
+still own some. Should any of those who seek to discredit me come to my
+house, they would be met by a Havana lap-dog barking shrilly and
+furiously at them, and by a greyhound that very likely would bite their
+legs for them. But my affection for dogs has an understratum of fear.
+These excellent creatures, so good, so faithful, so devoted, so loving,
+may go mad at any moment, and then they become more dangerous than a
+lance-head snake, an asp, a rattlesnake or a cobra capella. This reacts
+on my love for dogs. Then dogs strike me as a bit uncanny; they have
+such a searching, intense glance; they sit down in front of you with so
+questioning a look that it is fairly embarrassing. Goethe disliked that
+glance of theirs that seems to attempt to incorporate man’s soul within
+itself, and he drove away dogs, saying, “You shall not swallow my monad,
+much as you may try.”
+
+The Pharamond of my canine dynasty was called Luther. He was a big white
+spaniel, with liver spots, and handsome brown ears. He was a setter, had
+lost his owner, and after looking for him a long time in vain, had taken
+to living in my father’s house at Passy. Not having partridges to go
+after, he had taken to rat-hunting, and was as clever at it as a Scotch
+terrier. At that time I was living in that blind alley of the Doyenné,
+now destroyed, where Gérard de Nerval, Arsène Houssaye and Camille
+Rogier were the heads of a little picturesque and artistic Bohemia, the
+eccentric mode of life in which has been so well told by others that it
+is unnecessary to relate it over again. There we were, right in the
+centre of the Carrousel, as independent and solitary as on a desert
+island in Oceanica, under the shadow of the Louvre, among the blocks of
+stone and the nettles, close to an old ruinous church, with fallen-in
+roof which looked most romantic in the moonlight. Luther, with whom I
+was on a most friendly footing, seeing that I had finally abandoned the
+paternal nest, made a point of coming to see me every morning. He
+started from Passy, no matter what the weather was, came down the Quai
+de Billy, the Cours-la-Reine, and reached my place at about eight
+o’clock, just as I was waking. He used to scratch at the door, which was
+opened for him, and he dashed joyously at me with yelps of joy, put his
+paws on my knees, received with a modest and unassuming air the caresses
+his noble conduct merited, took a look round the room, and started back
+to Passy. On arriving there, he went to my mother, wagged his tail,
+barked a little, and said as plainly as if he had spoken: “I have seen
+young master; don’t worry; he is all right.” Having thus reported to the
+proper person the result of his self-imposed mission, he would drink up
+half a bowlful of water, eat his food, lie down on the carpet by my
+mother’s chair,--for he entertained peculiar affection for her,--and
+sleep for an hour or two after his long run. Now, how do people who
+maintain that animals do not think and are incapable of putting two and
+two together explain this morning visit, which kept up family relations
+and brought to the home-nest news of the fledgeling that had so recently
+left it?
+
+Poor Luther’s end was very sad. He became taciturn, morose, and one fine
+morning bolted from the house, feeling the rabies on him and resolved
+not to bite his masters; so he fled, and we have every reason to believe
+that he was killed as a mad dog, for we never saw him again.
+
+After a pretty long interregnum a new dog was brought into the house. It
+was called Zamore, and was a sort of spaniel, of very mixed breed, small
+in size, with a black coat, save the tan spots over his eyes and the tan
+hair on his stomach. On the whole he was insignificant physically, and
+ugly rather than handsome; but morally, he was a remarkable dog. He
+absolutely despised women, would not obey them, never would follow them,
+and never once did my mother or my sisters manage to win from him the
+least sign of friendship or deference. He would accept their attentions
+and the tit-bits they gave him with a superior air, but never did he
+express any gratitude for them. Never would he yelp, never would he rap
+the floor with his tail, never bestow on them a single one of those
+caresses dogs are so fond of lavishing. He remained impassible in a
+sphinx-like pose, like a serious man who will not take part in the
+conversation of frivolous persons. The master he had elected was my
+father, in whom he acknowledged the authority of the head of the house,
+and whom he considered a mature and serious man. But his affection for
+him was austere and stoical, and was not shown by gambadoes, larks, and
+lickings. Only, he always kept his eyes upon him, followed his every
+motion and kept close to heel, never allowing himself the smallest
+escapade or the least nod to any passing comrades. My dear and lamented
+father was a great fisherman before the Lord, and he caught more barbels
+than Nimrod ever slew antelopes. It certainly could not be said of his
+fishing-rod that it was a pole and string with a worm at one end and a
+fool at the other, for he was a very clever man, and none the less he
+daily filled his basket with fish. Zamore used to accompany him on his
+trips, and during the long night-watches entailed by ground-line
+fishing for the big fellows, he would stand on the very edge of the
+water, apparently trying to fathom its dark depths and to follow the
+movements of the prey. Although he often pricked up his ears at the
+faint and distant sounds that, at night, are heard in the deepest
+silence, he never barked, having understood that to be mute is a quality
+indispensable in a fisherman’s dog. In vain did Phœbe’s alabaster brow
+show above the horizon reflected in the sombre mirror of the river;
+Zamore would not bay at the moon, although such prolonged ululation
+gives infinite delight to creatures of his species. Only when the bell
+on the set-line tinkled did he look at his master and allow himself one
+short bark, knowing that the prey was caught; and he appeared to take
+the greatest interest in the manœuvres involved in the landing of a
+three or four pound barbel.
+
+No one would have suspected that under his calm, abstracted,
+philosophical look, this dog, so serious that he was almost melancholy,
+and despised all frivolity, nursed an overmastering, strange, never to
+be suspected passion, absolutely contrary to his apparent moral and
+physical character.
+
+“You do not mean,” I hear my reader exclaim, “that the good Zamore had
+hidden vices?--that he was a thief?” No. “A libertine?” No. “That he
+loved brandied cherries?” No. “That he bit people?” Never. Zamore was
+crazy about dancing. He was an artist devoted to the choregraphic art.
+
+He became conscious of his vocation in the following manner. One day
+there appeared on the square at Passy a gray moke, with sores on its
+back, and drooping ears, one of those wretched mountebanks’ asses that
+Decamps and Fouquet used to paint so well. The two baskets balanced on
+either side of his raw and prominent backbone contained a troupe of
+trained dogs, dressed as marquesses, troubadours, Turks, Alpine
+shepherdesses, or Queens of Golconda, according to their sex. The
+impresario put down the dogs, cracked his whip, and suddenly every one
+of the actors forsook the horizontal for the perpendicular position, and
+transformed itself into a biped. The drum and fife started up and the
+ballet commenced.
+
+Zamore, who was gravely idling around, stopped smitten with wonder at
+the sight. The dogs, dressed in showy colours, braided with imitation
+gold lace on every seam, a plumed hat or a turban on their heads, and
+moving in cadence to a witching rhythm, with a distant resemblance to
+human beings, appeared to him to be supernatural creatures. The
+skilfully linked steps, the slides, the pirouettes delighted but did not
+discourage him. Like Correggio at the sight of Raphael’s painting, he
+exclaimed in his canine speech, _Anch’ io son pittore!_ and when the
+company filed past him, he also, filled with a noble spirit of
+emulation, rose up, somewhat uncertainly, upon his hind legs and
+attempted to join them, to the great delight of the onlookers.
+
+The manager did not see it in that light, and let fly a smart cut of his
+whip at Zamore, who was driven from the circle, just as a spectator
+would be ejected from the theatre did he, during the performance, take
+on himself to ascend to the stage and to take part in the ballet.
+
+This public humiliation did not check Zamore’s vocation. He returned
+home with drooping tail and thoughtful mien, and during the whole of the
+remainder of that day was more reserved, more taciturn, and more morose
+than ever. But in the dead of night my sisters were awakened by slight
+sounds, the cause of which they could not conjecture, which proceeded
+from an uninhabited room next theirs, where Zamore was usually put to
+bed on an old arm-chair. It sounded like a rhythmic tread, made more
+sonorous by the silence of night. They at first supposed that the mice
+were romping round, but the sound of steps and leaps on the flooring was
+too loud for that. The bravest of my sisters rose, partly opened the
+door, and by the light of a moonbeam streaming in through a pane, she
+beheld Zamore on his hind legs, pawing the air with his fore paws, and
+busy studying the dancing steps he had admired in the street that
+morning. The gentleman was practising!
+
+Nor did this prove, as might be supposed, a passing fancy, a momentary
+attraction; Zamore persisted in his choregraphic aspirations and turned
+out a fine dancer. Every time he heard the fife and drum he would run
+out on the square, slip between the spectators’ legs and watch, with the
+closest attention, the trained dogs performing their exercises. Mindful,
+however, of the whip-cut, he no longer attempted to take part in the
+dancing; he took note of the poses, the steps, and the attitudes, and
+then, at night, in the silence of his room, he would work away at them,
+remaining the while, during the day, as austere in his bearing as ever.
+Ere long he was not satisfied with copying; he took to composing, to
+inventing, and I am bound to say few dogs surpassed him in the elevated
+style. I often used to watch him through the half-open door; he
+practised with such enthusiasm that every night he would drain dry the
+bowl of water placed in one corner of the room.
+
+When he had become quite sure of himself and the equal of the most
+accomplished of four-footed dancers, he felt he could no longer hide his
+light under a bushel and that he must reveal the mystery of his
+accomplishments. The court-yard of the house was closed, on one side, by
+an iron fence with spaces sufficiently wide to allow moderately stout
+dogs to enter in easily. So one fine morning some fifteen or twenty dog
+friends of his, connoisseurs no doubt, to whom Zamore had sent letters
+of invitation to his début in the choregraphic art, met around a square
+of smooth ground nicely levelled off, which the artist had previously
+swept with his tail, and the performance began. The dogs appeared to be
+delighted and manifested their enthusiasm by _ouahs!_ _ouahs!_ closely
+resembling the _bravi_ of dilettanti at the Opera. With the sole
+exception of an old and pretty muddy poodle, very wretched looking, and
+a critic, no doubt, who barked out something about forgetting sound
+tradition, all the spectators proclaimed Zamore the Vestris of dogs and
+the god of dancing. Our artist had performed a minuet, a jig, and a
+_deux temps_ waltz. A large number of two-footed spectators had joined
+the four-footed ones, and Zamore enjoyed the honour of being applauded
+by human hands.
+
+Dancing became so much a habit of his that when he was paying court to
+some fair, he would stand up on his hind legs, making bows and turning
+his toes out like a marquis of the _ancien régime_. All he lacked was
+the plumed hat under his arm.
+
+Apart from this he was as hypochondriacal as a comic actor and took no
+part in the life of the household. He stirred only when he saw his
+master pick up his hat and stick. Zamore died of brain fever, brought
+on, no doubt, by overwork in trying to learn the schottische, then in
+the full swing of its popularity. Zamore may say within his tomb, as
+says the Greek dancer in her epitaph: “Earth, rest lightly on me, for I
+rested lightly on thee.”
+
+How came it that being so talented, Zamore was not enrolled in Corvi’s
+company? For I was even then sufficiently influential as a critic to
+manage this for him. Zamore, however, would not leave his master, and
+sacrificed his self-love to his affection, a proof of devotion which one
+would look for in vain among men.
+
+A singer, named Kobold, a thorough-bred King Charles from the famous
+kennels of Lord Lauder, took the place of the dancer. It was a queer
+little beast, with an enormous projecting forehead, big goggle eyes,
+nose broken short off at the root, and long ears trailing on the ground.
+When Kobold was brought to France, knowing no language but English, he
+was quite bewildered. He could not understand the orders given him;
+trained to answer to “Go on,” or “Come here,” he remained motionless
+when he was told in French, “Viens,” or “Va-t’en.” It took him a year to
+learn the tongue of the new country in which he found himself and to
+take part in the conversation. Kobold was very fond of music, and
+himself sang little songs with a very strong English accent. The A would
+be struck on the piano, and he caught the note exactly and modulated
+with a flute-like sound phrases that were really musical and that had no
+connection whatever with barking or yelping. When we wanted to make him
+go on, all we had to do was to say, “Sing a little more,” and he would
+repeat the cadence. Although he was fed with the utmost care, as was
+proper in the case of a tenor singer and so distinguished a gentleman,
+Kobold had one eccentric taste: he would eat earth just like a South
+American savage. We never succeeded in curing him of the habit, which
+proved the cause of his death. He was very fond of the stablemen, the
+horses, and the stable, and my ponies had no more constant companion
+than he. He spent his time between their loose-boxes and the piano.
+
+After Kobold, the King Charles, came Myrza, a tiny Havana poodle that
+had the honour of being for a time the property of Giulia Grisi, who
+gave her to me. She is snow-white, especially when she is fresh from her
+bath and has not had time to roll over in the dust, a fancy some dogs
+share with dust-loving birds. She is extremely gentle and affectionate,
+and as sweet-tempered as a dove. Her little fluffy face, her two little
+eyes that might be mistaken for upholstery nails, and her little nose
+like a Piedmont truffle, are most comical. Tufts of hair, curly as
+Astrakhan fur, fall over her face in the most picturesque and unexpected
+way, hiding first one eye and then the other, so that she has the most
+peculiar appearance imaginable and squints like a chameleon.
+
+In Myrza, nature imitates the artificial so perfectly that the little
+creature looks as if she had stepped out of a toy-shop. When her coat is
+nicely curled, and she has got on her blue ribbon bow and her silver
+bell, she is the image of a toy dog, and when she barks it is impossible
+not to wonder whether there is a bellows under her paws.
+
+She spends three-fourths of her time in sleep, and her life would not be
+much changed were she stuffed, nor does she seem particularly clever in
+the ordinary intercourse of life. Yet she one day exhibited an amount of
+intelligence absolutely unparalleled in my experience. Bonnegrâce, the
+painter of the portraits of Tchoumakoff and E. H., which attracted so
+much attention at the exhibitions, had brought to me, in order to get my
+opinion upon it, one of his portraits painted in the manner of Pagnest,
+remarkable for truthfulness of colour and vigour of modelling. Although
+I have lived on terms of closest intimacy with animals and could tell a
+hundred traits of the ingenuity, reasoning, and philosophical powers of
+cats, dogs, and birds, I am bound to confess that animals wholly lack
+any feeling for art. Never have I seen a single one notice a picture,
+and the story of the birds that picked at the grapes in the painting by
+Zeuxis, strikes me as a piece of invention. It is precisely the feeling
+for ornament and art that distinguishes man from brutes. Dogs never look
+at pictures and never put on earrings. Well, Myrza, at the sight of the
+portrait placed against the wall by Bonnegrâce, sprang from the stool on
+which she was lying curled up, dashed at the canvas and barked furiously
+at it, trying to bite the stranger who had made his way into the room.
+Great was her surprise when she found herself compelled to recognise
+that she had a plane surface before her, that her teeth could not lay
+hold of it, and that it was no more than a vain presentment. She smelled
+the picture, tried to wedge in behind the frame, looked at us both with
+a glance of questioning and wonder, and returned to her place, where she
+disdainfully went to sleep again, refusing to have anything more to do
+with the painted individual. Myrza’s features will not be lost to
+posterity, for there is a fine portrait of her by the Hungarian artist,
+Victor Madarasz.
+
+Let me close with the story of Dash. One day a dealer in broken bottles
+and glass stopped at my door in quest of such wares. He had in his cart
+a puppy, three or four months old, which he had been commissioned to
+drown, whereat the worthy fellow grieved much, for the dog kept looking
+at him with a tender and beseeching look as if he knew well what was
+going to happen. The reason of the severe sentence passed on the puppy
+was that he had broken his fore paw. My heart was filled with pity for
+him, and I took charge of the condemned creature; called in a vet, and
+had Dash’s paw set in splints and bandaged. It was impossible, however,
+to stop him gnawing at the dressings; the paw could not be cured, and
+the bones not having knitted, it hung limp like the sleeve of a man who
+has lost an arm. His infirmity, however, did not prevent his being
+jolly, lively, and full of fun, and he managed to race along quite fast
+on his three legs.
+
+He was an out and out street dog, a rascally little cur that Buffon
+himself would have been puzzled to classify. He was ugly, but his
+features were uncommonly mobile and sparkled with cleverness. He seemed
+to understand what was told him, and his expression would change
+according as the words addressed to him, in the same tone of voice, were
+flattering or injurious. He rolled his eyes, turned up his lips,
+indulged in the wildest of nervous twitchings, or else grinned and
+showed his white teeth, obtaining in this way most comical effects of
+which he was perfectly conscious. He would often try to talk; laying his
+paw on my knee, he would fix on me that earnest gaze of his and begin a
+series of murmurs, sighs, and grunts, so varied in intonation that it
+was hard not to recognise them as language. Sometimes in the course of a
+conversation of this sort, Dash would break out into a bark or a yelp,
+and then I would look sternly at him and say: “That is barking, not
+speaking. Is it possible that you are an animal?” Dash, feeling
+humiliated at the suggestion, would go on with his vocalisation, giving
+it the most pathetic expression. We used to say then that Dash was
+telling his tale of woe.
+
+He was passionately fond of sugar, and at dessert, when coffee was
+brought in, he would invariably beg each guest for a piece with such
+insistence that he was always successful. He had ended by transforming
+this merely benevolent gift into a regular tax which he collected with
+unfailing regularity. He was but a little mongrel, yet with the frame of
+a Thersites he had the soul of an Achilles. Infirm though he was, he
+would attack, with madly heroic courage, dogs ten times his size and
+was regularly and terribly thrashed by them. Like Don Quixote, the brave
+Knight of La Mancha, he set out triumphantly and returned in most evil
+plight. Alas! he was destined to fall a victim to his own courage. Some
+months ago he was brought home with a broken back, the work of a
+Newfoundland, an amiable brute, which the next day played the same trick
+to a small greyhound.
+
+Dash’s death was the first of a series of catastrophes: the mistress of
+the house where he met with the death-stroke was, a few days later,
+burned alive in her bed, and the same fate overtook her husband who was
+trying to save her. This was merely a fatal coincidence and by no means
+an expiation, for these people were of the kindest and as fond of
+animals as is a Brahmin, besides being wholly innocent of our poor
+Dash’s tragic fate.
+
+It is true that I have still another dog, called Nero, but he is too
+recent an inmate of our home to have a story of his own.
+
+(NOTE.--Alas! Nero has been poisoned quite recently, just as if he had
+been supping with the Borgias, and his epitaph comes in the very first
+chapter of his life.)
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+MY HORSES
+
+
+Now let not the reader, on seeing this title, hastily accuse me of being
+a swell. Horses! That is a pretentious word to be written down by a man
+of letters! _Musa pedestris_, says Horace; that is, the Muse goes on
+foot, and Parnassus itself has but one horse in its stable, Pegasus.
+Besides, he is a winged steed and by no means quiet in harness, if we
+may credit what Schiller tells us in his ballad. I am not a sportsman,
+alas! and deeply do I regret it, for I am as fond of horses as if I had
+five hundred thousand a year, and I am entirely of the opinion of the
+Arabs concerning pedestrians. The horse is man’s natural pedestal, and
+the one complete being is the centaur, whom mythology so ingeniously
+invented.
+
+Nevertheless, although I am merely a man of letters, I have owned
+horses. In the year 1843 or 1844, I found in the pay-dirt of journalism,
+washed out in the wooden pan of the _feuilleton_, a sufficient quantity
+of gold dust to justify the hope that I might feed, besides my cats,
+dogs, and magpies, a couple of animals of larger size. I first had a
+couple of Shetland ponies, the size of big dogs, hairy as bears, all
+mane and tail, and who looked at me in such friendly fashion through
+their long black hair that I felt more like showing them into the
+drawing-room than sending them to the stable. They would take sugar out
+of my pockets like trained horses. But they proved to be decidedly too
+small; they would have answered as saddle horses for English children
+eight years of age, or as coach horses for Tom Thumb, but I was already
+in the enjoyment of that athletic and portly frame for which I am famed,
+and which has enabled me to bear up, without bending too much under the
+burden, under forty consecutive years of supplying of copy. The
+difference between the owner and the animals was unquestionably too
+striking, even though the little black ponies drew at a very lively gait
+the light phaeton to which they were harnessed with the daintiest tan
+harness, that looked as if it had been bought in a toy shop.
+
+Comic illustrated papers were not as numerous then as now, but there
+were quite enough of them to publish caricatures of me and of my
+horses. It goes without saying that, profiting by the latitude allowed
+to caricature, I was represented as of elephantine bulk and appearance,
+like the god Ganesa, the Hindoo god of wisdom, and that my ponies were
+shown as no larger than poodles, rats, or mice. It is also true that I
+could readily enough have carried my pair one under each arm, and taken
+the carriage on my back. I did for a moment think of having a pony
+four-in-hand, but such a Liliputian equipage would have merely attracted
+greater attention. So to my great regret, for I had already become fond
+of them, I replaced my Shetlands with two dapple-gray cobs of larger
+size, with powerful necks, broad chests, stout and well set up, which
+were not Mecklenburghers, no doubt, but plainly more capable of dragging
+me along. They were both mares, the one called Jane, the other Betsy. So
+far as outward looks went, they were as alike as two peas, and never was
+there a better matched pair apparently. But Betsy was as lazy as Jane
+was willing. While the one drew steadily, the other was satisfied with
+trotting along, saving herself and taking good care to do nothing. These
+two animals, of the same breed, of the same age, and destined to live in
+the same stable, had the liveliest antipathy for each other. They could
+not bear one another, fought in the stable, and bit each other as they
+reared in harness. It was impossible to reconcile them, which was a
+pity, for with their hog manes, like those of the horses on the
+Parthenon frieze, their quivering nostrils, and their eyes dilated with
+anger, they looked uncommonly handsome as they were driven up or down
+the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. A substitute had to be found for Betsy,
+and a small mare, somewhat lighter coloured, for it had been impossible
+to match her exactly, was brought round. Jane immediately welcomed the
+new-comer and did the honours of the stable to her most graciously, and
+ere long they became fast friends. Jane would rest her head on Blanche’s
+neck--she had been so called because her gray coat was rather
+whitish--and when they were let loose in the yard after being rubbed
+down, they would play together like a pair of dogs of children. If one
+was taken out driving, the one left in the stable was plainly wearying
+for her, and as soon as she heard in the distance the ring of her
+companion’s hoofs on the paving-stones, she set up a joyous neigh, like
+a trumpet-blast, to which the other did not fail to reply as she
+approached.
+
+They would come up to be harnessed with astonishing docility, and took
+of themselves their proper place by the pole. Like all animals that are
+loved and well treated, Jane and Blanche soon became most familiar and
+trusting. They would follow me without bridle or halter like the
+best-trained dog, and when I stopped they would stick their noses on my
+shoulder in order to be caressed. Jane was fond of bread, and Blanche of
+sugar, and both were crazy about melon skin. I could make them do
+anything in return for these dainties.
+
+If man were not odiously brutal and ferocious, as he too frequently
+shows himself towards animals, they would cling to him most gladly.
+Their dim brain is filled with the thought of that being who thinks,
+speaks, and does things the meaning of which escapes them; he is a
+mystery and a wonder to them. They will often look at you with eyes full
+of questions you cannot answer, for the key to their speech has not yet
+been found. Yet they have a speech which enables them to exchange, by
+means of intonations not yet noted by man, ideas that are rudimentary,
+no doubt, but which are such as may be conceived by creatures within
+their sphere of action and feeling. Less stupid than we are, animals
+succeed in understanding a few words of our idiom, but not enough to
+enable them to converse with us. Besides, as the words they do learn
+refer solely to what we exact of them, the conversation would be brief.
+But that animals speak cannot be doubted by any one who has lived in any
+degree of intimacy with dogs, cats, horses, or other creatures of that
+sort.
+
+For instance, Jane was naturally intrepid; she never refused, and
+nothing frightened her, but after a few months of cohabitation with
+Blanche her character changed and she manifested at times sudden and
+inexplicable fear. Her companion, much less brave, must have told her
+ghost stories at night. Often, when going through the Bois de Boulogne
+at dusk or after dark, Blanche would stop short or shy, as if a phantom,
+invisible to me, had risen up before her. She trembled in every limb,
+breathed hard, and broke out into sweat. If I attempted to urge her
+ahead with the whip, she backed, and all Jane could do, strong as she
+was, was insufficient to induce her to go on. One of us would have to
+get down, cover her eyes with the hand and lead her until the vision had
+vanished. Little by little Jane became subject to the same terror, the
+reason of which, no doubt, Blanche told her once they were back in their
+stable. I may as well confess that for my part, when I would be driving
+down a dark road on which the moonlight produced alternations of light
+and shadow, and Blanche suddenly became rooted to the spot as though a
+spectre had sprung at her head, and refused to move,--she who was
+usually so docile that Queen Mab’s whip, made of a cricket’s bone with a
+spider’s thread for a thong, was enough to start her into a gallop,--I
+could not repress a slight shudder or refrain from peering into the
+darkness rather anxiously, while at times the harmless trunks of ash or
+birch trees would appear to me as spectral-looking as one of Goya’s
+“Caprices.”
+
+I took great delight in driving these dear animals myself, and we soon
+became very intimate. It was merely as a matter of form that I held the
+reins, for the least click of the tongue was enough to direct them, to
+turn them to the right or the left, to make them go faster, or to stop
+them. They quickly learned all my habits and started of themselves for
+the office, the printer’s, the publishers’, the Bois de Boulogne, and
+the houses where I went to dinner on certain days of the week, and this
+so accurately that they would have ended by compromising me, for they
+would have revealed the places to which I paid the most mysterious
+visits. If I happened to forget the time in the course of an interesting
+or tender conversation they would remind me it was getting late by
+neighing or pawing in front of the balcony.
+
+Although I greatly enjoyed traversing the city in the phaeton drawn by
+my two friends, I could not help at times thinking the north wind sharp
+and the rain cold when the months came along which the Republican
+calendar named so appropriately the months of mist, of frost, of rain,
+of wind, of snow (brumaire, frimaire, pluviôse, ventôse, nivôse), so I
+purchased a small blue coupé, lined with white reps, which was likened
+to the equipage of the famous dwarf of the day, a piece of impertinence
+I did not mind. A brown coupé, lined with garnet, followed the blue one,
+and was itself replaced by a dark-green coupé lined with dark blue, for
+I actually did sport a coach--I, poor newspaper writer holding no
+Government stock--for five or six years. And my ponies were none the
+less fat and in good condition though they were fed on literature, had
+substantives for oats, adjectives for hay, and adverbs for straw. But
+alas! there came, no one knows very well why, the Revolution in
+February; a great many paving-stones were picked up for patriotic
+purposes, and Paris became rather unfit for carriage travel. I could of
+course have escaladed the barricades with my agile steeds and my light
+equipage, but it was only at the cook-shop that I could get credit, and
+I could not possibly feed my horses on roast chicken. The horizon was
+dark with heavy clouds, through which flashed red gleams. Money had
+taken fright and gone into hiding; the _Presse_, on the staff of which I
+was, had suspended publication, and I was glad enough to find a person
+willing to buy my horses, harness, and carriages for a fourth of their
+value. It was a bitter grief to me, and I would not venture to say that
+no tears ran down my cheeks on to the manes of Jane and Blanche when
+they were led away. Sometimes their new owner would drive past the
+house; I always knew their quick, sharp trot at a distance, and always
+the sudden way they would stop under my windows proved that they had not
+forgotten the place where they had been so tenderly loved and so well
+cared for, and a sigh would break responsive from me as I said to
+myself: “Poor Jane, poor Blanche! I wonder if they are happy.”
+
+And the loss of them is the one and only thing I felt sore over when I
+lost my slender fortune.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s Note
+
+The following typographical error was corrected.
+
+  286  scissors cut changed to scissors, cut
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's My Private Menagerie, by Theophile Gautier
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Private Menagerie, by Theophile Gautier
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: My Private Menagerie
+       from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19
+
+Author: Theophile Gautier
+
+Editor: F. C. de Sumichrast
+
+Translator: F. C. de Sumichrast
+
+Release Date: December 26, 2009 [EBook #30760]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Linda McKeown, Joseph Cooper, Nick Wall, Julia
+Miller, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. A list of corrections
+is found at the end of the text. Oe ligatures have been expanded. Text
+originally printed in Greek characters has been transliterated and
+surrounded with ~.
