t,
and every one of them believed that he was going to marry this beautiful
girl, but when an affair threatened to terminate in wedlock, she would
find some pretext for a break, conduct which did not seem very
respectable to me. "Marry a bow-legged man! Never!" she said of one. "As
to that little fellow he is snub-nosed." Men were all so much alike to
me that I could not understand this uncertainty founded on purely
physical differences.

Finally one day an old English Peer, seeing me, said to her: "You have a
beautiful Cat. She resembles you. She is white, she is young, she should
have a husband. Let me bring her a magnificent Angora that I have at
home."

Three days later the Peer brought in the handsomest Tom of the Peerage.
Puff, with a black coat, had the most magnificent eyes, green and
yellow, but cold and proud. The long silky hair of his tail, remarkable
for its yellow rings, swept the carpet. Perhaps he came from the
imperial house of Austria, because, as you see, he wore the colours. His
manners were those of a Cat who had seen the court and the great world.
His severity, in the matter of carrying himself, was so great that he
would not scratch his head were anybody present. Puff had travelled on
the continent. To sum up, he was so remarkably handsome that he had
been, it was said, caressed by the Queen of England. Simple and naive as
I was I leaped at his neck to engage him in play, but he refused under
the pretext that we were being watched. I then perceived that this
English Cat Peer owed this forced and fictitious gravity that in England
is called respectability to age and to intemperance at table. His
weight, that men admired, interfered with his movements. Such was the
true reason for his not responding to my pleasant advances. Calm and
cold he sat on his unnamable, agitating his beard, looking at me and
at times closing his eyes. In the society world of English Cats, Puff
was the richest kind of catch for a Cat born at a parson's. He had two
valets in his service; he ate from Chinese porcelain, and he drank only
black tea. He drove in a carriage in Hyde Park and had been to
parliament.

My mistress kept him. Unknown to me, all the feline population of London
learned that Miss Beauty from Catshire had married Puff, marked with the
colours of Austria. During the night I heard a concert in the street.
Accompanied by my lord, who, according to his taste, walked slowly, I
descended. We found the Cats of