2 THE FIRESIDE SPHINX 



so alarmingly that the comfort — if there was any 

 comfort — of the inmates was threatened with de- 

 struction. Then Noah, equal to the emergency, 

 passed his hand three times over the head of the 

 lioness, and lo ! she sneezed forth the cat. 



In connection with this venerable legend, it is 

 interesting to note the behaviour of Puss in the old 

 Italian pictures which represent the departure from 

 the Ark, a subject which Bassano has painted over 

 and over again. Invariably we see, walking at the 

 head of the procession, with a most self-satisfied 

 and arrogant air, as if she owned the newly recov- 

 ered earth, a large brindled cat. The lion and the 

 elephant, the camel and the horse, all the most 

 terrible and the most useful beasts linger with mod- 

 est diffidence in the background ; the cat presents 

 herself superbly to everybody's notice, and, as a 

 rule, begins her career of depredation by assailing 

 one of her late companions, — a fat frightened rab- 

 bit, or a trembling dove. No one would imagine 

 that she owed her existence to the incidental dis- 

 comforts of the Ark. 



However mysterious and informal may have been 

 her birth, Pussy's first appearance in veracious his- 

 tory is a splendid one. More than three thou- 

 sand years ago she dwelt serenely by the Nile, and 

 the great nation of antiquity paid her respectful 

 homage. Sleek and beautiful, she drowsed in the 



