my mouth.

One day a friend of mine, who was going out of town for a few days,
intrusted his parrot to me with the request that I would take care of it
during his absence. The bird, feeling strange in my house, had climbed,
helping himself with his beak, to the very top of his perch, and looking
pretty well bewildered, rolled round his eyes, that resembled the gilt
nails on arm-chairs, and wrinkled the whitish membrane that served him
for eyelids. Madame-Theophile had never seen a parrot, and she was
evidently much puzzled by the strange bird. Motionless as an Egyptian
mummy cat in its net-work of bands, she gazed upon it with an air of
profound meditation, and put together whatever she had been able to pick
up of natural history on the roofs, the yard, and the garden. Her
thoughts were reflected in her shifting glance, and I was able to read
in it the result of her examination: "It is unmistakably a chicken."

Having reached this conclusion, she sprang from the table on which she
had posted herself to make her investigations, and crouched down in one
corner of the room, flat on her stomach, her elbows out, her head low,
her muscular backbone on the stretch, like the black panther in Gerome's
painting, watching gazelles on their way to the drinking-place.

The parrot followed her movements with feverish anxiety, fluffing out
its feathers, rattling its chain, lifting its foot, and moving its
claws, and sharpening its beak upon the edge of its seed-box. Its
instinct warned it that an enemy was preparing to attack it.

The eyes of the cat, fixed upon the bird with an intensity that had
something of fascination in it, plainly said in a language well
understood of the parrot and absolutely intelligible: "Green though it
is, that chicken must be good to eat."

I watched the scene with much interest, prepared to interfere at the
proper time. Madame-Theophile had gradually crawled nearer; her pink
nose was working, her eyes were half closed, her claws were protruded
and then drawn in. She thrilled with anticipation like a gourmet sitting
down to enjoy a truffled pullet; she gloated over the thought of the
choice and succulent meal she was about to enjoy, and her sensuality was
tickled by the idea of the exotic dish that was to be hers.

Suddenly she arched her back like a bow that is being drawn, and a swift
leap landed her right on the perch. The parrot, seeing the danger upon
him, unexpectedly called out in a deep, sono