Faribole, received again into the service of Madame de la Grenouillère, conducted himself so well that his transient error was forgotten. He would have been able to distinguish himself in the kitchen, but he preferred to serve the State, and enlisted at the age of sixteen in an infantry regiment. He took part in the expedition against Majorca under the command of Marshal Richelieu, and was named corporal after the capture of Port-Mahon, June the 29th, 1756. When he obtained his discharge, he returned to live near Mother Michel, for whom he had an affection truly filial. To the agitations of their existence succeeded calm and happy days, embellished by the constantly increasing graces of Moumouth.
Our cat henceforth was without an enemy; he won, on the contrary, the esteem and affection of all who knew him. His adventures had made him quite famous. Besides the ballad,—of which, unfortunately, only two couplets have been preserved,—the poets of the period wrote in his honor a large number of verses that have not come down to us. He received visits from the most distinguished men of the time, even from the King himself, who once, on his way to the Chateau of Bellevue, dropped in for a moment on Moumouth.
A grand lady of the court condescended to choose for Moumouth a very gentle and very pretty companion, whom he accepted with gratitude. In seeing himself a father Moumouth’s happiness was at its highest, as was also that of Mother Michel, who felt that she lived again in the posterity of her cat.
You wish to know what finally became of Moumouth? He died,—but it was not until after a long and joyous career. His eyes, in closing, looked with sweet satisfaction upon groups of weeping children and grandchildren. His mortal remains were not treated like those of ordinary cats. Mother Michel had built for him a magnificent mausoleum of white marble. Following a custom then adopted at the burial of all illustrious personages, they engraved upon the tomb of Moumouth an epitaph in Latin, composed by a learned professor of the University of Paris.
Moumouth and his Family.