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