kettle, and the kittens purring by his hearth.  Heine’s cat, curled close to the glowing embers, purred a soft accompaniment to the rhythms pulsing in his brain; but he at least, being a German, was not deceived by this specious show of impeccability.  He knew that when the night called, his cat obeyed the summons, abandoning the warm fire for the hard-frozen snow, and the innocent companionship of a poet for the dancing of witches on the hill-tops.

The same grace of understanding—­more common in the sixteenth than in the nineteenth century—­made the famous Milanese physician, Jerome Cardan, abandon his students at the University of Pavia, in obedience to the decision of his cat.  “In the year 1552,” he writes with becoming gravity, “having left in the house a little cat of placid and domestic habits, she jumped upon my table, and tore at my public lectures; yet my Book of Fate she touched not, though it was the more exposed to her attacks.  I gave up my chair, nor returned to it for eight years.”  Oh, wise physician, to discern so clearly that “placid and domestic habits” were but a cloak for mysteries too deep to fathom, for warnings too pregnant to be disregarded.

The vanity of man revolts from the serene indifference of the cat.  He is forever lauding the dog, not only for its fidelity, which is a beautiful thing, but for its attitude of humility and abasement.  A distinguished American prelate has written some verses on his dog, in which he assumes that, to the animal’s eyes, he is as God,—­a being whose word is law, and from whose sovereign hand flow all life’s countless benefactions.  Another complacent enthusiast describes his dog as sitting motionless in his presence, “at once tranquil and attentive, as a saint should be in the presence of God.  He is happy with the happiness which we perhaps shall never know, since it springs from the smile and the approval of a life incomparably higher than his own.”

Of course, if we are going to wallow in idolatry like this, we do well to choose the dog, and not the cat, to play the worshipper’s part.  I am not without a suspicion that the dog is far from feeling the rapture and the reverence which we so delightedly ascribe to him.  What is there about any one of us to awaken such sentiments in the breast of an intelligent animal?  We have taught him our vices, and he fools us to the top of our bent.  The cat, however, is equally free from illusions and from hypocrisy.  If we aspire to a petty omnipotence, she, for one, will pay no homage at our shrine.  Therefore has her latest and greatest defamer, Maeterlinck, branded her as ungrateful and perfidious.  The cat of “The Blue Bird” fawns and flatters, which is something no real cat was ever known to do.  When and where did M. Maeterlinck encounter an obsequious cat?  That the wise little beast should resent Tyltyl’s intrusion into the ancient realms of night, is conceivable, and that, unlike the dog, she should see nothing godlike