"Half gentle kindliness and half disdain,
In salutation courtly and urbane,
Where naught disturbs the concord of her reign."
In the brilliant court of Louis the Fourteenth, Pussy began that series of social triumphs which led, step by step, to her grand apotheosis during the following reign. Her beauty, her exquisite propriety of demeanour, her velvet footfall, her gentle, flattering purr, her love of luxury and repose, all fitted her for the splendour of her surroundings. The art with which she veiled her mind and motives was duly appreciated by courtiers, forever occupied in masking their own emotions. She followed unconsciously the advice of the old French noble who sent his son to court with these wise words: "Seize everything, speak ill of nobody, and sit down whenever you have the opportunity." "Gracieuse, supple et perfide," she harmonized exquisitely with a society which reflected her dominant traits. Saint Simon, in an amusing passage of his Memoirs, describes the intrusion of a kitten upon one of the Royal Councils, and the delight of the little king, Louis the Fifteenth,—a boy of eight,—at this pleasant interruption of business. The kitten, with the audacity of kittenhood, jumped first upon the princely knee, and thence to the council table, where it pranced and paddled among the papers, tolerated for the sake of the pale tired child
