Virgin; which final subject—so dear to the Italian heart—was seldom deemed complete without the introduction of a cat into the spacious bed-chamber of Saint Ann. This is all the more pleasing because of Pussy's conspicuous absence from Pagan art. The dog leaps by the side of Artemis, or bays at the moon while Endymion slumbers. The kid drinks from the shepherd's bowl, the young bull is led garlanded to the sacrifice, the stag falls, pierced by the hunter's dart. But of the little fireside Sphinx we have no sign nor token. She and she alone finds no place among the marble animals of the Vatican. Those wise and watchful hounds, those lions and wolves and spotted leopards make no room for her. We see the hare couching upon her form, and the lobster lying on its rocky bed; but for the most beautiful of domestic animals we search, and search in vain. Only in the Capitoline Museum may be found a spirited bas-relief, of a late period, which represents a woman trying to teach her cat to dance to the music of a lyre. The cat, a sullen beast with no love of music or dancing in its soul, has paused in the unwelcome task to snap viciously at a young duck, which, with obvious lack of caution, is thrusting forward its inquisitive head. Centuries later, Tintoretto painted just such a pussy snapping at just such a duck, in his charming picture of Leda,—Leda caressing the amorous swan,
