happened, for Madame
Aubain was not of an expansive nature. Felicite was as grateful
for it as if it had been some favour, and thenceforth loved her
with animal-like devotion and a religious veneration.

Her kind-heartedness developed. When she heard the drums of a
marching regiment passing through the street, she would stand in
the doorway with a jug of cider and give the soldiers a drink. She
nursed cholera victims. She protected Polish refugees, and one of
them even declared that he wished to marry her. But they
quarrelled, for one morning when she returned from the Angelus she
found him in the kitchen coolly eating a dish which he had
prepared for himself during her absence.

After the Polish refugees, came Colmiche, an old man who was
credited with having committed frightful misdeeds in '93. He lived
near the river in the ruins of a pig-sty. The urchins peeped at
him through the cracks in the walls and threw stones that fell on
his miserable bed, where he lay gasping with catarrh, with long
hair, inflamed eyelids, and a tumour as big as his head on one
arm.

She got him some linen, tried to clean his hovel and dreamed of
installing him in the bake-house without his being in Madame's
way. When the cancer broke, she dressed it every day; sometimes
she brought him some cake and placed him in the sun on a bundle of
hay; and the poor old creature, trembling and drooling, would
thank her in his broken voice, and put out his hands whenever she
left him. Finally he died; and she had a mass said for the repose
of his soul.

That day a great joy came to her: at dinner-time, Madame de
Larsonniere's servant called with the parrot, the cage, and the
perch and chain and lock. A note from the baroness told Madame
Aubain that as her husband had been promoted to a prefecture, they
were leaving that night, and she begged her to accept the bird as
a remembrance and a token of her esteem.

Since a long time the parrot had been on Felicite's mind, because
he came from America, which reminded her of Victor, and she had
approached the negro on the subject.

Once even, she had said:

"How glad Madame would be to have him!"

The man had repeated this remark to his mistress who, not being
able to keep the bird, took this means of getting rid of it.

CHAPTER IV

THE BIRD

He was called Loulou. His body was green, his head blue, the tips
of his wings were pink and his breast was golden.

But he had the tiresome tric