cigar in his face; another time, Madame Lormeau was teasing him with

the tip of her umbrella and he swallowed the tip. Finally he got lost.
She had put him on the grass to cool him and went away only for a

second; when she returned, she found no parrot! She hunted among the
bushes, on the bank of the river, and on the roofs, without paying any

attention to Madame Aubain who screamed at her: "Take care! you must
be insane!" Then she searched every garden in Pont-l'Eveque and

stopped the passers-by to inquire of them: "Haven't you perhaps seen
my parrot?" To those who had never seen the parrot, she described him

minutely. Suddenly she thought she saw something green fluttering
behind the mills at the foot of the hill. But when she was at the top

of the hill she could not see it. A hod-carrier told her that he had
just seen the bird in Saint-Melaine, in Mother Simon's store. She

rushed to the place. The people did not know what she was talking
about. At last she came home, exhausted, with her slippers worn to

shreds, and despair in her heart. She sat down on the bench near
Madame and was telling of her search when presently a light weight

dropped on her shoulder--Loulou! What the deuce had he been doing?
Perhaps he had just taken a little walk around the town!

She did not easily forget her scare; in fact, she never got over it.
In consequence of a cold, she caught a sore throat; and some time

later she had an earache. Three years later she was stone deaf, and
spoke in a very loud voice even in church. Although her sins might

have been proclaimed throughout the diocese without any shame to
herself, or ill effects to the community, the cure thought it

advisable to receive her confession in the vestry-room.
Imaginary buzzings also added to her bewilderment. Her mistress often

said to her: "My goodness, how stupid you are!" and she would answer:
"Yes, Madame," and look for something.

The narrow circle of her ideas grew more restricted than it already
was; the bellowing of the oxen, the chime of the bells no longer

reached her intelligence. All things moved silently, like ghosts. Only
one noise penetrated her ears; the parrot's voice.

As if to divert her mind, he reproduced for her the tick-tack of the
spit in the kitchen, the shrill cry of the fish-vendors, the saw of

the carpenter who had a shop opposite, and when the door-bell rang, he
would imitate Madame Aubain: "Felicite! go to the front door."

They held conversations together, Loulou repeating the three phrases
of his repertory over and over, Felicite replying by words that had no

greater meaning, but in which she poured out her feelings. In her
isolation, the parrot was almost a son, a love. He climbed upon her

fingers, pecked at her lips, clung to her shawl, and when she rocked
her head to and fro like a nurse, the big wings of her cap and the

wings of the bird flapped in unison. When clouds gathered on the
horizon and the thunder rumbled, Loulou would scream, perhaps because

he remembered the storms in his native forests. The dripping of the
rain would excite him to frenzy; he flapped around, struck the ceiling

with his wings, upset everything, and would finally fly into the
garden to play. Then he would come back into the room, light on one of

the andirons, and hop around in order to get dry.
One morning during the terrible winter of 1837, when she had put him

in front of the fire-place on account of the cold, she found him dead
in his cage, hanging to the wire bars with his head down. He had

probably died of congestion. But she believed that he had been
poisoned, and although she had no proofs whatever, her suspicion

rested on Fabu.
She wept so sorely that her mistress said: "Why don't you have him

stuffed?"
She asked the advice of the chemist, who had always been kind to the

bird.
He wrote to Havre for her. A certain man named Fellacher consented to

do the work. But, as the diligence driver often lost parcels entrusted
to him, Felicite resolved to take her pet to Honfleur herself.

Leafless apple-trees lined the edges of the road. The ditches were
covered with ice. The dogs on the neighbouring farms barked; and

Felicite, with her hands beneath her cape, her little black sabots and
her basket, trotted along nimbly in the middle of the sidewalk. She

crossed the forest, passed by the Haut-Chene, and reached Saint-
Gatien.

Behind her, in a cloud of dust and impelled by the steep incline, a
mail-coach drawn by galloping horses advanced like a whirlwind. When

he saw a woman in the middle of the road, who did not get out of the
way, the driver stood up in his seat and shouted to her and so did the

postilion, while the four horses, which he could not hold back,
accelerated their pace; the two leaders were almost upon her; with a

jerk of the reins he threw them to one side, but, furious at the
incident, he lifted his big whip and lashed her from her head to her

feet with such violence that she fell to the ground unconscious.
Her first thought, when she recovered her senses, was to open the

basket. Loulou was unharmed. She felt a sting on her right cheek; when
she took her hand away it was red, for the blood was flowing.

She sat down on a pile of stones, and sopped her cheek with her
handkerchief; then she ate a crust of bread she had put in her basket,

and consoled herself by looking at the bird.
Arriving at the top of Ecquemanville, she saw the lights of Honfleur

shining in the distance like so many stars; further on, the ocean
spread out in a confused mass. Then a weakness came over her; the

misery of her childhood, the disappointment of her first love, the
departure of her nephew, the death of Virginia; all these things came

back to her at once, and, rising like a swelling tide in her throat,
almost choked her.

Then she wished to speak to the captain of the vessel, and without
stating what she was sending, she gave him some instructions.

Fellacher kept the parrot a long time. He always promised that it
would be ready for the following week; after six months he announced

the shipment of a case, and that was the end of it. Really, it seemed
as if Loulou would never come back to his home. "They have stolen

him," thought Felicite.
Finally he arrived, sitting bold upright on a branch which could be

screwed into a mahoganypedestal, with his foot in the air, his head
on one side, and in his beak a nut which the naturalist, from love of

the sumptuous, had gilded. She put him in her room.
This place, to which only a chosen few were admitted, looked like a

chapel and a second-hand shop, so filled was it with devotional and
heterogeneous things. The door could not be opened easily on account

of the presence of a large wardrobe. Opposite the window that looked
out into the garden, a bull's-eye opened on the yard; a table was

placed by the cot and held a wash-basin, two combs, and a piece of
blue soap in a broken saucer. On the walls were rosaries, medals, a

number of Holy Virgins, and a holy-water basin made out of a cocoanut;
on the bureau, which was covered with a napkin like an altar, stood

the box of shells that Victor had given her; also a watering-can and a
balloon, writing-books, the engraved geography and a pair of shoes; on

the nail which held the mirror, hung Virginia's little plush hat!
Felicite carried this sort of respect so far that she even kept one of

Monsieur's old coats. All the things which Madame Aubain discarded,
Felicite begged for her own room. Thus, she had artificial flowers on

the edge of the bureau, and the picture of the Comte d'Artois in the
recess of the window. By means of a board, Loulou was set on a portion

of the chimney which advanced into the room. Every morning when she
awoke, she saw him in the dim light of dawn and recalled bygone days

and the smallest details of insignificant actions, without any sense
of bitterness or grief.

As she was unable to communicate with people, she lived in a sort of
somnambulistic torpor. The processions of Corpus-Christi Day seemed to

wake her up. She visited the neighbours to beg for candlesticks and
mats so as to adorn the temporary altars in the street.

In church, she always gazed at the Holy Ghost, and noticed that there
was something about it that resembled a parrot. The likenesses

appeared even more striking on a coloured picture by Espinal,
representing the baptism of our Saviour. With his scarlet wings and

emerald body, it was really the image of Loulou. Having bought the
picture, she hung it near the one of the Comte d'Artois so that she