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 164 hand, found in Pussy's gentle presence a balm for their sensitive souls. Lord Byron stands forth, a striking exception to this rule. He was sensitive enough, and irritable enough, Heaven knows, and he had plenty of cats—five at one time in Ravenna — to have afforded him all the consolation of which he stood in need; but he harboured them rather from a passionate fancy for every kind of animal than from a particular grace in selection. They shared his indiscriminate hospitality with eight dogs, ten horses, three monkeys, an eagle, a crow, a falcon, five peacocks, two guinea-hens and an Egyptian crane; and must have had scant pleasure in such varied and over-animated society. There was even at one time a civet-cat added to this ménagerie intime; but it wisely ran away, after scratching one of the monkeys, and was never heard of again. Shelley, being of a nervous temperament, was made unspeakably wretched by the superabundance of birds and beasts in the Ravenna palace, and expressed his views forcibly to Byron, who could not be made to understand such discomfort. He himself found them all delightful, and noted down with deep concern in his journal the temporary lameness of the crow, and his apprehension lest "some fool" had trodden on its foot.

In more homely households. Pussy's recognized corner was the kitchen hearth. There dwelt the