SOME CATS OF FRANCE 195 



gerated the extravagant behaviour of the poet, are 

 questions hard to determine, and perhaps not worth 

 determining. M. Champfleury, who was a friend, 

 admits the lack of discretion in all of Baudelaire's 

 fancies. They began prettily, soon grew burden- 

 some, and ended too often in the grotesque. " Many 

 a time," he writes, "when he and I have been walk- 

 ing together, have we stopped at the door of a 

 laundry to look at a cat, curled luxuriously on a 

 pile of snow-white linen, and revelling in the fra- 

 grant softness of the newly-ironed fabrics. Into 

 what moods of contemplation have we fallen, while 

 the coquettish laundresses struck pretty attitudes 

 at their ironing-boards, under the delusion that we 

 were admiring them. If a cat appeared in a door- 

 way, or crossed the street, Baudelaire would coax 

 it softly, take it in his arms, and stroke its fur, 

 — sometimes the wrong way. Although I may 

 seem to confirm the stories that were circulated 

 when the poet was attacked by hopeless paralysis, 

 I must admit that his enthusiasm had in it some- 

 thing startling and excessive. This made him a 

 charming companion for an hour or so, after which 

 he became fatiguing, from the extreme excitability 

 which all who knew him recognized as character- 

 istic." 



The foolish tales current at the time may easily 

 be discarded. It is not probable that the poet, 



