glossy sable; and yet the gloom and dampness of the place seemed to
mildew them all so that their brightness was glaring and their softest
gradations took on a shade as of rusty mourning. No cat could be
expected to do herself justice.

To and fro they paced, balancing sometimes with hysterical precision
[Footnote: Hysterical precision. What does this mean?] on the ledge of
the parapet, passing each other at whisker's length, but cutting each
other dead. [Footnote: Cutting each other dead. Have you ever thought of
the quaint absurdity of this figurative expression?] Not a cat had a
look or a sniff for his fellow; not a cat so much as guessed at
another's existence. Among those hundred-and-three restless Spirits
there was not a cat that did not affect to believe that a
hundred-and-two were away! It was horrible, the inhumanity of it. Here
were these shreds and waifs, these "unnecessary litters" of Florentine
households, herded together in the only asylum (short of the Arno
[Footnote: Arno: the river that flows through Florence.]) open to them,
driven in like dead leaves in November, flitting dismally round and
round for a span, and watching each other die without a mew or a lick!
Saint Francis was not the wise man I had thought him. [Footnote: St.
Francis not the wise man, etc. Why not?]

It was about two o'clock in the afternoon. I had watched these beasts at
their feverish exercises for nearly an hour before I perceived that they
were gradually hemming me in. They seemed to be forming up, in ranks, on
the garth. Only a ditch separated us--I was in the cloister-walk, a
hundred-and-three gaunt, expectant, desperate cats facing me. Their
famished pale eyes pierced me through and through; and two-hundred-
and-two hungry eyes (four cats supported life on one apiece)
is more than I can stand, though I am a married man with a family. These