Rustiquel the Rat-Catcher

Extract

It is never safe to take it for granted that you are loved for yourself alone in this world. After all, why should you be? Even Rustiquel the Rat-Catcher had to be disillusioned upon this point. He thought he was the hero of his own story—he who shone only in the reflection of a hidden light. Yet who should be a hero if not a cat? How seriously and courteously he bears himself indoors, yet how freely and blithely he sallies forth to slay monsters and destroyers ! And if this is true of cats in general, how especially true it is of one cat in particular: that is of Rustiquel the Rat-Catcher, who flourished in the City of Paris in the reign of Philip the Fair.

I say ‘flourished,’ but, to tell the honest truth, Rustiquel the Rat-Catcher, though destined to a snug and creditable lot, had a kittenhood as dangerous and obscure as any cat in Paris. In fact, it was not until he reached die lanky, introspective age, when the chasing of his own tail offered more physical difficulties and fewer imaginative attractions every day, that he was rescued from death’ by Master Robert the Scrivener, and presented by way of a love-token to Alis, daughter of Ernoul the Crossbow-maker, which was the foundation of his subsequent fortunes.

It came about in this way. Master Robert, one of the youngest and neediest of all the five-hundred scriveners of Paris, was hastening back to his garret one winter evening, with a couple of tallow candles in one hand and a small eel-pie in the other, when he saw certain scholars of the Sorbonne, always an ingenious and ill-disposed crew, playing a cruel jest on an inoffensive cat.