m, a singular spectacle presented itself--the
great soldier of the age, half undressed, his countenance agitated,
the beaded drops of perspiration standing on his brow, in his hand
his victorious sword, with which he was making frequent and
convulsive lunges at some invisible enemy through the tapestry that
lined the walls. It was a cat that had secreted herself in this
place; and Napoleon held cats not so much in abhorrence as in
terror. 'A feather,' says the poet, 'daunts the brave;' and a
greater poet, through the mouth of his Shylock, remarks that 'there
are some that are mad if they behold a cat--a harmless, necessary
cat.' Count Bertram would seem to have shared in this unaccountable
aversion. When 'Monsieur Parolles, the gallant militarist, that had
the whole theory of war in the knot of his scarf, and the practice
in the chape of his dagger,' was convicted of mendacity and
cowardice, Bertram exclaimed, 'I could endure anything before this
but a cat, and now he's a cat to me.' The force of censure could no
further go.

If Napoleon, however, held cats, as has been averred, in positive
fear, there have been others, and some of them illustrious captains,
that have regarded them with other feelings. Marshal Turenne could
amuse himself for hours in playing with his kittens; and the great
general, Lord Heathfield, would often appear on the walls of
Gibraltar, at the time of the famous siege, attended by his
favourite cats. Cardinal Richelieu was also fond of cats; and when
we have enumerated the names of Cowper and Dr Johnson, of Thomas
Gray and Isaac Newton, and, above all, of the tender-hearted and
meditative Montaigne, the list is far from complete of those who
have bestowed on the feline race some portion of their affections.

Butler, in his _Hudibras_, observes, in an oft-quoted passage, that

'Montaigne, playing with his cat,
Complains she thought him but an ass.'

And the annotator on this passage, in explanation, adds, that
'Montaigne in his Essays supposes his cat thought him a fool for
losing his time in playing with her;' but, under favour, this is a
misinterpretation of the essayist's sentiment, and something like a
libel on the capacity of both himself and cat. Montaigne's words
are: 'When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her
more sport than she makes me? We mutually divert each other with our
play. If I have my hour to begin or refuse, so also has she hers.'
Nobody who has rea