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leeches could not calm the oppression, and on the ninth evening she died at exactly the age of seventy-two.

Félicité wept for her as masters are not wept. That Madame should die before her, troubled her mind and seemed contrary to the order of things,—inadmissible and monstrous.

Ten days later (the time to come from Besançon) the heirs arrived. The daughter-in-law searched the drawers, chose some furniture, and sold the remainder. Then they returned to the registry office.

Madame's arm-chair, her centre-table, her foot-stove, the eight chairs, were gone. The places where the engravings had hung showed in yellow squares on the walls. They had carried off the two beds with their mattresses, and none of Virginie's belongings remained in the cupboard! Félicité climbed up-stairs, drunk with grief.

The next day there was a sign on the door, and the apothecary cried in her ear that the house was for sale.

She tottered and had to sit down.

What troubled her most was the thought of leaving her room, so convenient for poor Loulou. Covering him with an anguished look, she implored the Holy Ghost, and fell into the idolatrous habit of kneeling before the parrot while she said her prayers. Sometimes the sun, coming in at the dormer window, fell on his glass eye, and it sparkled with a luminous ray which threw her into ecstasy.

Her mistress had left her an income of three hundred and eighty francs. The garden supplied her with vegetables. As to clothes, she had enough for the rest of her life, and she economized lights by going to bed with the dark.

In order to avoid the broker's shop, where some of Madame's old furniture was displayed, she scarcely ever went out. After her dizzy turn she dragged one leg, and as her strength grew less, Mother Simonne, who was bankrupt in her little grocery, came every morning to cut wood and draw water.

Her eyes grew weaker. She no longer opened the blinds. Thus many years passed, and the house was neither rented nor sold. In the fear that she might be sent away, Félicité never asked for any repairs. The shingles were rotting on the roof. All one winter her bolster was wet. After Easter she spit blood. Then Mother Simonne brought a doctor. Félicité wanted to know what she had. But in her deafness only one word came

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"Ah! like Madame," finding it natural to follow her mistress. The time for the street altars was drawing near.

One was always placed on the shore, a second before the postoffice, the third near the middle of the street. There were rivalries as to the position of this last, and finally the parishioners selected the court of Madame Aubain.

Félicité mourned that

The fever and oppression increased. she could not do anything for the altar. If she only had something to put on it! Then she thought of the parrot. The neighbors objected that it was not fitting. But the priest gave her permission, and this made her so happy that she begged him to accept Loulou, her one treasure, after her death.

From Tuesday to Saturday, the eve of Corpus Christi, she coughed oftener. That evening her face was drawn, her lips stuck to her gums, she vomited; and the next day, feeling herself very low, she summoned a priest.

Three kind women were with her when she received extreme unction.

Then she declared that she must speak to Fabu.

He came in his Sunday clothes, ill at ease in this mournful atmosphere.

"Forgive me," she said, trying to hold out her arm. "I thought you killed him."

What did she mean by such nonsense? To suspect a man like him of murder!-and he grew angry and was going to storm. "She has lost her mind, that's plain enough."

From time to time Félicité talked to visions. The good women went away. Mother Simonne breakfasted.

A little later she took Loulou and carried him to Félicité. "Come, say good-by to him!"

He was no longer a body: the worms were eating him; one of his wings was broken, the tow was bursting out of his breast. But blind now, she kissed his head and held him against her cheek. Then Mother Simonne took him back to the altar.

The odor of summer came from the pastures; flies were buzzing. The sun made the river sparkle and warmed the slates. Mother Simonne, who had returned, was calmly sleeping. The church bells woke her. Félicité's delirium left her. As she thought about the procession, she saw it as clearly as if she had followed it.

All the school-children, the choristers, and the firemen were walking on the sidewalks, while in the middle of the street the Swiss with his halberd came first, then the beadle with a great cross, the schoolmaster watching the boys, the nun anxious about her little girls; three of the prettiest looking like angels with their curled hair, throwing rose-leaves in the air; the deacon with outstretched arms leading the music; and two censerswingers turning toward the Holy Sacrament at every step, as four vestrymen carried it along under a red velvet canopy; then the priest in his fine chasuble. A crowd of people pressed on behind between the white eloths hung along the houses, and thus they reached the shore.

Félicité's temples were damp with a cold sweat. Mother Simonne wiped it off with a linen cloth, telling herself that some day she too must go through this.

The murmur of the crowd grew plainer, was very strong for

a moment, and then began to die away.

A discharge of guns shook the windows.

were saluting the Host.

lowest possible tone:

The postilions

Félicité rolled her eyes and said in the

"Is he all right?"-troubled about the parrot.

