not be bothered to take its cat along, but leaves it to become a houseless vagrant. Yet I wonder what Madame Rochelle herself would do in a similar case. She is our street wit and philosopher. In her little dark shop, omnivendous, gathers the court of women, where moral dicta are delivered upon the goings-on of Suzanne or of Mimi la blonde.

"We sit here, monsieur," said one of the frowziest of her customers to me, "and we talk of love."

"With hate," commented Madame Rochelle.

Such trust Madame Rochelle shows in humanity's honesty. She spreads her things upon a stage-work in the street before her shop; she leaves her shop door open and claps a notice in her window, "Call in the courtyard for Madame Rochelle." Then she dives down into the cellar, where she decants wine. You could walk into her shop and could go off with half its contents; you could take away her choicest pears or a full basket of muscatel grapes from her étalage without fear of detection or of molestation. She has warned you that there is nobody about, she has invited you to rob. Madame Rochelle's shop is the earliest to be opened in Seek Midday Street, it is the last shut. On Sundays and holidays she is always there, seeming content with the four walls and the cellar which make up the total of her existence. Yes, she enjoys herself. She doesn't

seek life, she invites it to come to her. She doesn't need leisure for amusement, since the amusement ment invades her working hours; she doesn't require to read, for the whole feminine street is her book.

It was Madame Rochelle who gave us the kitten which became Foot-foot. She is a dispenser of kittens. Ten to one you will not be three minutes in her little crowded shop before you feel some claw'd and scrambling thing making its way up your trouser leg. Footfoot was a long-nosed, ugly kitten, which has grown into a handsome animal, with a queer gift of conversation, communicating vocally desires and disappointments, protests and satisfactions with uncanny effectiveness. It was Madame Rochelle who sent us to the furrier upon feline business.

The usual thing had happened. A family had gone away deserting its cat to the haphazard fortune of the roofs and of what shelter it might beg. It was a confiding cat, though ugly, and as you came through the courtyard it caressed your legs with its back and tail, and stood with upward gazing, appealing green eyes as you operated your latchkey. It made one remember the story of the millionaire who, tormented by the harrowing tale of misfortune spun him by an old village chum, at last rang the bell. "John," said he to the footman, "show this gentleman out, he's breaking

my heart." We all salved our consciences by giving it food till it was almost bursting with fatness. The little old sculptor opposite brought his daily packet, the prix de Rome man down the passage left offerings on the doorstep, we begged scraps from the ex- priestex - priestbutcher, the illustrator docked his dog's allowance, but the cat wasn't satisfied. Food it had a'plenty; its soul was clamouring for a home.

"You can see clearly," cried the vociferous femme de menage, "c'est une chatte d'appartement.'

Little by little we learned more of him. He is no stargazer, but a calculating astronomer; he has a machine with which he measures out astronomical photographs; he theorises from the labour of others, though his work has its undoubted value. He measures off the deviations of a minorest planet as neatly as he chops you off a biftek or an escaloppe. Butcher and astronomer; but don't think he is the first of his type. He is surely a resurrection, history repeating itself; he is a revival of those old astrological augurs who would tell you the future indifferently either from the stars or from the guts of a disembowelled ΟΧ. You might think this enough for one man; his history is more appropriate yet. He was at first a priest, a profession which he deserted for the fleshpots of butchery, for he collected the wife and with her the butchery business in a

single apostacy. But once a Jesuit always a Jesuit, as they say. Our chops and steaks astronomer has not the cheery judgment of Madame Rochelle; he cannot hit off human weaknesses with a jeu-de-mot or with a paradox. It is a question of labial corners, hers go up, his down. He shakes his long face at the present generation, the corners of his mouth descend, the priest in him waves hell like an accusing flag. He would not have told us of the cat-collecting furrier. His His mind floats amongst comets and morals; it would not descend to a thing so particular as cats. But his fat female cashier, a buxom young woman, who knits interminably summer and winter in the chill open shop, added her testimony to that of Madame Rochelle. And so at last, growing desperate from an apparent imminence of kittens, we went to the shop indicated.

"Madame Georges is renowned for her kindness to cats," said a smart customer who was trying on a sable stole.

"I say to all my clients: you take this cat, try it. If you don't like it, I'll send to fetch it back, only let me know. But for heaven's sake don't desert it. Isn't it awful to think of the poor deserted creatures! Well, madame, where shall I send for it?" Jo elected to bring the cat herself.

We packed the cat into a basket, and Jo carried it along the Seek Midday Street to the little shop of Madame Georges. There, in spite of a horrified ejaculation from the proprietess, Jo opened the lid. The cat lay quietly in the basket, gazing about it with tired eyes. The basket was something approaching a home.

That cat is ill," said Madame Georges decisively, "or it wouldn't be so indolent. Eh bien! madame. I must take it to see my vet. If you will shut it up again and leave it, I will send the basket back."

