who had assured me that there was no reason to whip a Cat, and to whom, to prove my innocence, I avowed that I did not even know the meaning of the words, "criminal conversation" (he told me that the crime was so called precisely because one spoke so little while committing it), this attorney, bribed by Captain Puck, defended me so badly that my case appeared to be lost. Under these circumstances I went on the stand myself.
"My Lords," I said, "I am an English Cat and I am innocent. What would be said of the justice of old England if . . ."
Hardly had I pronounced these words than I was interrupted by a murmur of voices, so strongly had the public been influenced by the Cat-Chronicle and by Puck's friends.
"She questions the justice of old England which has created the jury!" cried some one.
"She wishes to explain to you, My Lords," cried my adversary's abominable lawyer, "that she went on the rooftop with a French Cat in order to convert him to the Anglican faith, when, as a matter of fact, she went there to learn how to say, Mon petit homme, in French, to her husband, to listen to the abominable principles of papism, and to learn to disregard the laws and customs of old England!"
Such piffle always drives an English audience wild. Therefore the words of Puck's attorney were received with tumultuous applause. I was condemned at the age of twenty-six months, when I could prove that I still was ignorant of the very meaning of the word, Tom. But from all this I gathered that it was on account
