It was the first time that this had ever happened,
for Madame Aubain was not of an expansive nature.
Felicite was as grateful for it as if it had been
some favour, and thenceforth loved her with animal-like
devotion and a religious veneration.
Her kind-heartedness developed. When she heard
the drums of a marching regiment passing through the
street, she would stand in the doorway with a jug
of cider and give the soldiers a drink. She nursed
cholera victims. She protected Polish refugees,
and one of them even declared that he wished to marry
her. But they quarrelled, for one morning when
she returned from the Angelus she found him in the
kitchen coolly eating a dish which he had prepared
for himself during her absence.
After the Polish refugees, came Colmiche, an old man
who was credited with having committed frightful misdeeds
in ’93. He lived near the river in the
ruins of a pig-sty. The urchins peeped at him
through the cracks in the walls and threw stones that
fell on his miserable bed, where he lay gasping with
catarrh, with long hair, inflamed eyelids, and a tumour
as big as his head on one arm.
She got him some linen, tried to clean his hovel and
dreamed of installing him in the bake-house without
his being in Madame’s way. When the cancer
broke, she dressed it every day; sometimes she brought
him some cake and placed him in the sun on a bundle
of hay; and the poor old creature, trembling and drooling,
would thank her in his broken voice, and put out his
hands whenever she left him. Finally he died;
and she had a mass said for the repose of his soul.
That day a great joy came to her: at dinner-time,
Madame de Larsonniere’s servant called with
the parrot, the cage, and the perch and chain and
lock. A note from the baroness told Madame Aubain
that as her husband had been promoted to a prefecture,
they were leaving that night, and she begged her to
accept the bird as a remembrance and a token of her
esteem.
Since a long time the parrot had been on Felicite’s
mind, because he came from America, which reminded
her of Victor, and she had approached the negro on
the subject.
Once even, she had said:
“How glad Madame would be to have him!”
The man had repeated this remark to his mistress who,
not being able to keep the bird, took this means of
getting rid of it.
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!
