A poor old woman used to beg her food by day and cook it at night. Half of the food she would eat in the morning, and the other half in the evening. After a while a cat got to know of this arrangement, and came and ate the meal for her. The old woman was very patient, but at last could no longer endure the cat’s impudence, and so she laid hold of it. She argued with herself as to whether she should kill it or not. “If I slay it,” she thought, “it will be a sin; but if I keep it alive, it will be to my heavy loss.” So she determined only to punish it. She procured some cotton wool and some oil, and soaking the one in the other, tied it on to the cat’s tail and then set it on fire. Away rushed the cat across the yard, up the side of the window, and on to the roof, where its flaming tail ignited the thatch and set the whole house on fire. The flames soon spread to other houses, and the whole village was destroyed. Not a few of the _Bizarrures_ of the Sieur Gaulard are the prototypes of bulls and foolish sayings of the typical Irishman, which go their ceaseless rounds in popular periodicals, and are even audaciously reproduced as original in our “comic” journals. To cite some examples: * * * * * A friend one day told M. Gaulard that the Dean of Besançon was dead. “Believe it not,” said he, “for had it been so he would have told me himself, since he writes to me about everything.” M. Gaulard asked his secretary one evening what hour it was. “Sir,” replied the secretary, “I cannot tell you by the dial, because the sun is set.” “Well,” quoth M. Gaulard, “and can you not see by the candle?” * * * * * On another occasion the Sieur called from his bed to a servant desiring him to see if it was daylight yet. “There is no sign of daylight,” said the servant. “I do not wonder,” rejoined the Sieur, “that thou canst not see day, great fool as thou art. Take a candle and look with it out at the window, and thou shalt see whether it be day or not.” * * * * * In a strange house, the Sieur found the walls of his bed chamber full of great holes. “This,” exclaimed he in a rage, “is the cursedest chamber in all the world. One may see day all the night through.” * * * * * Travelling in the country, his man, to gain the fairest way, rode through a field sowed with pease, upon which M. Gaulard cried to him, “Thou knave, wilt thou burn my horse’s feet? Dost thou not know that about six weeks ago I burned my mouth with eating pease, they were so hot?” * * * * * A poor man complained to him that he had had a horse stolen from him. “Why did you not mark his visage,” asked M. Gaulard, “and the clothes he wore?” “Sir,” said the man, “I was not there when he was stolen.” Quoth the Sieur, “You should have left somebody to ask him his name, and in what place he resided.” * * * * *