Paul has sprained his foot and spent two days in his room, occupied in watching a poultry yard. He improved the occasion by writing the following little treatise for the use of the young creole, a sort of viaticum, with which he will nourish himself for the better understanding of the world. I thought the treatise melancholy and skeptical. Paul replies, that one should be so at first, in order not to be afterward, and that it is well to be a little skeptical if you wish not to be too skeptical.
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LIFE AND PHILOSOPHICAL OPINIONS OF A CAT.
I.
I was born in a cask, at the back of a hay-loft: the light fell on my closed eyelids, so that the first eight days, everything appeared rose-colored to me.
The eighth, it was still better; I looked, and saw a great fall of light upon the dark shade; the dust and insects danced in it. The hay was warm and fragrant; the spiders hung in sleep from the tiles; the gnats hummed; everything seemed happy; that emboldened me; I wanted to go and touch the white patch where those little diamonds were whirling and which rejoined the roof by a column of gold. I rolled over like a ball; my eyes were burned, my sides bruised; I was choking, and I coughed till nightfall.