And who is this god? M. Maeterlinck, you, I, anybody who has bought and reared a puppy. Yet we are told that the dog is intelligent. What is there about men which can warrant the worship of a wise beast? What sort of “truth in its fullness” is compatible with such a blunder? Yet it is for the sake of being idolized that we prize and cherish the idolater. Our fellow mortals will not love us unless we are lovable. They will not admire us unless we are admirable. Our cats will probably neither love nor admire us, being self-engrossed animals, free from encumbering sensibilities. But our dogs will love and admire the meanest of us, and feed our colossal vanity with their uncritical homage. M. Maeterlinck recognizes our dependence on the dog for the deification we crave, and is unreasonably angry with the cat for her aloofness. In her eyes, he complains, we are parasites in our own homes. “She curses us from the depths of her mysterious heart.” She does not. She tolerates us with a wise tolerance, recognizing our usefulness, and indulgent of our foibles. Domesticity has not cost her the heavy price it has cost the dog. She has merely exchanged the asylum of cave or tree for the superior accommodation of the house. Her habits remain unaltered, her freedom unviolated. Cream-fed and pampered, she still loves the pleasures of the chase; nor will she pick and choose her prey at the recommendation of prejudiced humanity. M. Maeterlinck, who has striven to enter into the consciousness of the dog, describes it as congested with duties and inhibitions. There are chairs he must not sit on, rooms he must not enter, food he must not steal, babies he must not upset, cats he must not chase, visitors he must not bark at, beggars and tramps he must not permit to enter the gates. He lives under as many, and as strict, compulsions as though he were a citizen of the United States. By comparison with this perverted intelligence, this artificial morality, the mind of the cat appears like a cool and spacious chamber, with only her own spirit to fill it, and only her own tastes and distastes to be consulted and obeyed.