+
+
+
+
+  THE WORKS OF
+  TH�OPHILE GAUTIER
+
+  VOLUME NINETEEN
+
+  TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY
+  PROFESSOR F. C. DE SUMICHRAST
+  _Department of French, Harvard University_
+
+  CAPTAIN FRACASSE
+
+  PART THREE
+
+  MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE
+
+  THE ATHENAEUM SOCIETY
+  NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+  _Copyright, 1902, by_
+  GEORGE D. SPROUL
+
+
+  UNIVERSITY PRESS � JOHN WILSON
+  AND SON � CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+_Contents_
+
+
+MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE
+
+
+
+    I  ANTIQUITY           _Page_ 283
+
+   II  THE WHITE DYNASTY      "   294
+
+  III  THE BLACK DYNASTY      "   305
+
+   IV  THIS SIDE FOR DOGS     "   318
+
+    V  MY HORSES              "   336
+
+
+
+
+_My Private Menagerie_
+
+
+
+
+MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ANTIQUITY
+
+
+I have often been caricatured in Turkish dress seated upon cushions, and
+surrounded by cats so familiar that they did not hesitate to climb upon
+my shoulders and even upon my head. The caricature is truth slightly
+exaggerated, and I must own that all my life I have been as fond of
+animals in general and of cats in particular as any brahmin or old maid.
+The great Byron always trotted a menagerie round with him, even when
+travelling, and he caused to be erected, in the park of Newstead Abbey,
+a monument to his faithful Newfoundland dog Boatswain, with an
+inscription in verse of his own inditing. I cannot be accused of
+imitation in the matter of our common liking for dogs, for that love
+manifested itself in me at an age when I was yet ignorant of the
+alphabet.
+
+A clever man being at this time engaged in preparing a "History of
+Animals of Letters," I jot down these notes in which he may find, so far
+as my own animals are concerned, trustworthy information.
+
+The earliest remembrance of this sort that I have goes back to the time
+of my arrival in Paris from Tarbes. I was then three years old, so that
+it is difficult to credit the statement made by Mirecourt and Vapereau,
+who affirm that I "proved but an indifferent pupil" in my native town.
+Home-sickness of a violence that no one would credit a child with being
+capable of experiencing, fell upon me. I spoke our local dialect only,
+and people who talked French "were not mine own people." I would wake in
+the middle of the night and inquire whether we were not soon to start on
+our return to our own land.
+
+No dainty tempted me, no toy could amuse me. Drums and trumpets equally
+failed to relieve my gloom. Among the objects and beings I regretted
+figured a dog called Cagnotte, whom it had been found impossible to
+bring with us. His absence told on me to such an extent that one
+morning, having first chucked out of the window my little tin soldiers,
+my German village with its painted houses, and my bright red fiddle, I
+was about to take the same road to return as speedily as possible to
+Tarbes, the Gascons, and Cagnotte. I was grabbed by the jacket in the
+nick of time, and Josephine, my nurse, had the happy thought to tell me
+that Cagnotte, tired of waiting for us, was coming that very day by the
+stage-coach. Children accept the improbable with artless faith; nothing
+strikes them as impossible; only, they must not be deceived, for there
+is no impairing the fixity of a settled idea in their brains. I kept
+asking, every fifteen minutes, whether Cagnotte had not yet come. To
+quiet me, Josephine bought on the Pont-Neuf a little dog not unlike the
+Tarbes specimen. I did not feel sure of its identity, but I was told
+that travelling changed dogs very much. I was satisfied with the
+explanation and accepted the Pont-Neuf dog as being the authentic
+Cagnotte. He was very gentle, very amiable, and very well behaved. He
+would lick my cheeks, and indeed his tongue was not above licking also
+the slices of bread and butter cut for my afternoon tea. We lived on the
+best of terms with each other.
+
+Presently, however, the supposed Cagnotte became sad, troubled, and his
+movements lost their freedom. He found it difficult to curl himself up,
+lost his jolly agility, breathed hard and could not eat. One day, while
+caressing him, I felt a seam that ran down his stomach, which was much
+swelled and very tight. I called my nurse. She came, took a pair of
+scissors cut the thread, and Cagnotte, freed of a sort of overcoat made
+of curled lambskin, in which he had been tricked out by the Pont-Neuf
+dealers to make him look like a poodle, appeared in all the wretched
+guise and ugliness of a street cur, a worthless mongrel. He had grown
+fat, and his scant garment was choking him. Once he was rid of his
+carapace, he wagged his ears, stretched his limbs, and started romping
+joyously round the room, caring nothing about being ugly so long as he
+was comfortable. His appetite returned, and he made up by his moral
+qualities for his lack of beauty. In Cagnotte's company I gradually
+lost, for he was a genuine child of Paris, my remembrance of Tarbes and
+of the high mountains visible from our windows; I learned French and I
+also became a thorough-paced Parisian.
+
+The reader is not to suppose that this is a story I have invented for
+the sole purpose of entertaining him. It is literally true, and proves
+that the dog-dealers of that day were quite as clever as horse-coupers
+in the art of making up their animals and taking in purchasers.
+
+After Cagnotte's death, my liking was rather for cats, on account of
+their being more sedentary and fonder of the fireplace. I shall not
+attempt to relate their history in detail. Dynasties of felines, as
+numerous as the dynasties of Egyptian kings, succeeded each other in our
+home. Accident, flight, or death accounted for them in turns. They were
+all beloved and regretted; but life is made up of forgetfulness, and the
+remembrance of cats passes away like the remembrance of men.
+
+It is a sad thing that the life of these humble friends, of these
+inferior brethren, should not be proportionate to that of their masters.
+
+I shall do no more than mention an old gray cat that used to side with
+me against my parents, and bit my mother's ankles when she scolded me or
+seemed about to punish me, and come at once to Childebrand, a cat of the
+Romanticist period. The name suffices to let my reader understand the
+secret desire I felt to run counter to Boileau, whom I disliked then,
+but with whom I have since made my peace. It will be remembered that
+Nicolas says:--
+
+    "Oh! ridiculous notion of poet ignorant
+    Who, of so many heroes, chooses Childebrand!"
+
+It seemed to me that the man was not so ignorant after all, since he had
+selected a hero no one knew anything of; and, besides, Childebrand
+struck me as a most long-haired, Merovingian, medi�val, and Gothic name,
+immeasurably preferable to any Greek name, such as Agamemnon, Achilles,
+Idomeneus, Ulysses, or others of that sort. These were the ways of our
+day, so far as the young fellows were concerned, at least: for never, to
+quote the expression that occurs in the account of Kaulbach's frescoes
+on the outer walls of the Pinacothek at Munich, never did the hydra of
+"wiggery" (_perruquinisme_) erect its heads more fiercely, and no doubt
+the Classicists called their cats Hector, Patrocles, or Ajax.
+
+Childebrand was a splendid gutter-cat, short-haired, striped black and
+tan, like the trunks worn by Saltabadil in "le Roi s'amuse." His great
+green eyes with their almond-shaped pupils, and his regular velvet
+stripes, gave him a distant tigerish look that I liked. "Cats are the
+tigers of poor devils," I once wrote. Childebrand enjoyed the honour of
+entering into some verses of mine, again because I wanted to tease
+Boileau:--
+
+"Then shall I describe to you that picture by Rembrandt, that pleased me
+so much; and my cat Childebrand, as is his habit, on my knees resting,
+and anxiously up at me gazing, shall follow the motions of my finger as
+in the air it sketches the story to make it clear."
+
+Childebrand came in well by way of a rime to Rembrandt, for the verses
+were meant for a Romanticist profession of faith addressed to a friend,
+since deceased, and in those days as enthusiastic an admirer of Victor
+Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and Alfred de Musset as I was.
+
+I am compelled to say of my cats what Don Ruy Gomez de Silva said to Don
+Carlos, when the latter became impatient at the enumeration of the
+former's ancestors, beginning with Don Silvius "who thrice was Consul of
+Rome," that is, "I pass over a number, and of the greatest," and I shall
+come to Madame-Th�ophile, a red cat with white breast, pink nose, and
+blue eyes, so called because she lived with me on a footing of conjugal
+intimacy. She slept on the foot of my bed, snoozed on the arm of my
+chair while I was writing, came down to the garden and accompanied me
+on my walks, sat at meals with me and not infrequently appropriated the
+morsels on their way from my plate to my mouth.
+
+One day a friend of mine, who was going out of town for a few days,
+intrusted his parrot to me with the request that I would take care of it
+during his absence. The bird, feeling strange in my house, had climbed,
+helping himself with his beak, to the very top of his perch, and looking
+pretty well bewildered, rolled round his eyes, that resembled the gilt
+nails on arm-chairs, and wrinkled the whitish membrane that served him
+for eyelids. Madame-Th�ophile had never seen a parrot, and she was
+evidently much puzzled by the strange bird. Motionless as an Egyptian
+mummy cat in its net-work of bands, she gazed upon it with an air of
+profound meditation, and put together whatever she had been able to pick
+up of natural history on the roofs, the yard, and the garden. Her
+thoughts were reflected in her shifting glance, and I was able to read
+in it the result of her examination: "It is unmistakably a chicken."
+
+Having reached this conclusion, she sprang from the table on which she
+had posted herself to make her investigations, and crouched down in one
+corner of the room, flat on her stomach, her elbows out, her head low,
+her muscular backbone on the stretch, like the black panther in G�rome's
+painting, watching gazelles on their way to the drinking-place.
+
+The parrot followed her movements with feverish anxiety, fluffing out
+its feathers, rattling its chain, lifting its foot, and moving its
+claws, and sharpening its beak upon the edge of its seed-box. Its
+instinct warned it that an enemy was preparing to attack it.
+
+The eyes of the cat, fixed upon the bird with an intensity that had
+something of fascination in it, plainly said in a language well
+understood of the parrot and absolutely intelligible: "Green though it
+is, that chicken must be good to eat."
+
+I watched the scene with much interest, prepared to interfere at the
+proper time. Madame-Th�ophile had gradually crawled nearer; her pink
+nose was working, her eyes were half closed, her claws were protruded
+and then drawn in. She thrilled with anticipation like a gourmet sitting
+down to enjoy a truffled pullet; she gloated over the thought of the
+choice and succulent meal she was about to enjoy, and her sensuality was
+tickled by the idea of the exotic dish that was to be hers.
+
+Suddenly she arched her back like a bow that is being drawn, and a swift
+leap landed her right on the perch. The parrot, seeing the danger upon
+him, unexpectedly called out in a deep, sonorous bass voice: "Have you
+had your breakfast, Jack?"
+
+The words filled the cat with indescribable terror; and she leapt back.
+The blast of a trumpet, the smash of a pile of crockery, or a
+pistol-shot fired by her ear would not have dismayed the feline to such
+an extent. All her ornithological notions were upset.
+
+"And what did you have?--A royal roast," went on the bird.
+
+The cat's expression clearly meant: "This is not a bird; it's a man; it
+speaks."
+
+    "When of claret I've drunk my fill,
+    The pot-house whirls and is whirling still,"
+
+sang out the bird with a deafening voice, for it had at once perceived
+that the terror inspired by its speech was its surest means of defence.
+
+The cat looked at me questioningly, and my reply proving unsatisfactory,
+she sneaked under the bed, and refused to come out for the rest of the
+day.
+
+Those of my readers who have not been in the habit of having animals to
+keep them company, and who see in them, as did Descartes, merely
+machines, will no doubt think I am attributing intentions to the bird
+and the quadruped, but as a matter of fact, I have merely translated
+their thoughts into human speech. The next day, Madame-Th�ophile, having
+somewhat overcome her fright, made another attempt, and was routed in
+the same fashion. That was enough for her, and henceforth she remained
+convinced that the bird was a man.
+
+This dainty and lovely creature adored perfumes. She would go into
+ecstasies on breathing in the patchouli and vetiver used for Cashmere
+shawls. She had also a taste for music. Nestling upon a pile of scores,
+she would listen most attentively and with every mark of satisfaction to
+the singers who came to perform at the critic's piano. But high notes
+made her nervous, and she never failed to close the singer's mouth with
+her paw if the lady sang the high A. We used to try the experiment for
+the fun of the thing, and it never failed once. It was quite impossible
+to fool my dilettante cat on that note.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE WHITE DYNASTY
+
+
+Let me come to more recent times. A cat brought from Havana by Mlle.
+A�ta de la Penuela, a young Spanish artist whose studies of white angora
+cats used to adorn and still adorn the show-windows of the
+print-sellers, gave birth to the daintiest little kitten, exactly like
+the puffs used for the application of face powder, which kitten was
+presented to me. Its immaculate whiteness caused it to be named Pierrot,
+and this appellation, when it grew up, developed into Don Pierrot of
+Navarre, which was infinitely more majestic and smacked of a grandee of
+Spain.
+
+Don Pierrot, like all animals that are fondled and petted, became
+delightfully amiable, and shared the life of the household with that
+fulness of satisfaction cats derive from close association with the
+fireside. Seated in his customary place, close to the fire, he really
+looked as if he understood the conversation and was interested in it.
+He followed the speakers with his eyes, and every now and then would
+utter a little cry, exactly as if to object and give his own opinion
+upon literature, which formed the staple of our talks. He was very fond
+of books, and when he found one open on the table, he would lie down by
+it, gaze attentively at the page and turn the leaves with his claws;
+then he ended by going to sleep, just as if he had really been reading a
+fashionable novel. As soon as I picked up my pen, he would leap upon the
+desk, and watch attentively the steel nib scribbling away on the paper,
+moving his head every time I began a new line. Sometimes he endeavoured
+to collaborate with me, and would snatch the pen out of my hand, no
+doubt with the intention of writing in his turn, for he was as �sthetic
+a cat as Hoffmann's Murr. Indeed, I strongly suspect that he was in the
+habit of inditing his memoirs, at night, in some gutter or another, by
+the light of his own phosphorescent eyes. Unfortunately, these
+lucubrations are lost.
+
+Don Pierrot of Navarre always sat up at night until I came home, waiting
+for me on the inside of the door, and as soon as I stepped into the
+antechamber he would come rubbing himself against my legs, arching his
+back and purring in gladsome, friendly fashion. Then he would start to
+walk in front of me, preceding me like a page, and I am sure that if I
+had asked him to do so, he would have carried my candle. In this way he
+would escort me to my bedroom, wait until I had undressed, jump up on
+the bed, put his paws round my neck, rub his nose against mine, lick me
+with his tiny red tongue, rough as a file, and utter little inarticulate
+cries by way of expressing unmistakably the pleasure he felt at seeing
+me again. When he had sufficiently caressed me and it was time to sleep
+he used to perch upon the backboard of his bed and slept there like a
+bird roosting on a branch. As soon as I woke in the morning, he would
+come and stretch out beside me until I rose.
+
+Midnight was the latest time allowed for my return home. On this point
+Pierrot was as inflexible as a janitor. Now, at that time I had founded,
+along with a few friends, a little evening reunion called "The Four
+Candles Society," the place of meeting happening to be lighted by four
+candles stuck in silver candlesticks placed at each corner of the table.
+Occasionally the conversation became so absorbing that I would forget
+the time, even at the risk of seeing, like Cinderella, my carriage turn
+into a pumpkin and my coachman into a big rat. Twice or thrice Pierrot
+sat up for me until two o'clock in the morning, but presently he took
+offence at my conduct and went to bed without waiting for me. I was
+touched by this mute protest against my innocently disorderly way of
+life, and thereafter I regularly returned home at midnight. Pierrot,
+however, proved hard to win back; he wanted to make sure that my
+repentance was no mere passing matter, but once he was convinced that I
+had really reformed, he deigned to restore me to his good graces and
+again took up his nightly post in the antechamber.
+
+It is no easy matter to win a cat's love, for cats are philosophical,
+sedate, quiet animals, fond of their own way, liking cleanliness and
+order, and not apt to bestow their affection hastily. They are quite
+willing to be friends, if you prove worthy of their friendship, but they
+decline to be slaves. They are affectionate, but they exercise free
+will, and will not do for you what they consider to be unreasonable.
+Once, however, they have bestowed their friendship, their trust is
+absolute, and their affection most faithful. They become one's
+companions in hours of solitude, sadness, and labour. A cat will stay on
+your knees a whole evening, purring away, happy in your company and
+careless of that of its own species. In vain do mewings sound on the
+roofs, inviting it to one of the cat parties where red herring brine
+takes the place of tea; it is not to be tempted and spends the evening
+with you. If you put it down, it is back in a jiffy with a kind of
+cooing that sounds like a gentle reproach. Sometimes, sitting up in
+front of you, it looks at you so softly, so tenderly, so caressingly,
+and in so human a way that it is almost terrifying, for it is impossible
+to believe that there is no mind back of those eyes.
+
+Don Pierrot of Navarre had a mate of the same breed just as white as
+himself. All the expressions I have accumulated in the "Symphony in
+White Major" for the purpose of rendering the idea of snowy whiteness
+would be insufficient to give an idea of the immaculate coat of my cat,
+by the side of which the ermine's fur would have looked yellow. I called
+her S�raphita, after Balzac's Swedenborgian novel. Never did the heroine
+of that wondrous legend, when ascending with Minna the snow-covered
+summits of the Falberg, gleam more purely white. S�raphita was of a
+dreamy and contemplative disposition. She would remain for hours on a
+cushion, wide-awake and following with her eyes, with intensest
+attention, sights invisible to ordinary mortals. She liked to be petted,
+but returned caresses in a very reserved way, and only in the case of
+persons whom she honoured with her approbation, a most difficult thing
+to obtain. She was fond of luxury, and we were always sure to find her
+curled up in the newest arm-chair or on the piece of stuff that best set
+off her swan's-down coat. She spent endless time at her toilet; every
+morning she carefully smoothed out her fur. She used her paws to wash
+herself, and every single hair of her fur, having been brushed out with
+her rosy tongue, shone like brand-new silver. If any one touched her,
+she at once removed the traces of the touch, for she could not bear to
+be rumpled. Her elegance and stylishness suggested that she was an
+aristocrat, and among her own kind she must have been a duchess at the
+very least. She delighted in perfumes, stuck her little nose into
+bouquets, and bit with little spasms of pleasure at handkerchiefs on
+which scent had been put; she walked upon the dressing-table among the
+scent-bottles, smelling the stoppers, and if she had been allowed to do
+so would no doubt have used powder. Such was S�raphita, and never did a
+cat bear a poetic name more worthily.
+
+At about this time a couple of those sham sailors who sell striped rugs,
+handkerchiefs of pine-apple fibre and other exotic products, happened to
+pass through the Rue de Longchamps, where I was living. They had in a
+little cage a pair of white Norway rats with red eyes, as pretty as
+pretty could be. Just then I had a fancy for white creatures, and my
+hen-run was inhabited by white fowls only. I bought the two rats, and a
+big cage was built for them, with inner stairs leading to the different
+stories, eating-places, bedrooms, and trapezes for gymnastics. They were
+unquestionably happier and better off there than La Fontaine's rat in
+his Dutch cheese.
+
+The gentle creatures, which, I really do not know why, inspire puerile
+repulsion, became astonishingly tame as soon as they found out that no
+harm was intended them. They allowed themselves to be petted just like
+cats, and would catch my finger in their ideally delicate little rosy
+hands, and lick it in the friendliest way. They used to be let out at
+the end of our meals, and would clamber up the arms, the shoulders, and
+the heads of the guests, emerging from the sleeves of coats and
+dressing-gowns with marvellous skill and agility. All these
+performances, carried out very prettily, were intended to secure
+permission to forage among the remains of the dessert. They were then
+placed on the table, and in a twinkling the male and female had put away
+the nuts, filberts, raisins, and lumps of sugar. It was most amusing to
+watch their quick, eager ways, and their astonishment when they reached
+the edge of the table. Then, however, we would hold out to them a strip
+of wood reaching to their cage, and they stored away their gains in
+their pantry.
+
+The pair multiplied rapidly, and numerous families, as white as their
+progenitors, ran up and down the little ladders in the cage, so that ere
+long I found myself the owner of some thirty rats so very tame that when
+the weather was cold they were in the habit of nestling in my pockets in
+order to keep warm, and remained there perfectly still. Sometimes I used
+to have the doors of my City of Rats thrown open, and, after having
+ascended to the topmost story of my house, I whistled in a way very
+familiar to my pets. Then the rats, which find it difficult to ascend
+steps, climbed up the balusters, got on to the rail, and proceeding in
+Indian file while keeping their equilibrium like acrobats, ascended that
+narrow road not infrequently descended astride by schoolboys, and came
+to me uttering little squeaks and manifesting the liveliest joy. And
+now I must confess to a piece of stupidity on my part. I had so often
+been told that a rat's tail looked like a red worm and spoiled the
+creature's pretty looks, that I selected one of the younger generation
+and cut off the much criticised caudal appendage with a red-hot shovel.
+The little rat bore the operation very well, grew apace, and became an
+imposing fellow with mustaches. But though he was the lighter for the
+loss of his tail, he was much less agile than his comrades; he was very
+careful about trying gymnastics and fell very often. He always brought
+up the rear when the company ascended the balusters, and looked like a
+tight-rope dancer trying to do without a balancing-pole. Then I
+understood the usefulness of a tail in the case of rats: it aids them to
+maintain their equilibrium when scampering along cornices and narrow
+ledges. They swing it to the right or the left by way of counterpoise
+when they lean over to the one side or the other; hence the constant
+switching which appears so causeless. When one observes Nature
+carefully, one readily comes to the conclusion that she does nothing
+that is unnecessary, and that one ought to be very careful in attempting
+to improve upon her.
+
+No doubt my reader wonders how cats and rats, two races so hostile to
+each other, and the one of which is the prey of the other, can manage to
+live together. The fact is that mine got on wonderfully harmoniously
+together. The cats were good as gold to the rats, which had lost all
+fear of them. The felines were never perfidious, and the rats never had
+to mourn the loss of a single comrade. Don Pierrot of Navarre was
+uncommonly fond of them; he would lie down by their cage and spend hours
+watching them at play. When by chance the door of the room was closed,
+he would scratch and miaoul gently until it was opened and he could join
+his little white friends, which often came and slept by him. S�raphita,
+who was more stand-off and who disliked the strong odour of musk given
+out by the rats, did not take part in their sports, but she never harmed
+them, and allowed them to pass quietly in front of her without ever
+unsheathing her claws.
+
+The end of these rats was strange. One heavy, stormy summer's day, when
+the mercury was nearly up to a hundred degrees, their cage had been put
+in the garden, in an arbour covered with creepers, as they seemed to
+feel the heat greatly. The storm burst with lightnings, rain, thunder,
+and squalls of wind. The tall poplars on the river bank bent like reeds.
+Armed with an umbrella, which the wind turned inside out, I was just
+starting to fetch in my rats, when a dazzling flash of lightning, which
+seemed to tear open the very depths of heaven, stopped me on the
+uppermost of the steps leading from the terrace to the garden.
+
+A terrific thunder-clap, louder than the report of a hundred guns,
+followed almost instantaneously upon the flash, and the shock was so
+violent that I was nearly thrown to the ground.
+
+The storm passed away shortly after that frightful explosion, but, on
+reaching the arbour, I found the thirty-two rats, toes up, killed by the
+one and same stroke of lightning. No doubt the iron wires of their cage
+had attracted the electric fluid and acted as a conductor.
+
+Thus died together, as they had lived, the thirty-two Norway rats,--an
+enviable death, not often vouchsafed by fate!
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE BLACK DYNASTY
+
+
+Don Pierrot of Navarre, being a native of Havana, required a hot-house
+temperature, and he enjoyed it in the house; round the dwelling,
+however, stretched great gardens, separated by open fences through which
+a cat could easily make its way, and rose great trees in which
+twittered, warbled, and sang whole flocks of birds; so that sometimes
+Pierrot, profiting by a door left open, would go out at night and start
+on a hunt, rambling through the grass and flowers wet with dew. In such
+cases he would have to await daylight to be let in, for although he
+would come and miaoul under our windows, his appeals did not always
+awaken the sleepers in the house. He had a delicate chest, and one
+night, when it was colder than usual, he caught a cold which soon turned
+into consumption. After coughing for a whole year poor Pierrot became
+thin and emaciated, and his coat, formerly so silky, had the mat
+whiteness of a shroud. His great transparent eyes had become the most
+important feature in his poor shrunken face; his red nose had turned
+pale, and he walked with slow steps, in a melancholy fashion, by the
+sunny side of the wall, watching the yellow autumn leaves whirling and
+twisting. One could have sworn he was reciting to himself Millevoye's
+elegy. A sick animal is a very touching object, for it bears suffering
+with such gentle and sad resignation. We did all we could to save him; I
+called in a very skilful physician who tested his chest and felt his
+pulse. Ass's milk was prescribed, and the poor little creature drank it
+willingly enough out of his tiny china saucer. He would remain for hours
+at a time stretched out on my knee like the shadow of a sphinx; I could
+feel his vertebr� like the grains of a chaplet, and he would try to
+acknowledge my caresses with a feeble purr that sounded like a
+death-rattle. On the day he died, he lay on his side gasping, but got
+himself up by a supreme effort, came to me, and opening wide his eyes,
+fixed upon me a glance that called for help with intense supplication.
+He seemed to say to me, "You are a man; do save me." Then he staggered,
+his eyes already glazed, and fell to the ground, uttering so woeful, so
+despairing, so anguished a cry that it filled me with mute horror. He
+was buried at the foot of the garden, under a white rosebush that still
+marks the place of his tomb.
+
+S�raphita died two or three years later, of croup, which the physician
+was unable to master. She rests not far from Pierrot.
+
+With her ended the White Dynasty, but not the family. From that pair of
+snow-white cats had sprung three coal-black kittens, a mystery the
+solution of which I leave to others. Victor Hugo's "Les Mis�rables" were
+then all the rage, and the names of the characters in the novel were in
+every one's mouth. The two little male cats were called Enjolras and
+Gavroche, and the female Eponine. They were the sweetest of kittens, and
+we trained them to fetch and carry pieces of paper thrown at a distance
+just as a dog would do. We got so far as to throw the paper ball on the
+top of wardrobes, or to hide it behind boxes or in tall vases, and they
+would retrieve it very prettily with their paws. On attaining years of
+discretion, they forsook these frivolous sports and resumed the dreamy,
+philosophical calm which is the real characteristic of cats.
+
+All negroes are alike to people who land in a slave-owning country in
+America, and it is impossible for them to tell one from another. So, to
+those who do not care for them, three black cats are three black cats
+and nothing more. But an observing eye makes no such mistake. The
+physiognomies of animals are as different as those of men, and I could
+always tell to which particular cat belonged the black face, as black as
+Harlequin's mask, and lighted by emerald disks with golden gleams.
+
+Enjolras, who was by far the handsomest of the three, was marked by his
+big lion-like head and well whiskered cheeks, by his muscular shoulders,
+his long back, and his splendid tail, fluffy as a feather duster. There
+was something theatrical and grandiloquent about him, and he seemed to
+pose like an actor who attracts admiration. His motions were slow,
+undulating, and full of majesty; he seemed to be always stepping on a
+table covered with china ornaments and Venetian glass, so circumspectly
+did he select the place where he put down his foot. He was not much of a
+Stoic, and exhibited a liking for food which his namesake would have had
+reason to blame. No doubt Enjolras, the pure and sober youth, would have
+said to him, as the angel did to Swedenborg, "You eat too much." We
+rather encouraged this amusing voracity, analogous to that of monkeys,
+and Enjolras grew to a size and weight very uncommon among domestic
+cats. Then I bethought myself of having him shaved in the style of
+poodles, in order to bring out completely his leonine appearance. He
+retained his mane and a long tuft of hair at the end of the tail, and I
+would not swear that his thighs were not adorned with mutton-chop
+whiskers like those Munito used to wear. Thus trimmed, he resembled, I
+must confess, a Japanese monster much more than a lion of the Atlas
+Mountains or the Cape. Never was a more extravagant fancy carried out on
+the body of a living animal; his closely clipped coat allowed the skin
+to show through, and its bluish tones, most curious to note, contrasted
+strangely with his black mane.
+
+Gavroche was a cat with a sharp, satirical look, as if he intended to
+recall his namesake in the novel. Smaller than Enjolras, he was endowed
+with abrupt and comical agility, and in the stead of the puns and slang
+of the Paris street-Arab, he indulged in the funniest capers, leaps, and
+attitudes. I am bound to add that, yielding to his street instincts,
+Gavroche was in the habit of seizing every opportunity of leaving the
+drawing-room and going off to join, in the court, and even in the public
+streets, numbers of wandering cats, "of unknown blood and lineage low,"
+with whom he took part in performances of doubtful taste, completely
+forgetful of his dignified rank as a Havana cat, the son of the
+illustrious Don Pierrot of Navarre, a grandee of Spain of the first
+class, and of the Marchioness S�raphita, noted for her haughty and
+aristocratic manners.
