Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/133

 Rh In the Gallery of Madrid there is a fantastic picture by Hieronymus Bosch, representing the birth of Eve, in which a fierce but very badly painted cat is prematurely breaking the peace of Paradise by eating a poor little tadpole; and in Van Tulden's "Orpheus taming the Beasts,"—also in Madrid,—we see the animals great and small listening to the melody in a state of mild rapture,—like Germans in a Munich beer-cellar,—with the solitary exception of the cat, who erects an angry tail, and evinces a disposition to fight a sleepy and music-loving lion.

The faithfully wrought scenes of common life, which were the delight and triumph of the Dutch and Flemish schools, afforded a sympathetic setting for the cat. It would have been strange indeed if Jan Fyt, who copied beast and bird with such patient fidelity, had slighted this little model sitting in his chimney corner, or prowling panther-like along his neighbour's wall. He was well aware of her value. He knew how finely her pliant strength contrasted with the stillness of the poor dead pheasants whose ruffled plumage he so loved to paint. In one of his pictures in Milan there are two splendid, greedy, thievish cats, instinct with life and energy, that creep with cautious steps and gleaming eyes about the heaped-up game. The subject commended itself to other artists, but few gave it such lively and forcible expression. Compare the