PREFACE.
M. Bédollière’s charming story of Mother Michel and her cat was turned into English for the entertainment of two small readers at the writer’s fireside. Subsequently the translation was fortunate enough to find a larger audience in the pages of a popular juvenile magazine. The ingenious and spirited series of silhouettes with which Mr. Hopkins has enriched the text is the translator’s only plea for presenting in book form so slight a performance as his own part of the work.
THE STORY OF A CAT.
CHAPTER I.
HOW MOTHER MICHEL MADE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF
HER CAT.
here lived in Paris, under the reign of King Louis XV., a very rich old countess named Yolande de la Grenouillère. She was a worthy and charitable lady, who distributed alms not only to the poor of her own parish, Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, but to the unfortunate of other quarters. Her husband, Roch-Eustache-Jérémie, Count of Grenouillère, had fallen gloriously at the battle of Fontenoy, on the 11th of May, 1745. The noble widow had long mourned for him, and even now at times wept over his death. Left without children, and almost entirely alone in the world, she gave herself up to a strange fancy,—a fancy, it is true, which in no manner detracted from her real virtues and admirable qualities: she had a passion for animals. And an unhappy passion it was, since all those she had possessed had died in her arms.