But listen, Fire, what I saw after that, passes _my_ understanding. It was in a wood where stiff leaves rustled. Had She carried you under her cloak, or do gods like you come at her bidding? I saw her hands pile up the wood, arrange flat stones in some mysterious fashion, and then, Fire, I saw the sparks flash and your joyous soul palpitate, grow big, soar naked and rose-colored, veil itself in smoke, snap noisily (for yours is a belligerent soul), agonize--and disappear.... The world is full of incomprehensible things.... Last of all, on our way back, I discovered near the park gate--saw it before She did--one of those invincible beasts called hedge-hogs, the mere sight of which brings us dogs to bay. What madness to realize that an animal is hiding under that pin-cushion and laughing at me, and that I can do nothing, _nothing_! I implored her--She can do nearly everything--to pluck him for me. She began by turning him over with a little stick, as if he were a horse chestnut. "Astonishing," said She, "I can't find the top of him!" Then She took one of his spines between two fingers and carried him home that way--I dancing behind her--and put him in her work basket. After a while the horrid beast unrolled himself, stuck out a pig-like nose, opened two shiny rat's eyes and raised himself, holding fast by his little paws, which were exactly like a mole's. "How pretty he is," She cried, "a real little black pig." I stood near the table groaning with covetousness, but She didn't pluck him for me, not then, or ever, and perhaps the cook ate him.... This cat's a dissembler. Maybe _he_ ... But away with care! I'm too excitable! I mustn't let myself think of these things. Life is beautiful, O Fire, since you illumine it ... I'm going to sleep ... Watch over my unconscious body ... I'm going ... to sleep.... KIKI-THE-DEMURE One would think me asleep because the narrow slit made by my parted eyelids, seems but the continuation of that velvety line, that bold crayon-stroke, a sort of Oriental make-up, uniting my eyelids and my ears. But I'm awake, keeping watch like a yogi, in a state of blissful ankylosis, conscious of all that's going on around me.... My privileged eyes, Fire, do but behold you better when they're closed and I can count the various essences you mingle in a sparkling bouquet. Here in a flame of mauve-color and blue, glows the soul of a branch of arbor-vitae. Yesterday it waved a plume-like shadow on the garden walk ... To-day, with its delicate twigs, it is but a writhing skeleton. She cut it with one stroke of the pruning scissors. Why? That it might breathe out its fervent blue and mauve-colored soul? For like me, She delights in your dance, Fire, and chastises you when you're quiet, with a stern pair of tongs. Sitting there with her head bent and her arms hanging along her sides, what does She read, I wonder, in that fiery rose which is the labyrinthian heart of you?... She knows a great deal certainly, but not as much as a Cat.