roses, showed nothing but his blue head which looked like a piece
of lapis-lazuli.

The singers, the canopy-bearers and the children lined up against
the sides of the yard. Slowly the priest ascended the steps and
placed his shining sun on the lace cloth. Everybody knelt. There
was deep silence; and the censers slipping on their chains were
swung high in the air. A blue vapour rose in Félicité's room. She
opened her nostrils and inhaled it with a mystic sensuousness;
then she closed her lids. Her lips smiled. The beats of her heart
grew fainter and fainter, and vaguer, like a fountain giving out,
like an echo dying away;--and when she exhaled her last breath,
she thought she saw in the half-opened heavens a gigantic parrot
hovering above her head.