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.
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