204 THE FIRESIDE SPHINX 



Indeed, though the whole history of the Black and 

 White Dynasties has been told and retold until it is 

 as familiar as fairy stories, it must bear yet one 

 more telling, because of the melancholy incomplete- 

 ness of any cat-book from which it were omitted. 

 Like Gray's verses to the ill-fated Selima, like the 

 legend of Dick Whittington, like Puss-in-Boots, or 

 the oft-repeated tale of Mohammed's Muezza, it is 

 part of the annals of cathood. To exclude this 

 narrative because of its charming familiarity, would 

 be like excluding the Crusades, the tournaments, 

 the Cavaliers, from England's glorious chronicles. 

 Great Pasht forbid that the history of pussies should 

 be written from the blue-book and statistic point of 

 view ; or that the shades of Madame Theophile, of 

 Eponine, of Don Pierrot, and Gavroche should ever 

 cease to smile upon their little brothers and sisters 

 who frolic by our hearths to-day. 



The parrot that figures so dramatically in Gau- 

 tier's story was not by rights a member of the me- 

 nagerie. It was sent to the poet's hospitable home 

 to be entertained during its owner's absence from 

 Paris, and the fact that Madame Theophile had 

 never before seen such a bird, intensified the inter- 

 est of their meeting. " Motionless as a cat mummy 

 in its swathing-bands," says Gautier, "she fixed a 

 profoundly meditative gaze upon the creature, sum- 

 moning to her aid all the notions of natural history 



