Where had she learned to know that, this miserable outcast, never stroked by a kind hand, never loved by any one,--if not perhaps in the paternal junk, by some poor Chinese child without playthings, and without caresses, thrown by chance like a useless weed in the immense yellow swarm, miserable and hungry as herself, and whose incomplete soul in departing, left behind no more trace than her own? Then a frail paw was laid timidly upon me--oh! with so much delicacy, so much discretion!--and after looking at me a long time beseechingly, she decided to venture upon my knee. Jumping there lightly she curled herself in a light, small mass, making herself small as possible and almost without weight, never taking her eyes from me. She lay a long time thus, much in my way, but I had not the heart to dislodge her, which I should doubtless have done had she been a gay pretty kitten in the bloom of kittenhood. As if in fear at my least movement, she watched me incessantly, not fearing that I should harm her--she was too intelligent to think me capable of that--but with an air that seemed to ask: “Is it true that I do not weary you, that I do not trouble you?” and then, her eyes growing still more tender and expressive, saying to mine very plainly: “On this dismal autumn day, so depressing to the soul of cats, since we two are here so lonely, in this abode so strange, so unquiet, shaken and lost amid I know not what dangerous and endless space, can we not give to each other a little of that sweet thing, immaterial and beyond the power of death, which is called affection and which sometimes shows itself in a caress?” (VII) As soon as the treaty of friendship was signed between this cat and myself, anxieties arose within me concerning her future. What could I do with her? Carry her to France over so many thousand miles and difficulties innumerable? To be sure, my home would be for her the unhoped-for asylum where the short mysterious dream of her little life would pass with least suffering and most peace. But I could not see, without forebodings, this sickly, illy-robed foreigner the fellow resident of our superb Pussy White, so jealous, who would certainly drive her from the premises as soon as she appeared. No, that was impossible. On the other side, to abandon her at our next port of call, among chance new friends--that was equally impossible; I could have done so had she been vigorous and beautiful, but this melancholy little creature, with her human eyes, held me to her by a profound pity. (VIII)