208 THE FIRESIDE SPHINX 



open upon the table, would lie down on it, turn over 

 the edges of the leaves with his paw, and, after a 

 time, fall asleep, for all the world as if he had been 

 reading a fashionable novel. He gave a good deal 

 of attention to my work, and, while I wrote, would 

 follow the movement of my pen with serious scru- 

 tiny, taking note of each new line, and sometimes 

 pushing the penholder gently from my fingers, as 

 though anxious to add a few words of his own. He 

 was an aesthetic cat, like Hoffmann's Murr, and had, 

 I strongly suspect, been guilty of writing his me- 

 moirs ; scribbling away probably at night, in some 

 shadowy gutter, by the light of his own lambent 

 eyes. Unhappily these invaluable reminiscences 

 have been lost. 



" Don Pierrot made a point of never going to bed 

 until I came home. He used to wait for me in the 

 hall, greet me with friendly purrs, and precede me 

 to my chamber like a page. I have no doubt that, 

 if I had asked him, he would have carried the can- 

 dlestick. He slept on the back of my bedstead, 

 carefully balanced like a bird on a bough, and, when 

 I awoke in the morning, would jump down and 

 nestle beside me until I arose. He was strict as a 

 concierge, however, in his notions of the proper 

 time for all good people to be indoors, and would 

 tolerate nothing later than midnight. In those 

 days I belonged to a little society, known as 'The 



