The fireside sphinx. Agnes Repplier
condemned to death and executed for their hallucinations. Thirty-six were whipped every Sunday for a year before the church doors, and others were punished with varying degrees of severity. So widespread was the interest awakened in this trial, that it extended even to England, then much occupied with witches of her own. The Duke of Holstein attempted to acquaint himself with all the particulars; but was discouraged by the Swedish authorities, who deemed it best to bury the matter in oblivion.
Girt with mystery, burdened with subtle associations of evil, abhorred by the timorous and devout, how was the cat to escape from the long martyrdom which awaited her? The Church offered no asylum to this poor fugitive, albeit she was not without her advocates in Heaven, since both Saint Ives, patron of lawyers, and Saint Gertrude, gentlest of mystics, had deigned to take her under their protection. Moreover a pretty Italian legend softened in some degree the asperity of her lot in that chosen land; for it was whispered that she was created—not to mitigate the discomforts of the Ark—but to minister to the still greater needs of Saint Francis de Paula, when the holy recluse was living in the austere loneliness of his hermitage. Satan, having failed many times to beguile the Saint from a rapt ecstasy of prayer, sent, as a last resource, hundreds of mice to torment him. They swarmed in his narrow cell, gnawed his garments, nibbled at his feet, and behaved with the shameless audacity of vermin that knew their diabolic origin, and feared no retribution. The monk's prayers seemed ended, when suddenly there sprang from his loose sleeve a small furry animal that attacked the invaders with incredible speed and fury. So vigorous was its onslaught, that only two mice escaped by hiding in a crack of the wall; and it is to find these fugitives that the cat's descendants still sit motionless before every little hole and crevice, waiting, as they have waited ever since, for their appointed prey.
But neither the gratitude of Saint Francis, nor the lukewarm patronage of Saint Ives and Saint Gertrude could save poor Pussy from black calumny and persecution. Deeper and deeper into the hearts of men sank the belief that she was allied with demons, and that not only witches and wizards, but their most terrible Master might be seen by guilty mortals under the disguise of a cat. The unhesitating acceptance of a personal Devil, as an important factor in life, made our ancestors exceedingly alert to defeat his designs. No broad-minded doubts softened their fear and detestation; and Saint Dominic was not the only powerful preacher who figured Satan as a black cat, that he might thrill his startled hearers into a trembling abhorrence of sin. One result of this darkening of Pussy's character is that she can seldom be found in church architecture or decoration, where more innocent animals have frisked and gambolled for centuries. Indeed there are antiquarians who maliciously assert that her rare appearance—distorted out of grace and beauty—in some dim corner of a very old cathedral, is due, not to any softening of a universal prejudice, but to that sombre Manichean heresy which constantly found expression in symbolizing triumphant evil. They profess to believe that mediæval stone-masons, tainted with this unholy creed, yet discreet enough to conceal their errors from the Church's chastening hand, indicated the nature of their views by carving, on pulpit and on pillar, ravenous monsters—lions, leopards, cats, all equally unrecognizable, but all alike glutted with prey. Thus they handed down to posterity the disquiet of their souls, without risking the short, stern shrift of an ecclesiastical court.
The theory, like most theories, is entertaining; but even heresy can hardly be said to have given the cat her due. She was practically banished from cathedrals, save at Rouen, where we find her bravely chasing a mouse around one of the pillars in the nave. A careful search will also reveal her occasional presence in the beautiful old choir stalls, where the genius of the mediæval wood-carver resolved itself into an infinite capacity for taking pains. Amid the riotous groups of greyhounds, monkeys, and birds, we may see her—though very rarely—curled up in a recess, or springing with splendid freedom amid a network of oaken leaves. There are two very droll cats in the choir of the old Minster in the Isle of Thanet; and on one of the stalls of Great Malvern church a pair of rats are engaged in the congenial task of gibbeting a cat—"le monde bestorné, as this reversal of a natural law was called in ancient France.
Venice gives us a much finer exception in the superb choir-stalls of San Georgio Maggiore, carved by Albert de Brule at the very close of the sixteenth century, when prejudice and superstition were losing their ancient hold. They represent scenes from the life of Saint Benedict; and the Flemish sculptor, deeming no convent complete without its cat, has slyly introduced several into his pious work. One stall shows us Pussy quarrelling in a most unsanctified spirit with Benedict's blessed raven; and, in another, we see her eating a mouse under the bed of a sleepy brother whom the Saint is vainly endeavouring to arouse. The elaborate oak panellings which surround the altar in the upper sala of the Scuola di San Rocco are of a much later date, so that we are hardly surprised at the frank admission of a cat into Saint Roch's company. She sits on a well-curb, regarding him with thoughtful indifference. The anxious solicitude of his dog, the sleepy affection of Saint Jerome's lion, the humble fidelity of Saint Anthony's pig, find no reflection in her steadfast gaze. She merely stares at the Saint, as she stares at Venice from one of the columns of the Ducal Palace. Some subtle lack of sentiment renders her curiously ill-adapted for pious parts, notwithstanding her constant and very charming presence in Italian art, of which much may be said. Certain it is that she was deliberately ignored throughout those earlier years, when the great cathedrals rose slowly and superbly into being. We cannot believe with M. Champfleury that the sculptors of the Middle Ages failed to recognize the cat's beauty and grace; she must have leaped as lightly then as now upon her quivering prey; but hers was a sinister loveliness which they deemed unfit to adorn the splendid monuments of Christendom.
Persecution
CHAPTER III
PERSECUTION
"Beware of old black cats with evil faces."
THE aggressiveness of our fore-fathers puzzles and repels us. It is the quality which, of all others, is least comprehensible to the unconcern which we call tolerance, and to the sensitiveness which we call humanity. How, we ask ourselves, could men have felt cock-sure of things about which they knew nothing; and why should they have deemed it essential to beat their convictions into other men's brains? The speed and sincerity with which principles were translated into action five hundred years ago kept all Christendom in commotion. People did not then shrug their shoulders and say, "'T is a pity Neighbour Hearne standeth apart from Church;" or "'T is passing strange Dame Gurton should be so maliciously disposed." By no means! They saw to it that Hearne either went to church, or stood his trial for heresy; and they brought the sour old woman to a more amiable frame of mind, or to the witch's stake. Neither did they observe with scholarly composure that the adoption of the cat by the black race of sorcerers was a "curious custom, worthy of research." They said, "Like master, like servant;" and tossed poor Pussy into the terrible bonfire which blazed for her on the Eve of Saint John.
Now and then a student, gentle and profound, as one Balthazar Bekker of fragrant memory, asserted the innocence of the cat—perhaps he had a kitten of his own—and declared the dog to be more deeply versed than she in the unholy arts of necromancy. But the people knew better than this. The frank integrity of the dog was unmistakable. One wag of his honest tail disarmed suspicion. Blunder he might, and fall perchance from grace; but the subtle witchery of the cat was far beyond his canine comprehension.
Moreover the weight of evidence was always against the cat. At the trial of Rebecca Walther, a woman of Neuchatel who was strangled as a sorceress in 1647, it was proven that a neighbour's dog, trotting soberly along the road, fell dead in the dust, when the witch came to her doorway, and fixed her cold malignant eye upon him. Who ever heard of a cat dying of such delicate susceptibility?