Let no one suppose that this is an imaginary tale invented to amuse the reader. The facts are strictly true, and they show that the dog-merchants of that period were as ingenious as are the jockeys of to-day in disguising their wares to cheat unsuspecting country-folk. After the death of Cagnotte our affections turned to cats as more truly domestic animals and better friends for the fire-side. We will not attempt to give a detailed history of all of them. Whole dynasties of felines, as numerous as those of the Egyptian kings, succeeded one another in our house; accident, death, escape, in turn carrying them away. All were loved, and all were regretted; but life is made up of forgettings, and the remembrance of departed cats is gradually effaced like the remembrance of men. It is a sad fact that the lives of these humble friends, our inferior brothers, are not better proportioned to those of their masters. After briefly alluding to an old gray cat, who took our part against our own flesh and blood, and bit our mother’s ankles whenever she scolded or seemed about to punish us, we pass on to Childebrand, a cat belonging to the days of romance. From his name the reader will detect the secret desire which we felt to dispute Boileau, whom at that time we did not love, though since we have made peace with him. Does he not make Nicolas say:— “Oh charming thought of poet, most ignorant and bland, Among so many heroes to choose out Childebrand”? It did not seem to us that it argued such a depth of ignorance to select a hero of whom no one knew anything. Beside Childebrand struck us as an impressive name; very long-haired, very Merovingian, Gothic and Mediæval to the last degree, and much to be preferred to a Grecian name,—be it Agamemnon, Achilles, Idomeneus, Ulysses, or any other. These names, however, were the fashion of the day, especially among young people; for—to use a phrase taken from the notice of Kaulbach’s frescoes on the outside of the Pinacothek at Munich—“Never did the Hydra of wigginess dress more bristling heads than at that period;” and persons of a classical turn doubtless gave their cats such names as Hector, Ajax, or Patrocles. Our Childebrand was a magnificent cat of the house-tops, with shaven hair, striped fawn color and black like Saltabadil’s clown in “Le Roi s’Amuse.” His great green eyes of almond shape, and his velvet, striped coat, gave him a resemblance to a tiger, which we found extremely pleasing; for, as we have elsewhere said, cats are nothing more than tigers under a cloud. Childebrand has the honor to figure in some verses of ours, also intended for the discomfiture of Boileau:—