+
+Sometimes he would bring in to his meals, in order to treat them,
+consumptive friends of his, so starved that every rib in their body
+showed, having nothing but skin and bones, whom he had picked up in the
+course of his excursions and wanderings, for he was a kind-hearted
+fellow. The poor devils, their ears laid back, their tails between their
+legs, their glance restless, dreading to be driven from their free meal
+by a housemaid armed with a broom, swallowed the pieces two, three, and
+four at a time, and like the famous dog, _Siete Aguas_ (Seven Waters),
+of Spanish posadas, would lick the platter as clean as if it had been
+washed and scoured by a Dutch housekeeper who had served as model to
+Mieris or Gerard Dow. Whenever I saw Gavroche's companions, I
+remembered the lettering under one of Gavarni's drawings: "A nice lot,
+the friends you are capable of proceeding with!" But after all it was
+merely a proof of Gavroche's kindness of heart, for he was quite able to
+polish off the plateful himself.
+
+The cat who bore the name of the interesting Eponine was more lissome
+and slender in shape than her brothers. Her mien was quite peculiar to
+herself, owing to her somewhat long face, her eyes slanting slightly in
+the Chinese fashion, and of a green like that of the eyes of Pallas
+Athene, on whom Homer invariably bestows the title of ~glauk�pis~, her
+velvety black nose, of as fine a grain as a Perigord truffle, and her
+incessantly moving whiskers. Her coat, of a superb black, was always in
+motion and shimmered with infinite changes. There never was a more
+sensitive, nervous, and electric animal. If she were stroked two or
+three times, in the dark, blue sparks came crackling from her fur. She
+attached herself to me in particular, just as in the novel Eponine
+becomes attached to Marius. As I was less taken up with Cosette than
+that handsome youth, I accepted the love of my affectionate and devoted
+cat, who is still the assiduous companion of my labours and the delight
+of my hermitage on the confines of the suburbs. She trots up when she
+hears the bell ring, welcomes my visitors, leads them into the
+drawing-room, shows them to a seat, talks to them--yes, I mean it, talks
+to them--with croonings and cooings and whimpers quite unlike the
+language cats make use of among themselves, and which simulate the
+articulate speech of man. You ask me what it is she says? She says, in
+the plainest possible fashion: "Do not be impatient; look at the
+pictures or chat with me, if you enjoy that. My master will be down in a
+minute." And when I come in she discreetly retires to an arm-chair or on
+top of the piano, and listens to the conversation without breaking in
+upon it, like a well-bred animal that is used to society.
+
+Sweet Eponine has given us so many proofs of intelligence, kindly
+disposition, and sociability that she has been promoted, by common
+consent, to the dignity of a _person_, for it is plain that a higher
+order of reason than instinct guides her actions. This dignity entails
+the right of eating at table like a person, and not from a saucer in a
+corner, like an animal. So Eponine's chair is placed beside mine at
+lunch and dinner, and on account of her size she is allowed to rest her
+fore paws upon the edge of the table. She has her own place set, without
+fork or spoon, but with her glass. She eats of every course that is
+brought on, from the soup to the dessert, always waiting for her turn to
+be served and behaving with a discretion and decency that it is to be
+wished were more frequently met with in children. She turns up at the
+first sound of the bell, and when we enter the dining-room we are sure
+to find her already in her place, standing on her chair, her paws on the
+edge of the table, and holding up her little head to be kissed, like a
+well-bred young lady who is polite and affectionate towards her parents
+and her elders.
+
+The sun has its spots, the diamond its flaws, and perfection itself its
+little weak points. Eponine, it must be owned, has an overmastering
+fondness for fish, a taste she shares in common with all her race. The
+Latin proverb, _Catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantas_, to the
+contrary notwithstanding, she is always ready to pop her paw into the
+water to fish out a blay, a small carp, or a trout. Fish makes her
+well-nigh delirious, and like children eagerly looking for the dessert,
+she is apt to object to the soup, when the preliminary investigations
+she has carried on in the kitchen have enabled her to ascertain that the
+fish has duly come in and that there is no reason why Vatel should run
+himself through with his sword. In such cases we do not help her to
+fish, and I remark to her, in a cold tone, "A lady who has no appetite
+for soup cannot have any appetite for fish," and the dish is
+remorselessly sent past her. Then seeing that it is no joking matter,
+dainty Eponine bolts her soup in hot haste, licks up the very last drop
+of the bouillon, puts away the minutest crumb of bread or Italian paste,
+and turns round to me with the proud look of one conscious of being
+without fear or reproach and of having fulfilled her duty. Her share of
+the fish is handed to her, and she despatches it with every mark of
+extreme satisfaction. Then, having tasted a little of every dish, she
+winds up her meal by drinking one-third of a glassful of water.
+
+If we happen to have guests at dinner, Eponine does not need to have
+seen them enter to be aware that there is to be company. She simply
+looks at her place, and if she sees a knife, fork, and spoon laid there,
+she makes off at once and perches on the piano stool, her usual place of
+refuge in such cases. Those who deny reasoning powers to animals may
+explain this fact, so simple apparently, yet so suggestive, as best they
+may. That judicious and observant cat of mine deduces from the presence
+by her plate of utensils which man alone understands how to use that she
+must give up her position for that day to a guest, and she forthwith
+does so. Never once has she made a mistake. Only, when she is well
+acquainted with the particular guest, she will climb upon his knee and
+seek, by her graceful ways and her caresses, to induce him to bestow
+some tit-bit upon her.
+
+But enough of this; I must not weary my readers, and stories of cats are
+less attractive than stories about dogs. Yet I deem that I ought to tell
+of the deaths of Enjolras and Gavroche. In the Latin Rudiments there is
+a rule stated thus: _Sua eum perdidit ambitio._ Of Enjolras it may be
+said: _Sua eum perdidit pinguitudo_, that is, his admirable condition
+was the cause of his death. He was killed by idiotic fanciers of jugged
+hare. His murderers, however, perished before the end of the year in the
+most painful manner; for the death of a black cat, an eminently
+cabalistic animal, never goes unavenged.
+
+Gavroche, seized with a frantic love of freedom, or rather with a
+sudden attack of vertigo, sprang out of the window one day, crossed the
+street, climbed the fence of the Parc Saint-James, which faces our
+house, and vanished. In spite of our utmost endeavours, we never managed
+to hear of him again, and a shadow of mystery hangs over his fate; so
+that the only survivor of the Black Dynasty is Eponine, who is still
+faithful to her master and has become a thorough cat of letters.
+
+Her companion now is a magnificent angora cat, whose gray and silver fur
+recalls Chinese spotted porcelain. He is called Zizi, alias "Too
+Handsome to Work." The handsome fellow lives in a sort of contemplative
+_kief_, like a theriaki under the influence of the drug, and makes one
+think of "The Ecstasies of Mr. Hochenez." Zizi is passionately fond of
+music, and, not satisfied with listening to it, he indulges in it
+himself. Sometimes, in the dead of night, when everybody is asleep, a
+strange, fantastic melody, which the Kreislers and the musicians of the
+future might well envy, breaks in upon the silence. It is Zizi walking
+upon the key-board of the piano which has been left open, and who is at
+once astonished and delighted at hearing the keys sing under his tread.
+
+It would be unjust not to link with this branch Cleopatra, Eponine's
+daughter, whose shy disposition keeps her from mingling in society. She
+is of a tawny black, like Mummia, Atta-Croll's hairy companion, and her
+two green eyes look like huge aqua-marines. She generally stands on
+three legs, her fourth lifted up like a classical lion that has lost its
+marble ball.
+
+These be the chronicles of the Black Dynasty. Enjolras, Gavroche, and
+Eponine recall to me the creations of a beloved master; only, when I
+re-read "Les Mis�rables," the chief characters in the novel seem to me
+to be taken by black cats, a fact that in no wise diminishes the
+interest I take in it.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THIS SIDE FOR DOGS
+
+
+I have often been charged with not being fond of dogs; a charge which
+does not at first sight appear to be very serious, but which I
+nevertheless desire to clear myself of, for it implies a certain amount
+of dislike. People who prefer cats are thought by many to be cruel,
+sensuous, and treacherous, while dog-lovers are credited with being
+frank, loyal, and open-hearted,--in a word, possessed of all the
+qualities attributed to the canine race. I in no wise deny the merits of
+M�dor, Turk, Miraut, and other engaging animals, and I am prepared to
+acknowledge the truth of the axiom formulated by Charlet,--"The best
+thing about man is his dog." I have been the owner of several, and I
+still own some. Should any of those who seek to discredit me come to my
+house, they would be met by a Havana lap-dog barking shrilly and
+furiously at them, and by a greyhound that very likely would bite their
+legs for them. But my affection for dogs has an understratum of fear.
+These excellent creatures, so good, so faithful, so devoted, so loving,
+may go mad at any moment, and then they become more dangerous than a
+lance-head snake, an asp, a rattlesnake or a cobra capella. This reacts
+on my love for dogs. Then dogs strike me as a bit uncanny; they have
+such a searching, intense glance; they sit down in front of you with so
+questioning a look that it is fairly embarrassing. Goethe disliked that
+glance of theirs that seems to attempt to incorporate man's soul within
+itself, and he drove away dogs, saying, "You shall not swallow my monad,
+much as you may try."
+
+The Pharamond of my canine dynasty was called Luther. He was a big white
+spaniel, with liver spots, and handsome brown ears. He was a setter, had
+lost his owner, and after looking for him a long time in vain, had taken
+to living in my father's house at Passy. Not having partridges to go
+after, he had taken to rat-hunting, and was as clever at it as a Scotch
+terrier. At that time I was living in that blind alley of the Doyenn�,
+now destroyed, where G�rard de Nerval, Ars�ne Houssaye and Camille
+Rogier were the heads of a little picturesque and artistic Bohemia, the
+eccentric mode of life in which has been so well told by others that it
+is unnecessary to relate it over again. There we were, right in the
+centre of the Carrousel, as independent and solitary as on a desert
+island in Oceanica, under the shadow of the Louvre, among the blocks of
+stone and the nettles, close to an old ruinous church, with fallen-in
+roof which looked most romantic in the moonlight. Luther, with whom I
+was on a most friendly footing, seeing that I had finally abandoned the
+paternal nest, made a point of coming to see me every morning. He
+started from Passy, no matter what the weather was, came down the Quai
+de Billy, the Cours-la-Reine, and reached my place at about eight
+o'clock, just as I was waking. He used to scratch at the door, which was
+opened for him, and he dashed joyously at me with yelps of joy, put his
+paws on my knees, received with a modest and unassuming air the caresses
+his noble conduct merited, took a look round the room, and started back
+to Passy. On arriving there, he went to my mother, wagged his tail,
+barked a little, and said as plainly as if he had spoken: "I have seen
+young master; don't worry; he is all right." Having thus reported to the
+proper person the result of his self-imposed mission, he would drink up
+half a bowlful of water, eat his food, lie down on the carpet by my
+mother's chair,--for he entertained peculiar affection for her,--and
+sleep for an hour or two after his long run. Now, how do people who
+maintain that animals do not think and are incapable of putting two and
+two together explain this morning visit, which kept up family relations
+and brought to the home-nest news of the fledgeling that had so recently
+left it?
+
+Poor Luther's end was very sad. He became taciturn, morose, and one fine
+morning bolted from the house, feeling the rabies on him and resolved
+not to bite his masters; so he fled, and we have every reason to believe
+that he was killed as a mad dog, for we never saw him again.
+
+After a pretty long interregnum a new dog was brought into the house. It
+was called Zamore, and was a sort of spaniel, of very mixed breed, small
+in size, with a black coat, save the tan spots over his eyes and the tan
+hair on his stomach. On the whole he was insignificant physically, and
+ugly rather than handsome; but morally, he was a remarkable dog. He
+absolutely despised women, would not obey them, never would follow them,
+and never once did my mother or my sisters manage to win from him the
+least sign of friendship or deference. He would accept their attentions
+and the tit-bits they gave him with a superior air, but never did he
+express any gratitude for them. Never would he yelp, never would he rap
+the floor with his tail, never bestow on them a single one of those
+caresses dogs are so fond of lavishing. He remained impassible in a
+sphinx-like pose, like a serious man who will not take part in the
+conversation of frivolous persons. The master he had elected was my
+father, in whom he acknowledged the authority of the head of the house,
+and whom he considered a mature and serious man. But his affection for
+him was austere and stoical, and was not shown by gambadoes, larks, and
+lickings. Only, he always kept his eyes upon him, followed his every
+motion and kept close to heel, never allowing himself the smallest
+escapade or the least nod to any passing comrades. My dear and lamented
+father was a great fisherman before the Lord, and he caught more barbels
+than Nimrod ever slew antelopes. It certainly could not be said of his
+fishing-rod that it was a pole and string with a worm at one end and a
+fool at the other, for he was a very clever man, and none the less he
+daily filled his basket with fish. Zamore used to accompany him on his
+trips, and during the long night-watches entailed by ground-line
+fishing for the big fellows, he would stand on the very edge of the
+water, apparently trying to fathom its dark depths and to follow the
+movements of the prey. Although he often pricked up his ears at the
+faint and distant sounds that, at night, are heard in the deepest
+silence, he never barked, having understood that to be mute is a quality
+indispensable in a fisherman's dog. In vain did Phoebe's alabaster brow
+show above the horizon reflected in the sombre mirror of the river;
+Zamore would not bay at the moon, although such prolonged ululation
+gives infinite delight to creatures of his species. Only when the bell
+on the set-line tinkled did he look at his master and allow himself one
+short bark, knowing that the prey was caught; and he appeared to take
+the greatest interest in the manoeuvres involved in the landing of a
+three or four pound barbel.
+
+No one would have suspected that under his calm, abstracted,
+philosophical look, this dog, so serious that he was almost melancholy,
+and despised all frivolity, nursed an overmastering, strange, never to
+be suspected passion, absolutely contrary to his apparent moral and
+physical character.
+
+"You do not mean," I hear my reader exclaim, "that the good Zamore had
+hidden vices?--that he was a thief?" No. "A libertine?" No. "That he
+loved brandied cherries?" No. "That he bit people?" Never. Zamore was
+crazy about dancing. He was an artist devoted to the choregraphic art.
+
+He became conscious of his vocation in the following manner. One day
+there appeared on the square at Passy a gray moke, with sores on its
+back, and drooping ears, one of those wretched mountebanks' asses that
+Decamps and Fouquet used to paint so well. The two baskets balanced on
+either side of his raw and prominent backbone contained a troupe of
+trained dogs, dressed as marquesses, troubadours, Turks, Alpine
+shepherdesses, or Queens of Golconda, according to their sex. The
+impresario put down the dogs, cracked his whip, and suddenly every one
+of the actors forsook the horizontal for the perpendicular position, and
+transformed itself into a biped. The drum and fife started up and the
+ballet commenced.
+
+Zamore, who was gravely idling around, stopped smitten with wonder at
+the sight. The dogs, dressed in showy colours, braided with imitation
+gold lace on every seam, a plumed hat or a turban on their heads, and
+moving in cadence to a witching rhythm, with a distant resemblance to
+human beings, appeared to him to be supernatural creatures. The
+skilfully linked steps, the slides, the pirouettes delighted but did not
+discourage him. Like Correggio at the sight of Raphael's painting, he
+exclaimed in his canine speech, _Anch' io son pittore!_ and when the
+company filed past him, he also, filled with a noble spirit of
+emulation, rose up, somewhat uncertainly, upon his hind legs and
+attempted to join them, to the great delight of the onlookers.
+
+The manager did not see it in that light, and let fly a smart cut of his
+whip at Zamore, who was driven from the circle, just as a spectator
+would be ejected from the theatre did he, during the performance, take
+on himself to ascend to the stage and to take part in the ballet.
+
+This public humiliation did not check Zamore's vocation. He returned
+home with drooping tail and thoughtful mien, and during the whole of the
+remainder of that day was more reserved, more taciturn, and more morose
+than ever. But in the dead of night my sisters were awakened by slight
+sounds, the cause of which they could not conjecture, which proceeded
+from an uninhabited room next theirs, where Zamore was usually put to
+bed on an old arm-chair. It sounded like a rhythmic tread, made more
+sonorous by the silence of night. They at first supposed that the mice
+were romping round, but the sound of steps and leaps on the flooring was
+too loud for that. The bravest of my sisters rose, partly opened the
+door, and by the light of a moonbeam streaming in through a pane, she
+beheld Zamore on his hind legs, pawing the air with his fore paws, and
+busy studying the dancing steps he had admired in the street that
+morning. The gentleman was practising!
+
+Nor did this prove, as might be supposed, a passing fancy, a momentary
+attraction; Zamore persisted in his choregraphic aspirations and turned
+out a fine dancer. Every time he heard the fife and drum he would run
+out on the square, slip between the spectators' legs and watch, with the
+closest attention, the trained dogs performing their exercises. Mindful,
+however, of the whip-cut, he no longer attempted to take part in the
+dancing; he took note of the poses, the steps, and the attitudes, and
+then, at night, in the silence of his room, he would work away at them,
+remaining the while, during the day, as austere in his bearing as ever.
+Ere long he was not satisfied with copying; he took to composing, to
+inventing, and I am bound to say few dogs surpassed him in the elevated
+style. I often used to watch him through the half-open door; he
+practised with such enthusiasm that every night he would drain dry the
+bowl of water placed in one corner of the room.
+
+When he had become quite sure of himself and the equal of the most
+accomplished of four-footed dancers, he felt he could no longer hide his
+light under a bushel and that he must reveal the mystery of his
+accomplishments. The court-yard of the house was closed, on one side, by
+an iron fence with spaces sufficiently wide to allow moderately stout
+dogs to enter in easily. So one fine morning some fifteen or twenty dog
+friends of his, connoisseurs no doubt, to whom Zamore had sent letters
+of invitation to his d�but in the choregraphic art, met around a square
+of smooth ground nicely levelled off, which the artist had previously
+swept with his tail, and the performance began. The dogs appeared to be
+delighted and manifested their enthusiasm by _ouahs!_ _ouahs!_ closely
+resembling the _bravi_ of dilettanti at the Opera. With the sole
+exception of an old and pretty muddy poodle, very wretched looking, and
+a critic, no doubt, who barked out something about forgetting sound
+tradition, all the spectators proclaimed Zamore the Vestris of dogs and
+the god of dancing. Our artist had performed a minuet, a jig, and a
+_deux temps_ waltz. A large number of two-footed spectators had joined
+the four-footed ones, and Zamore enjoyed the honour of being applauded
+by human hands.
+
+Dancing became so much a habit of his that when he was paying court to
+some fair, he would stand up on his hind legs, making bows and turning
+his toes out like a marquis of the _ancien r�gime_. All he lacked was
+the plumed hat under his arm.
+
+Apart from this he was as hypochondriacal as a comic actor and took no
+part in the life of the household. He stirred only when he saw his
+master pick up his hat and stick. Zamore died of brain fever, brought
+on, no doubt, by overwork in trying to learn the schottische, then in
+the full swing of its popularity. Zamore may say within his tomb, as
+says the Greek dancer in her epitaph: "Earth, rest lightly on me, for I
+rested lightly on thee."
+
+How came it that being so talented, Zamore was not enrolled in Corvi's
+company? For I was even then sufficiently influential as a critic to
+manage this for him. Zamore, however, would not leave his master, and
+sacrificed his self-love to his affection, a proof of devotion which one
+would look for in vain among men.
+
+A singer, named Kobold, a thorough-bred King Charles from the famous
+kennels of Lord Lauder, took the place of the dancer. It was a queer
+little beast, with an enormous projecting forehead, big goggle eyes,
+nose broken short off at the root, and long ears trailing on the ground.
+When Kobold was brought to France, knowing no language but English, he
+was quite bewildered. He could not understand the orders given him;
+trained to answer to "Go on," or "Come here," he remained motionless
+when he was told in French, "Viens," or "Va-t'en." It took him a year to
+learn the tongue of the new country in which he found himself and to
+take part in the conversation. Kobold was very fond of music, and
+himself sang little songs with a very strong English accent. The A would
+be struck on the piano, and he caught the note exactly and modulated
+with a flute-like sound phrases that were really musical and that had no
+connection whatever with barking or yelping. When we wanted to make him
+go on, all we had to do was to say, "Sing a little more," and he would
+repeat the cadence. Although he was fed with the utmost care, as was
+proper in the case of a tenor singer and so distinguished a gentleman,
+Kobold had one eccentric taste: he would eat earth just like a South
+American savage. We never succeeded in curing him of the habit, which
+proved the cause of his death. He was very fond of the stablemen, the
+horses, and the stable, and my ponies had no more constant companion
+than he. He spent his time between their loose-boxes and the piano.
+
+After Kobold, the King Charles, came Myrza, a tiny Havana poodle that
+had the honour of being for a time the property of Giulia Grisi, who
+gave her to me. She is snow-white, especially when she is fresh from her
+bath and has not had time to roll over in the dust, a fancy some dogs
+share with dust-loving birds. She is extremely gentle and affectionate,
+and as sweet-tempered as a dove. Her little fluffy face, her two little
+eyes that might be mistaken for upholstery nails, and her little nose
+like a Piedmont truffle, are most comical. Tufts of hair, curly as
+Astrakhan fur, fall over her face in the most picturesque and unexpected
+way, hiding first one eye and then the other, so that she has the most
+peculiar appearance imaginable and squints like a chameleon.
+
+In Myrza, nature imitates the artificial so perfectly that the little
+creature looks as if she had stepped out of a toy-shop. When her coat is
+nicely curled, and she has got on her blue ribbon bow and her silver
+bell, she is the image of a toy dog, and when she barks it is impossible
+not to wonder whether there is a bellows under her paws.
+
+She spends three-fourths of her time in sleep, and her life would not be
+much changed were she stuffed, nor does she seem particularly clever in
+the ordinary intercourse of life. Yet she one day exhibited an amount of
+intelligence absolutely unparalleled in my experience. Bonnegr�ce, the
+painter of the portraits of Tchoumakoff and E. H., which attracted so
+much attention at the exhibitions, had brought to me, in order to get my
+opinion upon it, one of his portraits painted in the manner of Pagnest,
+remarkable for truthfulness of colour and vigour of modelling. Although
+I have lived on terms of closest intimacy with animals and could tell a
+hundred traits of the ingenuity, reasoning, and philosophical powers of
+cats, dogs, and birds, I am bound to confess that animals wholly lack
+any feeling for art. Never have I seen a single one notice a picture,
+and the story of the birds that picked at the grapes in the painting by
+Zeuxis, strikes me as a piece of invention. It is precisely the feeling
+for ornament and art that distinguishes man from brutes. Dogs never look
+at pictures and never put on earrings. Well, Myrza, at the sight of the
+portrait placed against the wall by Bonnegr�ce, sprang from the stool on
+which she was lying curled up, dashed at the canvas and barked furiously
+at it, trying to bite the stranger who had made his way into the room.
+Great was her surprise when she found herself compelled to recognise
+that she had a plane surface before her, that her teeth could not lay
+hold of it, and that it was no more than a vain presentment. She smelled
+the picture, tried to wedge in behind the frame, looked at us both with
+a glance of questioning and wonder, and returned to her place, where she
+disdainfully went to sleep again, refusing to have anything more to do
+with the painted individual. Myrza's features will not be lost to
+posterity, for there is a fine portrait of her by the Hungarian artist,
+Victor Madarasz.
+
+Let me close with the story of Dash. One day a dealer in broken bottles
+and glass stopped at my door in quest of such wares. He had in his cart
+a puppy, three or four months old, which he had been commissioned to
+drown, whereat the worthy fellow grieved much, for the dog kept looking
+at him with a tender and beseeching look as if he knew well what was
+going to happen. The reason of the severe sentence passed on the puppy
+was that he had broken his fore paw. My heart was filled with pity for
+him, and I took charge of the condemned creature; called in a vet, and
+had Dash's paw set in splints and bandaged. It was impossible, however,
+to stop him gnawing at the dressings; the paw could not be cured, and
+the bones not having knitted, it hung limp like the sleeve of a man who
+has lost an arm. His infirmity, however, did not prevent his being
+jolly, lively, and full of fun, and he managed to race along quite fast
+on his three legs.
+
+He was an out and out street dog, a rascally little cur that Buffon
+himself would have been puzzled to classify. He was ugly, but his
+features were uncommonly mobile and sparkled with cleverness. He seemed
+to understand what was told him, and his expression would change
+according as the words addressed to him, in the same tone of voice, were
+flattering or injurious. He rolled his eyes, turned up his lips,
+indulged in the wildest of nervous twitchings, or else grinned and
+showed his white teeth, obtaining in this way most comical effects of
+which he was perfectly conscious. He would often try to talk; laying his
+paw on my knee, he would fix on me that earnest gaze of his and begin a
+series of murmurs, sighs, and grunts, so varied in intonation that it
+was hard not to recognise them as language. Sometimes in the course of a
+conversation of this sort, Dash would break out into a bark or a yelp,
+and then I would look sternly at him and say: "That is barking, not
+speaking. Is it possible that you are an animal?" Dash, feeling
+humiliated at the suggestion, would go on with his vocalisation, giving
+it the most pathetic expression. We used to say then that Dash was
+telling his tale of woe.
+
+He was passionately fond of sugar, and at dessert, when coffee was
+brought in, he would invariably beg each guest for a piece with such
+insistence that he was always successful. He had ended by transforming
+this merely benevolent gift into a regular tax which he collected with
+unfailing regularity. He was but a little mongrel, yet with the frame of
+a Thersites he had the soul of an Achilles. Infirm though he was, he
+would attack, with madly heroic courage, dogs ten times his size and
+was regularly and terribly thrashed by them. Like Don Quixote, the brave
+Knight of La Mancha, he set out triumphantly and returned in most evil
+plight. Alas! he was destined to fall a victim to his own courage. Some
+months ago he was brought home with a broken back, the work of a
+Newfoundland, an amiable brute, which the next day played the same trick
+to a small greyhound.
+
+Dash's death was the first of a series of catastrophes: the mistress of
+the house where he met with the death-stroke was, a few days later,
+burned alive in her bed, and the same fate overtook her husband who was
+trying to save her. This was merely a fatal coincidence and by no means
+an expiation, for these people were of the kindest and as fond of
+animals as is a Brahmin, besides being wholly innocent of our poor
+Dash's tragic fate.
+
+It is true that I have still another dog, called Nero, but he is too
+recent an inmate of our home to have a story of his own.
+
+(NOTE.--Alas! Nero has been poisoned quite recently, just as if he had
+been supping with the Borgias, and his epitaph comes in the very first
+chapter of his life.)
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+MY HORSES
+
+
+Now let not the reader, on seeing this title, hastily accuse me of being
+a swell. Horses! That is a pretentious word to be written down by a man
+of letters! _Musa pedestris_, says Horace; that is, the Muse goes on
+foot, and Parnassus itself has but one horse in its stable, Pegasus.
+Besides, he is a winged steed and by no means quiet in harness, if we
+may credit what Schiller tells us in his ballad. I am not a sportsman,
+alas! and deeply do I regret it, for I am as fond of horses as if I had
+five hundred thousand a year, and I am entirely of the opinion of the
+Arabs concerning pedestrians. The horse is man's natural pedestal, and
+the one complete being is the centaur, whom mythology so ingeniously
+invented.
+
+Nevertheless, although I am merely a man of letters, I have owned
+horses. In the year 1843 or 1844, I found in the pay-dirt of journalism,
+washed out in the wooden pan of the _feuilleton_, a sufficient quantity
+of gold dust to justify the hope that I might feed, besides my cats,
+dogs, and magpies, a couple of animals of larger size. I first had a
+couple of Shetland ponies, the size of big dogs, hairy as bears, all
+mane and tail, and who looked at me in such friendly fashion through
+their long black hair that I felt more like showing them into the
+drawing-room than sending them to the stable. They would take sugar out
+of my pockets like trained horses. But they proved to be decidedly too
+small; they would have answered as saddle horses for English children
+eight years of age, or as coach horses for Tom Thumb, but I was already
+in the enjoyment of that athletic and portly frame for which I am famed,
+and which has enabled me to bear up, without bending too much under the
+burden, under forty consecutive years of supplying of copy. The
+difference between the owner and the animals was unquestionably too
+striking, even though the little black ponies drew at a very lively gait
+the light phaeton to which they were harnessed with the daintiest tan
+harness, that looked as if it had been bought in a toy shop.
