Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/219

 Rh one of his name be reasonably expected to love them! "They are," he says, "deceitful and treacherous by instinct, depraved and cruel by habit." The best that can be offered in their behalf is that their perversity is less criminal than that of men, being a natural trait instead of a premeditated ill-doing. Buffon's traducing cynicisms are quoted lengthily to prove that even the youngest kittens are little monsters of iniquity, filled with inborn malice, and with that propensity to evil which the catechism teaches us is the dark shadow cast by original sin. "Determined thieves, education only makes them more supple and alert. They know well how to conceal their purpose, to seize their opportunity, to cover their flight, and to escape retribution. They easily acquire the manners, but never the morals of society."

How far the morals of society are in advance of the morals of cats, it would be hard to determine.

says Boileau, who plainly found little to choose between them.

The really curious thing about M. Raton's treatise is that it is embodied in a series of letters addressed to Madame la Supérieure du Convent des Visitandines; and one cannot help wondering why the good nun should have desired so much information