f fluid.

"See," he said, "how in saintly company all becomes perfection: Beauty
understands eternity, because she describes the circle which is its
emblem in lapping her milk."

Conscience obliges me to state that the aversion of Cats to wetting
their fur was the only reason for my fashion of drinking, but we will
always be badly understood by the savants who are much more preoccupied
in showing their own wit, than in discovering ours.

When the ladies or the gentlemen lifted me to pass their hands over my
snowy back to make the sparks fly from my hair, the old woman remarked
with pride, "You can hold her without having any fear for your dress;
she is admirably well-bred!" Everybody said I was an angel; I was loaded
with delicacies, but I assure you that I was profoundly bored. I was
well aware of the fact that a young female Cat of the neighbourhood had
run away with a Tom. This word, Tom, caused my soul a suffering which
nothing could alleviate, not even the compliments I received, or rather
that my mistress lavished on herself.

"Beauty is entirely moral; she is a little angel," she said. "Although
she is very beautiful she has the air of not knowing it. She never looks
at anybody, which is the height of a fine aristocratic education. When
she does look at anybody it is with that perfect indifference which we
demand of our young girls, but which we obtain only with great
difficulty. She never intrudes herself unless you call her; she never
jumps on you with familiarity; nobody ever sees her eat, and certainly
that monster of a Lord Byron would have adored her. Like a tried and
true Englishwoman she loves tea, sits, gravely calm, while the Bible is
being explained, and thinks badly of nobody, a fact which permits one to
speak freely before her. She is simple, without affectation, and has no
desire for jewels. Give her a ring and she will not keep it. Finally,
she does not imitate the vulgarity of the hunter. She loves her home and
remains there so perfectly tranquil that at times you would believe that
she was a mechanical Cat made at Birmingham or Manchester, which is the
_ne plus ultra_ of the finest education."

What these men and old women call education is the custom of
dissimulating natural manners, and when they have completely depraved us
they say that we are well-bred. One evening my mistress begged one of
the young ladies to sing. When this girl went to the piano and began to
sing I recognized at once