Then I for you will paint that picture of Rembrandt
Which pleases me most greatly; and meanwhile Childebrand,
According to his custom soft couched upon my knee,
Lifts up his pretty head and watches anxiously
The movement of my finger, which traces in the air
The outline of the picture to make it clear and fair.
Childebrand came in nicely as a rhyme to Rembrandt; for this fragment was a sort of confession of faith and romance to a friend, since dead, who at that time shared all our enthusiasms for Victor Hugo, Sainte-*Beuve, and Alfred de Musset.
We must say of our cats as said Ruy Gomez de Silva to the impatient Don Carlos, when giving him the names and titles of his ancestors, which began with "Don Silvius, three times elected Consul of Rome," "I have skipped some of the best," and so pass on to Madame Theophile, a reddish cat, with a white breast, pink nose, and blue eyes, who was thus named because she lived with us in an
