and so dispirited that a mouse might have beaten him. There was only one thing in his favor, and that was his physiognomy.

The Cat is presented, half dead, to the Countess.

"Dear me, how homely he is!" said Madame de la Grenouillère, after finishing her examination.

At the moment she stepped into the carriage, the cat fixed his great sea-green eyes upon her and gave her a look, strange, indefinable, full at the same time of gratitude and reproach, and so expressive that the good lady was instantly fascinated. She read in this glance a discourse of great eloquence. The look seemed to wish to say,—

"You have obeyed a generous impulse; you saw me feeble, suffering, oppressed, and you took pity on me. Now that your benevolence is satisfied, my deformity inspires you with contempt. I thought you were good, but you are not good; you have the instinct of kindness, but you are not kind. If you were really charitable you would continue to interest yourself in me for the very reason that I am homely; you would reflect that my misfortunes are owing to my ugly appearance, and that the same cause,—should you leave me there in the street, at the mercy of the wicked boys,—the same cause, I say, would produce the same effects. Go! you needn’t pride yourself on your half-way benevolence!—you have not done me a service; you have only prolonged my agony. I am an outcast, the whole world is against me, I am condemned to die; let my destiny be accomplished!"

Madame de la Grenouillère was moved to tears. The cat seemed to her superhuman—no, it was a cat; it seemed to her superanimal! She thought of the mysteries of transformation, and imagined that the cat, before assuming his present form, had been a great orator and a person of standing. She said to her maid, Mother Michel, who was in the carriage,—

"Take the cat and carry him."

"What, you will bring him with you, madame?" cried Mother Michel.

"Certainly. As long as I live that animal shall have a place at my fireside and at my table. If you wish to please me, you will treat him with the same zeal and affection you show to myself."

"Madame shall be obeyed."

"That is well,—and now for home!"

Mother Michel is told to take the Cat.

Mother Michel.

Madame de la Grenouillère inhabited a magnificent mansion situated on the corner of the streets Saint-Thomas-du-Louvre and Orties-Saint-Louis; there she led a very retired life, on almost intimate terms with her two principal domestics,—Madame Michel, her maid and companion, and M. Lustucru, the steward. These servants being elderly persons, the Countess, who was possessed of a pleasant humor, had christened them Mother Michel and Father Lustucru.

The features of Mother Michel bore the imprint of her amiable disposition; she was as open and candid as Father Lustucru was sly and dissimulating. The plausible air of the steward might deceive persons without much experience; but close observers could easily discover the most perverse inclinations under his false mask of good nature. There was duplicity in his great blue eyes, anger concentrated in his nostrils, something wily in the end of his tapering nose, and malice in the shape of his lips.

However, this man had never, in appearance, at least, done anything to forfeit his honor; he had been able to guard an outside air of honesty, hiding very carefully the blackness of his nature. His wickedness was like a mine to which one has not yet applied the match,—it waited only for an occasion to flash out.

Father Lustucru.

Lustucru detested animals, but, in order to flatter the taste of his mistress, he pretended to idolize them. On seeing Mother Michel bearing in her arms the rescued cat, he said to himself:

"What, another beast! As if there were not enough of us in the house!"

He could not help throwing a glance of antipathy at the new-comer; then, curbing himself quickly, he cried, with an affected admiration,—

"Oh, the beautiful cat! the pretty cat! that cat hasn’t his equal!"—and he caressed it in the most perfidious fashion.

"Truly?" said Madame de la Grenouillère; "you do not find him too homely?"

"Oh, the Beautiful Cat!"

"Too homely! But, then, he has charming eyes. But, if he was frightful, your interesting yourself in him would change him."

"He displeased me at first."

"The beings who displease at first are those one loves the most after awhile," replied Father Lustucru, sententiously.

They proceeded at once to make the toilet of the cat, who, in spite of his instinctive horror of water, submitted with touching resignation to being washed; he seemed to understand that it improved his personal appearance. After giving him a dish of broken meat, which he ate with great relish, they arranged the hours for his meals, the employment of his days, and the place where he was to sleep.

The Cat is washed.

They thought also to give him a name. Mother Michel and Father Lustucru proposed several that were quite happy, such as Mistigris, Tristepatte, etc.; but the Countess rejected them all successively. She desired a name that would recall the circumstances in which the cat was found. An old scholar, whom she consulted the next day, suggested that of Moumouth, composed of two Hebrew words which signify saved from saucepans.

The Cat grows Fat.

The Old Scholar looks for a Name.

At the end of a few days, Moumouth was unrecognizable. His fur was polished with care; nourishing food had filled out his form; his mustaches stood up like those of a swordsman of the seventeenth century; his eyes shone as emeralds. He was a living proof of the influence of good fare upon the race. He owed his excellent condition chiefly to Mother Michel, whom he held in affectionate consideration; he showed, on the other hand, for Father Lustucru a very marked dislike. As if he had divined that here he had to do with an enemy, he refused to accept anything presented by the steward. However, they saw but little of each other. The days passed very happily with Moumouth, and everything promised a smiling future for him; but, like the sword of Damocles,