32 THE FIRESIDE SPHINX 



of warlocks and of witches, stole through the lattice 

 window as a sleek black cat. Perchance some 

 passing traveller, seeing her glide by, wounded her 

 with stone or sword ; and the next morning she was 

 found maimed and bleeding beneath the counter- 

 pane. In ruined churches, pillaged and desecrated 

 by the unsparing wickedness of war, there assem- 

 bled, on the eve of Saint John, hags and wizards 

 and young girls caught in Satan's toils, all creeping 

 through the darkness under the forms of cats, and 

 all afire with impious relish for sorcery and sin. 



Innumerable legends cluster around the cat dur- 

 ing these picturesque centuries of superstition, 

 when men were poor in letters, but rich in vivid 

 imaginings ; when they were densely ignorant, but 

 never dull. Even after the Dark Ages had grown 

 light, there was no lifting of the gloom which 

 enveloped Pussy's pathway, there was no visible 

 softening of her lot. The stories told of her imp- 

 ish wickedness have the same general character 

 throughout Europe. We meet them with modest 

 variations in France, in Germany, in Sweden, Den- 

 mark, England, Scotland and Wales. It was a be- 

 lated woodcutter of Brittany who saw with horror- 

 stricken eyes thirteen cats dancing in sacrilegious 

 glee around a wayside crucifix. One he killed with 

 his axe, and the other twelve disappeared in a 

 trice. It was a charcoal-burner in the Black For- 