Her final agony began. A death-rattle shook her more and more. There were bubbles of foam in the corners of her mouth, and her whole body trembled.

Soon they could hear the music again, the clear voices of the children and the deep voices of men. At intervals all were quiet, and the sound of footsteps, deadened by the flowers, seemed like cattle on the turf.

The clergy entered the court, and Mother Simonne climbed on a chair, so that she could look down upon the altar from the little round window.

Green wreaths were hung on the altar, which was adorned with English lace. In the middle was a little box containing relics; two orange-trees stood in the corners; and along the front were ranged silver candlesticks and china vases with sunflowers, lilies, peonies, foxgloves, and bunches of hydrangea. This mass of sparkling color sloped down from the highest stage to the carpet, and was prolonged on the pavement; and there were curiosities to attract the attention. A bird in silver-gilt had a crown of violets; pendants of Alençon gems sparkled from the moss; two Chinese screens displayed their landscapes. Loulou,

hidden behind the roses, showed only his blue crest like a bit of lapis lazuli.

The vestrymen, the choristers, and the children 'ranged themselves along three sides of the court. The priest slowly mounted the steps and set upon the lace his large golden sun, which sparkled as he did so. All knelt down. There was a solemn silence. And the censers, swinging freely, slipped up and down their slender chains.

A blue vapor mounted to Félicité's room. She breathed it in with a mystical sensuality, and then closed her eyelids. Her lips were smiling. Her heart beat more and more slowly, more gently and uncertainly like a spring which is growing exhausted, like an echo which is sinking away; and as she breathed for the last time, she seemed to see in the opening heavens a gigantic parrot hovering above her head.

IT

SALAMMBO PREPARES FOR HER JOURNEY

From Salammbô›

T WAS the season when the doves of Carthage migrated to the mountain of Eryx in Sicily, there nesting about the temple of Venus. Previous to their departure, during many days, they sought each other, and cooed to reunite themselves; finally one evening they flew, driven by the wind, and this large white cloud glided in the heaven, very high above the sea.

The horizon was crimson. They seemed gradually to descend to the waves, then disappear as though swallowed up, and falling of their own accord into the jaws of the sun. Salammbô, who watched them disappear, lowered her head. Taanach, believing that she surmised her mistress's grief, tenderly said:

"But mistress, they will return."

"Yes, I know it."

"And you will see them again."

"Perhaps!" Salammbô said, as she sighed.

She had not confided to any one her resolution, and for its discreet accomplishment she sent Taanach to purchase in the suburbs of Kinisdo (instead of requiring them of the stewards) all the articles it was necessary she should have: vermilion, aromatics, a linen girdle, and new garments. The old slave was

amazed by these preparations, without daring to ask any questions; and so the day arrived, fixed by Schahabarim, when Salammbô must depart.

Toward the twelfth hour she perceived at the end of the sycamores an old blind man, whose hand rested on the shoulder of a child who walked before him, and in the other hand he held against his hip a species of cithara made of black wood.

The eunuchs, the slaves, the women, had been scrupulously sent away; no one could possibly know the mystery that was being prepared.

Taanach lighted in the corners of the room four tripods full of strobus and cardamom; then she spread out great Babylonian tapestries and hung them on cords all round the room,- for Salammbô did not wish to be seen even by the walls. The player of the kinnor waited crouching behind the door, and the young boy, standing up, applied his lips to a reed flute. In the distance the street clamor faded, the violet shadows lengthened before the peristyles of the temples, and on the other side. of the gulf the base of the mountain, the olive-fields, and the waste yellow ground indefinitely undulated till finally lost in a bluish vapor; not a single sound could be heard, and an indescribable oppression pervaded the air.

Salammbô crouched on the onyx step on the edge of the porphyry basin; she lifted her wide sleeves and fastened them behind her shoulders, and began her ablutions in a methodical manner, according to the sacred rites.

Next Taanach brought to her an alabaster phial containing something liquid, yet coagulated; it was the blood of a black dog, strangled by barren women on a winter's night in the ruins of a sepulchre. She rubbed it on her ears, her heels, and the thumb of her right hand; and even the nail remained tinged a trifle red, as if she had crushed a berry.

The moon rose; then, both at once, the cithara and the flute commenced to play. Salammbô took off her earrings, laid aside her necklace, bracelets, and her long white simarra; unknotted the fillet from her hair, and for some minutes shook her tresses gently over her shoulders to refresh and disentangle them. The music outside continued; there were always the same three notes, precipitous and furious; the strings grated, the flute was high-sounding and sonorous. Taanach marked the cadence by striking her hands; Salammbô, swaying her entire body, chanted

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