y and unconscious devotion to the arrangement of his person, his
evident sensation of complete loneliness, most comfortable solitude,
brought home with vehemence to the Father the undignified buffoonery of
his conduct; the more piteous buffoonery of his friend. He seized the
curtains with his hands and was about to thrust them aside and issue
forth when an abrupt movement of the parrot stopped him. The bird, as
if sharply attracted by something, paused in its pecking, and, with its
head still bent backward and twisted sideways on its neck, seemed to
listen intently. Its round eye looked glistening and strained like the
eye of a disturbed pigeon. Contracting its wing, it lifted its head and
sat for a moment erect on its perch, shifting its feet mechanically up
and down, as if a dawning excitement produced in it an uncontrollable
desire of movement. Then it thrust its head forward in the direction of
the further room and remained perfectly still. Its attitude so strongly
suggested the concentration of its attention on something immediately
before it that Father Murchison instinctively stared about the room,
half expecting to see Pitting advance softly, having entered through the
hidden door. He did not come, and there was no sound in the chamber.
Nevertheless, the parrot was obviously getting excited and increasingly
attentive. It bent its head lower and lower, stretching out its neck
until, almost falling from the perch, it half extended its wings,
raising them slightly from its back, as if about to take flight, and
fluttering them rapidly up and down. It continued this fluttering
movement for what seemed to the Father an immense time. At length,
raising its wings as far as possible, it dropped them slowly and
deliberately down to its back, caught hold of the edge of its bath with
its beak, hoisted itself on to the floor of the cage, waddled to the
bars, thrust its head against them, and stood quite still in the exact
attitude it always assumed when its head was being scratched by the
Professor. So complete was the suggestion of this delight conveyed by
the bird that Father Murchison felt as if he saw a white finger gently
pushed among the soft feathers of its head, and he was seized by a most
strong conviction that something, unseen by him but seen and welcomed by
Napoleon, stood immediately before the cage.

The parrot presently withdrew its head, as if the coaxing finger had
been lifted from it, and its pronounced air