My father was a notary public. Since time immemorial it had been so with the Mintié family. It would have appeared monstrous, almost revolutionary, if a member of the Mintié family had dared to break this family tradition and had renounced the scutcheons of gilt wood which were transmitted religiously from one generation to another like some title of nobility. At Saint-Michel-les-Hêtres and the surrounding country, my father occupied a position which ancestral pride, his dignified manners of a country gentleman, and, above all, his income of twenty thousand francs rendered very important, almost unshakeable. Mayor of Saint-Michel, member of the general council, acting justice of the peace, vice president of the agricultural commission, member of numerous agronomic and forestry societies, he did not overlook any of the petty or ambitious honors which carry with them a sort of prestige and influence. He was an excellent man, very honest and very gentle,--with a mania for killing. He could not see a bird, a cat, an insect--anything at all that was alive--without being seized with a strange desire to kill it. He waged a relentless trapper's war on blackbirds, goldfinches, chaffinches and bullfinches. Felix was instructed to let my father know as soon as a bird appeared in our garden, and my father would leave everything--clients, business, his meal--to kill the bird. He would often lie in wait for hours, motionless, behind a tree on which the gardener had pointed out a little blueheaded titmouse. During his walks, every time he noticed a bird on a branch and did not have his rifle with him, he would throw his cane at it, never failing to say, "Oh, hang it! He was there this morning!" or "Hang it! I must have missed him for sure, it's too far." These were the only thoughts which birds ever inspired in him. He was also greatly engrossed with cats. Whenever he recognized the trail of a cat he could not rest until he discovered and killed it. Sometimes on a moonlight night he would get up, go out with his gun and stay outside till dawn. You should have seen him, musket on shoulder, holding by the tail the cadaver of a cat, bleeding and motionless! Never have I admired anything so heroic; and David on killing Goliath must have had no more intoxicated an air of triumph! With a majestic gesture he threw the cat at the feet of the cook who said, "Oh! the nasty beast!" and thereupon started to cut it up, saving the meat for the beggars, leaving the skin to dry on the end of a stick, later to be sold at Auvergnats. If I dwell so much on details of a seemingly unimportant character, it is because during all my life I was obsessed with and haunted by these feline episodes of my childhood. There is one among them which has left such an impression on my spirit that to this very day, in spite of all the years that have gone by and all the sorrows that I have experienced, not a day passes without my thinking of it sadly.