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 P^ri- 

 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. 



