Page:The fireside sphinx.djvu/49

 Rh Great was the solicitude manifested throughout all Islam for the welfare of these favoured animals, whose brooding reserve and wise impassiveness seemed but a reflection of the unchanging and uncommunicative East. M. Prisse d'Avennes tells us that the Moslem warrior, El-Daher-Beybars, "brave as Cæsar and cruel as Nero," had so true an affection for cats that he bequeathed a fertile garden called Gheyt-el-Quottah (the cat's orchard) for the support of homeless and necessitous pussies. This garden lay close to his own mosque, and but a short distance from Cairo. With the revenue it yielded, food was bought and distributed every noon in the outer court of the Mehkémeh to all cats who, wishing to live in freedom, were yet driven by hunger or neglect to accept the generous alms. There is an admirable permanence about Oriental customs which we of the West—unstable citizens of a protean world—regard with envious scorn. Seven centuries have elapsed since El-Daher-Beybars atoned for the misdeeds of his fierce life by gentle charity. His gilded mosque has crumbled into ruins, the site of his orchard is unknown, his legacy has lapsed into oblivion. Yet as late as 1870 the cats of Cairo received their daily dole, no longer in memory of their benefactor, but in unconscious perpetuation of his bounty.