The Grocer's Cat
the hard-frozen snow, and the innocent companionship of a poet for the dancing of witches on the hill-tops.
The same grace of understanding—more common in the sixteenth than in the nineteenth century—made the famous Milanese physician, Jerome Cardan, abandon his students at the University of Pavia, in obedience to the decision of his cat. "In the year 1552," he writes with becoming gravity, "having left in the house a little cat of placid and domestic habits, she jumped upon my table, and tore at my public lectures; yet my Book of Fate she touched not, though it was the more exposed to her attacks. I gave up my chair, nor returned to it for eight years." Oh, wise physician, to discern so clearly that "placid and domestic habits" were but a cloak for mysteries too deep to fathom, for warnings too pregnant to be disregarded.
The vanity of man revolts from the serene indifference of the cat. He is for-
289
