The leal true cat they prize not, that if e'er compelled to roam,
Still flies, when let out of the bag, precipitately home."
An amusing instance of Pussy's incurable nostalgia is related by M. Champfleury. A country curé of his acquaintance received a more important charge in a neighbouring town, and moved thither with his little household, consisting of an old servant, a tame crow, and a female cat. The crow was a clever and voluble vaurien; the cat—despite her sex—an unprincipled freebooter; the servant an affectionate scold; and the curé an amused spectator of their constant and animated bickerings. Two days after the journey to town. Pussy disappeared. The crow, uneasy at her absence, hopped disconsolately about his new abode. The housekeeper was loud in her lamentations. The curé felt a reasonable alarm lest the current of her hourly reproaches, checked in its ordinary course, might before long be diverted in his direction.
A week passed, and a former parishioner came to the priest's door, bearing in a bag the missing cat, whom he had found mewing disconsolately at the gate of her old home. She was welcomed with delight, and the household seemed restored to its former state of quarrelsome tranquillity, when, one fair morning, behold! her place by the hearth was again vacant. This time she was promptly sought for, and discovered prowling about the garden of
