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Updated: June 29, 2025
As he said these words, Moumouth came out from under the bed and threw himself before Mother Michel, as if to implore her aid and protection. Lustucru stood amazed. Everybody knows how light is the slumber of cats. Moumouth, who had the habit of sleeping with only one eye, had risen quickly on hearing a rustling behind the round window.
"He doesn't answer me," said she. "But when I went down-stairs, Lustucru was here; may be he can tell me what has become of the cat." She knocked without delay at the door of the steward, who pretended to rouse himself from a deep slumber, and, in a gruff voice, demanded what was wanted. "Isn't Moumouth with you?" "Does your cat ever come where I am? You know very well that he can't bear me."
The cat approached Mother Michel, who had seated herself to chat awhile, and looking at her with supplicating eyes, pulled at the skirt of her robe, as if to say to her: "Come, let us go!" "Take care!" said the good creature, "you will tear my dress." Moumouth began again. "What is it? Do you want to get out of here?" asked Mother Michel. Moumouth made several affirmative capers in the air.
She did not linger in the parlor, when she arrived out of breath and unable to speak a word, but carried Moumouth straight to the Countess. On recognizing the animal, the Countess gave so loud a cry of joy that it was heard as far as the Place de la Carrousel. Lustucru assisted at this touching scene. At the sight of the cat he was so dumbfounded that his reason wavered for a moment.
He had scarcely finished the sentence when Moumouth leaped over the parapet. "Treason!" cried the two fishers, who started in pursuit of the quadruped that had come so miraculously out of the water; but Moumouth ran faster than they did and easily escaped them.
At the moment she knocked at the door, Father Lustucru was taking from the shelf a green package which bore this label: Death to Rats. "This is the thing," he said to himself, thrusting the paper into his vest. "Death to Rats should also be Death to Cats. Our dear Moumouth shall make the trial.... What can one do to serve you, my good Mother Michel?"
On stepping from the carriage Madame de la Grenouillère honored her servitors with a benevolent glance, embraced Mother Michel with touching familiarity, and demanded news of Moumouth.
Justice is done!" Several days passed in painful expectation; but the cat, like General Marlborough, did not come back. The despair of Madame de la Grenouillère was sincere, profound, and silent, all the more intense because it was suppressed. She continually pictured to herself the charming ways of Moumouth, his natural goodness, his superior intelligence.
The days passed very happily with Moumouth, and everything promised a smiling future for him; but, like the sword of Damocles, troubles are ever suspended above the heads of men and of cats.
She desired a name that would recall the circumstances in which the cat was found. An old scholar, whom she consulted the next day, suggested that of Moumouth, composed of two Hebrew words which signify saved from saucepans. At the end of a few days, Moumouth was unrecognizable.
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