After briefly alluding to an old gray cat, who took our part against our own flesh and blood, and bit our mother’s ankles whenever she scolded or seemed about to punish us, we pass on to Childebrand, a cat belonging to the days of romance. From his name the reader will detect the secret desire which we felt to dispute Boileau, whom at that time we did not love, though since we have made peace with him. Does he not make Nicolas say:—
“Oh charming thought of poet, most ignorant and bland,
Among so many heroes to choose out Childebrand”?
It did not seem to us that it argued such a depth of ignorance to select a hero of whom no one knew anything. Beside Childebrand struck us as an impressive name; very long-haired, very Merovingian, Gothic and Mediæval to the last degree, and much to be preferred to a Grecian name,—be it Agamemnon, Achilles, Idomeneus, Ulysses, or any other. These names, however, were the fashion of the day, especially among young people; for—to use a phrase taken from the notice of Kaulbach’s frescoes on the outside of the Pinacothek at Munich—“Never did the Hydra of wigginess dress more bristling heads than at that period;” and persons of a classical turn doubtless gave their cats such names as Hector, Ajax, or Patrocles. Our Childebrand was a magnificent cat of the house-tops, with shaven hair, striped fawn color and black like Saltabadil’s clown in “Le Roi s’Amuse.” His great green eyes of almond shape, and his velvet, striped coat, gave him a resemblance to a tiger, which we found extremely pleasing; for, as we have elsewhere said, cats are nothing more than tigers under a cloud. Childebrand has the honor to figure in some verses of ours, also intended for the discomfiture of Boileau:—
Then I for you will paint that picture of Rembrandt
Which pleases me most greatly; and meanwhile Childebrand,
According to his custom soft couched upon my knee,
Lifts up his pretty head and watches anxiously
The movement of my finger, which traces in the air
The outline of the picture to make it clear and fair.