es already glazed, and fell to the ground, uttering so woeful, so
despairing, so anguished a cry that it filled me with mute horror. He
was buried at the foot of the garden, under a white rosebush that still
marks the place of his tomb.

Seraphita died two or three years later, of croup, which the physician
was unable to master. She rests not far from Pierrot.

With her ended the White Dynasty, but not the family. From that pair of
snow-white cats had sprung three coal-black kittens, a mystery the
solution of which I leave to others. Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" were
then all the rage, and the names of the characters in the novel were in
every one's mouth. The two little male cats were called Enjolras and
Gavroche, and the female Eponine. They were the sweetest of kittens, and
we trained them to fetch and carry pieces of paper thrown at a distance
just as a dog would do. We got so far as to throw the paper ball on the
top of wardrobes, or to hide it behind boxes or in tall vases, and they
would retrieve it very prettily with their paws. On attaining years of
discretion, they forsook these frivolous sports and resumed the dreamy,
philosophical calm which is the real characteristic of cats.

All negroes are alike to people who land in a slave-owning country in
America, and it is impossible for them to tell one from another. So, to
those who do not care for them, three black cats are three black cats
and nothing more. But an observing eye makes no such mistake. The
physiognomies of animals are as different as those of men, and I could
always tell to which particular cat belonged the black face, as black as
Harlequin's mask, and lighted by emerald disks with golden gleams.

Enjolras, who was by far the handsomest of the three, was marked by his
big lion-like head and well whiskered cheeks, by his muscular shoulders,
his long back, and his splendid tail, fluffy as a feather duster. There
was something theatrical and grandiloquent about him, and he seemed to
pose like an actor who attracts admiration. His motions were slow,
undulating, and full of majesty; he seemed to be always stepping on a
table covered with china ornaments and Venetian glass, so circumspectly
did he select the place where he put down his foot. He was not much of a
Stoic, and exhibited a liking for food which his namesake would have had
reason to blame. No doubt Enjolras, the pure and sober youth, would have
said to him, as the angel did to Swedenborg,