France of the 17th century is about courtliness and duels, ballet and theaters, conspiracies against the king and cardinal and wars for the redistribution of Europe. Just before Christmas 1632, two minor events happened simultaneously: the English Countess of Carlisle arrived in Paris, and the French embassy brought a Siberian cat from distant Muscovy as a gift to its king. The king gave the animal to the cardinal, a great connoisseur of cats, and Lady Carlisle easily entered the circle of the Parisian elite. And it seemed that nothing foreshadowed trouble, if one February midnight the lieutenant of the guards company Henri de Gaulle had not heard obscene couplets addressed to his Eminence, and in the morning Richelieu’s new favorite, the Siberian cat Porthos, had not disappeared!..