“O urna! nunquam sis tuo ernta portuls:
Cor intus est fidele, nam cor est canis.
Vale, portule! ætemumque, Pomero! vale.
Sed, sidatur, nostri memor.”
Giallo, also a Pomeranian, was a gift from the sculptor Story. He became a great favorite with his master, who would often talk doggerel to please him, and maintained that he was the best critic in Italy. “Giallo and I think” so and so, he would often say; or, “I think so, and Giallo quite agrees.” That he was quite fit for heaven, was another belief with his master. Who knows? Perhaps he was!
Victor Hugo’s happy family comprised both cats and dogs. There was Chougna, the watch-dog, and Sénat, the greyhound, whose collar bore the inscription: “I wish some one would take me home. Who is my master? Hugo. What’s my name? Sénat.” There were the Angora kittens, Gavroche I. and Gavroche II., and Mouche, the great black-and-white cat; the latter, according to an intimate friend, was “silencieuse, défiante, ténébreuse, sinistre—the cat of the prison, and of exile”—attributes confirmed by her portrait.
MOUCHE, VICTOR HUGO’S CAT.
From sheer force of contrast, both Mouche and Hugo must have enjoyed—had they known him—General Muff, the stately and affable favorite of an American authoress (Miss Mary L. Booth). I called upon this lady one day to request of her an introduction to the General; but he took matters into his own paws, as it were, and introduced himself before she could appear. Exquisitely dignified and urbane, his composure was not ruffled by the very wildest gambols of a Persian kitten, who darted, glanced and flashed hither and thither in the room like flame.
He wore the famous Fayal collar in which he was photographed. He wore it because of artistic preference, I suppose—certainly not because he had nothing else to wear; for I saw in his own particular wardrobe collars of all kinds and colors, from dainty ribbon to Russia leather.