+
+Comic illustrated papers were not as numerous then as now, but there
+were quite enough of them to publish caricatures of me and of my
+horses. It goes without saying that, profiting by the latitude allowed
+to caricature, I was represented as of elephantine bulk and appearance,
+like the god Ganesa, the Hindoo god of wisdom, and that my ponies were
+shown as no larger than poodles, rats, or mice. It is also true that I
+could readily enough have carried my pair one under each arm, and taken
+the carriage on my back. I did for a moment think of having a pony
+four-in-hand, but such a Liliputian equipage would have merely attracted
+greater attention. So to my great regret, for I had already become fond
+of them, I replaced my Shetlands with two dapple-gray cobs of larger
+size, with powerful necks, broad chests, stout and well set up, which
+were not Mecklenburghers, no doubt, but plainly more capable of dragging
+me along. They were both mares, the one called Jane, the other Betsy. So
+far as outward looks went, they were as alike as two peas, and never was
+there a better matched pair apparently. But Betsy was as lazy as Jane
+was willing. While the one drew steadily, the other was satisfied with
+trotting along, saving herself and taking good care to do nothing. These
+two animals, of the same breed, of the same age, and destined to live in
+the same stable, had the liveliest antipathy for each other. They could
+not bear one another, fought in the stable, and bit each other as they
+reared in harness. It was impossible to reconcile them, which was a
+pity, for with their hog manes, like those of the horses on the
+Parthenon frieze, their quivering nostrils, and their eyes dilated with
+anger, they looked uncommonly handsome as they were driven up or down
+the Avenue des Champs-�lys�es. A substitute had to be found for Betsy,
+and a small mare, somewhat lighter coloured, for it had been impossible
+to match her exactly, was brought round. Jane immediately welcomed the
+new-comer and did the honours of the stable to her most graciously, and
+ere long they became fast friends. Jane would rest her head on Blanche's
+neck--she had been so called because her gray coat was rather
+whitish--and when they were let loose in the yard after being rubbed
+down, they would play together like a pair of dogs of children. If one
+was taken out driving, the one left in the stable was plainly wearying
+for her, and as soon as she heard in the distance the ring of her
+companion's hoofs on the paving-stones, she set up a joyous neigh, like
+a trumpet-blast, to which the other did not fail to reply as she
+approached.
+
+They would come up to be harnessed with astonishing docility, and took
+of themselves their proper place by the pole. Like all animals that are
+loved and well treated, Jane and Blanche soon became most familiar and
+trusting. They would follow me without bridle or halter like the
+best-trained dog, and when I stopped they would stick their noses on my
+shoulder in order to be caressed. Jane was fond of bread, and Blanche of
+sugar, and both were crazy about melon skin. I could make them do
+anything in return for these dainties.
+
+If man were not odiously brutal and ferocious, as he too frequently
+shows himself towards animals, they would cling to him most gladly.
+Their dim brain is filled with the thought of that being who thinks,
+speaks, and does things the meaning of which escapes them; he is a
+mystery and a wonder to them. They will often look at you with eyes full
+of questions you cannot answer, for the key to their speech has not yet
+been found. Yet they have a speech which enables them to exchange, by
+means of intonations not yet noted by man, ideas that are rudimentary,
+no doubt, but which are such as may be conceived by creatures within
+their sphere of action and feeling. Less stupid than we are, animals
+succeed in understanding a few words of our idiom, but not enough to
+enable them to converse with us. Besides, as the words they do learn
+refer solely to what we exact of them, the conversation would be brief.
+But that animals speak cannot be doubted by any one who has lived in any
+degree of intimacy with dogs, cats, horses, or other creatures of that
+sort.
+
+For instance, Jane was naturally intrepid; she never refused, and
+nothing frightened her, but after a few months of cohabitation with
+Blanche her character changed and she manifested at times sudden and
+inexplicable fear. Her companion, much less brave, must have told her
+ghost stories at night. Often, when going through the Bois de Boulogne
+at dusk or after dark, Blanche would stop short or shy, as if a phantom,
+invisible to me, had risen up before her. She trembled in every limb,
+breathed hard, and broke out into sweat. If I attempted to urge her
+ahead with the whip, she backed, and all Jane could do, strong as she
+was, was insufficient to induce her to go on. One of us would have to
+get down, cover her eyes with the hand and lead her until the vision had
+vanished. Little by little Jane became subject to the same terror, the
+reason of which, no doubt, Blanche told her once they were back in their
+stable. I may as well confess that for my part, when I would be driving
+down a dark road on which the moonlight produced alternations of light
+and shadow, and Blanche suddenly became rooted to the spot as though a
+spectre had sprung at her head, and refused to move,--she who was
+usually so docile that Queen Mab's whip, made of a cricket's bone with a
+spider's thread for a thong, was enough to start her into a gallop,--I
+could not repress a slight shudder or refrain from peering into the
+darkness rather anxiously, while at times the harmless trunks of ash or
+birch trees would appear to me as spectral-looking as one of Goya's
+"Caprices."
+
+I took great delight in driving these dear animals myself, and we soon
+became very intimate. It was merely as a matter of form that I held the
+reins, for the least click of the tongue was enough to direct them, to
+turn them to the right or the left, to make them go faster, or to stop
+them. They quickly learned all my habits and started of themselves for
+the office, the printer's, the publishers', the Bois de Boulogne, and
+the houses where I went to dinner on certain days of the week, and this
+so accurately that they would have ended by compromising me, for they
+would have revealed the places to which I paid the most mysterious
+visits. If I happened to forget the time in the course of an interesting
+or tender conversation they would remind me it was getting late by
+neighing or pawing in front of the balcony.
+
+Although I greatly enjoyed traversing the city in the phaeton drawn by
+my two friends, I could not help at times thinking the north wind sharp
+and the rain cold when the months came along which the Republican
+calendar named so appropriately the months of mist, of frost, of rain,
+of wind, of snow (brumaire, frimaire, pluvi�se, vent�se, niv�se), so I
+purchased a small blue coup�, lined with white reps, which was likened
+to the equipage of the famous dwarf of the day, a piece of impertinence
+I did not mind. A brown coup�, lined with garnet, followed the blue one,
+and was itself replaced by a dark-green coup� lined with dark blue, for
+I actually did sport a coach--I, poor newspaper writer holding no
+Government stock--for five or six years. And my ponies were none the
+less fat and in good condition though they were fed on literature, had
+substantives for oats, adjectives for hay, and adverbs for straw. But
+alas! there came, no one knows very well why, the Revolution in
+February; a great many paving-stones were picked up for patriotic
+purposes, and Paris became rather unfit for carriage travel. I could of
+course have escaladed the barricades with my agile steeds and my light
+equipage, but it was only at the cook-shop that I could get credit, and
+I could not possibly feed my horses on roast chicken. The horizon was
+dark with heavy clouds, through which flashed red gleams. Money had
+taken fright and gone into hiding; the _Presse_, on the staff of which I
+was, had suspended publication, and I was glad enough to find a person
+willing to buy my horses, harness, and carriages for a fourth of their
+value. It was a bitter grief to me, and I would not venture to say that
+no tears ran down my cheeks on to the manes of Jane and Blanche when
+they were led away. Sometimes their new owner would drive past the
+house; I always knew their quick, sharp trot at a distance, and always
+the sudden way they would stop under my windows proved that they had not
+forgotten the place where they had been so tenderly loved and so well
+cared for, and a sigh would break responsive from me as I said to
+myself: "Poor Jane, poor Blanche! I wonder if they are happy."
+
+And the loss of them is the one and only thing I felt sore over when I
+lost my slender fortune.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+The following typographical error was corrected.
+
+  286  scissors cut changed to scissors, cut
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's My Private Menagerie, by Theophile Gautier
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of My Private Menagerie, by Théophile Gautier.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Private Menagerie, by Theophile Gautier
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: My Private Menagerie
+       from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19
+
+Author: Theophile Gautier
+
+Editor: F. C. de Sumichrast
+
+Translator: F. C. de Sumichrast
+
+Release Date: December 26, 2009 [EBook #30760]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Linda McKeown, Joseph Cooper, Nick Wall, Julia
+Miller, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="tn">
+<p class="titlepage bold">Transcriber&#8217;s Note</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">This ebook is an extract from <cite>The Works of Théophile Gautier, Volume Nineteen</cite>,
+translated and edited by F. C. de Sumichrast. Only the references to this
+work have been retained on the title page and in the table of contents.</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. A <a href="#trans_note">list</a> of corrections
+is found at the end of the text.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chapbreak" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="width30">
+<p class="titletop2 bt bb"><span class="size120">THE WORKS OF</span><br />
+<span class="size200">THÉOPHILE GAUTIER</span><br />
+
+<span class="size120">VOLUME NINETEEN</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage bb">TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY<br />
+<span class="smcap">PROFESSOR F. C. de SUMICHRAST</span><br />
+<i>Department of French, Harvard University</i></p>
+
+<h1 class="booktitle">MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE</h1>
+
+<p class="titletop2 bb bt">THE ATHENAEUM SOCIETY<br />
+NEW YORK</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chapbreak" />
+
+
+<div class="width20">
+<p class="titletop2 bb"><i>Copyright, 1902, by</i><br />
+<span class="smcap">George D. Sproul</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="titletop4 bt">UNIVERSITY PRESS · JOHN WILSON<br />
+AND SON · CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chapbreak" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="chapterhead"><a name="Contents" id="Contents"></a><i>Contents</i></h2>
+
+
+<p class="titletop2 size120">MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE</p>
+
+<table border="0" summary="contents">
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">I</td>
+  <td class="smcap"><a href="#I">Antiquity</a></td>
+  <td class="tdc"><i>Page</i></td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#I">283</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">II</td>
+  <td class="smcap"><a href="#II">The White Dynasty</a></td>
+  <td class="tdc">“</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#II">294</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">III</td>
+  <td class="smcap"><a href="#III">The Black Dynasty</a></td>
+  <td class="tdc">“</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#III">305</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">IV</td>
+  <td class="smcap"><a href="#IV">This Side for Dogs</a></td>
+  <td class="tdc">“</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#IV">318</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td class="tdr">V</td>
+  <td class="smcap"><a href="#V">My Horses</a></td>
+  <td class="tdc">“</td>
+  <td class="tdr"><a href="#V">336</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chapbreak" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="titleboth2 size200"><i>My Private Menagerie</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr class="chapbreak" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="titletop2 size200">MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE</p>
+
+
+<h2 class="chapterhead"><a name="I" id="I"></a>I<br />
+
+ANTIQUITY</h2>
+
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="dropcap">I</span> <span class="upper">have</span> often been caricatured in Turkish dress seated upon cushions, and
+surrounded by cats so familiar that they did not hesitate to climb upon
+my shoulders and even upon my head. The caricature is truth slightly
+exaggerated, and I must own that all my life I have been as fond of
+animals in general and of cats in particular as any brahmin or old maid.
+The great Byron always trotted a menagerie round with him, even when
+travelling, and he caused to be erected, in the park of Newstead Abbey,
+a monument to his faithful Newfoundland dog Boatswain, with an
+inscription in verse of his own inditing. I cannot be accused of
+imitation in the matter of our common liking for dogs, for that love
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>manifested itself in me at an age when I was yet ignorant of the
+alphabet.</p>
+
+<p>A clever man being at this time engaged in preparing a “History of
+Animals of Letters,” I jot down these notes in which he may find, so far
+as my own animals are concerned, trustworthy information.</p>
+
+<p>The earliest remembrance of this sort that I have goes back to the time
+of my arrival in Paris from Tarbes. I was then three years old, so that
+it is difficult to credit the statement made by Mirecourt and Vapereau,
+who affirm that I “proved but an indifferent pupil” in my native town.
+Home-sickness of a violence that no one would credit a child with being
+capable of experiencing, fell upon me. I spoke our local dialect only,
+and people who talked French “were not mine own people.” I would wake in
+the middle of the night and inquire whether we were not soon to start on
+our return to our own land.</p>
+
+<p>No dainty tempted me, no toy could amuse me. Drums and trumpets equally
+failed to relieve my gloom. Among the objects and beings I regretted
+figured a dog called Cagnotte, whom it had been found impossible to
+bring with us. His absence told on me to such an extent that one
+morning, having first chucked out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span> the window my little tin soldiers,
+my German village with its painted houses, and my bright red fiddle, I
+was about to take the same road to return as speedily as possible to
+Tarbes, the Gascons, and Cagnotte. I was grabbed by the jacket in the
+nick of time, and Josephine, my nurse, had the happy thought to tell me
+that Cagnotte, tired of waiting for us, was coming that very day by the
+stage-coach. Children accept the improbable with artless faith; nothing
+strikes them as impossible; only, they must not be deceived, for there
+is no impairing the fixity of a settled idea in their brains. I kept
+asking, every fifteen minutes, whether Cagnotte had not yet come. To
+quiet me, Josephine bought on the Pont-Neuf a little dog not unlike the
+Tarbes specimen. I did not feel sure of its identity, but I was told
+that travelling changed dogs very much. I was satisfied with the
+explanation and accepted the Pont-Neuf dog as being the authentic
+Cagnotte. He was very gentle, very amiable, and very well behaved. He
+would lick my cheeks, and indeed his tongue was not above licking also
+the slices of bread and butter cut for my afternoon tea. We lived on the
+best of terms with each other.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, however, the supposed Cagnotte became<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span> sad, troubled, and his
+movements lost their freedom. He found it difficult to curl himself up,
+lost his jolly agility, breathed hard and could not eat. One day, while
+caressing him, I felt a seam that ran down his stomach, which was much
+swelled and very tight. I called my nurse. She came, took a pair of
+scissors cut the thread, and Cagnotte, freed of a sort of overcoat made
+of curled lambskin, in which he had been tricked out by the Pont-Neuf
+dealers to make him look like a poodle, appeared in all the wretched
+guise and ugliness of a street cur, a worthless mongrel. He had grown
+fat, and his scant garment was choking him. Once he was rid of his
+carapace, he wagged his ears, stretched his limbs, and started romping
+joyously round the room, caring nothing about being ugly so long as he
+was comfortable. His appetite returned, and he made up by his moral
+qualities for his lack of beauty. In Cagnotte’s company I gradually
+lost, for he was a genuine child of Paris, my remembrance of Tarbes and
+of the high mountains visible from our windows; I learned French and I
+also became a thorough-paced Parisian.</p>
+
+<p>The reader is not to suppose that this is a story I have invented for
+the sole purpose of entertaining<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span> him. It is literally true, and proves
+that the dog-dealers of that day were quite as clever as horse-coupers
+in the art of making up their animals and taking in purchasers.</p>
+
+<p>After Cagnotte’s death, my liking was rather for cats, on account of
+their being more sedentary and fonder of the fireplace. I shall not
+attempt to relate their history in detail. Dynasties of felines, as
+numerous as the dynasties of Egyptian kings, succeeded each other in our
+home. Accident, flight, or death accounted for them in turns. They were
+all beloved and regretted; but life is made up of forgetfulness, and the
+remembrance of cats passes away like the remembrance of men.</p>
+
+<p>It is a sad thing that the life of these humble friends, of these
+inferior brethren, should not be proportionate to that of their masters.</p>
+
+<p>I shall do no more than mention an old gray cat that used to side with
+me against my parents, and bit my mother’s ankles when she scolded me or
+seemed about to punish me, and come at once to Childebrand, a cat of the
+Romanticist period. The name suffices to let my reader understand the
+secret desire I felt to run counter to Boileau, whom I disliked then,
+but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span> with whom I have since made my peace. It will be remembered that
+Nicolas says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">“Oh! ridiculous notion of poet ignorant<br />
+Who, of so many heroes, chooses Childebrand!”</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to me that the man was not so ignorant after all, since he had
+selected a hero no one knew anything of; and, besides, Childebrand
+struck me as a most long-haired, Merovingian, mediæval, and Gothic name,
+immeasurably preferable to any Greek name, such as Agamemnon, Achilles,
+Idomeneus, Ulysses, or others of that sort. These were the ways of our
+day, so far as the young fellows were concerned, at least: for never, to
+quote the expression that occurs in the account of Kaulbach’s frescoes
+on the outer walls of the Pinacothek at Munich, never did the hydra of
+“wiggery” (<i>perruquinisme</i>) erect its heads more fiercely, and no doubt
+the Classicists called their cats Hector, Patrocles, or Ajax.</p>
+
+<p>Childebrand was a splendid gutter-cat, short-haired, striped black and
+tan, like the trunks worn by Saltabadil in “le Roi s’amuse.” His great
+green eyes with their almond-shaped pupils, and his regular velvet
+stripes, gave him a distant tigerish look that I liked. “Cats<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span> are the
+tigers of poor devils,” I once wrote. Childebrand enjoyed the honour of
+entering into some verses of mine, again because I wanted to tease
+Boileau:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>“Then shall I describe to you that picture by Rembrandt, that pleased me
+so much; and my cat Childebrand, as is his habit, on my knees resting,
+and anxiously up at me gazing, shall follow the motions of my finger as
+in the air it sketches the story to make it clear.”</p>
+
+<p>Childebrand came in well by way of a rime to Rembrandt, for the verses
+were meant for a Romanticist profession of faith addressed to a friend,
+since deceased, and in those days as enthusiastic an admirer of Victor
+Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and Alfred de Musset as I was.</p>
+
+<p>I am compelled to say of my cats what Don Ruy Gomez de Silva said to Don
+Carlos, when the latter became impatient at the enumeration of the
+former’s ancestors, beginning with Don Silvius “who thrice was Consul of
+Rome,” that is, “I pass over a number, and of the greatest,” and I shall
+come to Madame-Théophile, a red cat with white breast, pink nose, and
+blue eyes, so called because she lived with me on a footing of conjugal
+intimacy. She slept on the foot of my bed, snoozed on the arm of my
+chair while I was writing, came down to the garden and accompanied me<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>
+on my walks, sat at meals with me and not infrequently appropriated the
+morsels on their way from my plate to my mouth.</p>
+
+<p>One day a friend of mine, who was going out of town for a few days,
+intrusted his parrot to me with the request that I would take care of it
+during his absence. The bird, feeling strange in my house, had climbed,
+helping himself with his beak, to the very top of his perch, and looking
+pretty well bewildered, rolled round his eyes, that resembled the gilt
+nails on arm-chairs, and wrinkled the whitish membrane that served him
+for eyelids. Madame-Théophile had never seen a parrot, and she was
+evidently much puzzled by the strange bird. Motionless as an Egyptian
+mummy cat in its net-work of bands, she gazed upon it with an air of
+profound meditation, and put together whatever she had been able to pick
+up of natural history on the roofs, the yard, and the garden. Her
+thoughts were reflected in her shifting glance, and I was able to read
+in it the result of her examination: “It is unmistakably a chicken.”</p>
+
+<p>Having reached this conclusion, she sprang from the table on which she
+had posted herself to make her investigations, and crouched down in one
+corner of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span> room, flat on her stomach, her elbows out, her head low,
+her muscular backbone on the stretch, like the black panther in Gérome’s
+painting, watching gazelles on their way to the drinking-place.</p>
+
+<p>The parrot followed her movements with feverish anxiety, fluffing out
+its feathers, rattling its chain, lifting its foot, and moving its
+claws, and sharpening its beak upon the edge of its seed-box. Its
+instinct warned it that an enemy was preparing to attack it.</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of the cat, fixed upon the bird with an intensity that had
+something of fascination in it, plainly said in a language well
+understood of the parrot and absolutely intelligible: “Green though it
+is, that chicken must be good to eat.”</p>
+
+<p>I watched the scene with much interest, prepared to interfere at the
+proper time. Madame-Théophile had gradually crawled nearer; her pink
+nose was working, her eyes were half closed, her claws were protruded
+and then drawn in. She thrilled with anticipation like a gourmet sitting
+down to enjoy a truffled pullet; she gloated over the thought of the
+choice and succulent meal she was about to enjoy, and her sensuality was
+tickled by the idea of the exotic dish that was to be hers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span>Suddenly she arched her back like a bow that is being drawn, and a swift
+leap landed her right on the perch. The parrot, seeing the danger upon
+him, unexpectedly called out in a deep, sonorous bass voice: “Have you
+had your breakfast, Jack?”</p>
+
+<p>The words filled the cat with indescribable terror; and she leapt back.
+The blast of a trumpet, the smash of a pile of crockery, or a
+pistol-shot fired by her ear would not have dismayed the feline to such
+an extent. All her ornithological notions were upset.</p>
+
+<p>“And what did you have?&mdash;A royal roast,” went on the bird.</p>
+
+<p>The cat’s expression clearly meant: “This is not a bird; it’s a man; it
+speaks.”</p>
+
+<p class="poem">“When of claret I’ve drunk my fill,<br />
+The pot-house whirls and is whirling still,”</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">sang out the bird with a deafening voice, for it had at once perceived
+that the terror inspired by its speech was its surest means of defence.</p>
+
+<p>The cat looked at me questioningly, and my reply proving unsatisfactory,
+she sneaked under the bed, and refused to come out for the rest of the
+day.</p>
+
+<p>Those of my readers who have not been in the habit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span> of having animals to
+keep them company, and who see in them, as did Descartes, merely
+machines, will no doubt think I am attributing intentions to the bird
+and the quadruped, but as a matter of fact, I have merely translated
+their thoughts into human speech. The next day, Madame-Théophile, having
+somewhat overcome her fright, made another attempt, and was routed in
+the same fashion. That was enough for her, and henceforth she remained
+convinced that the bird was a man.</p>
+
+<p>This dainty and lovely creature adored perfumes. She would go into
+ecstasies on breathing in the patchouli and vetiver used for Cashmere
+shawls. She had also a taste for music. Nestling upon a pile of scores,
+she would listen most attentively and with every mark of satisfaction to
+the singers who came to perform at the critic’s piano. But high notes
+made her nervous, and she never failed to close the singer’s mouth with
+her paw if the lady sang the high A. We used to try the experiment for
+the fun of the thing, and it never failed once. It was quite impossible
+to fool my dilettante cat on that note.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chapbreak" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="chapterhead"><a name="II" id="II"></a>II<br />
+
+THE WHITE DYNASTY</h2>
+
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="dropcap">L</span><span class="upper">et</span> me come to more recent times. A cat brought from Havana by Mlle.
+Aïta de la Penuela, a young Spanish artist whose studies of white angora
+cats used to adorn and still adorn the show-windows of the
+print-sellers, gave birth to the daintiest little kitten, exactly like
+the puffs used for the application of face powder, which kitten was
+presented to me. Its immaculate whiteness caused it to be named Pierrot,
+and this appellation, when it grew up, developed into Don Pierrot of
+Navarre, which was infinitely more majestic and smacked of a grandee of
+Spain.</p>
+
+<p>Don Pierrot, like all animals that are fondled and petted, became
+delightfully amiable, and shared the life of the household with that
+fulness of satisfaction cats derive from close association with the
+fireside. Seated in his customary place, close to the fire, he really
+looked as if he understood the conversation and was interested<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span> in it.
+He followed the speakers with his eyes, and every now and then would
+utter a little cry, exactly as if to object and give his own opinion
+upon literature, which formed the staple of our talks. He was very fond
+of books, and when he found one open on the table, he would lie down by
+it, gaze attentively at the page and turn the leaves with his claws;
+then he ended by going to sleep, just as if he had really been reading a
+fashionable novel. As soon as I picked up my pen, he would leap upon the
+desk, and watch attentively the steel nib scribbling away on the paper,
+moving his head every time I began a new line. Sometimes he endeavoured
+to collaborate with me, and would snatch the pen out of my hand, no
+doubt with the intention of writing in his turn, for he was as æsthetic
+a cat as Hoffmann’s Murr. Indeed, I strongly suspect that he was in the
+habit of inditing his memoirs, at night, in some gutter or another, by
+the light of his own phosphorescent eyes. Unfortunately, these
+lucubrations are lost.</p>
+
+<p>Don Pierrot of Navarre always sat up at night until I came home, waiting
+for me on the inside of the door, and as soon as I stepped into the
+antechamber he would come rubbing himself against my legs, arching<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span> his
+back and purring in gladsome, friendly fashion. Then he would start to
+walk in front of me, preceding me like a page, and I am sure that if I
+had asked him to do so, he would have carried my candle. In this way he
+would escort me to my bedroom, wait until I had undressed, jump up on
+the bed, put his paws round my neck, rub his nose against mine, lick me
+with his tiny red tongue, rough as a file, and utter little inarticulate
+cries by way of expressing unmistakably the pleasure he felt at seeing
+me again. When he had sufficiently caressed me and it was time to sleep
+he used to perch upon the backboard of his bed and slept there like a
+bird roosting on a branch. As soon as I woke in the morning, he would
+come and stretch out beside me until I rose.</p>
+
+<p>Midnight was the latest time allowed for my return home. On this point
+Pierrot was as inflexible as a janitor. Now, at that time I had founded,
+along with a few friends, a little evening reunion called “The Four
+Candles Society,” the place of meeting happening to be lighted by four
+candles stuck in silver candlesticks placed at each corner of the table.
+Occasionally the conversation became so absorbing that I would forget
+the time, even at the risk of seeing, like Cin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>derella, my carriage turn
+into a pumpkin and my coachman into a big rat. Twice or thrice Pierrot
+sat up for me until two o’clock in the morning, but presently he took
+offence at my conduct and went to bed without waiting for me. I was
+touched by this mute protest against my innocently disorderly way of
+life, and thereafter I regularly returned home at midnight. Pierrot,
+however, proved hard to win back; he wanted to make sure that my
+repentance was no mere passing matter, but once he was convinced that I
+had really reformed, he deigned to restore me to his good graces and
+again took up his nightly post in the antechamber.</p>
+
+<p>It is no easy matter to win a cat’s love, for cats are philosophical,
+sedate, quiet animals, fond of their own way, liking cleanliness and
+order, and not apt to bestow their affection hastily. They are quite
+willing to be friends, if you prove worthy of their friendship, but they
+decline to be slaves. They are affectionate, but they exercise free
+will, and will not do for you what they consider to be unreasonable.
