her a million miles away from me, a new, remote
creature, impersonal as those who had already appeared on the stage.
Mingled with this was a fear lest she might not please this vast
audience. Failure, I felt, would be as humiliating to me as to her.
Agatha, I remembered, confessed to the same feeling with regard to
myself when I made my first speech in the House of Commons. But then
I had an incontrovertible array of facts and arguments, drawn up by an
infallible secretary and welded into cunning verbiage by myself, which
I learned off by heart. And the House, as I knew it would, had been
half asleep. I couldn't fail. But Lola had to please three thousand
wide-awake Berlin citizens, who had paid their money for entertainment,
with no other equipment than her own personality and the tricks of a set
of wretched irresponsible cats.

The orchestra struck up the act music. The curtains parted, and revealed
the brightly polished miniature gymnasium I had seen at Anastasius's
cattery; the row of pussies at the back, each on a velvet stand, some
white, some tabby, some long-furred, some short-furred, all sitting with
their forepaws doubled demurely under their chests, wagging their tails
comically, and blinking with feline indifference at the footlights; a
cage in a corner in which I descried the ferocious wild tomcat;
and, busily putting the last touches to the guy ropes, the pupil and
assistant Quast, neatly attired in a close fitting bottle-green uniform
with brass buttons. Almost immediately Lola appeared, in a shimmering
gold evening gown, and with a necklet of barbaric gold round her neck.
I had never seen her so magnificently, so commandingly beautiful. I
was conscious of a ripple of admiration running through the huge
assembly--and it was a queer sensation, half pride, half angry jealousy.
My immediate neighbors were emphatic in their praise. Applause greeted
her. She smiled acknowledgments and, flicking the little toy whip which
she carried in her hand, she began the act. First of all, the cats
jumped from their stands, right-turned like a military line, and walked
in procession round the stage. At a halt and a signal each pussy put its
front paws on its front neighbour and the march began again. Then Lola
did something with voice and whip, and each cat dropped on its paws, and
as if by magic there appeared a space between every animal.

At a further word the last cat jumped over the one in front and over the
one in f