Being the privileged character that he is, Tootsie always eats at the table with the family. He has his own chair and bib, and his manners are said to be exquisite.
It is quite common for writers on the cat to say, "The story of Théophile Gautier's cats is too familiar to need comment." On the contrary, I do not believe it is familiar to the average reader, and that only those who know Gautier's "Ménagerie In-time" in the original, recall the particulars of his "White and Black Dynasties." For this reason they shall be repeated in these pages. I use Mrs. Cashel-Hoey's translation, partly in a selfish desire to save myself time and labor, but principally because she has preserved so successfully the sympathetic and appreciative spirit of M. Gautier himself.
"Dynasties of cats, as numerous as those of the Egyptian kings, succeeded each other in my dwelling," says he. "One after another they were swept away by accident, by flight, by death. All were loved and regretted: but life is made up of oblivion, and the memory of cats dies out like the memory of men." After making mention of an old gray cat who always took his part against his parents, and used to bite Madame Gautier's legs when she presumed to reprove her son, he passes on at once to the romantic period, and the commemoration of Childebrand.
"This name at once reveals a deep design of flouting Boileau, whom I did not like then, but have since become reconciled to. Has not Nicholas said:--
"'O le plaisant projet d'un poëte ignorant Que de tant de héros va choisir Childebrant!'
"Now I considered Childebrand a very fine name indeed, Merovingian, mediaeval, and Gothic, and vastly preferable to Agamemnon, Achilles, Ulysses, or any Greek name whatsoever. Romanticism was the fashion of my early days: I have no doubt the people of classical times called their cats Hector, Ajax, or Patroclus. Childebrand was a splendid cat of common kind, tawny and striped with black, like the hose of Saltabadil in 'Le Rois' Amuse.' With his large, green, almond-shaped eyes, and his symmetrical stripes, there was something tigerlike about him that pleased me. Childebrand had the honor of figuring in some verses that I wrote to 'flout' Boileau:--