+Once, however, they have bestowed their friendship, their trust is
+absolute, and their affection most faithful. They become one’s
+companions in hours of solitude, sadness, and labour. A cat will stay on
+your knees a whole evening,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span> purring away, happy in your company and
+careless of that of its own species. In vain do mewings sound on the
+roofs, inviting it to one of the cat parties where red herring brine
+takes the place of tea; it is not to be tempted and spends the evening
+with you. If you put it down, it is back in a jiffy with a kind of
+cooing that sounds like a gentle reproach. Sometimes, sitting up in
+front of you, it looks at you so softly, so tenderly, so caressingly,
+and in so human a way that it is almost terrifying, for it is impossible
+to believe that there is no mind back of those eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Don Pierrot of Navarre had a mate of the same breed just as white as
+himself. All the expressions I have accumulated in the “Symphony in
+White Major” for the purpose of rendering the idea of snowy whiteness
+would be insufficient to give an idea of the immaculate coat of my cat,
+by the side of which the ermine’s fur would have looked yellow. I called
+her Séraphita, after Balzac’s Swedenborgian novel. Never did the heroine
+of that wondrous legend, when ascending with Minna the snow-covered
+summits of the Falberg, gleam more purely white. Séraphita was of a
+dreamy and contemplative disposition. She would remain for hours on a
+cushion, wide-awake and follow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>ing with her eyes, with intensest
+attention, sights invisible to ordinary mortals. She liked to be petted,
+but returned caresses in a very reserved way, and only in the case of
+persons whom she honoured with her approbation, a most difficult thing
+to obtain. She was fond of luxury, and we were always sure to find her
+curled up in the newest arm-chair or on the piece of stuff that best set
+off her swan’s-down coat. She spent endless time at her toilet; every
+morning she carefully smoothed out her fur. She used her paws to wash
+herself, and every single hair of her fur, having been brushed out with
+her rosy tongue, shone like brand-new silver. If any one touched her,
+she at once removed the traces of the touch, for she could not bear to
+be rumpled. Her elegance and stylishness suggested that she was an
+aristocrat, and among her own kind she must have been a duchess at the
+very least. She delighted in perfumes, stuck her little nose into
+bouquets, and bit with little spasms of pleasure at handkerchiefs on
+which scent had been put; she walked upon the dressing-table among the
+scent-bottles, smelling the stoppers, and if she had been allowed to do
+so would no doubt have used powder. Such was Séraphita, and never did a
+cat bear a poetic name more worthily.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>At about this time a couple of those sham sailors who sell striped rugs,
+handkerchiefs of pine-apple fibre and other exotic products, happened to
+pass through the Rue de Longchamps, where I was living. They had in a
+little cage a pair of white Norway rats with red eyes, as pretty as
+pretty could be. Just then I had a fancy for white creatures, and my
+hen-run was inhabited by white fowls only. I bought the two rats, and a
+big cage was built for them, with inner stairs leading to the different
+stories, eating-places, bedrooms, and trapezes for gymnastics. They were
+unquestionably happier and better off there than La Fontaine’s rat in
+his Dutch cheese.</p>
+
+<p>The gentle creatures, which, I really do not know why, inspire puerile
+repulsion, became astonishingly tame as soon as they found out that no
+harm was intended them. They allowed themselves to be petted just like
+cats, and would catch my finger in their ideally delicate little rosy
+hands, and lick it in the friendliest way. They used to be let out at
+the end of our meals, and would clamber up the arms, the shoulders, and
+the heads of the guests, emerging from the sleeves of coats and
+dressing-gowns with marvellous skill and agility. All these
+performances, carried out very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span> prettily, were intended to secure
+permission to forage among the remains of the dessert. They were then
+placed on the table, and in a twinkling the male and female had put away
+the nuts, filberts, raisins, and lumps of sugar. It was most amusing to
+watch their quick, eager ways, and their astonishment when they reached
+the edge of the table. Then, however, we would hold out to them a strip
+of wood reaching to their cage, and they stored away their gains in
+their pantry.</p>
+
+<p>The pair multiplied rapidly, and numerous families, as white as their
+progenitors, ran up and down the little ladders in the cage, so that ere
+long I found myself the owner of some thirty rats so very tame that when
+the weather was cold they were in the habit of nestling in my pockets in
+order to keep warm, and remained there perfectly still. Sometimes I used
+to have the doors of my City of Rats thrown open, and, after having
+ascended to the topmost story of my house, I whistled in a way very
+familiar to my pets. Then the rats, which find it difficult to ascend
+steps, climbed up the balusters, got on to the rail, and proceeding in
+Indian file while keeping their equilibrium like acrobats, ascended that
+narrow road not infrequently descended astride by schoolboys, and came
+to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span> me uttering little squeaks and manifesting the liveliest joy. And
+now I must confess to a piece of stupidity on my part. I had so often
+been told that a rat’s tail looked like a red worm and spoiled the
+creature’s pretty looks, that I selected one of the younger generation
+and cut off the much criticised caudal appendage with a red-hot shovel.
+The little rat bore the operation very well, grew apace, and became an
+imposing fellow with mustaches. But though he was the lighter for the
+loss of his tail, he was much less agile than his comrades; he was very
+careful about trying gymnastics and fell very often. He always brought
+up the rear when the company ascended the balusters, and looked like a
+tight-rope dancer trying to do without a balancing-pole. Then I
+understood the usefulness of a tail in the case of rats: it aids them to
+maintain their equilibrium when scampering along cornices and narrow
+ledges. They swing it to the right or the left by way of counterpoise
+when they lean over to the one side or the other; hence the constant
+switching which appears so causeless. When one observes Nature
+carefully, one readily comes to the conclusion that she does nothing
+that is unnecessary, and that one ought to be very careful in attempting
+to improve upon her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>No doubt my reader wonders how cats and rats, two races so hostile to
+each other, and the one of which is the prey of the other, can manage to
+live together. The fact is that mine got on wonderfully harmoniously
+together. The cats were good as gold to the rats, which had lost all
+fear of them. The felines were never perfidious, and the rats never had
+to mourn the loss of a single comrade. Don Pierrot of Navarre was
+uncommonly fond of them; he would lie down by their cage and spend hours
+watching them at play. When by chance the door of the room was closed,
+he would scratch and miaoul gently until it was opened and he could join
+his little white friends, which often came and slept by him. Séraphita,
+who was more stand-off and who disliked the strong odour of musk given
+out by the rats, did not take part in their sports, but she never harmed
+them, and allowed them to pass quietly in front of her without ever
+unsheathing her claws.</p>
+
+<p>The end of these rats was strange. One heavy, stormy summer’s day, when
+the mercury was nearly up to a hundred degrees, their cage had been put
+in the garden, in an arbour covered with creepers, as they seemed to
+feel the heat greatly. The storm burst with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span> lightnings, rain, thunder,
+and squalls of wind. The tall poplars on the river bank bent like reeds.
+Armed with an umbrella, which the wind turned inside out, I was just
+starting to fetch in my rats, when a dazzling flash of lightning, which
+seemed to tear open the very depths of heaven, stopped me on the
+uppermost of the steps leading from the terrace to the garden.</p>
+
+<p>A terrific thunder-clap, louder than the report of a hundred guns,
+followed almost instantaneously upon the flash, and the shock was so
+violent that I was nearly thrown to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>The storm passed away shortly after that frightful explosion, but, on
+reaching the arbour, I found the thirty-two rats, toes up, killed by the
+one and same stroke of lightning. No doubt the iron wires of their cage
+had attracted the electric fluid and acted as a conductor.</p>
+
+<p>Thus died together, as they had lived, the thirty-two Norway rats,&mdash;an
+enviable death, not often vouchsafed by fate!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chapbreak" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="chapterhead"><a name="III" id="III"></a>III<br />
+
+THE BLACK DYNASTY</h2>
+
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="dropcap">D</span><span class="upper">on Pierrot</span> of Navarre, being a native of Havana, required a hot-house
+temperature, and he enjoyed it in the house; round the dwelling,
+however, stretched great gardens, separated by open fences through which
+a cat could easily make its way, and rose great trees in which
+twittered, warbled, and sang whole flocks of birds; so that sometimes
+Pierrot, profiting by a door left open, would go out at night and start
+on a hunt, rambling through the grass and flowers wet with dew. In such
+cases he would have to await daylight to be let in, for although he
+would come and miaoul under our windows, his appeals did not always
+awaken the sleepers in the house. He had a delicate chest, and one
+night, when it was colder than usual, he caught a cold which soon turned
+into consumption. After coughing for a whole year poor Pierrot became
+thin and emaciated, and his coat, formerly so silky, had the mat
+whiteness of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span> shroud. His great transparent eyes had become the most
+important feature in his poor shrunken face; his red nose had turned
+pale, and he walked with slow steps, in a melancholy fashion, by the
+sunny side of the wall, watching the yellow autumn leaves whirling and
+twisting. One could have sworn he was reciting to himself Millevoye’s
+elegy. A sick animal is a very touching object, for it bears suffering
+with such gentle and sad resignation. We did all we could to save him; I
+called in a very skilful physician who tested his chest and felt his
+pulse. Ass’s milk was prescribed, and the poor little creature drank it
+willingly enough out of his tiny china saucer. He would remain for hours
+at a time stretched out on my knee like the shadow of a sphinx; I could
+feel his vertebræ like the grains of a chaplet, and he would try to
+acknowledge my caresses with a feeble purr that sounded like a
+death-rattle. On the day he died, he lay on his side gasping, but got
+himself up by a supreme effort, came to me, and opening wide his eyes,
+fixed upon me a glance that called for help with intense supplication.
+He seemed to say to me, “You are a man; do save me.” Then he staggered,
+his eyes already glazed, and fell to the ground, uttering so woeful, so
+despair<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>ing, so anguished a cry that it filled me with mute horror. He
+was buried at the foot of the garden, under a white rosebush that still
+marks the place of his tomb.</p>
+
+<p>Séraphita died two or three years later, of croup, which the physician
+was unable to master. She rests not far from Pierrot.</p>
+
+<p>With her ended the White Dynasty, but not the family. From that pair of
+snow-white cats had sprung three coal-black kittens, a mystery the
+solution of which I leave to others. Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables” were
+then all the rage, and the names of the characters in the novel were in
+every one’s mouth. The two little male cats were called Enjolras and
+Gavroche, and the female Eponine. They were the sweetest of kittens, and
+we trained them to fetch and carry pieces of paper thrown at a distance
+just as a dog would do. We got so far as to throw the paper ball on the
+top of wardrobes, or to hide it behind boxes or in tall vases, and they
+would retrieve it very prettily with their paws. On attaining years of
+discretion, they forsook these frivolous sports and resumed the dreamy,
+philosophical calm which is the real characteristic of cats.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>All negroes are alike to people who land in a slave-owning country in
+America, and it is impossible for them to tell one from another. So, to
+those who do not care for them, three black cats are three black cats
+and nothing more. But an observing eye makes no such mistake. The
+physiognomies of animals are as different as those of men, and I could
+always tell to which particular cat belonged the black face, as black as
+Harlequin’s mask, and lighted by emerald disks with golden gleams.</p>
+
+<p>Enjolras, who was by far the handsomest of the three, was marked by his
+big lion-like head and well whiskered cheeks, by his muscular shoulders,
+his long back, and his splendid tail, fluffy as a feather duster. There
+was something theatrical and grandiloquent about him, and he seemed to
+pose like an actor who attracts admiration. His motions were slow,
+undulating, and full of majesty; he seemed to be always stepping on a
+table covered with china ornaments and Venetian glass, so circumspectly
+did he select the place where he put down his foot. He was not much of a
+Stoic, and exhibited a liking for food which his namesake would have had
+reason to blame. No doubt Enjolras, the pure and sober youth, would have
+said to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span> him, as the angel did to Swedenborg, “You eat too much.” We
+rather encouraged this amusing voracity, analogous to that of monkeys,
+and Enjolras grew to a size and weight very uncommon among domestic
+cats. Then I bethought myself of having him shaved in the style of
+poodles, in order to bring out completely his leonine appearance. He
+retained his mane and a long tuft of hair at the end of the tail, and I
+would not swear that his thighs were not adorned with mutton-chop
+whiskers like those Munito used to wear. Thus trimmed, he resembled, I
+must confess, a Japanese monster much more than a lion of the Atlas
+Mountains or the Cape. Never was a more extravagant fancy carried out on
+the body of a living animal; his closely clipped coat allowed the skin
+to show through, and its bluish tones, most curious to note, contrasted
+strangely with his black mane.</p>
+
+<p>Gavroche was a cat with a sharp, satirical look, as if he intended to
+recall his namesake in the novel. Smaller than Enjolras, he was endowed
+with abrupt and comical agility, and in the stead of the puns and slang
+of the Paris street-Arab, he indulged in the funniest capers, leaps, and
+attitudes. I am bound to add that, yielding to his street instincts,
+Gavroche was in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span> the habit of seizing every opportunity of leaving the
+drawing-room and going off to join, in the court, and even in the public
+streets, numbers of wandering cats, “of unknown blood and lineage low,”
+with whom he took part in performances of doubtful taste, completely
+forgetful of his dignified rank as a Havana cat, the son of the
+illustrious Don Pierrot of Navarre, a grandee of Spain of the first
+class, and of the Marchioness Séraphita, noted for her haughty and
+aristocratic manners.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes he would bring in to his meals, in order to treat them,
+consumptive friends of his, so starved that every rib in their body
+showed, having nothing but skin and bones, whom he had picked up in the
+course of his excursions and wanderings, for he was a kind-hearted
+fellow. The poor devils, their ears laid back, their tails between their
+legs, their glance restless, dreading to be driven from their free meal
+by a housemaid armed with a broom, swallowed the pieces two, three, and
+four at a time, and like the famous dog, <i>Siete Aguas</i> (Seven Waters),
+of Spanish posadas, would lick the platter as clean as if it had been
+washed and scoured by a Dutch housekeeper who had served as model to
+Mieris or Gerard Dow. Whenever I saw<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span> Gavroche’s companions, I
+remembered the lettering under one of Gavarni’s drawings: “A nice lot,
+the friends you are capable of proceeding with!” But after all it was
+merely a proof of Gavroche’s kindness of heart, for he was quite able to
+polish off the plateful himself.</p>
+
+<p>The cat who bore the name of the interesting Eponine was more lissome
+and slender in shape than her brothers. Her mien was quite peculiar to
+herself, owing to her somewhat long face, her eyes slanting slightly in
+the Chinese fashion, and of a green like that of the eyes of Pallas
+Athene, on whom Homer invariably bestows the title of γλαυκῶπις, her
+velvety black nose, of as fine a grain as a Perigord
+truffle, and her incessantly moving whiskers. Her coat, of a superb
+black, was always in motion and shimmered with infinite changes. There
+never was a more sensitive, nervous, and electric animal. If she were
+stroked two or three times, in the dark, blue sparks came crackling from
+her fur. She attached herself to me in particular, just as in the novel
+Eponine becomes attached to Marius. As I was less taken up with Cosette
+than that handsome youth, I accepted the love of my affectionate and
+devoted cat, who is still the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span> assiduous companion of my labours and the
+delight of my hermitage on the confines of the suburbs. She trots up
+when she hears the bell ring, welcomes my visitors, leads them into the
+drawing-room, shows them to a seat, talks to them&mdash;yes, I mean it, talks
+to them&mdash;with croonings and cooings and whimpers quite unlike the
+language cats make use of among themselves, and which simulate the
+articulate speech of man. You ask me what it is she says? She says, in
+the plainest possible fashion: “Do not be impatient; look at the
+pictures or chat with me, if you enjoy that. My master will be down in a
+minute.” And when I come in she discreetly retires to an arm-chair or on
+top of the piano, and listens to the conversation without breaking in
+upon it, like a well-bred animal that is used to society.</p>
+
+<p>Sweet Eponine has given us so many proofs of intelligence, kindly
+disposition, and sociability that she has been promoted, by common
+consent, to the dignity of a <i>person</i>, for it is plain that a higher
+order of reason than instinct guides her actions. This dignity entails
+the right of eating at table like a person, and not from a saucer in a
+corner, like an animal. So Eponine’s chair is placed beside mine at
+lunch and dinner, and on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span> account of her size she is allowed to rest her
+fore paws upon the edge of the table. She has her own place set, without
+fork or spoon, but with her glass. She eats of every course that is
+brought on, from the soup to the dessert, always waiting for her turn to
+be served and behaving with a discretion and decency that it is to be
+wished were more frequently met with in children. She turns up at the
+first sound of the bell, and when we enter the dining-room we are sure
+to find her already in her place, standing on her chair, her paws on the
+edge of the table, and holding up her little head to be kissed, like a
+well-bred young lady who is polite and affectionate towards her parents
+and her elders.</p>
+
+<p>The sun has its spots, the diamond its flaws, and perfection itself its
+little weak points. Eponine, it must be owned, has an overmastering
+fondness for fish, a taste she shares in common with all her race. The
+Latin proverb, <i>Catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantas</i>, to the
+contrary notwithstanding, she is always ready to pop her paw into the
+water to fish out a blay, a small carp, or a trout. Fish makes her
+well-nigh delirious, and like children eagerly looking for the dessert,
+she is apt to object to the soup, when the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span> preliminary investigations
+she has carried on in the kitchen have enabled her to ascertain that the
+fish has duly come in and that there is no reason why Vatel should run
+himself through with his sword. In such cases we do not help her to
+fish, and I remark to her, in a cold tone, “A lady who has no appetite
+for soup cannot have any appetite for fish,” and the dish is
+remorselessly sent past her. Then seeing that it is no joking matter,
+dainty Eponine bolts her soup in hot haste, licks up the very last drop
+of the bouillon, puts away the minutest crumb of bread or Italian paste,
+and turns round to me with the proud look of one conscious of being
+without fear or reproach and of having fulfilled her duty. Her share of
+the fish is handed to her, and she despatches it with every mark of
+extreme satisfaction. Then, having tasted a little of every dish, she
+winds up her meal by drinking one-third of a glassful of water.</p>
+
+<p>If we happen to have guests at dinner, Eponine does not need to have
+seen them enter to be aware that there is to be company. She simply
+looks at her place, and if she sees a knife, fork, and spoon laid there,
+she makes off at once and perches on the piano stool, her usual place of
+refuge in such cases. Those who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span> deny reasoning powers to animals may
+explain this fact, so simple apparently, yet so suggestive, as best they
+may. That judicious and observant cat of mine deduces from the presence
+by her plate of utensils which man alone understands how to use that she
+must give up her position for that day to a guest, and she forthwith
+does so. Never once has she made a mistake. Only, when she is well
+acquainted with the particular guest, she will climb upon his knee and
+seek, by her graceful ways and her caresses, to induce him to bestow
+some tit-bit upon her.</p>
+
+<p>But enough of this; I must not weary my readers, and stories of cats are
+less attractive than stories about dogs. Yet I deem that I ought to tell
+of the deaths of Enjolras and Gavroche. In the Latin Rudiments there is
+a rule stated thus: <i>Sua eum perdidit ambitio.</i> Of Enjolras it may be
+said: <i>Sua eum perdidit pinguitudo</i>, that is, his admirable condition
+was the cause of his death. He was killed by idiotic fanciers of jugged
+hare. His murderers, however, perished before the end of the year in the
+most painful manner; for the death of a black cat, an eminently
+cabalistic animal, never goes unavenged.</p>
+
+<p>Gavroche, seized with a frantic love of freedom, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span> rather with a
+sudden attack of vertigo, sprang out of the window one day, crossed the
+street, climbed the fence of the Parc Saint-James, which faces our
+house, and vanished. In spite of our utmost endeavours, we never managed
+to hear of him again, and a shadow of mystery hangs over his fate; so
+that the only survivor of the Black Dynasty is Eponine, who is still
+faithful to her master and has become a thorough cat of letters.</p>
+
+<p>Her companion now is a magnificent angora cat, whose gray and silver fur
+recalls Chinese spotted porcelain. He is called Zizi, alias “Too
+Handsome to Work.” The handsome fellow lives in a sort of contemplative
+<i>kief</i>, like a theriaki under the influence of the drug, and makes one
+think of “The Ecstasies of Mr. Hochenez.” Zizi is passionately fond of
+music, and, not satisfied with listening to it, he indulges in it
+himself. Sometimes, in the dead of night, when everybody is asleep, a
+strange, fantastic melody, which the Kreislers and the musicians of the
+future might well envy, breaks in upon the silence. It is Zizi walking
+upon the key-board of the piano which has been left open, and who is at
+once astonished and delighted at hearing the keys sing under his tread.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>It would be unjust not to link with this branch Cleopatra, Eponine’s
+daughter, whose shy disposition keeps her from mingling in society. She
+is of a tawny black, like Mummia, Atta-Croll’s hairy companion, and her
+two green eyes look like huge aqua-marines. She generally stands on
+three legs, her fourth lifted up like a classical lion that has lost its
+marble ball.</p>
+
+<p>These be the chronicles of the Black Dynasty. Enjolras, Gavroche, and
+Eponine recall to me the creations of a beloved master; only, when I
+re-read “Les Misérables,” the chief characters in the novel seem to me
+to be taken by black cats, a fact that in no wise diminishes the
+interest I take in it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chapbreak" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="chapterhead"><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV<br />
+
+THIS SIDE FOR DOGS</h2>
+
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="dropcap">I</span> <span class="upper">have</span> often been charged with not being fond of dogs; a charge which
+does not at first sight appear to be very serious, but which I
+nevertheless desire to clear myself of, for it implies a certain amount
+of dislike. People who prefer cats are thought by many to be cruel,
+sensuous, and treacherous, while dog-lovers are credited with being
+frank, loyal, and open-hearted,&mdash;in a word, possessed of all the
+qualities attributed to the canine race. I in no wise deny the merits of
+Médor, Turk, Miraut, and other engaging animals, and I am prepared to
+acknowledge the truth of the axiom formulated by Charlet,&mdash;“The best
+thing about man is his dog.” I have been the owner of several, and I
+still own some. Should any of those who seek to discredit me come to my
+house, they would be met by a Havana lap-dog barking shrilly and
+furiously at them, and by a greyhound that very likely would bite their
+legs for them. But my affection for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span> dogs has an understratum of fear.
+These excellent creatures, so good, so faithful, so devoted, so loving,
+may go mad at any moment, and then they become more dangerous than a
+lance-head snake, an asp, a rattlesnake or a cobra capella. This reacts
+on my love for dogs. Then dogs strike me as a bit uncanny; they have
+such a searching, intense glance; they sit down in front of you with so
+questioning a look that it is fairly embarrassing. Goethe disliked that
+glance of theirs that seems to attempt to incorporate man’s soul within
+itself, and he drove away dogs, saying, “You shall not swallow my monad,
+much as you may try.”</p>
+
+<p>The Pharamond of my canine dynasty was called Luther. He was a big white
+spaniel, with liver spots, and handsome brown ears. He was a setter, had
+lost his owner, and after looking for him a long time in vain, had taken
+to living in my father’s house at Passy. Not having partridges to go
+after, he had taken to rat-hunting, and was as clever at it as a Scotch
+terrier. At that time I was living in that blind alley of the Doyenné,
+now destroyed, where Gérard de Nerval, Arsène Houssaye and Camille
+Rogier were the heads of a little picturesque and artistic Bohemia, the
+eccentric mode of life in which has been so well told by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span> others that it
+is unnecessary to relate it over again. There we were, right in the
+centre of the Carrousel, as independent and solitary as on a desert
+island in Oceanica, under the shadow of the Louvre, among the blocks of
+stone and the nettles, close to an old ruinous church, with fallen-in
+roof which looked most romantic in the moonlight. Luther, with whom I
+was on a most friendly footing, seeing that I had finally abandoned the
+paternal nest, made a point of coming to see me every morning. He
+started from Passy, no matter what the weather was, came down the Quai
+de Billy, the Cours-la-Reine, and reached my place at about eight
+o’clock, just as I was waking. He used to scratch at the door, which was
+opened for him, and he dashed joyously at me with yelps of joy, put his
+paws on my knees, received with a modest and unassuming air the caresses
+his noble conduct merited, took a look round the room, and started back
+to Passy. On arriving there, he went to my mother, wagged his tail,
+barked a little, and said as plainly as if he had spoken: “I have seen
+young master; don’t worry; he is all right.” Having thus reported to the
+proper person the result of his self-imposed mission, he would drink up
+half a bowlful of water, eat his food, lie down on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span> the carpet by my
+mother’s chair,&mdash;for he entertained peculiar affection for her,&mdash;and
+sleep for an hour or two after his long run. Now, how do people who
+maintain that animals do not think and are incapable of putting two and
+two together explain this morning visit, which kept up family relations
+and brought to the home-nest news of the fledgeling that had so recently
+left it?</p>
+
+<p>Poor Luther’s end was very sad. He became taciturn, morose, and one fine
+morning bolted from the house, feeling the rabies on him and resolved
+not to bite his masters; so he fled, and we have every reason to believe
+that he was killed as a mad dog, for we never saw him again.</p>
+
+<p>After a pretty long interregnum a new dog was brought into the house. It
+was called Zamore, and was a sort of spaniel, of very mixed breed, small
+in size, with a black coat, save the tan spots over his eyes and the tan
+hair on his stomach. On the whole he was insignificant physically, and
+ugly rather than handsome; but morally, he was a remarkable dog. He
+absolutely despised women, would not obey them, never would follow them,
+and never once did my mother or my sisters manage to win from him the
+least sign of friend<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>ship or deference. He would accept their attentions
+and the tit-bits they gave him with a superior air, but never did he
+express any gratitude for them. Never would he yelp, never would he rap
+the floor with his tail, never bestow on them a single one of those
+caresses dogs are so fond of lavishing. He remained impassible in a
+sphinx-like pose, like a serious man who will not take part in the
+conversation of frivolous persons. The master he had elected was my
+father, in whom he acknowledged the authority of the head of the house,
+and whom he considered a mature and serious man. But his affection for
+him was austere and stoical, and was not shown by gambadoes, larks, and
+lickings. Only, he always kept his eyes upon him, followed his every
+motion and kept close to heel, never allowing himself the smallest
+escapade or the least nod to any passing comrades. My dear and lamented
+father was a great fisherman before the Lord, and he caught more barbels
+than Nimrod ever slew antelopes. It certainly could not be said of his
+fishing-rod that it was a pole and string with a worm at one end and a
+fool at the other, for he was a very clever man, and none the less he
+daily filled his basket with fish. Zamore used to accompany him on his
+trips, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span> during the long night-watches entailed by ground-line
+fishing for the big fellows, he would stand on the very edge of the
+water, apparently trying to fathom its dark depths and to follow the
+movements of the prey. Although he often pricked up his ears at the
+faint and distant sounds that, at night, are heard in the deepest
+silence, he never barked, having understood that to be mute is a quality
+indispensable in a fisherman’s dog. In vain did Phœbe’s alabaster
+brow show above the horizon reflected in the sombre mirror of the river;
+Zamore would not bay at the moon, although such prolonged ululation
+gives infinite delight to creatures of his species. Only when the bell
+on the set-line tinkled did he look at his master and allow himself one
+short bark, knowing that the prey was caught; and he appeared to take
+the greatest interest in the manœuvres involved in the landing of a
+three or four pound barbel.</p>
+
+<p>No one would have suspected that under his calm, abstracted,
+philosophical look, this dog, so serious that he was almost melancholy,
+and despised all frivolity, nursed an overmastering, strange, never to
+be suspected passion, absolutely contrary to his apparent moral and
+physical character.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span>“You do not mean,” I hear my reader exclaim, “that the good Zamore had
+hidden vices?&mdash;that he was a thief?” No. “A libertine?” No. “That he
+loved brandied cherries?” No. “That he bit people?” Never. Zamore was
+crazy about dancing. He was an artist devoted to the choregraphic art.</p>
+
+<p>He became conscious of his vocation in the following manner. One day
+there appeared on the square at Passy a gray moke, with sores on its
+back, and drooping ears, one of those wretched mountebanks’ asses that
+Decamps and Fouquet used to paint so well. The two baskets balanced on
+either side of his raw and prominent backbone contained a troupe of
+trained dogs, dressed as marquesses, troubadours, Turks, Alpine
+shepherdesses, or Queens of Golconda, according to their sex. The
+impresario put down the dogs, cracked his whip, and suddenly every one
+of the actors forsook the horizontal for the perpendicular position, and
+transformed itself into a biped. The drum and fife started up and the
+ballet commenced.</p>
+
+<p>Zamore, who was gravely idling around, stopped smitten with wonder at
+the sight. The dogs, dressed in showy colours, braided with imitation
+gold lace on every seam, a plumed hat or a turban on their heads,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span> and
+moving in cadence to a witching rhythm, with a distant resemblance to
+human beings, appeared to him to be supernatural creatures. The
+skilfully linked steps, the slides, the pirouettes delighted but did not
+discourage him. Like Correggio at the sight of Raphael’s painting, he
+exclaimed in his canine speech, <i>Anch’ io son pittore!</i> and when the
+company filed past him, he also, filled with a noble spirit of
+emulation, rose up, somewhat uncertainly, upon his hind legs and
+attempted to join them, to the great delight of the onlookers.</p>
+
+<p>The manager did not see it in that light, and let fly a smart cut of his
+whip at Zamore, who was driven from the circle, just as a spectator
+would be ejected from the theatre did he, during the performance, take
+on himself to ascend to the stage and to take part in the ballet.</p>
+
+<p>This public humiliation did not check Zamore’s vocation. He returned
+home with drooping tail and thoughtful mien, and during the whole of the
+remainder of that day was more reserved, more taciturn, and more morose
+than ever. But in the dead of night my sisters were awakened by slight
+sounds, the cause of which they could not conjecture, which proceeded
+from an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span> uninhabited room next theirs, where Zamore was usually put to
+bed on an old arm-chair. It sounded like a rhythmic tread, made more
+sonorous by the silence of night. They at first supposed that the mice
+were romping round, but the sound of steps and leaps on the flooring was
+too loud for that. The bravest of my sisters rose, partly opened the
+door, and by the light of a moonbeam streaming in through a pane, she
+beheld Zamore on his hind legs, pawing the air with his fore paws, and
+busy studying the dancing steps he had admired in the street that
+morning. The gentleman was practising!</p>
+
+<p>Nor did this prove, as might be supposed, a passing fancy, a momentary
+attraction; Zamore persisted in his choregraphic aspirations and turned
+out a fine dancer. Every time he heard the fife and drum he would run
+out on the square, slip between the spectators’ legs and watch, with the
+closest attention, the trained dogs performing their exercises. Mindful,
+however, of the whip-cut, he no longer attempted to take part in the
+dancing; he took note of the poses, the steps, and the attitudes, and
+then, at night, in the silence of his room, he would work away at them,
+remaining the while, during the day, as austere in his bearing as ever.
