E-text prepared by D. Alexander, Ronnie Sahlberg, Joseph Cooper, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 27472-h.htm or 27472-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/7/4/7/27472/27472-h/27472-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/7/4/7/27472/27472-h.zip) THE STORY OF A CAT Translated from the French of EMILE DE LA BEDOLLIERE by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH With Silhouettes by L. Hopkins Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press Cambridge Copyright, 1878, by Houghton, Osgood and Company Copyright, 1906, by T. B. Aldrich Copyright, 1910, by Mary Elizabeth Aldrich All Rights Reserved, Including the Right to Reproduce This Book or Parts Thereof in Any Form PREFACE. M. Bedolliere's charming story of Mother Michel and her cat was turned into English for the entertainment of two small readers at the writer's fireside. Subsequently the translation was fortunate enough to find a larger audience in the pages of a popular juvenile magazine. The ingenious and spirited series of silhouettes with which Mr. Hopkins has enriched the text is the translator's only plea for presenting in book form so slight a performance as his own part of the work. THE STORY OF A CAT. CHAPTER I. HOW MOTHER MICHEL MADE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF HER CAT. There lived in Paris, under the reign of King Louis XV., a very rich old countess named Yolande de la Grenouillere. She was a worthy and charitable lady, who distributed alms not only to the poor of her own parish, Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, but to the unfortunate of other quarters. Her husband, Roch-Eustache-Jeremie, Count of Grenouillere, had fallen gloriously at the battle of Fontenoy, on the 11th of May, 1745. The noble widow had long mourned for him, and even now at times wept over his death. Left without children, and almost entirely alone in the world, she gave herself up to a strange fancy,--a fancy, it is true, which in no manner detracted from her real virtues and admirable qualities: she had a passion for animals. And an unhappy passion it was, since all those she had possessed had died in her arms. [Illustration: The Countess distributes Alms.] The first, in date, in her affections had been a green parrot, which, having been so imprudent as to eat some parsley, fell a victim to frightful colics. An indigestion, caused by sweet biscuits, had taken from Madame de la Grenouillere a pug-dog of the most brilliant promise. A third favorite, an ape of a very interesting species, having broken his chain one night, went clambering over the trees in the garden, where, during a shower, he caught a cold in the head, which conducted him to the tomb. [Illustration: The Ape fatally exposes himself.]