rembling of body
and soul, in everlasting expectation of outrageous thrashings.

This lasted ten years. She was so timorous that she would grow pale
whenever she spoke to any one, and she thought of nothing but the blows
with which she was threatened; and she became thinner, more yellow and
drier than a smoked fish.

II

One night, when her husband was at sea, she was suddenly awakened by the
wild roaring of the wind!

She sat up in her bed, trembling, but, as she hear nothing more, she lay
down again; almost immediately there was a roar in the chimney which
shook the entire house; it seemed to cross the heavens like a pack of
furious animals snorting and roaring.

Then she arose and rushed to the harbor. Other women were arriving from
all sides, carrying lanterns. The men also were gathering, and all were
watching the foaming crests of the breaking wave.

The storm lasted fifteen hours. Eleven sailors never returned; Patin was
among them.

In the neighborhood of Dieppe the wreck of his bark, the Jeune-Amelie,
was found. The bodies of his sailors were found near Saint-Valery, but
his body was never recovered. As his vessel seemed to have been cut in
two, his wife expected and feared his return for a long time, for if
there had been a collision he alone might have been picked up and carried
afar off.

Little by little she grew accustomed to the thought that she was rid of
him, although she would start every time that a neighbor, a beggar or a
peddler would enter suddenly.

One afternoon, about four years after the disappearance of her husband,
while she was walking along the Rue aux Juifs, she stopped before the
house of an old sea captain who had recently died and whose furniture was
for sale. Just at that moment a parrot was at auction. He had green
feathers and a blue head and was watching everybody with a displeased
look. "Three francs!" cried the auctioneer. "A bird that can talk like a
lawyer, three francs!"

A friend of the Patin woman nudged her and said:

"You ought to buy that, you who are rich. It would be good company for
you. That bird is worth more than thirty francs. Anyhow, you can always
sell it for twenty or twenty-five!"

Patin's widow added fifty centimes, and the bird was given her in a
little cage, which she carried away. She took it home, and, as she was
opening the wire door in order to give it something to drink, he bit her
finger and drew blood.

"Oh, how naughty he is!" sh