+Ere<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span> long he was not satisfied with copying; he took to composing, to
+inventing, and I am bound to say few dogs surpassed him in the elevated
+style. I often used to watch him through the half-open door; he
+practised with such enthusiasm that every night he would drain dry the
+bowl of water placed in one corner of the room.</p>
+
+<p>When he had become quite sure of himself and the equal of the most
+accomplished of four-footed dancers, he felt he could no longer hide his
+light under a bushel and that he must reveal the mystery of his
+accomplishments. The court-yard of the house was closed, on one side, by
+an iron fence with spaces sufficiently wide to allow moderately stout
+dogs to enter in easily. So one fine morning some fifteen or twenty dog
+friends of his, connoisseurs no doubt, to whom Zamore had sent letters
+of invitation to his début in the choregraphic art, met around a square
+of smooth ground nicely levelled off, which the artist had previously
+swept with his tail, and the performance began. The dogs appeared to be
+delighted and manifested their enthusiasm by <i>ouahs!</i> <i>ouahs!</i> closely
+resembling the <i>bravi</i> of dilettanti at the Opera. With the sole
+exception of an old and pretty muddy poodle, very wretched looking, and
+a critic, no doubt, who barked out something about forgetting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span> sound
+tradition, all the spectators proclaimed Zamore the Vestris of dogs and
+the god of dancing. Our artist had performed a minuet, a jig, and a
+<i>deux temps</i> waltz. A large number of two-footed spectators had joined
+the four-footed ones, and Zamore enjoyed the honour of being applauded
+by human hands.</p>
+
+<p>Dancing became so much a habit of his that when he was paying court to
+some fair, he would stand up on his hind legs, making bows and turning
+his toes out like a marquis of the <i>ancien régime</i>. All he lacked was
+the plumed hat under his arm.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from this he was as hypochondriacal as a comic actor and took no
+part in the life of the household. He stirred only when he saw his
+master pick up his hat and stick. Zamore died of brain fever, brought
+on, no doubt, by overwork in trying to learn the schottische, then in
+the full swing of its popularity. Zamore may say within his tomb, as
+says the Greek dancer in her epitaph: “Earth, rest lightly on me, for I
+rested lightly on thee.”</p>
+
+<p>How came it that being so talented, Zamore was not enrolled in Corvi’s
+company? For I was even then sufficiently influential as a critic to
+manage this for him. Zamore, however, would not leave his mas<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span>ter, and
+sacrificed his self-love to his affection, a proof of devotion which one
+would look for in vain among men.</p>
+
+<p>A singer, named Kobold, a thorough-bred King Charles from the famous
+kennels of Lord Lauder, took the place of the dancer. It was a queer
+little beast, with an enormous projecting forehead, big goggle eyes,
+nose broken short off at the root, and long ears trailing on the ground.
+When Kobold was brought to France, knowing no language but English, he
+was quite bewildered. He could not understand the orders given him;
+trained to answer to “Go on,” or “Come here,” he remained motionless
+when he was told in French, “Viens,” or “Va-t’en.” It took him a year to
+learn the tongue of the new country in which he found himself and to
+take part in the conversation. Kobold was very fond of music, and
+himself sang little songs with a very strong English accent. The A would
+be struck on the piano, and he caught the note exactly and modulated
+with a flute-like sound phrases that were really musical and that had no
+connection whatever with barking or yelping. When we wanted to make him
+go on, all we had to do was to say, “Sing a little more,” and he would
+repeat the cadence. Although he was fed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span> with the utmost care, as was
+proper in the case of a tenor singer and so distinguished a gentleman,
+Kobold had one eccentric taste: he would eat earth just like a South
+American savage. We never succeeded in curing him of the habit, which
+proved the cause of his death. He was very fond of the stablemen, the
+horses, and the stable, and my ponies had no more constant companion
+than he. He spent his time between their loose-boxes and the piano.</p>
+
+<p>After Kobold, the King Charles, came Myrza, a tiny Havana poodle that
+had the honour of being for a time the property of Giulia Grisi, who
+gave her to me. She is snow-white, especially when she is fresh from her
+bath and has not had time to roll over in the dust, a fancy some dogs
+share with dust-loving birds. She is extremely gentle and affectionate,
+and as sweet-tempered as a dove. Her little fluffy face, her two little
+eyes that might be mistaken for upholstery nails, and her little nose
+like a Piedmont truffle, are most comical. Tufts of hair, curly as
+Astrakhan fur, fall over her face in the most picturesque and unexpected
+way, hiding first one eye and then the other, so that she has the most
+peculiar appearance imaginable and squints like a chameleon.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span>In Myrza, nature imitates the artificial so perfectly that the little
+creature looks as if she had stepped out of a toy-shop. When her coat is
+nicely curled, and she has got on her blue ribbon bow and her silver
+bell, she is the image of a toy dog, and when she barks it is impossible
+not to wonder whether there is a bellows under her paws.</p>
+
+<p>She spends three-fourths of her time in sleep, and her life would not be
+much changed were she stuffed, nor does she seem particularly clever in
+the ordinary intercourse of life. Yet she one day exhibited an amount of
+intelligence absolutely unparalleled in my experience. Bonnegrâce, the
+painter of the portraits of Tchoumakoff and E. H., which attracted so
+much attention at the exhibitions, had brought to me, in order to get my
+opinion upon it, one of his portraits painted in the manner of Pagnest,
+remarkable for truthfulness of colour and vigour of modelling. Although
+I have lived on terms of closest intimacy with animals and could tell a
+hundred traits of the ingenuity, reasoning, and philosophical powers of
+cats, dogs, and birds, I am bound to confess that animals wholly lack
+any feeling for art. Never have I seen a single one notice a picture,
+and the story of the birds that picked at the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span> grapes in the painting by
+Zeuxis, strikes me as a piece of invention. It is precisely the feeling
+for ornament and art that distinguishes man from brutes. Dogs never look
+at pictures and never put on earrings. Well, Myrza, at the sight of the
+portrait placed against the wall by Bonnegrâce, sprang from the stool on
+which she was lying curled up, dashed at the canvas and barked furiously
+at it, trying to bite the stranger who had made his way into the room.
+Great was her surprise when she found herself compelled to recognise
+that she had a plane surface before her, that her teeth could not lay
+hold of it, and that it was no more than a vain presentment. She smelled
+the picture, tried to wedge in behind the frame, looked at us both with
+a glance of questioning and wonder, and returned to her place, where she
+disdainfully went to sleep again, refusing to have anything more to do
+with the painted individual. Myrza’s features will not be lost to
+posterity, for there is a fine portrait of her by the Hungarian artist,
+Victor Madarasz.</p>
+
+<p>Let me close with the story of Dash. One day a dealer in broken bottles
+and glass stopped at my door in quest of such wares. He had in his cart
+a puppy, three or four months old, which he had been commis<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span>sioned to
+drown, whereat the worthy fellow grieved much, for the dog kept looking
+at him with a tender and beseeching look as if he knew well what was
+going to happen. The reason of the severe sentence passed on the puppy
+was that he had broken his fore paw. My heart was filled with pity for
+him, and I took charge of the condemned creature; called in a vet, and
+had Dash’s paw set in splints and bandaged. It was impossible, however,
+to stop him gnawing at the dressings; the paw could not be cured, and
+the bones not having knitted, it hung limp like the sleeve of a man who
+has lost an arm. His infirmity, however, did not prevent his being
+jolly, lively, and full of fun, and he managed to race along quite fast
+on his three legs.</p>
+
+<p>He was an out and out street dog, a rascally little cur that Buffon
+himself would have been puzzled to classify. He was ugly, but his
+features were uncommonly mobile and sparkled with cleverness. He seemed
+to understand what was told him, and his expression would change
+according as the words addressed to him, in the same tone of voice, were
+flattering or injurious. He rolled his eyes, turned up his lips,
+indulged in the wildest of nervous twitchings, or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span> else grinned and
+showed his white teeth, obtaining in this way most comical effects of
+which he was perfectly conscious. He would often try to talk; laying his
+paw on my knee, he would fix on me that earnest gaze of his and begin a
+series of murmurs, sighs, and grunts, so varied in intonation that it
+was hard not to recognise them as language. Sometimes in the course of a
+conversation of this sort, Dash would break out into a bark or a yelp,
+and then I would look sternly at him and say: “That is barking, not
+speaking. Is it possible that you are an animal?” Dash, feeling
+humiliated at the suggestion, would go on with his vocalisation, giving
+it the most pathetic expression. We used to say then that Dash was
+telling his tale of woe.</p>
+
+<p>He was passionately fond of sugar, and at dessert, when coffee was
+brought in, he would invariably beg each guest for a piece with such
+insistence that he was always successful. He had ended by transforming
+this merely benevolent gift into a regular tax which he collected with
+unfailing regularity. He was but a little mongrel, yet with the frame of
+a Thersites he had the soul of an Achilles. Infirm though he was, he
+would attack, with madly heroic courage, dogs ten times his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span> size and
+was regularly and terribly thrashed by them. Like Don Quixote, the brave
+Knight of La Mancha, he set out triumphantly and returned in most evil
+plight. Alas! he was destined to fall a victim to his own courage. Some
+months ago he was brought home with a broken back, the work of a
+Newfoundland, an amiable brute, which the next day played the same trick
+to a small greyhound.</p>
+
+<p>Dash’s death was the first of a series of catastrophes: the mistress of
+the house where he met with the death-stroke was, a few days later,
+burned alive in her bed, and the same fate overtook her husband who was
+trying to save her. This was merely a fatal coincidence and by no means
+an expiation, for these people were of the kindest and as fond of
+animals as is a Brahmin, besides being wholly innocent of our poor
+Dash’s tragic fate.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that I have still another dog, called Nero, but he is too
+recent an inmate of our home to have a story of his own.</p>
+
+<p>(<span class="smcap">Note.</span>&mdash;Alas! Nero has been poisoned quite recently, just as if he had
+been supping with the Borgias, and his epitaph comes in the very first
+chapter of his life.)</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chapbreak" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2 class="chapterhead"><a name="V" id="V"></a>V<br />
+
+MY HORSES</h2>
+
+
+<p class="noindent"><span class="dropcap">N</span><span class="upper">ow</span> let not the reader, on seeing this title, hastily accuse me of being
+a swell. Horses! That is a pretentious word to be written down by a man
+of letters! <i>Musa pedestris</i>, says Horace; that is, the Muse goes on
+foot, and Parnassus itself has but one horse in its stable, Pegasus.
+Besides, he is a winged steed and by no means quiet in harness, if we
+may credit what Schiller tells us in his ballad. I am not a sportsman,
+alas! and deeply do I regret it, for I am as fond of horses as if I had
+five hundred thousand a year, and I am entirely of the opinion of the
+Arabs concerning pedestrians. The horse is man’s natural pedestal, and
+the one complete being is the centaur, whom mythology so ingeniously
+invented.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, although I am merely a man of letters, I have owned
+horses. In the year 1843 or 1844, I found in the pay-dirt of journalism,
+washed out in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span> wooden pan of the <i>feuilleton</i>, a sufficient quantity
+of gold dust to justify the hope that I might feed, besides my cats,
+dogs, and magpies, a couple of animals of larger size. I first had a
+couple of Shetland ponies, the size of big dogs, hairy as bears, all
+mane and tail, and who looked at me in such friendly fashion through
+their long black hair that I felt more like showing them into the
+drawing-room than sending them to the stable. They would take sugar out
+of my pockets like trained horses. But they proved to be decidedly too
+small; they would have answered as saddle horses for English children
+eight years of age, or as coach horses for Tom Thumb, but I was already
+in the enjoyment of that athletic and portly frame for which I am famed,
+and which has enabled me to bear up, without bending too much under the
+burden, under forty consecutive years of supplying of copy. The
+difference between the owner and the animals was unquestionably too
+striking, even though the little black ponies drew at a very lively gait
+the light phaeton to which they were harnessed with the daintiest tan
+harness, that looked as if it had been bought in a toy shop.</p>
+
+<p>Comic illustrated papers were not as numerous then as now, but there
+were quite enough of them to publish<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span> caricatures of me and of my
+horses. It goes without saying that, profiting by the latitude allowed
+to caricature, I was represented as of elephantine bulk and appearance,
+like the god Ganesa, the Hindoo god of wisdom, and that my ponies were
+shown as no larger than poodles, rats, or mice. It is also true that I
+could readily enough have carried my pair one under each arm, and taken
+the carriage on my back. I did for a moment think of having a pony
+four-in-hand, but such a Liliputian equipage would have merely attracted
+greater attention. So to my great regret, for I had already become fond
+of them, I replaced my Shetlands with two dapple-gray cobs of larger
+size, with powerful necks, broad chests, stout and well set up, which
+were not Mecklenburghers, no doubt, but plainly more capable of dragging
+me along. They were both mares, the one called Jane, the other Betsy. So
+far as outward looks went, they were as alike as two peas, and never was
+there a better matched pair apparently. But Betsy was as lazy as Jane
+was willing. While the one drew steadily, the other was satisfied with
+trotting along, saving herself and taking good care to do nothing. These
+two animals, of the same breed, of the same age, and destined to live in
+the same stable, had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span> the liveliest antipathy for each other. They could
+not bear one another, fought in the stable, and bit each other as they
+reared in harness. It was impossible to reconcile them, which was a
+pity, for with their hog manes, like those of the horses on the
+Parthenon frieze, their quivering nostrils, and their eyes dilated with
+anger, they looked uncommonly handsome as they were driven up or down
+the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. A substitute had to be found for Betsy,
+and a small mare, somewhat lighter coloured, for it had been impossible
+to match her exactly, was brought round. Jane immediately welcomed the
+new-comer and did the honours of the stable to her most graciously, and
+ere long they became fast friends. Jane would rest her head on Blanche’s
+neck&mdash;she had been so called because her gray coat was rather
+whitish&mdash;and when they were let loose in the yard after being rubbed
+down, they would play together like a pair of dogs of children. If one
+was taken out driving, the one left in the stable was plainly wearying
+for her, and as soon as she heard in the distance the ring of her
+companion’s hoofs on the paving-stones, she set up a joyous neigh, like
+a trumpet-blast, to which the other did not fail to reply as she
+approached.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span>They would come up to be harnessed with astonishing docility, and took
+of themselves their proper place by the pole. Like all animals that are
+loved and well treated, Jane and Blanche soon became most familiar and
+trusting. They would follow me without bridle or halter like the
+best-trained dog, and when I stopped they would stick their noses on my
+shoulder in order to be caressed. Jane was fond of bread, and Blanche of
+sugar, and both were crazy about melon skin. I could make them do
+anything in return for these dainties.</p>
+
+<p>If man were not odiously brutal and ferocious, as he too frequently
+shows himself towards animals, they would cling to him most gladly.
+Their dim brain is filled with the thought of that being who thinks,
+speaks, and does things the meaning of which escapes them; he is a
+mystery and a wonder to them. They will often look at you with eyes full
+of questions you cannot answer, for the key to their speech has not yet
+been found. Yet they have a speech which enables them to exchange, by
+means of intonations not yet noted by man, ideas that are rudimentary,
+no doubt, but which are such as may be conceived by creatures within
+their sphere of action and feeling. Less stupid than we are, animals
+succeed in understanding a few<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span> words of our idiom, but not enough to
+enable them to converse with us. Besides, as the words they do learn
+refer solely to what we exact of them, the conversation would be brief.
+But that animals speak cannot be doubted by any one who has lived in any
+degree of intimacy with dogs, cats, horses, or other creatures of that
+sort.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, Jane was naturally intrepid; she never refused, and
+nothing frightened her, but after a few months of cohabitation with
+Blanche her character changed and she manifested at times sudden and
+inexplicable fear. Her companion, much less brave, must have told her
+ghost stories at night. Often, when going through the Bois de Boulogne
+at dusk or after dark, Blanche would stop short or shy, as if a phantom,
+invisible to me, had risen up before her. She trembled in every limb,
+breathed hard, and broke out into sweat. If I attempted to urge her
+ahead with the whip, she backed, and all Jane could do, strong as she
+was, was insufficient to induce her to go on. One of us would have to
+get down, cover her eyes with the hand and lead her until the vision had
+vanished. Little by little Jane became subject to the same terror, the
+reason of which, no doubt, Blanche told her once they were back in their
+stable. I may as well confess that for my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span> part, when I would be driving
+down a dark road on which the moonlight produced alternations of light
+and shadow, and Blanche suddenly became rooted to the spot as though a
+spectre had sprung at her head, and refused to move,&mdash;she who was
+usually so docile that Queen Mab’s whip, made of a cricket’s bone with a
+spider’s thread for a thong, was enough to start her into a gallop,&mdash;I
+could not repress a slight shudder or refrain from peering into the
+darkness rather anxiously, while at times the harmless trunks of ash or
+birch trees would appear to me as spectral-looking as one of Goya’s
+“Caprices.”</p>
+
+<p>I took great delight in driving these dear animals myself, and we soon
+became very intimate. It was merely as a matter of form that I held the
+reins, for the least click of the tongue was enough to direct them, to
+turn them to the right or the left, to make them go faster, or to stop
+them. They quickly learned all my habits and started of themselves for
+the office, the printer’s, the publishers’, the Bois de Boulogne, and
+the houses where I went to dinner on certain days of the week, and this
+so accurately that they would have ended by compromising me, for they
+would have revealed the places to which I paid the most mysterious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span>
+visits. If I happened to forget the time in the course of an interesting
+or tender conversation they would remind me it was getting late by
+neighing or pawing in front of the balcony.</p>
+
+<p>Although I greatly enjoyed traversing the city in the phaeton drawn by
+my two friends, I could not help at times thinking the north wind sharp
+and the rain cold when the months came along which the Republican
+calendar named so appropriately the months of mist, of frost, of rain,
+of wind, of snow (brumaire, frimaire, pluviôse, ventôse, nivôse), so I
+purchased a small blue coupé, lined with white reps, which was likened
+to the equipage of the famous dwarf of the day, a piece of impertinence
+I did not mind. A brown coupé, lined with garnet, followed the blue one,
+and was itself replaced by a dark-green coupé lined with dark blue, for
+I actually did sport a coach&mdash;I, poor newspaper writer holding no
+Government stock&mdash;for five or six years. And my ponies were none the
+less fat and in good condition though they were fed on literature, had
+substantives for oats, adjectives for hay, and adverbs for straw. But
+alas! there came, no one knows very well why, the Revolution in
+February; a great many paving-stones were picked up for patriotic
+purposes, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span> Paris became rather unfit for carriage travel. I could of
+course have escaladed the barricades with my agile steeds and my light
+equipage, but it was only at the cook-shop that I could get credit, and
+I could not possibly feed my horses on roast chicken. The horizon was
+dark with heavy clouds, through which flashed red gleams. Money had
+taken fright and gone into hiding; the <i>Presse</i>, on the staff of which I
+was, had suspended publication, and I was glad enough to find a person
+willing to buy my horses, harness, and carriages for a fourth of their
+value. It was a bitter grief to me, and I would not venture to say that
+no tears ran down my cheeks on to the manes of Jane and Blanche when
+they were led away. Sometimes their new owner would drive past the
+house; I always knew their quick, sharp trot at a distance, and always
+the sudden way they would stop under my windows proved that they had not
+forgotten the place where they had been so tenderly loved and so well
+cared for, and a sigh would break responsive from me as I said to
+myself: “Poor Jane, poor Blanche! I wonder if they are happy.”</p>
+
+<p>And the loss of them is the one and only thing I felt sore over when I
+lost my slender fortune.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr class="chapbreak" />
+
+<div class="tn">
+<p class="titlepage bold"><a name="trans_note" id="trans_note"></a>Transcriber&rsquo;s&nbsp;Note</p>
+
+<p class="noindent">The following typographical error was corrected.</p>
+
+<table class="tntable" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="typos">
+<tr>
+  <td>286</td>
+  <td>scissors cut</td>
+  <td>scissors, cut</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's My Private Menagerie, by Theophile Gautier
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+
diff --git a/30760.txt b/30760.txt
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/30760.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,1695 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of My Private Menagerie, by Theophile Gautier
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: My Private Menagerie
+       from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19
+
+Author: Theophile Gautier
+
+Editor: F. C. de Sumichrast
+
+Translator: F. C. de Sumichrast
+
+Release Date: December 26, 2009 [EBook #30760]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Linda McKeown, Joseph Cooper, Nick Wall, Julia
+Miller, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. A list of corrections
+is found at the end of the text. Oe ligatures have been expanded. Text
+originally printed in Greek characters has been transliterated and
+surrounded with ~.
+
+
+
+
+  THE WORKS OF
+  THEOPHILE GAUTIER
+
+  VOLUME NINETEEN
+
+  TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY
+  PROFESSOR F. C. DE SUMICHRAST
+  _Department of French, Harvard University_
+
+  CAPTAIN FRACASSE
+
+  PART THREE
+
+  MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE
+
+  THE ATHENAEUM SOCIETY
+  NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+  _Copyright, 1902, by_
+  GEORGE D. SPROUL
+
+
+  UNIVERSITY PRESS . JOHN WILSON
+  AND SON . CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A.
+
+
+
+
+_Contents_
+
+
+MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE
+
+
+
+    I  ANTIQUITY           _Page_ 283
+
+   II  THE WHITE DYNASTY      "   294
+
+  III  THE BLACK DYNASTY      "   305
+
+   IV  THIS SIDE FOR DOGS     "   318
+
+    V  MY HORSES              "   336
+
+
+
+
+_My Private Menagerie_
+
+
+
+
+MY PRIVATE MENAGERIE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ANTIQUITY
+
+
+I have often been caricatured in Turkish dress seated upon cushions, and
+surrounded by cats so familiar that they did not hesitate to climb upon
+my shoulders and even upon my head. The caricature is truth slightly
+exaggerated, and I must own that all my life I have been as fond of
+animals in general and of cats in particular as any brahmin or old maid.
+The great Byron always trotted a menagerie round with him, even when
+travelling, and he caused to be erected, in the park of Newstead Abbey,
+a monument to his faithful Newfoundland dog Boatswain, with an
+inscription in verse of his own inditing. I cannot be accused of
+imitation in the matter of our common liking for dogs, for that love
+manifested itself in me at an age when I was yet ignorant of the
+alphabet.
+
+A clever man being at this time engaged in preparing a "History of
+Animals of Letters," I jot down these notes in which he may find, so far
+as my own animals are concerned, trustworthy information.
+
+The earliest remembrance of this sort that I have goes back to the time
+of my arrival in Paris from Tarbes. I was then three years old, so that
+it is difficult to credit the statement made by Mirecourt and Vapereau,
+who affirm that I "proved but an indifferent pupil" in my native town.
+Home-sickness of a violence that no one would credit a child with being
+capable of experiencing, fell upon me. I spoke our local dialect only,
+and people who talked French "were not mine own people." I would wake in
+the middle of the night and inquire whether we were not soon to start on
+our return to our own land.
+
+No dainty tempted me, no toy could amuse me. Drums and trumpets equally
+failed to relieve my gloom. Among the objects and beings I regretted
+figured a dog called Cagnotte, whom it had been found impossible to
+bring with us. His absence told on me to such an extent that one
+morning, having first chucked out of the window my little tin soldiers,
+my German village with its painted houses, and my bright red fiddle, I
+was about to take the same road to return as speedily as possible to
+Tarbes, the Gascons, and Cagnotte. I was grabbed by the jacket in the
+nick of time, and Josephine, my nurse, had the happy thought to tell me
+that Cagnotte, tired of waiting for us, was coming that very day by the
+stage-coach. Children accept the improbable with artless faith; nothing
+strikes them as impossible; only, they must not be deceived, for there
+is no impairing the fixity of a settled idea in their brains. I kept
+asking, every fifteen minutes, whether Cagnotte had not yet come. To
+quiet me, Josephine bought on the Pont-Neuf a little dog not unlike the
+Tarbes specimen. I did not feel sure of its identity, but I was told
+that travelling changed dogs very much. I was satisfied with the
+explanation and accepted the Pont-Neuf dog as being the authentic
+Cagnotte. He was very gentle, very amiable, and very well behaved. He
+would lick my cheeks, and indeed his tongue was not above licking also
+the slices of bread and butter cut for my afternoon tea. We lived on the
+best of terms with each other.
+
+Presently, however, the supposed Cagnotte became sad, troubled, and his
+movements lost their freedom. He found it difficult to curl himself up,
+lost his jolly agility, breathed hard and could not eat. One day, while
+caressing him, I felt a seam that ran down his stomach, which was much
+swelled and very tight. I called my nurse. She came, took a pair of
+scissors cut the thread, and Cagnotte, freed of a sort of overcoat made
+of curled lambskin, in which he had been tricked out by the Pont-Neuf
+dealers to make him look like a poodle, appeared in all the wretched
+guise and ugliness of a street cur, a worthless mongrel. He had grown
+fat, and his scant garment was choking him. Once he was rid of his
+carapace, he wagged his ears, stretched his limbs, and started romping
+joyously round the room, caring nothing about being ugly so long as he
+was comfortable. His appetite returned, and he made up by his moral
+qualities for his lack of beauty. In Cagnotte's company I gradually
+lost, for he was a genuine child of Paris, my remembrance of Tarbes and
+of the high mountains visible from our windows; I learned French and I
+also became a thorough-paced Parisian.
+
+The reader is not to suppose that this is a story I have invented for
+the sole purpose of entertaining him. It is literally true, and proves
+that the dog-dealers of that day were quite as clever as horse-coupers
+in the art of making up their animals and taking in purchasers.
+
+After Cagnotte's death, my liking was rather for cats, on account of
+their being more sedentary and fonder of the fireplace. I shall not
+attempt to relate their history in detail. Dynasties of felines, as
+numerous as the dynasties of Egyptian kings, succeeded each other in our
+home. Accident, flight, or death accounted for them in turns. They were
+all beloved and regretted; but life is made up of forgetfulness, and the
+remembrance of cats passes away like the remembrance of men.
+
+It is a sad thing that the life of these humble friends, of these
+inferior brethren, should not be proportionate to that of their masters.
+
+I shall do no more than mention an old gray cat that used to side with
+me against my parents, and bit my mother's ankles when she scolded me or
+seemed about to punish me, and come at once to Childebrand, a cat of the
+Romanticist period. The name suffices to let my reader understand the
+secret desire I felt to run counter to Boileau, whom I disliked then,
+but with whom I have since made my peace. It will be remembered that
+Nicolas says:--
+
+    "Oh! ridiculous notion of poet ignorant
+    Who, of so many heroes, chooses Childebrand!"
+
+It seemed to me that the man was not so ignorant after all, since he had
+selected a hero no one knew anything of; and, besides, Childebrand
+struck me as a most long-haired, Merovingian, mediaeval, and Gothic name,
+immeasurably preferable to any Greek name, such as Agamemnon, Achilles,
+Idomeneus, Ulysses, or others of that sort. These were the ways of our
+day, so far as the young fellows were concerned, at least: for never, to
+quote the expression that occurs in the account of Kaulbach's frescoes
+on the outer walls of the Pinacothek at Munich, never did the hydra of
+"wiggery" (_perruquinisme_) erect its heads more fiercely, and no doubt
+the Classicists called their cats Hector, Patrocles, or Ajax.
+
+Childebrand was a splendid gutter-cat, short-haired, striped black and
+tan, like the trunks worn by Saltabadil in "le Roi s'amuse." His great
+green eyes with their almond-shaped pupils, and his regular velvet
+stripes, gave him a distant tigerish look that I liked. "Cats are the
+tigers of poor devils," I once wrote. Childebrand enjoyed the honour of
+entering into some verses of mine, again because I wanted to tease
+Boileau:--
+
+"Then shall I describe to you that picture by Rembrandt, that pleased me
+so much; and my cat Childebrand, as is his habit, on my knees resting,
+and anxiously up at me gazing, shall follow the motions of my finger as
+in the air it sketches the story to make it clear."
+
+Childebrand came in well by way of a rime to Rembrandt, for the verses
+were meant for a Romanticist profession of faith addressed to a friend,
+since deceased, and in those days as enthusiastic an admirer of Victor
+Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and Alfred de Musset as I was.
