““The king and queen were usually present, and the king or the dauphin would light a pyre. The cats were then tumbled into the flames from an overhead basket, and the crowd reveled in their cries. “Certainly this is not really a worse spectacle than the burning of heretics, or the torturings and public executions of every kind,” Elias writes. “It only appears worse because the joy in torturing living creatures shows itself so nakedly and purposelessly, without any excuse before reason. The revulsion aroused in us by the mere report of the institution, a reaction which must be taken as ‘normal’ for the present-day standard of affect control, demonstrates once again the long term change of personality structure.” 15 Elias argued that””
