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 tricks of biting his perch, pulling his feathers
out, scattering refuse and spilling the water of his bath. Madame Aubain
grew tired of him and gave him to Felicite for good.
She undertook his education, and soon he was able to repeat: “Pretty
boy! Your servant, sir! I salute you, Marie!” His perch was placed near
the door and several persons were astonished that he did not answer to
the name of “Jacquot,” for every parrot is called Jacquot. They called
him a goose and a log, and these taunts were like so many dagger thrusts
to Felicite. Strange stubbornness of the bird which would not talk when
people watched him!
Nevertheless, he sought society; for on Sunday, when the ladies
Rochefeuille, Monsieur de Houppeville and the new habitues, Onfroy, the
chemist, Monsieur Varin and Captain Mathieu, dropped in for their game
of cards, he struck the window-panes with his wings and made such a
racket that it was impossible to talk.
Bourais’ face must have appeared very funny to Loulou. As soon as he
saw him he would begin to roar. His voice re-echoed in the yard, and
the neighbours would come to the windows and begin to laugh, too; and
in order that the parrot might not see him, Monsieur Bourais edged along
the wall, pushed his hat over his eyes to hide his profile, and entered
by the garden door, and the looks he gave the bird lacked affection.
Loulou, having thrust his head into the butcher-boy’s basket, received
a slap, and from that time he always tried to nip his enemy. Fabu
threatened to ring his neck, although he was not cruelly inclined,
notwithstanding his big whiskers and tattooings. On the contrary, he
rather liked the bird, and, out of devilry, tried to teach him oaths.
Felicite, whom his manner alarmed, put Loulou in the kitchen, took off
his chain and let him walk all over the house.
When he went downstairs, he rested his beak on the steps, lifted his
right foot and then his left one; but his mistress feared that such
feats would give him vertigo. He became ill and was unable to eat. There
was a small growth under his tongue like those chickens are sometimes
afflicted with. Felicite pulled it off with her nails and cured him.
One day, Paul was imprudent enough to blow the smoke of his 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 mahogany pedestal, 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 could take them in at one
glance.
They associated in her mind, the parrot becoming sanctified through the
neighbourhood of the Holy Ghost, and the latter becoming more lifelike
in her eyes, and more comprehensible. In all probability the Father had
never chosen as messenger a dove, as the latter has no voice, but rather
one of Loulou’s ancestors. And Felicite said her prayers in front of the
coloured picture, though from time to time she turned slightly towards
the bird.
She desired very much to enter in the ranks of the “Daughters of the
Virgin.” But Madame Aubain dissuaded her from it.
A most important event occurred: Paul’s marriage.
After being first a notary’s clerk, then in business, then in the
customs, and a tax collector, and having even applied for a position
in the administration of woods and forests, he had at last, when he
was thirty-six years old, by a divine inspiration, found his vocation:
registrature! and he displayed such a high ability that an inspector had
offered him his daughter and his influence.
Paul, who had become quite settled, brought his bride to visit his
mother.
But she looked down upon the customs of Pont-l’Eveque, put on airs, and
hurt Felicite’s feelings. Madame Aubain felt relieved when she left.
The following week they learned of Monsieur Bourais’ death in an inn.
There were rumours of suicide, which were confirmed; doubts concerning
his integrity arose. Madame Aubain looked over her accounts and soon
discovered his numerous embezzlements; sales of wood which had been
concealed from her, false receipts, etc. Furthermore, he had an
illegitimate child, and entertained a friendship for “a person in
Dozule.”
These base actions affected her very much. In March, 1853, she developed
a pain in her chest; her tongue looked as if it were coated with smoke,
and the leeches they applied did not relieve her oppression; and on the
ninth evening she died, being just seventy-two years old.
People thought that she was younger, because her hair, which she wore in
bands framing her pale face, was brown. Few friends regretted her loss,
for her manner was so haughty that she did not attract them. Felicite
mourned for her as servants seldom mourn for their masters. The fact
that Madame should die before herself perplexed her mind and seemed
contrary to the order of things, and absolutely monstrous and
inadmissible. Ten days later (the time to journey from Besancon), the
heirs arrived. Her daughter-in-law ransacked the drawers, kept some of
the furniture, and sold the rest; then they went back to their own home.
Madame’s armchair, foot-warmer, work-table, the eight chairs, everything
was gone! The places occupied by the pictures formed yellow squares on
the walls. They had taken the two little beds, and the wardrobe had been
emptied of Virginia’s belongings! Felicite went upstairs, overcome with
grief.
The following day a sign was posted on the door; the chemist screamed in
her ear that the house was for sale.
For a moment she tottered, and had to sit down.
What hurt her most was to give up her room,--so nice for poor Loulou!
She looked at him in despair and implored the Holy Ghost, and it was
this way that she contracted the idolatrous habit of saying her prayers
kneeling in front of the bird. Sometimes the sun fell through the window
on his glass eye, and lighted a spark in it which sent Felicite into
ecstasy.
Her mistress had left her an income of three hundred and eighty francs.
The garden supplied her with vegetables. As for clothes, she had enough
to last her till the end of her days, and she economised on the light by
going to bed at dusk.
She rarely went out, in order to avoid passing in front of the
second-hand dealer’s shop where there was some of the old furniture.
Since her fainting spell, she dragged her leg, and as her strength was
failing rapidly, old Mother Simon, who had lost her money in the grocery
business, came very morning to chop the wood and pump the water.
Her eyesight grew dim. She did not open the shutters after that. Many
years passed. But the house did not sell or rent. Fearing that she would
be put out, Felicite did not ask for repairs. The laths of the roof were
rotting away, and during one whole winter her bolster was wet. After
Easter she spit blood.
Then Mother Simon went for a doctor. Felicite wished to know what her
complaint was. But, being too deaf to hear, she caught only one word:
“Pneumonia.” She was familiar with it and gently answered:--“Ah! like
Madame,” thinking it quite natural that she should follow her mistress.
The time for the altars in the street drew near.
The first one was always erected at the foot of the hill, the second
in front of the post-office, and the third in the middle of the street.
This position occasioned some rivalry among the women and they finally
decided upon Madame Aubain’s yard.
Felicite’s fever grew worse. She was sorry that she could not do
anything for the altar. If she could, at least, have contributed
something towards it! Then she thought of the parrot. Her neighbours
objected that it would not be proper. But the cure gave his consent
and she was so grateful for it that she begged him to accept after her
death, her only treasure, Loulou. From Tuesday until Saturday, the day
before the event, she coughed more frequently. In the evening her face
was contracted, her lips stuck to her gums and she began to vomit; and
on the following day, she felt so low that she called for a priest.
Three neighbours surrounded her when the dominie administered the
Extreme Unction. Afterwards she said that she wished to speak to Fabu.
He arrived in his Sunday clothes, very ill at ease among the funereal
surroundings.
“Forgive me,” she said, making an effort to extend her arm, “I believed
it was you who killed him!”
What did such accusations mean? Suspect a man like him of murder! And
Fabu became excited and was about to make trouble.
“Don’t you see she is not in her right mind?”
From time to time Felicite spoke to shadows. The women left her and
Mother Simon sat down to breakfast.
A little later, she took Loulou and holding him up to Felicite:
“Say good-bye to him, now!” she commanded.
Although he was not a corpse, he was eaten up by worms; one of his wings
was broken and the wadding was coming out of his body. But Felicite was
blind now, and she took him and laid him against her cheek. Then Mother
Simon removed him in order to set him on the altar.