and 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 bolt 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 washbasin, 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