SOME CATS OF FRANCE 213 



dignity. Gavroche was a born Bohemian, enam- 

 oured of low company, and of the careless come- 

 dies of life. Their sister Eponine — best loved of 

 the three — was a delicate, fastidious little creature, 

 with an exquisite sense of propriety, and of the 

 refinements of social intercourse. Enjolras was 

 a glutton, caring for nothing so much as for his 

 dinner. Gavroche, more generous, would bring 

 in from the streets gaunt and ragged cats, who 

 devoured in a scurry of fright the food laid aside 

 for him. " I was often tempted to remonstrate," 

 writes Gautier, "and to say to the little scamp, 

 ' A nice lot of friends you do pick up ! ' But I re- 

 frained. After all, it was an amiable weakness. 

 He might have eaten his dinner himself." 



Eponine was piquant rather than beautiful. Her 

 little velvety nose looked like a fine truffle of Peri- 

 gord. Her eyes had the oblique slant of the Orient, 

 and were sea-green like the eyes of Pallas-Athene, 

 or of that fair Dame de Fayel, to whom the Sire 

 de Coucy, dying in the Holy Land, sent back his 

 heart by a trusted squire, and whose husband, dis- 

 covering the contents of the box, forced her to eat it, 

 of which horror she died. In the Sire de Coucy 's 

 passionate verses, his lady's eyes are described as 

 green "like a cat's ; " for no other colour, cries the 

 lover rapturously, can inspire ardour and adoration 

 in the human heart. 



