round which was coiled a serpent, the whole fashioned from malachite, and a small cornelian casket, engraved in cuneiform characters. There were no windows in the room, and apparently no doors, for even the opening through which we had entered had disappeared, but the chamber was pleasantly lighted with a lambent glow, the origin of which it was impossible to discover, for no lamps were visible. In one corner, I noted a cabinet of ebony on the top of which perched an enormous black, short-haired cat, with yellow eyes, which, at first, indeed, until the animal made a slight movement, I took to be an objet d'art. Then Peter called, Lou Matagot, and with one magnificent bound, the creature landed on the silver table and arched his glossy back. Then he sharpened his claws and stretched his joints by the aid of the casket scratched with the cuneiform symbols.
Lou Matagot, Peter explained, signifies the Cat of Dreams, the Cat of the Sorcerers, in the Provençal dialect.
There were a few chairs, strangely modern, Ballet Russe chairs, upholstered in magenta and green and orange brocades in which were woven circles and crescents and stars of gold and silver, but Peter and I seated ourselves at one end of the room on a high purple couch, a sort of throne, piled with silver and black cushions, on which was worked in green threads an emblem, which Peter explained was the character of Mersilde, a fiend who has the power