One by one the great cats in the shop sniffed the air, drew themselves up lazily, stretched, and crept over to examine the basket containing the newcomer. As Jo turned out of the shop she saw the basket transformed into a mere heap of feline curiosity.

A few days later Foot-foot Foot-f made a journey in the same basket, though not with the

same placidity. Some irritation of his skin made us take him to the veterinary surgeon, who lives also in our all-providing Seek Midday Street, though at the farther end. Foot-foot went with protests. He is now a large cat, and has a large voice. The sudden transition from the quiet of our studio to a fearsome wicker prison and to the tumult of Seek Midday Street must have been admittedly terrifying, but we wished that he had been

struck dumb in the conventionally romantic way. As we turned the corner the full horror of his position became evident, and, opposite the coal merchant's, he let out his first earsplitting yell. The coal merchant was at his door chatting to the cobbler, and he nearly jumped out of his coal-begrimed skin as Foot-foot's first feline expostulation exploded unexpectedly from somewhere near his buttocks.

The coal-merchant is an Auvergnat; he combines coaldealing with a small wine-shop. He is the only local tradesman who has penetrated to our studio, and he shows a very nice discrimination in pictorial matters. Each time he brings us a fresh sack of coal he asks to see our recent productions, names his preferences, and offers his congratulations. His labourer is not so artistically minded. The latter is excessively grimy, seeming to grow more and more buried under layers of undisturbed coal dust as the winter goes on. The

Auvergnats have a reputation for dirtiness, and a Parisian proverb says, "Where you'll find an Auvergnat you'll find a bug." By a charming compensation of trades the coal boys clean up and become waiters in the out-o'-door restaurants during the summer.

From the coal-merchant's onwards Foot-foot created shame for us all the way down Seek Midday Street. Shopkeepers hurried to their doors, hoping that some delectable drame tragique was to be performed beneath their very eyes; hoping, as tender humanity will, that some lover was murdering his lass, or that at least a dog had been run over by a taxicab.

The veterinary surgeon lives over his wife's sweet-shop. A narrow and echoing staircase leads up to his rooms, and amid those echoes Foot-foot's catcalls roused a pandemonium which drew the vet. from his labours in sheer curiosity. We needed no further announcing. The veterinary surgeon had been at his easel. He combined business with pleasure, and being an enthusiastic amateur artist made of his patients his subject-matter. Dogs with bound limbs and cats with bandaged eyes covered the walls, in the centre of which was his masterpiece, representing mournful procession of repaired animals at the veterinary surgeon's door. The business was soon finished, and with the prescription of a cooling medicine, we made once more a

a

vociferous passage of Seek Midday Street.

On our way we turned into the chemist's shop. Foot-foot greeted the silence with a fading yell. The chemist is a smiling little fellow, the Don Juan of the rue. After the cinema is over we sometimes turn into a certain café on our road home. Here ten to one we will espy the chemist lurking at some corner table with a girl. Our attention would have hardly been aroused by this had it not been for the chemist's evident wish to avoid recognition. After a variety of such meetings we decided that the chemist's taste is wideembracing, blonde or brunette, golden or ginger, all came alike to him.

The flirtatious chemist pored over the prescription.

"For the little cat," he said, cocking his eye at the basket. "Assurément," we answered. "It's all very well," said the chemist, "but what he really wants is a little pot of young barley. He needs his salad, like a Christian. This is quite good, but get him the barley in a little pot. . . at the florist's. That will keep him fit, ça purge."

We have but few dealings with the florist; our income does not admit such luxuries. A chance conversation at Madame Rochelle's revealed her as a passionate lover of historical romances, of Dumas and of Victor Hugo. She will read nothing, she says, that is not founded on fact, and appa

rently to her the mere sentiment of love is not fact enough; she must enjoy her love amidst the titans of the past. However, she graciously supplied us with a red flower-pot sprouting young barley specially grown, she assured us, for "le petit chat d'appartement."

Talking of literary preferences, the baker's wife reads only travel books, and is disappointed with us because none of our books has yet achieved the honour of a translation; the rag and bone merchant's lady, on the contrary, prefers to read plays. Molière is her favourite author. The rag-and-bone merchant's lady is not only literary, but has some psychology. She exhibits a small shelf of secondhand books, picked up in business, at which I browse en passant as I go to get our early morning milk or rolls. She has judged my taste so well now that I can tell by her arrangement if she thinks she has a suitable volume. For a few mornings I was distracted, and omitted my usual glance at her stall. At last she stopped Jo in the street.

"I don't know what has come over your husband for the recent few days," she said; "I have displayed a book especially for him, but he hasn't given it a glance." She held Stendhal's Parme.'

out

a copy of Chartreuse de

There is a café half-way along Seek Midday Street. Sometimes we seat ourselves