Major" for the purpose of rendering the idea of snowy whiteness
would be insufficient to give an idea of the immaculate coat of my cat,
by the side of which the ermine's fur would have looked yellow. I called
her Seraphita, after Balzac's Swedenborgian novel. Never did the heroine
of that wondrous legend, when ascending with Minna the snow-covered
summits of the Falberg, gleam more purely white. Seraphita was of a
dreamy and contemplative disposition. She would remain for hours on a
cushion, wide-awake and following with her eyes, with intensest
attention, sights invisible to ordinary mortals. She liked to be petted,
but returned caresses in a very reserved way, and only in the case of
persons whom she honoured with her approbation, a most difficult thing
to obtain. She was fond of luxury, and we were always sure to find her
curled up in the newest arm-chair or on the piece of stuff that best set
off her swan's-down coat. She spent endless time at her toilet; every
morning she carefully smoothed out her fur. She used her paws to wash
herself, and every single hair of her fur, having been brushed out with
her rosy tongue, shone like brand-new silver. If any one touched her,
she at once removed the traces of the touch, for she could not bear to
be rumpled. Her elegance and stylishness suggested that she was an
aristocrat, and among her own kind she must have been a duchess at the
very least. She delighted in perfumes, stuck her little nose into
bouquets, and bit with little spasms of pleasure at handkerchiefs on
which scent had been put; she walked upon the dressing-table among the
scent-bottles, smelling the stoppers, and if she had been allowed to do
so would no doubt have used powder. Such was Seraphita, and never did a
cat bear a poetic name more worthily.

At about this time a couple of those sham sailors who sell striped rugs,
handkerchiefs of pine-apple fibre and other exotic products, happened to
pass through the Rue de Longchamps, where I was living. They had in a
little cage a pair of white Norway rats with red eyes, as pretty as
pretty could be. Just then I had a fancy for white creatures, and my
hen-run was inhabited by white fowls only. I bought the two rats, and a
big cage was built for them, with inner stairs leading to the different
stories, eating-places, bedrooms, and trapezes for gymnastics. They were
unquestionably happier and better off there than La Fontaine's rat in
his Dutch cheese.

The gentle cr