BARKS AND PURRS

BY

COLETTE WILLY

TRANSLATED BY
MAIRE KELLY

CONTENTS

PREFACE

SENTIMENTALITIES

ON THE TRAIN

DINNER IS LATE

SHE IS ILL

THE FIRST FIRE

THE STORM

A CALLER

PREFACE

Madame:

There are moments when one seems tocome to life. One looks about and distinguishesa creature whose foot-print closelyresembles the ace of spades. The thingsays: bow-wow. It is a dog. One looksagain. The ace of spades is now an ace ofclubs. The thing says: pffffffff—and itis a cat.

This is the history of the visible worldand in particular, that of my god-children,Toby-Dog and Kiki-the-Demure. They areso natural—I use the word in the sense inwhich it is applicable to the savages ofOceania—that all their acts conspire tomake of life, a very simple proposition.These are animals in the fullest sense of theword—animos—if I may employ the originalorthography, capable of exclaimingwith those of Faust:

"The fool knows it not!
He knows not the pot,
He knows not the kettle."

And as such, Madame, you have placedthem exactly where they should be: theirearthly Paradise is the apartment ofMonsieur Willy. In your salon, the probablepalm and rubber-plant give the impressionof luxuriant Edenic flora, relativelyspeaking, and illustrate the transmogrificationwhich is to allow M. Gaston Deschamps—criticof a "Temps" plus-que-passé—toannounce to the wilderness(where he speaks familiarly of Chateaubriand),and to the Collège de France, how wellhe can admire and understand a true poet.

For you are a true poet and I will declareit freely, not concerning myself more withthe legends Parisians have the habit of weavingabout every celebrity. They admireGauguin and Verlaine, not so much for theiroriginality, as for their eccentricities. Andso it happens that certain persons, unacquaintedwith the nameless sentiment, theorder and purity, the thousand interior virtueswhich guide you, persist in saying thatyou wear your hair short and that Willy isbald.

Must I then—living at Orthez—tellTout-Paris who you are, present you to all