"Je vois avec étonnement
Le feu de ses prunelles pâles,
Clairs fanaux, vivantes opales,
Qui me contemplent fixement."
"The boast of our age," says a modern cynic, "is the reverse of simplicity;" but then the cat is not a simple animal. When poets have chosen to write simply about a creature so curiously complex, they have succeeded merely in portraying a single trait or aspect; something easily compassed by even a limited understanding, as Wordsworth described the gambols of the kitten on the wall. Nevertheless, there is a sweeter, homelier side to man's tenderness for any animal; there is affection distinct from infatuation. It does not inspire the poet,—how should it!—but it warms our hearts, as nothing save kindness and the knowledge of kindness can ever warm them in a world chilled by indifference to pain. Madame Michelet, the clever wife and collaboratrice of the historian, has told us in "L'Oiseau" a plain pathetic little story, which contains all the elements of tragedy and of consolation that go to make up life.
"My father," she writes, "had a strong sympathy for cats. This was the result of early experience. He and his brother, knocked pitilessly about in their childhood between the harshness of home and the cruelty of school, had, for solace and alleviation,
