46 Chapters on Animals. 



umphal arch ; and from my window, at certain hours of 

 the day, might be observed a purveyor of dead cats who 

 supplied a small cheap restaurant in a back street. I 

 never went to eat at the restaurant, but ascertained that it 

 had a certain reputation for a dish supposed to be made of 

 rabbits. During the great siege, many Parisians who may 

 frequently have eaten cat without knowing it (as you also 

 may perchance have done, respected reader) came to eat 

 cat with clear knowledge of the true nature of the feast, 

 and they all seemed to agree that it was very good. Our 

 prejudices about the flesh we use for food are often incon- 

 sistent, the most reasonable one seems to be a preference 

 for vegetable feeders, yet we eat lobsters and pike. The 

 truth is that nobody who eats even duck can consistently 

 have a horror of cat's flesh on the ground of the animal's 

 habits. And although the cat is a carnivorous animal, 

 it has a passionate fondness for certain vegetable 

 substances, delighting in the odour of valerian, and in the 

 taste of asparagus, the former to ecstasy, the latter to 

 downright gluttony. 



Since artists cannot conveniently have lions and tigers 

 in their studios, they sometimes like to have cats merely 

 that they may watch the ineffable grace of their motions. 

 Stealthy and treacherous as they are, they have yet a quite 

 peculiar finish of style in action, far surpassing in certain 

 qualities of manner the most perfectly-trained action of 

 horses, or even the grace of the roe-deer or the gazelle. 

 All other animals are stiff in comparison with the felines, 

 all other animals have distinctly bodies supported by legs, 

 reminding one of the primitive toy-maker's conception of 

 a quadruped, a cylinder on four sticks, with a neck and 

 head at one end and a tail at the other. But the cat no 



The triumphal arch in Paris, is at the end of the Champs Elysees. 



