THE RAT : BARBARIC INVASIONS. 
143 
have never denied the truth of these comparisons, but the mod- 
esty of an author aside, I think the analogy of the Cyclop much 
the best. Having thus stated the opinion of the minority, I trust 
the decision to my readers. 
The fox is the only carnivorous beast of France to whom the 
mole is not disgusting. 
THE RAT. 
I could write twenty volumes on the Rat. There is no richer 
subject, especially the rat of the great Parisian sewers, not the 
gutter or house rat, another category of gnawers, whose history 
has also grreat interest and charms. The rat tells the inv^asions 
of the Barbarians, as the war-horse tells the grandeur and decay 
of the blooded aristocracy. 
Each horde has its rat : to every occupation of the superficies, 
corresponds an occupation of the subsoil. There has been the rat 
of the Goths, the rat of the Vandals, the rat of the Huns ! There 
is the Herman rat (English) and the Tartar rat (Muscovite.) 
The strata of barbarians which have been superposed on each 
other upon our soil, may be counted by the number of the varie- 
ties of rats which this soil has successively nourished. Here is 
certainly a new and important historical datum. I would lay a 
high wager however, that this is the first time that the academy 
of inscriptions and of belles-lettres has been called to reflect upon 
this luminous connection. 
I shall not dig among the rubbish of the past to seek there the 
traces of the passage and establishment of the rats of the great 
invasion of Gaul. The testimony of my cotemporaries will suffice 
to confirm this theory. 
A few words in preface upon the history of the rat in general. 
In the first place, the rat is not the husband of the mouse, as a 
popular prejudice supposes. The rat is no more the husband of 
the mouse than the toad is the husband of the frog. All the 
^ This thesis has been developed by Dr. Lallemand, in the Revue Inde- 
pendante, April, 1847. My work preceded three years that of the illus- 
trious academician. 