+
+I am compelled to say of my cats what Don Ruy Gomez de Silva said to Don
+Carlos, when the latter became impatient at the enumeration of the
+former's ancestors, beginning with Don Silvius "who thrice was Consul of
+Rome," that is, "I pass over a number, and of the greatest," and I shall
+come to Madame-Theophile, a red cat with white breast, pink nose, and
+blue eyes, so called because she lived with me on a footing of conjugal
+intimacy. She slept on the foot of my bed, snoozed on the arm of my
+chair while I was writing, came down to the garden and accompanied me
+on my walks, sat at meals with me and not infrequently appropriated the
+morsels on their way from my plate to my mouth.
+
+One day a friend of mine, who was going out of town for a few days,
+intrusted his parrot to me with the request that I would take care of it
+during his absence. The bird, feeling strange in my house, had climbed,
+helping himself with his beak, to the very top of his perch, and looking
+pretty well bewildered, rolled round his eyes, that resembled the gilt
+nails on arm-chairs, and wrinkled the whitish membrane that served him
+for eyelids. Madame-Theophile had never seen a parrot, and she was
+evidently much puzzled by the strange bird. Motionless as an Egyptian
+mummy cat in its net-work of bands, she gazed upon it with an air of
+profound meditation, and put together whatever she had been able to pick
+up of natural history on the roofs, the yard, and the garden. Her
+thoughts were reflected in her shifting glance, and I was able to read
+in it the result of her examination: "It is unmistakably a chicken."
+
+Having reached this conclusion, she sprang from the table on which she
+had posted herself to make her investigations, and crouched down in one
+corner of the room, flat on her stomach, her elbows out, her head low,
+her muscular backbone on the stretch, like the black panther in Gerome's
+painting, watching gazelles on their way to the drinking-place.
+
+The parrot followed her movements with feverish anxiety, fluffing out
+its feathers, rattling its chain, lifting its foot, and moving its
+claws, and sharpening its beak upon the edge of its seed-box. Its
+instinct warned it that an enemy was preparing to attack it.
+
+The eyes of the cat, fixed upon the bird with an intensity that had
+something of fascination in it, plainly said in a language well
+understood of the parrot and absolutely intelligible: "Green though it
+is, that chicken must be good to eat."
+
+I watched the scene with much interest, prepared to interfere at the
+proper time. Madame-Theophile had gradually crawled nearer; her pink
+nose was working, her eyes were half closed, her claws were protruded
+and then drawn in. She thrilled with anticipation like a gourmet sitting
+down to enjoy a truffled pullet; she gloated over the thought of the
+choice and succulent meal she was about to enjoy, and her sensuality was
+tickled by the idea of the exotic dish that was to be hers.
+
+Suddenly she arched her back like a bow that is being drawn, and a swift
+leap landed her right on the perch. The parrot, seeing the danger upon
+him, unexpectedly called out in a deep, sonorous bass voice: "Have you
+had your breakfast, Jack?"
+
+The words filled the cat with indescribable terror; and she leapt back.
+The blast of a trumpet, the smash of a pile of crockery, or a
+pistol-shot fired by her ear would not have dismayed the feline to such
+an extent. All her ornithological notions were upset.
+
+"And what did you have?--A royal roast," went on the bird.
+
+The cat's expression clearly meant: "This is not a bird; it's a man; it
+speaks."
+
+    "When of claret I've drunk my fill,
+    The pot-house whirls and is whirling still,"
+
+sang out the bird with a deafening voice, for it had at once perceived
+that the terror inspired by its speech was its surest means of defence.
+
+The cat looked at me questioningly, and my reply proving unsatisfactory,
+she sneaked under the bed, and refused to come out for the rest of the
+day.
+
+Those of my readers who have not been in the habit of having animals to
+keep them company, and who see in them, as did Descartes, merely
+machines, will no doubt think I am attributing intentions to the bird
+and the quadruped, but as a matter of fact, I have merely translated
+their thoughts into human speech. The next day, Madame-Theophile, having
+somewhat overcome her fright, made another attempt, and was routed in
+the same fashion. That was enough for her, and henceforth she remained
+convinced that the bird was a man.
+
+This dainty and lovely creature adored perfumes. She would go into
+ecstasies on breathing in the patchouli and vetiver used for Cashmere
+shawls. She had also a taste for music. Nestling upon a pile of scores,
+she would listen most attentively and with every mark of satisfaction to
+the singers who came to perform at the critic's piano. But high notes
+made her nervous, and she never failed to close the singer's mouth with
+her paw if the lady sang the high A. We used to try the experiment for
+the fun of the thing, and it never failed once. It was quite impossible
+to fool my dilettante cat on that note.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE WHITE DYNASTY
+
+
+Let me come to more recent times. A cat brought from Havana by Mlle.
+Aita de la Penuela, a young Spanish artist whose studies of white angora
+cats used to adorn and still adorn the show-windows of the
+print-sellers, gave birth to the daintiest little kitten, exactly like
+the puffs used for the application of face powder, which kitten was
+presented to me. Its immaculate whiteness caused it to be named Pierrot,
+and this appellation, when it grew up, developed into Don Pierrot of
+Navarre, which was infinitely more majestic and smacked of a grandee of
+Spain.
+
+Don Pierrot, like all animals that are fondled and petted, became
+delightfully amiable, and shared the life of the household with that
+fulness of satisfaction cats derive from close association with the
+fireside. Seated in his customary place, close to the fire, he really
+looked as if he understood the conversation and was interested in it.
+He followed the speakers with his eyes, and every now and then would
+utter a little cry, exactly as if to object and give his own opinion
+upon literature, which formed the staple of our talks. He was very fond
+of books, and when he found one open on the table, he would lie down by
+it, gaze attentively at the page and turn the leaves with his claws;
+then he ended by going to sleep, just as if he had really been reading a
+fashionable novel. As soon as I picked up my pen, he would leap upon the
+desk, and watch attentively the steel nib scribbling away on the paper,
+moving his head every time I began a new line. Sometimes he endeavoured
+to collaborate with me, and would snatch the pen out of my hand, no
+doubt with the intention of writing in his turn, for he was as aesthetic
+a cat as Hoffmann's Murr. Indeed, I strongly suspect that he was in the
+habit of inditing his memoirs, at night, in some gutter or another, by
+the light of his own phosphorescent eyes. Unfortunately, these
+lucubrations are lost.
+
+Don Pierrot of Navarre always sat up at night until I came home, waiting
+for me on the inside of the door, and as soon as I stepped into the
+antechamber he would come rubbing himself against my legs, arching his
+back and purring in gladsome, friendly fashion. Then he would start to
+walk in front of me, preceding me like a page, and I am sure that if I
+had asked him to do so, he would have carried my candle. In this way he
+would escort me to my bedroom, wait until I had undressed, jump up on
+the bed, put his paws round my neck, rub his nose against mine, lick me
+with his tiny red tongue, rough as a file, and utter little inarticulate
+cries by way of expressing unmistakably the pleasure he felt at seeing
+me again. When he had sufficiently caressed me and it was time to sleep
+he used to perch upon the backboard of his bed and slept there like a
+bird roosting on a branch. As soon as I woke in the morning, he would
+come and stretch out beside me until I rose.
+
+Midnight was the latest time allowed for my return home. On this point
+Pierrot was as inflexible as a janitor. Now, at that time I had founded,
+along with a few friends, a little evening reunion called "The Four
+Candles Society," the place of meeting happening to be lighted by four
+candles stuck in silver candlesticks placed at each corner of the table.
+Occasionally the conversation became so absorbing that I would forget
+the time, even at the risk of seeing, like Cinderella, my carriage turn
+into a pumpkin and my coachman into a big rat. Twice or thrice Pierrot
+sat up for me until two o'clock in the morning, but presently he took
+offence at my conduct and went to bed without waiting for me. I was
+touched by this mute protest against my innocently disorderly way of
+life, and thereafter I regularly returned home at midnight. Pierrot,
+however, proved hard to win back; he wanted to make sure that my
+repentance was no mere passing matter, but once he was convinced that I
+had really reformed, he deigned to restore me to his good graces and
+again took up his nightly post in the antechamber.
+
+It is no easy matter to win a cat's love, for cats are philosophical,
+sedate, quiet animals, fond of their own way, liking cleanliness and
+order, and not apt to bestow their affection hastily. They are quite
+willing to be friends, if you prove worthy of their friendship, but they
+decline to be slaves. They are affectionate, but they exercise free
+will, and will not do for you what they consider to be unreasonable.
+Once, however, they have bestowed their friendship, their trust is
+absolute, and their affection most faithful. They become one's
+companions in hours of solitude, sadness, and labour. A cat will stay on
+your knees a whole evening, purring away, happy in your company and
+careless of that of its own species. In vain do mewings sound on the
+roofs, inviting it to one of the cat parties where red herring brine
+takes the place of tea; it is not to be tempted and spends the evening
+with you. If you put it down, it is back in a jiffy with a kind of
+cooing that sounds like a gentle reproach. Sometimes, sitting up in
+front of you, it looks at you so softly, so tenderly, so caressingly,
+and in so human a way that it is almost terrifying, for it is impossible
+to believe that there is no mind back of those eyes.
+
+Don Pierrot of Navarre had a mate of the same breed just as white as
+himself. All the expressions I have accumulated in the "Symphony in
+White Major" for the purpose of rendering the idea of snowy whiteness
+would be insufficient to give an idea of the immaculate coat of my cat,
+by the side of which the ermine's fur would have looked yellow. I called
+her Seraphita, after Balzac's Swedenborgian novel. Never did the heroine
+of that wondrous legend, when ascending with Minna the snow-covered
+summits of the Falberg, gleam more purely white. Seraphita was of a
+dreamy and contemplative disposition. She would remain for hours on a
+cushion, wide-awake and following with her eyes, with intensest
+attention, sights invisible to ordinary mortals. She liked to be petted,
+but returned caresses in a very reserved way, and only in the case of
+persons whom she honoured with her approbation, a most difficult thing
+to obtain. She was fond of luxury, and we were always sure to find her
+curled up in the newest arm-chair or on the piece of stuff that best set
+off her swan's-down coat. She spent endless time at her toilet; every
+morning she carefully smoothed out her fur. She used her paws to wash
+herself, and every single hair of her fur, having been brushed out with
+her rosy tongue, shone like brand-new silver. If any one touched her,
+she at once removed the traces of the touch, for she could not bear to
+be rumpled. Her elegance and stylishness suggested that she was an
+aristocrat, and among her own kind she must have been a duchess at the
+very least. She delighted in perfumes, stuck her little nose into
+bouquets, and bit with little spasms of pleasure at handkerchiefs on
+which scent had been put; she walked upon the dressing-table among the
+scent-bottles, smelling the stoppers, and if she had been allowed to do
+so would no doubt have used powder. Such was Seraphita, and never did a
+cat bear a poetic name more worthily.
+
+At about this time a couple of those sham sailors who sell striped rugs,
+handkerchiefs of pine-apple fibre and other exotic products, happened to
+pass through the Rue de Longchamps, where I was living. They had in a
+little cage a pair of white Norway rats with red eyes, as pretty as
+pretty could be. Just then I had a fancy for white creatures, and my
+hen-run was inhabited by white fowls only. I bought the two rats, and a
+big cage was built for them, with inner stairs leading to the different
+stories, eating-places, bedrooms, and trapezes for gymnastics. They were
+unquestionably happier and better off there than La Fontaine's rat in
+his Dutch cheese.
+
+The gentle creatures, which, I really do not know why, inspire puerile
+repulsion, became astonishingly tame as soon as they found out that no
+harm was intended them. They allowed themselves to be petted just like
+cats, and would catch my finger in their ideally delicate little rosy
+hands, and lick it in the friendliest way. They used to be let out at
+the end of our meals, and would clamber up the arms, the shoulders, and
+the heads of the guests, emerging from the sleeves of coats and
+dressing-gowns with marvellous skill and agility. All these
+performances, carried out very prettily, were intended to secure
+permission to forage among the remains of the dessert. They were then
+placed on the table, and in a twinkling the male and female had put away
+the nuts, filberts, raisins, and lumps of sugar. It was most amusing to
+watch their quick, eager ways, and their astonishment when they reached
+the edge of the table. Then, however, we would hold out to them a strip
+of wood reaching to their cage, and they stored away their gains in
+their pantry.
+
+The pair multiplied rapidly, and numerous families, as white as their
+progenitors, ran up and down the little ladders in the cage, so that ere
+long I found myself the owner of some thirty rats so very tame that when
+the weather was cold they were in the habit of nestling in my pockets in
+order to keep warm, and remained there perfectly still. Sometimes I used
+to have the doors of my City of Rats thrown open, and, after having
+ascended to the topmost story of my house, I whistled in a way very
+familiar to my pets. Then the rats, which find it difficult to ascend
+steps, climbed up the balusters, got on to the rail, and proceeding in
+Indian file while keeping their equilibrium like acrobats, ascended that
+narrow road not infrequently descended astride by schoolboys, and came
+to me uttering little squeaks and manifesting the liveliest joy. And
+now I must confess to a piece of stupidity on my part. I had so often
+been told that a rat's tail looked like a red worm and spoiled the
+creature's pretty looks, that I selected one of the younger generation
+and cut off the much criticised caudal appendage with a red-hot shovel.
+The little rat bore the operation very well, grew apace, and became an
+imposing fellow with mustaches. But though he was the lighter for the
+loss of his tail, he was much less agile than his comrades; he was very
+careful about trying gymnastics and fell very often. He always brought
+up the rear when the company ascended the balusters, and looked like a
+tight-rope dancer trying to do without a balancing-pole. Then I
+understood the usefulness of a tail in the case of rats: it aids them to
+maintain their equilibrium when scampering along cornices and narrow
+ledges. They swing it to the right or the left by way of counterpoise
+when they lean over to the one side or the other; hence the constant
+switching which appears so causeless. When one observes Nature
+carefully, one readily comes to the conclusion that she does nothing
+that is unnecessary, and that one ought to be very careful in attempting
+to improve upon her.
+
+No doubt my reader wonders how cats and rats, two races so hostile to
+each other, and the one of which is the prey of the other, can manage to
+live together. The fact is that mine got on wonderfully harmoniously
+together. The cats were good as gold to the rats, which had lost all
+fear of them. The felines were never perfidious, and the rats never had
+to mourn the loss of a single comrade. Don Pierrot of Navarre was
+uncommonly fond of them; he would lie down by their cage and spend hours
+watching them at play. When by chance the door of the room was closed,
+he would scratch and miaoul gently until it was opened and he could join
+his little white friends, which often came and slept by him. Seraphita,
+who was more stand-off and who disliked the strong odour of musk given
+out by the rats, did not take part in their sports, but she never harmed
+them, and allowed them to pass quietly in front of her without ever
+unsheathing her claws.
+
+The end of these rats was strange. One heavy, stormy summer's day, when
+the mercury was nearly up to a hundred degrees, their cage had been put
+in the garden, in an arbour covered with creepers, as they seemed to
+feel the heat greatly. The storm burst with lightnings, rain, thunder,
+and squalls of wind. The tall poplars on the river bank bent like reeds.
+Armed with an umbrella, which the wind turned inside out, I was just
+starting to fetch in my rats, when a dazzling flash of lightning, which
+seemed to tear open the very depths of heaven, stopped me on the
+uppermost of the steps leading from the terrace to the garden.
+
+A terrific thunder-clap, louder than the report of a hundred guns,
+followed almost instantaneously upon the flash, and the shock was so
+violent that I was nearly thrown to the ground.
+
+The storm passed away shortly after that frightful explosion, but, on
+reaching the arbour, I found the thirty-two rats, toes up, killed by the
+one and same stroke of lightning. No doubt the iron wires of their cage
+had attracted the electric fluid and acted as a conductor.
+
+Thus died together, as they had lived, the thirty-two Norway rats,--an
+enviable death, not often vouchsafed by fate!
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE BLACK DYNASTY
+
+
+Don Pierrot of Navarre, being a native of Havana, required a hot-house
+temperature, and he enjoyed it in the house; round the dwelling,
+however, stretched great gardens, separated by open fences through which
+a cat could easily make its way, and rose great trees in which
+twittered, warbled, and sang whole flocks of birds; so that sometimes
+Pierrot, profiting by a door left open, would go out at night and start
+on a hunt, rambling through the grass and flowers wet with dew. In such
+cases he would have to await daylight to be let in, for although he
+would come and miaoul under our windows, his appeals did not always
+awaken the sleepers in the house. He had a delicate chest, and one
+night, when it was colder than usual, he caught a cold which soon turned
+into consumption. After coughing for a whole year poor Pierrot became
+thin and emaciated, and his coat, formerly so silky, had the mat
+whiteness of a shroud. His great transparent eyes had become the most
+important feature in his poor shrunken face; his red nose had turned
+pale, and he walked with slow steps, in a melancholy fashion, by the
+sunny side of the wall, watching the yellow autumn leaves whirling and
+twisting. One could have sworn he was reciting to himself Millevoye's
+elegy. A sick animal is a very touching object, for it bears suffering
+with such gentle and sad resignation. We did all we could to save him; I
+called in a very skilful physician who tested his chest and felt his
+pulse. Ass's milk was prescribed, and the poor little creature drank it
+willingly enough out of his tiny china saucer. He would remain for hours
+at a time stretched out on my knee like the shadow of a sphinx; I could
+feel his vertebrae like the grains of a chaplet, and he would try to
+acknowledge my caresses with a feeble purr that sounded like a
+death-rattle. On the day he died, he lay on his side gasping, but got
+himself up by a supreme effort, came to me, and opening wide his eyes,
+fixed upon me a glance that called for help with intense supplication.
+He seemed to say to me, "You are a man; do save me." Then he staggered,
+his eyes already glazed, and fell to the ground, uttering so woeful, so
+despairing, so anguished a cry that it filled me with mute horror. He
+was buried at the foot of the garden, under a white rosebush that still
+marks the place of his tomb.
+
+Seraphita died two or three years later, of croup, which the physician
+was unable to master. She rests not far from Pierrot.
+
+With her ended the White Dynasty, but not the family. From that pair of
+snow-white cats had sprung three coal-black kittens, a mystery the
+solution of which I leave to others. Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" were
+then all the rage, and the names of the characters in the novel were in
+every one's mouth. The two little male cats were called Enjolras and
+Gavroche, and the female Eponine. They were the sweetest of kittens, and
+we trained them to fetch and carry pieces of paper thrown at a distance
+just as a dog would do. We got so far as to throw the paper ball on the
+top of wardrobes, or to hide it behind boxes or in tall vases, and they
+would retrieve it very prettily with their paws. On attaining years of
+discretion, they forsook these frivolous sports and resumed the dreamy,
+philosophical calm which is the real characteristic of cats.
+
+All negroes are alike to people who land in a slave-owning country in
+America, and it is impossible for them to tell one from another. So, to
+those who do not care for them, three black cats are three black cats
+and nothing more. But an observing eye makes no such mistake. The
+physiognomies of animals are as different as those of men, and I could
+always tell to which particular cat belonged the black face, as black as
+Harlequin's mask, and lighted by emerald disks with golden gleams.
+
+Enjolras, who was by far the handsomest of the three, was marked by his
+big lion-like head and well whiskered cheeks, by his muscular shoulders,
+his long back, and his splendid tail, fluffy as a feather duster. There
+was something theatrical and grandiloquent about him, and he seemed to
+pose like an actor who attracts admiration. His motions were slow,
+undulating, and full of majesty; he seemed to be always stepping on a
+table covered with china ornaments and Venetian glass, so circumspectly
+did he select the place where he put down his foot. He was not much of a
+Stoic, and exhibited a liking for food which his namesake would have had
+reason to blame. No doubt Enjolras, the pure and sober youth, would have
+said to him, as the angel did to Swedenborg, "You eat too much." We
+rather encouraged this amusing voracity, analogous to that of monkeys,
+and Enjolras grew to a size and weight very uncommon among domestic
+cats. Then I bethought myself of having him shaved in the style of
+poodles, in order to bring out completely his leonine appearance. He
+retained his mane and a long tuft of hair at the end of the tail, and I
+would not swear that his thighs were not adorned with mutton-chop
+whiskers like those Munito used to wear. Thus trimmed, he resembled, I
+must confess, a Japanese monster much more than a lion of the Atlas
+Mountains or the Cape. Never was a more extravagant fancy carried out on
+the body of a living animal; his closely clipped coat allowed the skin
+to show through, and its bluish tones, most curious to note, contrasted
+strangely with his black mane.
+
+Gavroche was a cat with a sharp, satirical look, as if he intended to
+recall his namesake in the novel. Smaller than Enjolras, he was endowed
+with abrupt and comical agility, and in the stead of the puns and slang
+of the Paris street-Arab, he indulged in the funniest capers, leaps, and
+attitudes. I am bound to add that, yielding to his street instincts,
+Gavroche was in the habit of seizing every opportunity of leaving the
+drawing-room and going off to join, in the court, and even in the public
+streets, numbers of wandering cats, "of unknown blood and lineage low,"
+with whom he took part in performances of doubtful taste, completely
+forgetful of his dignified rank as a Havana cat, the son of the
+illustrious Don Pierrot of Navarre, a grandee of Spain of the first
+class, and of the Marchioness Seraphita, noted for her haughty and
+aristocratic manners.
+
+Sometimes he would bring in to his meals, in order to treat them,
+consumptive friends of his, so starved that every rib in their body
+showed, having nothing but skin and bones, whom he had picked up in the
+course of his excursions and wanderings, for he was a kind-hearted
+fellow. The poor devils, their ears laid back, their tails between their
+legs, their glance restless, dreading to be driven from their free meal
+by a housemaid armed with a broom, swallowed the pieces two, three, and
+four at a time, and like the famous dog, _Siete Aguas_ (Seven Waters),
+of Spanish posadas, would lick the platter as clean as if it had been
+washed and scoured by a Dutch housekeeper who had served as model to
+Mieris or Gerard Dow. Whenever I saw Gavroche's companions, I
+remembered the lettering under one of Gavarni's drawings: "A nice lot,
+the friends you are capable of proceeding with!" But after all it was
+merely a proof of Gavroche's kindness of heart, for he was quite able to
+polish off the plateful himself.
+
+The cat who bore the name of the interesting Eponine was more lissome
+and slender in shape than her brothers. Her mien was quite peculiar to
+herself, owing to her somewhat long face, her eyes slanting slightly in
+the Chinese fashion, and of a green like that of the eyes of Pallas
+Athene, on whom Homer invariably bestows the title of ~glaukopis~, her
+velvety black nose, of as fine a grain as a Perigord truffle, and her
+incessantly moving whiskers. Her coat, of a superb black, was always in
+motion and shimmered with infinite changes. There never was a more
+sensitive, nervous, and electric animal. If she were stroked two or
+three times, in the dark, blue sparks came crackling from her fur. She
+attached herself to me in particular, just as in the novel Eponine
+becomes attached to Marius. As I was less taken up with Cosette than
+that handsome youth, I accepted the love of my affectionate and devoted
+cat, who is still the assiduous companion of my labours and the delight
+of my hermitage on the confines of the suburbs. She trots up when she
+hears the bell ring, welcomes my visitors, leads them into the
+drawing-room, shows them to a seat, talks to them--yes, I mean it, talks
+to them--with croonings and cooings and whimpers quite unlike the
+language cats make use of among themselves, and which simulate the
+articulate speech of man. You ask me what it is she says? She says, in
+the plainest possible fashion: "Do not be impatient; look at the
+pictures or chat with me, if you enjoy that. My master will be down in a
+minute." And when I come in she discreetly retires to an arm-chair or on
+top of the piano, and listens to the conversation without breaking in
+upon it, like a well-bred animal that is used to society.
+
+Sweet Eponine has given us so many proofs of intelligence, kindly
+disposition, and sociability that she has been promoted, by common
+consent, to the dignity of a _person_, for it is plain that a higher
+order of reason than instinct guides her actions. This dignity entails
+the right of eating at table like a person, and not from a saucer in a
+corner, like an animal. So Eponine's chair is placed beside mine at
+lunch and dinner, and on account of her size she is allowed to rest her
+fore paws upon the edge of the table. She has her own place set, without
+fork or spoon, but with her glass. She eats of every course that is
+brought on, from the soup to the dessert, always waiting for her turn to
+be served and behaving with a discretion and decency that it is to be
+wished were more frequently met with in children. She turns up at the
+first sound of the bell, and when we enter the dining-room we are sure
+to find her already in her place, standing on her chair, her paws on the
+edge of the table, and holding up her little head to be kissed, like a
+well-bred young lady who is polite and affectionate towards her parents
+and her elders.
+
+The sun has its spots, the diamond its flaws, and perfection itself its
+little weak points. Eponine, it must be owned, has an overmastering
+fondness for fish, a taste she shares in common with all her race. The
+Latin proverb, _Catus amat pisces, sed non vult tingere plantas_, to the
+contrary notwithstanding, she is always ready to pop her paw into the
+water to fish out a blay, a small carp, or a trout. Fish makes her
+well-nigh delirious, and like children eagerly looking for the dessert,
+she is apt to object to the soup, when the preliminary investigations
+she has carried on in the kitchen have enabled her to ascertain that the
+fish has duly come in and that there is no reason why Vatel should run
+himself through with his sword. In such cases we do not help her to
+fish, and I remark to her, in a cold tone, "A lady who has no appetite
+for soup cannot have any appetite for fish," and the dish is
+remorselessly sent past her. Then seeing that it is no joking matter,
+dainty Eponine bolts her soup in hot haste, licks up the very last drop
+of the bouillon, puts away the minutest crumb of bread or Italian paste,
+and turns round to me with the proud look of one conscious of being
+without fear or reproach and of having fulfilled her duty. Her share of
+the fish is handed to her, and she despatches it with every mark of
+extreme satisfaction. Then, having tasted a little of every dish, she
+winds up her meal by drinking one-third of a glassful of water.
+
+If we happen to have guests at dinner, Eponine does not need to have
+seen them enter to be aware that there is to be company. She simply
+looks at her place, and if she sees a knife, fork, and spoon laid there,
+she makes off at once and perches on the piano stool, her usual place of
+refuge in such cases. Those who deny reasoning powers to animals may
+explain this fact, so simple apparently, yet so suggestive, as best they
+may. That judicious and observant cat of mine deduces from the presence
+by her plate of utensils which man alone understands how to use that she
+must give up her position for that day to a guest, and she forthwith
+does so. Never once has she made a mistake. Only, when she is well
+acquainted with the particular guest, she will climb upon his knee and
+seek, by her graceful ways and her caresses, to induce him to bestow
+some tit-bit upon her.
+
+But enough of this; I must not weary my readers, and stories of cats are
+less attractive than stories about dogs. Yet I deem that I ought to tell
+of the deaths of Enjolras and Gavroche. In the Latin Rudiments there is
+a rule stated thus: _Sua eum perdidit ambitio._ Of Enjolras it may be
+said: _Sua eum perdidit pinguitudo_, that is, his admirable condition
+was the cause of his death. He was killed by idiotic fanciers of jugged
+hare. His murderers, however, perished before the end of the year in the
+most painful manner; for the death of a black cat, an eminently
+cabalistic animal, never goes unavenged.
+
+Gavroche, seized with a frantic love of freedom, or rather with a
+sudden attack of vertigo, sprang out of the window one day, crossed the
+street, climbed the fence of the Parc Saint-James, which faces our
+house, and vanished. In spite of our utmost endeavours, we never managed
+to hear of him again, and a shadow of mystery hangs over his fate; so
+that the only survivor of the Black Dynasty is Eponine, who is still
+faithful to her master and has become a thorough cat of letters.
+
+Her companion now is a magnificent angora cat, whose gray and silver fur
+recalls Chinese spotted porcelain. He is called Zizi, alias "Too
+Handsome to Work." The handsome fellow lives in a sort of contemplative
+_kief_, like a theriaki under the influence of the drug, and makes one
+think of "The Ecstasies of Mr. Hochenez." Zizi is passionately fond of
+music, and, not satisfied with listening to it, he indulges in it
+himself. Sometimes, in the dead of night, when everybody is asleep, a
+strange, fantastic melody, which the Kreislers and the musicians of the
+future might well envy, breaks in upon the silence. It is Zizi walking
+upon the key-board of the piano which has been left open, and who is at
+once astonished and delighted at hearing the keys sing under his tread.
+
+It would be unjust not to link with this branch Cleopatra, Eponine's
+daughter, whose shy disposition keeps her from mingling in society. She
+is of a tawny black, like Mummia, Atta-Croll's hairy companion, and her
+two green eyes look like huge aqua-marines. She generally stands on
+three legs, her fourth lifted up like a classical lion that has lost its
+marble ball.
