SOME CATS OF FRANCE 187 



her confidence or devotion. He neither demanded 

 the loyalty he knew she would not give, nor ignored 

 the friendship she was sometimes ready to bestow. 

 Therefore there was a peculiar fitness in his inherit- 

 ing from Leo the Twelfth the superb cat who had 

 been for several years the Pontiff's most intimate 

 companion, and who had aroused the ambassador's 

 admiration by his beauty, his dignified demeanour, 

 and a certain ascetic charm, derived from contact 

 with the papacy. The Pope was abstemious, after 

 the admirable fashion of Italians ; the cat, Micetto, 

 was abstemious too, living on a little polenta, and 

 wholly weaned from the carnivorous habits of his 

 race. Chateaubriand, in a well-known passage of 

 his " Memoires," has left us a pretty description 

 of the pontifical pet,, who lived in France to a serene 

 old age, bearing his weight of honours with graceful 

 propriety, and hardening into arrogance only when 

 forced to repel the undue familiarity of visitors. 



" My companion," he writes, " is a large grey and 

 red cat, banded with black. He was born in the 

 Vatican, in the loggia of Raphael. Leo the Twelfth 

 reared him on a fold of his white robe, where I 

 used to look at him with envy when, as ambassador, 

 I received my audiences. The successor of Saint 

 Peter being dead, I inherited the bereaved animal. 

 He is called Micetto, and surnamed ' the Pope's 

 cat,' enjoying, in that regard, much consideration 



