at a time! Good heavens, what
a thought! I wish we could manage to start him now. Does he begin it
often?"

"Monsieur," the Frenchman answered, "when I came here first, though
Methuselah was already very old and feeble, he was not quite a dotard,
and he used to recite it all every morning regularly. That was the hour,
I suppose, at which the master, who first taught him this lengthy
recitation, used originally to impress it upon him. In those days his
sight and his memory were far more clear than now. But by degrees, since
my arrival, he has grown dull and stupid. The natives tell me that fifty
years ago, while he was already old, he was still bright and lively, and
would recite the whole poem whenever anybody presented him with his
greatest dainty, the claw of a moora-crab. Nowadays, however, when he can
hardly eat, and hardly mumble, he is much less persistent and less
coherent than formerly. To say the truth, I have discouraged him in his
efforts, because his pertinacity annoyed me. So now he seldom gets
through all his lesson at one bout, as he used to do at the beginning.
The best way to get him on is for me to sing him one of my French songs.
That seems to excite him, or to rouse him to rivalry. Then he will put
his head on one side, listen critically for a while, smile a superior
smile, and finally begin--jabber, jabber, jabber--trying to talk me down,
as if I were a brother parrot."

"Oh, do sing now!" Muriel cried, with intense persuasion in her voice.
"I do so want to hear it." She meant, of course, the parrot's story.

But the Frenchman bowed, and laid his hand on his heart. "Ah,
mademoiselle," he said, "your wish is almost a royal command. And yet, do
you know, it is so long since I have sung, except to please myself--my
music is so rusty, old pieces you have heard--I have no accompaniment,
no score--_mais enfin_, we are all so far from Paris!"

Muriel didn't dare to undeceive him as to her meaning, lest he should
refuse to sing in real earnest, and the chance of learning the parrot's
secret might slip by them irretrievably. "Oh, monsieur," she cried,
fitting herself to his humor at once, and speaking as ceremoniously as if
she were assisting at a musical party in the Avenue Victor Hugo, "don't
decline, I beg of you, on those accounts. We are both most anxious to
hear your song. Don't disappoint us, pray. Please begin immediately."

"Ah, mademoiselle," the Frenchman said, "who could resist such an appeal