other, an unworldly
woman at best, to forget the dissimilarity in their species. In fact,
she was convinced that Dauphin was an enchanted prince, and Dauphin, in
consideration of her illusions, never dissuaded her. At last, they were
married by an understanding clergyman of the locale, who solemnly filled
in the marriage application with the name of M. Edwarde Dauphin.

I, Etienne Dauphin, am their son.

To be candid, I am a handsome youth, not unlike my mother in the
delicacy of my features. My father's heritage is evident in my large,
feline eyes, and in my slight body and quick movements. My mother's
death, when I was four, left me in the charge of my father and his
coterie of loyal servants, and I could not have wished for a finer
upbringing. It is to my father's patient tutoring that I owe whatever
graces I now possess. It was my father, the cat, whose gentle paws
guided me to the treasure houses of literature, art, and music, whose
whiskers bristled with pleasure at a goose well cooked, at a meal well
served, at a wine well chosen. How many happy hours we shared! He knew
more of life and the humanities, my father, the cat, than any human I
have met in all my twenty-three years.

Until the age of eighteen, my education was his personal challenge.
Then, it was his desire to send me into the world outside the gates. He
chose for me a university in America, for he was deeply fond of what he
called "that great raw country," where he believed my feline qualities
might be tempered by the aggressiveness of the rough-coated barking dogs
I would be sure to meet.

I must confess to a certain amount of unhappiness in my early American
years, torn as I was from the comforts of the estate and the wisdom of
my father, the cat. But I became adapted, and even upon my graduation
from the university, sought and held employment in a metropolitan art
museum. It was there I met Joanna, the young woman I intended to make my
bride.

Joanna was a product of the great American southwest, the daughter of a
cattle-raiser. There was a blooming vitality in her face and her body, a
lustiness born of open skies and desert. Her hair was not the gold of
antiquity; it was new gold, freshly mined from the black rock. Her eyes
were not like old-world diamonds; their sparkle was that of sunlight on
a cascading river. Her figure was bold, an open declaration of her sex.

She was, perhaps, an unusual choice for the son of fairy-like mother and
an