colas says:--

"Oh! ridiculous notion of poet ignorant
Who, of so many heroes, chooses Childebrand!"

It seemed to me that the man was not so ignorant after all, since he had
selected a hero no one knew anything of; and, besides, Childebrand
struck me as a most long-haired, Merovingian, mediaeval, and Gothic name,
immeasurably preferable to any Greek name, such as Agamemnon, Achilles,
Idomeneus, Ulysses, or others of that sort. These were the ways of our
day, so far as the young fellows were concerned, at least: for never, to
quote the expression that occurs in the account of Kaulbach's frescoes
on the outer walls of the Pinacothek at Munich, never did the hydra of
"wiggery" (_perruquinisme_) erect its heads more fiercely, and no doubt
the Classicists called their cats Hector, Patrocles, or Ajax.

Childebrand was a splendid gutter-cat, short-haired, striped black and
tan, like the trunks worn by Saltabadil in "le Roi s'amuse." His great
green eyes with their almond-shaped pupils, and his regular velvet
stripes, gave him a distant tigerish look that I liked. "Cats are the
tigers of poor devils," I once wrote. Childebrand enjoyed the honour of
entering into some verses of mine, again because I wanted to tease
Boileau:--

"Then shall I describe to you that picture by Rembrandt, that pleased me
so much; and my cat Childebrand, as is his habit, on my knees resting,
and anxiously up at me gazing, shall follow the motions of my finger as
in the air it sketches the story to make it clear."

Childebrand came in well by way of a rime to Rembrandt, for the verses
were meant for a Romanticist profession of faith addressed to a friend,
since deceased, and in those days as enthusiastic an admirer of Victor
Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, and Alfred de Musset as I was.

I am compelled to say of my cats what Don Ruy Gomez de Silva said to Don
Carlos, when the latter became impatient at the enumeration of the
former's ancestors, beginning with Don Silvius "who thrice was Consul of
Rome," that is, "I pass over a number, and of the greatest," and I shall
come to Madame-Theophile, a red cat with white breast, pink nose, and
blue eyes, so called because she lived with me on a footing of conjugal
intimacy. She slept on the foot of my bed, snoozed on the arm of my
chair while I was writing, came down to the garden and accompanied me
on my walks, sat at meals with me and not infrequently appropriated the
morsels on their way from my plate to