"Am I the dupe of a nightmare?" said Father Lustucru to himself. "Is it really that rascal of a Moumouth that I have there under my eyes, in flesh and bone? Isn’t it his ghost that has come back to torment me? This cat, then, is the evil one in person!"
The cat was not the evil one—Providence had protected him.
CHAPTER V.
IN WHICH THE CAT CONTENDS
SUCCESSFULLY AGAINST
HIS ENEMY.
he events we have recorded indicate very clearly the position of our personages. Fearing to lose both the well-beloved cat and the advantages she was ambitious to obtain, Mother Michel redoubled her vigilance and attention.
Moumouth, knowing henceforth with whom he had to deal, promised himself to avoid the steward, or to fight him, if need be, with tooth and nail.
As to Father Lustucru, it was enough that his projects had been defeated, in order that he should persist in them with desperation. He now wished the destruction of the poor and innocent cat, not only on account of his jealousy of Mother Michel, but because he hated the cat itself.
"Oh, what humiliation!" he said to himself, with bitterness. "I ought to hide myself, retire to a desert, and bury me in the bowels of the earth! What! I, Jérôme Lustucru, a grown man, a man of knowledge and experience, a man—I dare say it—charming in society, I am vanquished, scoffed at, taken for a dupe, by a cat of the gutter!... I leave him at the bottom of a river, and find him at the top of a house! I wish to separate him from his guardian, and I am the means of bringing them together! I lead Mother Michel to the garret to torture her, and there I witness her transports of joy! The cat I believed dead reappears to defy me!... He shall not defy me long!"