Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/245

 Rh virtues, we love their faults. But the two little creatures who shared between them the fickle heart of M. Loti have been painted for us in such generous colours, and with such consummate art, that they live in his pages as the Black Prince and Du Guesclin live in the heroic pages of Froissart.

Never were friends more widely separated by birth, breeding, or the accidents of early life. Moumoutte Blanche was a Persian pussy, beautiful as Scheherazade, gentle as Zobeide, discreet as Fatima,—the Prophet's fair daughter, not Bluebeard's prying wife. She was adopted by M. Loti in early kittenhood, when the innocence of infancy still lingered in her lovely eyes, and the playfulness of infancy prompted her to much "ground and lofty tumbling," wherein he took delight. She was not wholly white, as her name would imply; and her patches of black fur suggested to his fancy—which is a Gallic fancy always—a little bonnet shading her smooth brow, and a little pélerine thrown over her snowy shoulders. Her gentleness was reserved for her master and for his household. Like the beautiful and intrepid Menine of Mme. de Lesdiguières, she was

"Refined, correct, an aristocrat to the tips of her little claws," says Loti, "she so detested other cats, as to forget her manners sadly whenever a visitor