, on
reaching the arbour, I found the thirty-two rats, toes up, killed by the
one and same stroke of lightning. No doubt the iron wires of their cage
had attracted the electric fluid and acted as a conductor.

Thus died together, as they had lived, the thirty-two Norway rats,--an
enviable death, not often vouchsafed by fate!

III

THE BLACK DYNASTY

Don Pierrot of Navarre, being a native of Havana, required a hot-house
temperature, and he enjoyed it in the house; round the dwelling,
however, stretched great gardens, separated by open fences through which
a cat could easily make its way, and rose great trees in which
twittered, warbled, and sang whole flocks of birds; so that sometimes
Pierrot, profiting by a door left open, would go out at night and start
on a hunt, rambling through the grass and flowers wet with dew. In such
cases he would have to await daylight to be let in, for although he
would come and miaoul under our windows, his appeals did not always
awaken the sleepers in the house. He had a delicate chest, and one
night, when it was colder than usual, he caught a cold which soon turned
into consumption. After coughing for a whole year poor Pierrot became
thin and emaciated, and his coat, formerly so silky, had the mat
whiteness of a shroud. His great transparent eyes had become the most
important feature in his poor shrunken face; his red nose had turned
pale, and he walked with slow steps, in a melancholy fashion, by the
sunny side of the wall, watching the yellow autumn leaves whirling and
twisting. One could have sworn he was reciting to himself Millevoye's
elegy. A sick animal is a very touching object, for it bears suffering
with such gentle and sad resignation. We did all we could to save him; I
called in a very skilful physician who tested his chest and felt his
pulse. Ass's milk was prescribed, and the poor little creature drank it
willingly enough out of his tiny china saucer. He would remain for hours
at a time stretched out on my knee like the shadow of a sphinx; I could
feel his vertebrae like the grains of a chaplet, and he would try to
acknowledge my caresses with a feeble purr that sounded like a
death-rattle. On the day he died, he lay on his side gasping, but got
himself up by a supreme effort, came to me, and opening wide his eyes,
fixed upon me a glance that called for help with intense supplication.
He seemed to say to me, "You are a man; do save me." Then he staggered,
his ey