he rear when the company ascended the balusters, and looked like a
tight-rope dancer trying to do without a balancing-pole. Then I
understood the usefulness of a tail in the case of rats: it aids them to
maintain their equilibrium when scampering along cornices and narrow
ledges. They swing it to the right or the left by way of counterpoise
when they lean over to the one side or the other; hence the constant
switching which appears so causeless. When one observes Nature
carefully, one readily comes to the conclusion that she does nothing
that is unnecessary, and that one ought to be very careful in attempting
to improve upon her.

No doubt my reader wonders how cats and rats, two races so hostile to
each other, and the one of which is the prey of the other, can manage to
live together. The fact is that mine got on wonderfully harmoniously
together. The cats were good as gold to the rats, which had lost all
fear of them. The felines were never perfidious, and the rats never had
to mourn the loss of a single comrade. Don Pierrot of Navarre was
uncommonly fond of them; he would lie down by their cage and spend hours
watching them at play. When by chance the door of the room was closed,
he would scratch and miaoul gently until it was opened and he could join
his little white friends, which often came and slept by him. Seraphita,
who was more stand-off and who disliked the strong odour of musk given
out by the rats, did not take part in their sports, but she never harmed
them, and allowed them to pass quietly in front of her without ever
unsheathing her claws.

The end of these rats was strange. One heavy, stormy summer's day, when
the mercury was nearly up to a hundred degrees, their cage had been put
in the garden, in an arbour covered with creepers, as they seemed to
feel the heat greatly. The storm burst with lightnings, rain, thunder,
and squalls of wind. The tall poplars on the river bank bent like reeds.
Armed with an umbrella, which the wind turned inside out, I was just
starting to fetch in my rats, when a dazzling flash of lightning, which
seemed to tear open the very depths of heaven, stopped me on the
uppermost of the steps leading from the terrace to the garden.

A terrific thunder-clap, louder than the report of a hundred guns,
followed almost instantaneously upon the flash, and the shock was so
violent that I was nearly thrown to the ground.

The storm passed away shortly after that frightful explosion, but