+
+These be the chronicles of the Black Dynasty. Enjolras, Gavroche, and
+Eponine recall to me the creations of a beloved master; only, when I
+re-read "Les Miserables," the chief characters in the novel seem to me
+to be taken by black cats, a fact that in no wise diminishes the
+interest I take in it.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THIS SIDE FOR DOGS
+
+
+I have often been charged with not being fond of dogs; a charge which
+does not at first sight appear to be very serious, but which I
+nevertheless desire to clear myself of, for it implies a certain amount
+of dislike. People who prefer cats are thought by many to be cruel,
+sensuous, and treacherous, while dog-lovers are credited with being
+frank, loyal, and open-hearted,--in a word, possessed of all the
+qualities attributed to the canine race. I in no wise deny the merits of
+Medor, Turk, Miraut, and other engaging animals, and I am prepared to
+acknowledge the truth of the axiom formulated by Charlet,--"The best
+thing about man is his dog." I have been the owner of several, and I
+still own some. Should any of those who seek to discredit me come to my
+house, they would be met by a Havana lap-dog barking shrilly and
+furiously at them, and by a greyhound that very likely would bite their
+legs for them. But my affection for dogs has an understratum of fear.
+These excellent creatures, so good, so faithful, so devoted, so loving,
+may go mad at any moment, and then they become more dangerous than a
+lance-head snake, an asp, a rattlesnake or a cobra capella. This reacts
+on my love for dogs. Then dogs strike me as a bit uncanny; they have
+such a searching, intense glance; they sit down in front of you with so
+questioning a look that it is fairly embarrassing. Goethe disliked that
+glance of theirs that seems to attempt to incorporate man's soul within
+itself, and he drove away dogs, saying, "You shall not swallow my monad,
+much as you may try."
+
+The Pharamond of my canine dynasty was called Luther. He was a big white
+spaniel, with liver spots, and handsome brown ears. He was a setter, had
+lost his owner, and after looking for him a long time in vain, had taken
+to living in my father's house at Passy. Not having partridges to go
+after, he had taken to rat-hunting, and was as clever at it as a Scotch
+terrier. At that time I was living in that blind alley of the Doyenne,
+now destroyed, where Gerard de Nerval, Arsene Houssaye and Camille
+Rogier were the heads of a little picturesque and artistic Bohemia, the
+eccentric mode of life in which has been so well told by others that it
+is unnecessary to relate it over again. There we were, right in the
+centre of the Carrousel, as independent and solitary as on a desert
+island in Oceanica, under the shadow of the Louvre, among the blocks of
+stone and the nettles, close to an old ruinous church, with fallen-in
+roof which looked most romantic in the moonlight. Luther, with whom I
+was on a most friendly footing, seeing that I had finally abandoned the
+paternal nest, made a point of coming to see me every morning. He
+started from Passy, no matter what the weather was, came down the Quai
+de Billy, the Cours-la-Reine, and reached my place at about eight
+o'clock, just as I was waking. He used to scratch at the door, which was
+opened for him, and he dashed joyously at me with yelps of joy, put his
+paws on my knees, received with a modest and unassuming air the caresses
+his noble conduct merited, took a look round the room, and started back
+to Passy. On arriving there, he went to my mother, wagged his tail,
+barked a little, and said as plainly as if he had spoken: "I have seen
+young master; don't worry; he is all right." Having thus reported to the
+proper person the result of his self-imposed mission, he would drink up
+half a bowlful of water, eat his food, lie down on the carpet by my
+mother's chair,--for he entertained peculiar affection for her,--and
+sleep for an hour or two after his long run. Now, how do people who
+maintain that animals do not think and are incapable of putting two and
+two together explain this morning visit, which kept up family relations
+and brought to the home-nest news of the fledgeling that had so recently
+left it?
+
+Poor Luther's end was very sad. He became taciturn, morose, and one fine
+morning bolted from the house, feeling the rabies on him and resolved
+not to bite his masters; so he fled, and we have every reason to believe
+that he was killed as a mad dog, for we never saw him again.
+
+After a pretty long interregnum a new dog was brought into the house. It
+was called Zamore, and was a sort of spaniel, of very mixed breed, small
+in size, with a black coat, save the tan spots over his eyes and the tan
+hair on his stomach. On the whole he was insignificant physically, and
+ugly rather than handsome; but morally, he was a remarkable dog. He
+absolutely despised women, would not obey them, never would follow them,
+and never once did my mother or my sisters manage to win from him the
+least sign of friendship or deference. He would accept their attentions
+and the tit-bits they gave him with a superior air, but never did he
+express any gratitude for them. Never would he yelp, never would he rap
+the floor with his tail, never bestow on them a single one of those
+caresses dogs are so fond of lavishing. He remained impassible in a
+sphinx-like pose, like a serious man who will not take part in the
+conversation of frivolous persons. The master he had elected was my
+father, in whom he acknowledged the authority of the head of the house,
+and whom he considered a mature and serious man. But his affection for
+him was austere and stoical, and was not shown by gambadoes, larks, and
+lickings. Only, he always kept his eyes upon him, followed his every
+motion and kept close to heel, never allowing himself the smallest
+escapade or the least nod to any passing comrades. My dear and lamented
+father was a great fisherman before the Lord, and he caught more barbels
+than Nimrod ever slew antelopes. It certainly could not be said of his
+fishing-rod that it was a pole and string with a worm at one end and a
+fool at the other, for he was a very clever man, and none the less he
+daily filled his basket with fish. Zamore used to accompany him on his
+trips, and during the long night-watches entailed by ground-line
+fishing for the big fellows, he would stand on the very edge of the
+water, apparently trying to fathom its dark depths and to follow the
+movements of the prey. Although he often pricked up his ears at the
+faint and distant sounds that, at night, are heard in the deepest
+silence, he never barked, having understood that to be mute is a quality
+indispensable in a fisherman's dog. In vain did Phoebe's alabaster brow
+show above the horizon reflected in the sombre mirror of the river;
+Zamore would not bay at the moon, although such prolonged ululation
+gives infinite delight to creatures of his species. Only when the bell
+on the set-line tinkled did he look at his master and allow himself one
+short bark, knowing that the prey was caught; and he appeared to take
+the greatest interest in the manoeuvres involved in the landing of a
+three or four pound barbel.
+
+No one would have suspected that under his calm, abstracted,
+philosophical look, this dog, so serious that he was almost melancholy,
+and despised all frivolity, nursed an overmastering, strange, never to
+be suspected passion, absolutely contrary to his apparent moral and
+physical character.
+
+"You do not mean," I hear my reader exclaim, "that the good Zamore had
+hidden vices?--that he was a thief?" No. "A libertine?" No. "That he
+loved brandied cherries?" No. "That he bit people?" Never. Zamore was
+crazy about dancing. He was an artist devoted to the choregraphic art.
+
+He became conscious of his vocation in the following manner. One day
+there appeared on the square at Passy a gray moke, with sores on its
+back, and drooping ears, one of those wretched mountebanks' asses that
+Decamps and Fouquet used to paint so well. The two baskets balanced on
+either side of his raw and prominent backbone contained a troupe of
+trained dogs, dressed as marquesses, troubadours, Turks, Alpine
+shepherdesses, or Queens of Golconda, according to their sex. The
+impresario put down the dogs, cracked his whip, and suddenly every one
+of the actors forsook the horizontal for the perpendicular position, and
+transformed itself into a biped. The drum and fife started up and the
+ballet commenced.
+
+Zamore, who was gravely idling around, stopped smitten with wonder at
+the sight. The dogs, dressed in showy colours, braided with imitation
+gold lace on every seam, a plumed hat or a turban on their heads, and
+moving in cadence to a witching rhythm, with a distant resemblance to
+human beings, appeared to him to be supernatural creatures. The
+skilfully linked steps, the slides, the pirouettes delighted but did not
+discourage him. Like Correggio at the sight of Raphael's painting, he
+exclaimed in his canine speech, _Anch' io son pittore!_ and when the
+company filed past him, he also, filled with a noble spirit of
+emulation, rose up, somewhat uncertainly, upon his hind legs and
+attempted to join them, to the great delight of the onlookers.
+
+The manager did not see it in that light, and let fly a smart cut of his
+whip at Zamore, who was driven from the circle, just as a spectator
+would be ejected from the theatre did he, during the performance, take
+on himself to ascend to the stage and to take part in the ballet.
+
+This public humiliation did not check Zamore's vocation. He returned
+home with drooping tail and thoughtful mien, and during the whole of the
+remainder of that day was more reserved, more taciturn, and more morose
+than ever. But in the dead of night my sisters were awakened by slight
+sounds, the cause of which they could not conjecture, which proceeded
+from an uninhabited room next theirs, where Zamore was usually put to
+bed on an old arm-chair. It sounded like a rhythmic tread, made more
+sonorous by the silence of night. They at first supposed that the mice
+were romping round, but the sound of steps and leaps on the flooring was
+too loud for that. The bravest of my sisters rose, partly opened the
+door, and by the light of a moonbeam streaming in through a pane, she
+beheld Zamore on his hind legs, pawing the air with his fore paws, and
+busy studying the dancing steps he had admired in the street that
+morning. The gentleman was practising!
+
+Nor did this prove, as might be supposed, a passing fancy, a momentary
+attraction; Zamore persisted in his choregraphic aspirations and turned
+out a fine dancer. Every time he heard the fife and drum he would run
+out on the square, slip between the spectators' legs and watch, with the
+closest attention, the trained dogs performing their exercises. Mindful,
+however, of the whip-cut, he no longer attempted to take part in the
+dancing; he took note of the poses, the steps, and the attitudes, and
+then, at night, in the silence of his room, he would work away at them,
+remaining the while, during the day, as austere in his bearing as ever.
+Ere long he was not satisfied with copying; he took to composing, to
+inventing, and I am bound to say few dogs surpassed him in the elevated
+style. I often used to watch him through the half-open door; he
+practised with such enthusiasm that every night he would drain dry the
+bowl of water placed in one corner of the room.
+
+When he had become quite sure of himself and the equal of the most
+accomplished of four-footed dancers, he felt he could no longer hide his
+light under a bushel and that he must reveal the mystery of his
+accomplishments. The court-yard of the house was closed, on one side, by
+an iron fence with spaces sufficiently wide to allow moderately stout
+dogs to enter in easily. So one fine morning some fifteen or twenty dog
+friends of his, connoisseurs no doubt, to whom Zamore had sent letters
+of invitation to his debut in the choregraphic art, met around a square
+of smooth ground nicely levelled off, which the artist had previously
+swept with his tail, and the performance began. The dogs appeared to be
+delighted and manifested their enthusiasm by _ouahs!_ _ouahs!_ closely
+resembling the _bravi_ of dilettanti at the Opera. With the sole
+exception of an old and pretty muddy poodle, very wretched looking, and
+a critic, no doubt, who barked out something about forgetting sound
+tradition, all the spectators proclaimed Zamore the Vestris of dogs and
+the god of dancing. Our artist had performed a minuet, a jig, and a
+_deux temps_ waltz. A large number of two-footed spectators had joined
+the four-footed ones, and Zamore enjoyed the honour of being applauded
+by human hands.
+
+Dancing became so much a habit of his that when he was paying court to
+some fair, he would stand up on his hind legs, making bows and turning
+his toes out like a marquis of the _ancien regime_. All he lacked was
+the plumed hat under his arm.
+
+Apart from this he was as hypochondriacal as a comic actor and took no
+part in the life of the household. He stirred only when he saw his
+master pick up his hat and stick. Zamore died of brain fever, brought
+on, no doubt, by overwork in trying to learn the schottische, then in
+the full swing of its popularity. Zamore may say within his tomb, as
+says the Greek dancer in her epitaph: "Earth, rest lightly on me, for I
+rested lightly on thee."
+
+How came it that being so talented, Zamore was not enrolled in Corvi's
+company? For I was even then sufficiently influential as a critic to
+manage this for him. Zamore, however, would not leave his master, and
+sacrificed his self-love to his affection, a proof of devotion which one
+would look for in vain among men.
+
+A singer, named Kobold, a thorough-bred King Charles from the famous
+kennels of Lord Lauder, took the place of the dancer. It was a queer
+little beast, with an enormous projecting forehead, big goggle eyes,
+nose broken short off at the root, and long ears trailing on the ground.
+When Kobold was brought to France, knowing no language but English, he
+was quite bewildered. He could not understand the orders given him;
+trained to answer to "Go on," or "Come here," he remained motionless
+when he was told in French, "Viens," or "Va-t'en." It took him a year to
+learn the tongue of the new country in which he found himself and to
+take part in the conversation. Kobold was very fond of music, and
+himself sang little songs with a very strong English accent. The A would
+be struck on the piano, and he caught the note exactly and modulated
+with a flute-like sound phrases that were really musical and that had no
+connection whatever with barking or yelping. When we wanted to make him
+go on, all we had to do was to say, "Sing a little more," and he would
+repeat the cadence. Although he was fed with the utmost care, as was
+proper in the case of a tenor singer and so distinguished a gentleman,
+Kobold had one eccentric taste: he would eat earth just like a South
+American savage. We never succeeded in curing him of the habit, which
+proved the cause of his death. He was very fond of the stablemen, the
+horses, and the stable, and my ponies had no more constant companion
+than he. He spent his time between their loose-boxes and the piano.
+
+After Kobold, the King Charles, came Myrza, a tiny Havana poodle that
+had the honour of being for a time the property of Giulia Grisi, who
+gave her to me. She is snow-white, especially when she is fresh from her
+bath and has not had time to roll over in the dust, a fancy some dogs
+share with dust-loving birds. She is extremely gentle and affectionate,
+and as sweet-tempered as a dove. Her little fluffy face, her two little
+eyes that might be mistaken for upholstery nails, and her little nose
+like a Piedmont truffle, are most comical. Tufts of hair, curly as
+Astrakhan fur, fall over her face in the most picturesque and unexpected
+way, hiding first one eye and then the other, so that she has the most
+peculiar appearance imaginable and squints like a chameleon.
+
+In Myrza, nature imitates the artificial so perfectly that the little
+creature looks as if she had stepped out of a toy-shop. When her coat is
+nicely curled, and she has got on her blue ribbon bow and her silver
+bell, she is the image of a toy dog, and when she barks it is impossible
+not to wonder whether there is a bellows under her paws.
+
+She spends three-fourths of her time in sleep, and her life would not be
+much changed were she stuffed, nor does she seem particularly clever in
+the ordinary intercourse of life. Yet she one day exhibited an amount of
+intelligence absolutely unparalleled in my experience. Bonnegrace, the
+painter of the portraits of Tchoumakoff and E. H., which attracted so
+much attention at the exhibitions, had brought to me, in order to get my
+opinion upon it, one of his portraits painted in the manner of Pagnest,
+remarkable for truthfulness of colour and vigour of modelling. Although
+I have lived on terms of closest intimacy with animals and could tell a
+hundred traits of the ingenuity, reasoning, and philosophical powers of
+cats, dogs, and birds, I am bound to confess that animals wholly lack
+any feeling for art. Never have I seen a single one notice a picture,
+and the story of the birds that picked at the grapes in the painting by
+Zeuxis, strikes me as a piece of invention. It is precisely the feeling
+for ornament and art that distinguishes man from brutes. Dogs never look
+at pictures and never put on earrings. Well, Myrza, at the sight of the
+portrait placed against the wall by Bonnegrace, sprang from the stool on
+which she was lying curled up, dashed at the canvas and barked furiously
+at it, trying to bite the stranger who had made his way into the room.
+Great was her surprise when she found herself compelled to recognise
+that she had a plane surface before her, that her teeth could not lay
+hold of it, and that it was no more than a vain presentment. She smelled
+the picture, tried to wedge in behind the frame, looked at us both with
+a glance of questioning and wonder, and returned to her place, where she
+disdainfully went to sleep again, refusing to have anything more to do
+with the painted individual. Myrza's features will not be lost to
+posterity, for there is a fine portrait of her by the Hungarian artist,
+Victor Madarasz.
+
+Let me close with the story of Dash. One day a dealer in broken bottles
+and glass stopped at my door in quest of such wares. He had in his cart
+a puppy, three or four months old, which he had been commissioned to
+drown, whereat the worthy fellow grieved much, for the dog kept looking
+at him with a tender and beseeching look as if he knew well what was
+going to happen. The reason of the severe sentence passed on the puppy
+was that he had broken his fore paw. My heart was filled with pity for
+him, and I took charge of the condemned creature; called in a vet, and
+had Dash's paw set in splints and bandaged. It was impossible, however,
+to stop him gnawing at the dressings; the paw could not be cured, and
+the bones not having knitted, it hung limp like the sleeve of a man who
+has lost an arm. His infirmity, however, did not prevent his being
+jolly, lively, and full of fun, and he managed to race along quite fast
+on his three legs.
+
+He was an out and out street dog, a rascally little cur that Buffon
+himself would have been puzzled to classify. He was ugly, but his
+features were uncommonly mobile and sparkled with cleverness. He seemed
+to understand what was told him, and his expression would change
+according as the words addressed to him, in the same tone of voice, were
+flattering or injurious. He rolled his eyes, turned up his lips,
+indulged in the wildest of nervous twitchings, or else grinned and
+showed his white teeth, obtaining in this way most comical effects of
+which he was perfectly conscious. He would often try to talk; laying his
+paw on my knee, he would fix on me that earnest gaze of his and begin a
+series of murmurs, sighs, and grunts, so varied in intonation that it
+was hard not to recognise them as language. Sometimes in the course of a
+conversation of this sort, Dash would break out into a bark or a yelp,
+and then I would look sternly at him and say: "That is barking, not
+speaking. Is it possible that you are an animal?" Dash, feeling
+humiliated at the suggestion, would go on with his vocalisation, giving
+it the most pathetic expression. We used to say then that Dash was
+telling his tale of woe.
+
+He was passionately fond of sugar, and at dessert, when coffee was
+brought in, he would invariably beg each guest for a piece with such
+insistence that he was always successful. He had ended by transforming
+this merely benevolent gift into a regular tax which he collected with
+unfailing regularity. He was but a little mongrel, yet with the frame of
+a Thersites he had the soul of an Achilles. Infirm though he was, he
+would attack, with madly heroic courage, dogs ten times his size and
+was regularly and terribly thrashed by them. Like Don Quixote, the brave
+Knight of La Mancha, he set out triumphantly and returned in most evil
+plight. Alas! he was destined to fall a victim to his own courage. Some
+months ago he was brought home with a broken back, the work of a
+Newfoundland, an amiable brute, which the next day played the same trick
+to a small greyhound.
+
+Dash's death was the first of a series of catastrophes: the mistress of
+the house where he met with the death-stroke was, a few days later,
+burned alive in her bed, and the same fate overtook her husband who was
+trying to save her. This was merely a fatal coincidence and by no means
+an expiation, for these people were of the kindest and as fond of
+animals as is a Brahmin, besides being wholly innocent of our poor
+Dash's tragic fate.
+
+It is true that I have still another dog, called Nero, but he is too
+recent an inmate of our home to have a story of his own.
+
+(NOTE.--Alas! Nero has been poisoned quite recently, just as if he had
+been supping with the Borgias, and his epitaph comes in the very first
+chapter of his life.)
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+MY HORSES
+
+
+Now let not the reader, on seeing this title, hastily accuse me of being
+a swell. Horses! That is a pretentious word to be written down by a man
+of letters! _Musa pedestris_, says Horace; that is, the Muse goes on
+foot, and Parnassus itself has but one horse in its stable, Pegasus.
+Besides, he is a winged steed and by no means quiet in harness, if we
+may credit what Schiller tells us in his ballad. I am not a sportsman,
+alas! and deeply do I regret it, for I am as fond of horses as if I had
+five hundred thousand a year, and I am entirely of the opinion of the
+Arabs concerning pedestrians. The horse is man's natural pedestal, and
+the one complete being is the centaur, whom mythology so ingeniously
+invented.
+
+Nevertheless, although I am merely a man of letters, I have owned
+horses. In the year 1843 or 1844, I found in the pay-dirt of journalism,
+washed out in the wooden pan of the _feuilleton_, a sufficient quantity
+of gold dust to justify the hope that I might feed, besides my cats,
+dogs, and magpies, a couple of animals of larger size. I first had a
+couple of Shetland ponies, the size of big dogs, hairy as bears, all
+mane and tail, and who looked at me in such friendly fashion through
+their long black hair that I felt more like showing them into the
+drawing-room than sending them to the stable. They would take sugar out
+of my pockets like trained horses. But they proved to be decidedly too
+small; they would have answered as saddle horses for English children
+eight years of age, or as coach horses for Tom Thumb, but I was already
+in the enjoyment of that athletic and portly frame for which I am famed,
+and which has enabled me to bear up, without bending too much under the
+burden, under forty consecutive years of supplying of copy. The
+difference between the owner and the animals was unquestionably too
+striking, even though the little black ponies drew at a very lively gait
+the light phaeton to which they were harnessed with the daintiest tan
+harness, that looked as if it had been bought in a toy shop.
+
+Comic illustrated papers were not as numerous then as now, but there
+were quite enough of them to publish caricatures of me and of my
+horses. It goes without saying that, profiting by the latitude allowed
+to caricature, I was represented as of elephantine bulk and appearance,
+like the god Ganesa, the Hindoo god of wisdom, and that my ponies were
+shown as no larger than poodles, rats, or mice. It is also true that I
+could readily enough have carried my pair one under each arm, and taken
+the carriage on my back. I did for a moment think of having a pony
+four-in-hand, but such a Liliputian equipage would have merely attracted
+greater attention. So to my great regret, for I had already become fond
+of them, I replaced my Shetlands with two dapple-gray cobs of larger
+size, with powerful necks, broad chests, stout and well set up, which
+were not Mecklenburghers, no doubt, but plainly more capable of dragging
+me along. They were both mares, the one called Jane, the other Betsy. So
+far as outward looks went, they were as alike as two peas, and never was
+there a better matched pair apparently. But Betsy was as lazy as Jane
+was willing. While the one drew steadily, the other was satisfied with
+trotting along, saving herself and taking good care to do nothing. These
+two animals, of the same breed, of the same age, and destined to live in
+the same stable, had the liveliest antipathy for each other. They could
+not bear one another, fought in the stable, and bit each other as they
+reared in harness. It was impossible to reconcile them, which was a
+pity, for with their hog manes, like those of the horses on the
+Parthenon frieze, their quivering nostrils, and their eyes dilated with
+anger, they looked uncommonly handsome as they were driven up or down
+the Avenue des Champs-Elysees. A substitute had to be found for Betsy,
+and a small mare, somewhat lighter coloured, for it had been impossible
+to match her exactly, was brought round. Jane immediately welcomed the
+new-comer and did the honours of the stable to her most graciously, and
+ere long they became fast friends. Jane would rest her head on Blanche's
+neck--she had been so called because her gray coat was rather
+whitish--and when they were let loose in the yard after being rubbed
+down, they would play together like a pair of dogs of children. If one
+was taken out driving, the one left in the stable was plainly wearying
+for her, and as soon as she heard in the distance the ring of her
+companion's hoofs on the paving-stones, she set up a joyous neigh, like
+a trumpet-blast, to which the other did not fail to reply as she
+approached.
+
+They would come up to be harnessed with astonishing docility, and took
+of themselves their proper place by the pole. Like all animals that are
+loved and well treated, Jane and Blanche soon became most familiar and
+trusting. They would follow me without bridle or halter like the
+best-trained dog, and when I stopped they would stick their noses on my
+shoulder in order to be caressed. Jane was fond of bread, and Blanche of
+sugar, and both were crazy about melon skin. I could make them do
+anything in return for these dainties.
+
+If man were not odiously brutal and ferocious, as he too frequently
+shows himself towards animals, they would cling to him most gladly.
+Their dim brain is filled with the thought of that being who thinks,
+speaks, and does things the meaning of which escapes them; he is a
+mystery and a wonder to them. They will often look at you with eyes full
+of questions you cannot answer, for the key to their speech has not yet
+been found. Yet they have a speech which enables them to exchange, by
+means of intonations not yet noted by man, ideas that are rudimentary,
+no doubt, but which are such as may be conceived by creatures within
+their sphere of action and feeling. Less stupid than we are, animals
+succeed in understanding a few words of our idiom, but not enough to
+enable them to converse with us. Besides, as the words they do learn
+refer solely to what we exact of them, the conversation would be brief.
+But that animals speak cannot be doubted by any one who has lived in any
+degree of intimacy with dogs, cats, horses, or other creatures of that
+sort.
+
+For instance, Jane was naturally intrepid; she never refused, and
+nothing frightened her, but after a few months of cohabitation with
+Blanche her character changed and she manifested at times sudden and
+inexplicable fear. Her companion, much less brave, must have told her
+ghost stories at night. Often, when going through the Bois de Boulogne
+at dusk or after dark, Blanche would stop short or shy, as if a phantom,
+invisible to me, had risen up before her. She trembled in every limb,
+breathed hard, and broke out into sweat. If I attempted to urge her
+ahead with the whip, she backed, and all Jane could do, strong as she
+was, was insufficient to induce her to go on. One of us would have to
+get down, cover her eyes with the hand and lead her until the vision had
+vanished. Little by little Jane became subject to the same terror, the
+reason of which, no doubt, Blanche told her once they were back in their
+stable. I may as well confess that for my part, when I would be driving
+down a dark road on which the moonlight produced alternations of light
+and shadow, and Blanche suddenly became rooted to the spot as though a
+spectre had sprung at her head, and refused to move,--she who was
+usually so docile that Queen Mab's whip, made of a cricket's bone with a
+spider's thread for a thong, was enough to start her into a gallop,--I
+could not repress a slight shudder or refrain from peering into the
+darkness rather anxiously, while at times the harmless trunks of ash or
+birch trees would appear to me as spectral-looking as one of Goya's
+"Caprices."
+
+I took great delight in driving these dear animals myself, and we soon
+became very intimate. It was merely as a matter of form that I held the
+reins, for the least click of the tongue was enough to direct them, to
+turn them to the right or the left, to make them go faster, or to stop
+them. They quickly learned all my habits and started of themselves for
+the office, the printer's, the publishers', the Bois de Boulogne, and
+the houses where I went to dinner on certain days of the week, and this
+so accurately that they would have ended by compromising me, for they
+would have revealed the places to which I paid the most mysterious
+visits. If I happened to forget the time in the course of an interesting
+or tender conversation they would remind me it was getting late by
+neighing or pawing in front of the balcony.
+
+Although I greatly enjoyed traversing the city in the phaeton drawn by
+my two friends, I could not help at times thinking the north wind sharp
+and the rain cold when the months came along which the Republican
+calendar named so appropriately the months of mist, of frost, of rain,
+of wind, of snow (brumaire, frimaire, pluviose, ventose, nivose), so I
+purchased a small blue coupe, lined with white reps, which was likened
+to the equipage of the famous dwarf of the day, a piece of impertinence
+I did not mind. A brown coupe, lined with garnet, followed the blue one,
+and was itself replaced by a dark-green coupe lined with dark blue, for
+I actually did sport a coach--I, poor newspaper writer holding no
+Government stock--for five or six years. And my ponies were none the
+less fat and in good condition though they were fed on literature, had
+substantives for oats, adjectives for hay, and adverbs for straw. But
+alas! there came, no one knows very well why, the Revolution in
+February; a great many paving-stones were picked up for patriotic
+purposes, and Paris became rather unfit for carriage travel. I could of
+course have escaladed the barricades with my agile steeds and my light
+equipage, but it was only at the cook-shop that I could get credit, and
+I could not possibly feed my horses on roast chicken. The horizon was
+dark with heavy clouds, through which flashed red gleams. Money had
+taken fright and gone into hiding; the _Presse_, on the staff of which I
+was, had suspended publication, and I was glad enough to find a person
+willing to buy my horses, harness, and carriages for a fourth of their
+value. It was a bitter grief to me, and I would not venture to say that
+no tears ran down my cheeks on to the manes of Jane and Blanche when
+they were led away. Sometimes their new owner would drive past the
+house; I always knew their quick, sharp trot at a distance, and always
+the sudden way they would stop under my windows proved that they had not
+forgotten the place where they had been so tenderly loved and so well
+cared for, and a sigh would break responsive from me as I said to
+myself: "Poor Jane, poor Blanche! I wonder if they are happy."
+
+And the loss of them is the one and only thing I felt sore over when I
+lost my slender fortune.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+The following typographical error was corrected.
+
+  286  scissors cut changed to scissors, cut
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's My Private Menagerie, by Theophile Gautier
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