Cats. 



49 



their colour, they should be so little painted by consider- 

 able artists. Almost all the pictures of cats which I 

 remember were done by inferior men, often by artists of 

 a very low grade indeed. The reason for this is probably, 

 that although the cat is a refined and very voluptuous ani- 

 mal, it is so wanting in the nobler qualities as to fail in 

 winning the serious sympathies of noble and generous- 

 hearted men. 



Mr. Manet once very appropriately introduced a black 

 cat on the bed of a Parisian lorette, and this cat became 

 quite famous for a week or two in all the Parisian news- 

 papers, being also cleverly copied by the caricaturists. No 

 other painted cat ever attracted so much attention, indeed 

 " Le chat de M. Manet" amused Paris as Athens amused 

 itself with the dog of Alcibiades. 



M. Manet's cat had an awful look, and depths of mean- 

 ing were discoverable in its eyes of yellow flame set in the 

 blackness of the night. There has always been a feeling 

 that a black cat was not altogether " canny." Many of us, 

 if we were quite sincere, would confess to a superstition 

 about black cats. They seem to know too much, and is it 

 not written that their ancestors were the companions and 

 accomplices of witches in the times of old .■" Who can tell 

 what baleful secrets may not have been transmitted through 

 their generations .'' There can be no doubt that cats know 

 a great deal more than they choose to tell us, though occa- 

 sionally they may let a secret out in some unguarded 

 moment. Shelley the poet, who had an intense sense of 

 the supernatural, narrates the following history, as he 

 heard it from Mr. G. Lewis : — 



M. Manet, a famous French painter. 



The Black Cat; see the tale by Edgar Allan Poe. 



The dog of Alcibiades; see Plutarch's Life. 



