most a son, a lover.
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 h