PREFACE

_Madame_:

_There are moments when one seems to come to life. One looks about and
distinguishes a creature whose foot-print closely resembles the ace of
spades. The thing says: bow-wow. It is a dog. One looks again. The ace
of spades is now an ace of clubs. The thing says: pffffffff--and it is a
cat._

_This is the history of the visible world and in particular, that of my
god-children, Toby-Dog and Kiki-the-Demure. They are so natural--I use
the word in the sense in which it is applicable to the savages of
Oceania--that all their acts conspire to make of life, a very simple
proposition. These are animals in the fullest sense of the
word--animos--if I may employ the original orthography, capable of
exclaiming with those of Faust_: "The fool knows it not! He knows not
the pot, He knows not the kettle."

* * * * *

_And as such, Madame, you have placed them exactly where they should be:
their earthly Paradise is the apartment of Monsieur Willy. In your
salon, the probable palm and rubber-plant give the impression of
luxuriant Edenic flora, relatively speaking, and illustrate the
transmogrification which is to allow M. Gaston Deschamps--critic of a_
"Temps" _plus-que-passé--to announce to the wilderness (where he speaks
familiarly of Chateaubriand), and to the Collège de France, how well he
can admire and understand a true poet_.