cheese, of an intoxicating fragrance. She took
her position in a room, alone. Nothing could
resist this; besides, they have held revel so
long, they fear nothing. One fellow peeps
cautiously out, steals slowly along, opens his
white teeth for a nibble, when,—'clack!' and
the adventurer is beheaded!"

"Beheaded?"

"The process is plain enough; a back step,
distance calculated—and there is an end of him."

And that is the elastic heel that can really
trip! Seeing our astonishment and dismay,
the Doctor takes care to add, "But, remember,
they are killed for a sacred purpose,"

"And what? in the name of the lady, who
illustrates the force of habit in the fable."

"To offer up their tails to the Virgin."

"They will be petitioning Jove, soon, to be
born without tails, if those treasures endanger
decapitation."

"Observe," he adds, as we enter the second
out-house, "here is the tail of one of them."

M. Robyns, seeing us absorbed in the
contemplation of this translated tail, produces 'a
quantity, all undergoing the necessary stages
of drying, straightening, polishing, and gilding,
before being offered up.

"But, how how—do these tails——?" We
break down, utterly unable to express what
we want to know; amazed, stupefied, topsy-turvy,
with astonishment."

"The tails," says M. Robyns, "when in
this state," holding up a radiant one, full of
flickering golden curves, like a natural flame,
"are intended to form a Glory—a halo round
the Virgin's head. The rats' tails, being the
largest, are to be hung nearest; the mice tails
taper off at the extreme end of the circle."

Looking round us, we perceive the bodies
belonging to the tails, once their happy
owners, and wielding them at will, in the days
when,

"Alas! unconscious of their fate,
The little victims played."

These bodies are all stretched out, like those
of rooks and daws, forming the most grotesque
and extraordinary sight imaginable.

Passing from these, we observe an old owl,
staring with his usual astonished air, which
is considerably heightened in intensity, by the
strange position in which he is placed; his
wings and feet compulsorily spread out in
such strange company. Then, several rows of
sparrows, under one of which the head of a
cat, ticketed with the following inscription

"Condamné à mort pour avoir mangé*
la tête d'un moineau."
*Condemned to death for having eaten the head of a
sparrow

M. Robyns inculcates the virtues among his
domestic animals. Those who attend to the
laws, have a happy life of it; those who
disobey, never escape justice, and are thus
executed and exposed, as a terrible warning to
the rest. On our way, we found there had
been several offenders, all bearing the dreaded
words of condemnation—

"Condamné à mort pour avoir mangé
la tête d'un moineau."

Sparrows seem to have been the chief attractions
that lured these miserable Grimalkins
to their fate. M. Robyns is of opinion that,
by this time, his household animals are well
aware of the penalty any transgressions of the
kind, within the sacred limits, would bring
upon them; and asserts that it is a long
while since an execution has taken place. It
is, without doubt, a rigorous school for a cat.

Having in my mind some distant allusion
to Mademoiselle, I asked M. Robyns whether
cats could not be trained to catch rats and
mice, and deliver them up whole? But he
did not at all entertain the idea.
"Mademoiselle was too excellent a 'mouser' to
render that necessary." On the Doctor's
hinting one of those meagre suspicions, society
declares its right to nourish, with reference
to Mademoiselle's personal attractions, he
reiterated her qualification of being an excellent
"mouser" with such profound significance,
that the veriest prude would have
taken heart without hesitation. It was quite
enough for us. So bowing our thanks to M.
Robyns for his extreme courtliness and kindness,
and determining, at the same time, never
to make him the victim of any moral reflections
as to the usefulness of much that his
passion for collecting has added to his natural
museum, we—with a flying glimpse at the
forever-astounded owls, decapitated cats, countless
sparrows, the cause of their disaster,
rooks, daws, crows, moles, bats, bodies of rats
and mice, burnished tails, by this time, doubtless
less, resplendent in a glory their possessors
never dreamed they could be born to, (such
are the uses and terrible lessons of this world,
when the tail to our confusion and disgrace
will frequently be found of more value than
the top, although ignominy is written upon
one, and sublimity on the other,) catching a
reeling glance at the whole of the quaint
Arabesques on the walls, an immortal picture
and illustration of the compulsorily Happy
Family!—departed. What were the Doctor's
thoughts on our journey back to my hotel I
cannot say. My own were too much haunted
by commiseration for the household I had just
visited; quite convinced that Mademoiselle
will, on some unexpected day, be carried away
in the heat of the chase, and return to her original
state of feline sleekness. Should this ever
be the case, the crown of retributive disaster is
imaged in the presumption that, not being
educated, like every present pussy in the laws
of the ménage, she will sin against them, and
be condemned to the inevitable placard. If
so, there is, at once, an end to all farther
progress in the collection. The rats and mice
will keep their lives, and their tails will lose
their glory.

I beg to add, in all possible seriousness,