and one below
that line, some distance away. The Cat took neither the one nor the
other: his instinct told him the shortest road and he followed that
road, as his belly, covered with red mud, proved. He crossed the torrent
in May, at a time when the rivers run high; he overcame his repugnance
to water in order to return to his beloved home. The Avignon Tom did the
same when crossing the Sorgue.

The deserter was reinstated in his attic at Serignan. He stayed there
for a fortnight; and at last we let him out. Twenty-four hours had
not elapsed before he was back at Orange. We had to abandon him to his
unhappy fate. A neighbour living out in the country, near my former
house, told me that he saw him one day hiding behind a hedge with a
rabbit in his mouth. Once no longer provided with food, he, accustomed
to all the sweets of a Cat's existence, turned poacher, taking toll of
the farm-yards round about my old home. I heard no more of him. He came
to a bad end, no doubt: he had become a robber and must have met with a
robber's fate.

The experiment has been made and here is the conclusion, twice proved.
Full-grown Cats can find their way home, in spite of the distance and
their complete ignorance of the intervening ground. They have, in their
own fashion, the instinct of my Mason-bees. A second point remains to be
cleared up, that of the swinging motion in the bag. Are they thrown out
of their latitude by this stratagem, are or they not? I was thinking
of making some experiments, when more precise information arrived and
taught me that it was not necessary. The first who acquainted me with
the method of the revolving bag was telling the story told him by a
second person, who repeated the story of a third, a story related on the
authority of a fourth; and so on. None had tried it, none had seen it
for himself. It is a tradition of the country-side. One and all extol
it as an infallible method, without, for the most part, having attempted
it. And the reason which they give for its success is, in their eyes,
conclusive. If, say they, we ourselves are blind-folded and then spin
round for a few seconds, we no longer know where we are. Even so with
the Cat carried off in the darkness of the swinging bag. They argue from
man to the animal, just as others argue from the animal to man: a faulty
method in either case, if there really be two distinct psychic worlds.

The belief would not be so deep-rooted in the peasant's mind, if f