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heart, and declaimed it well enough to have been her substitute in case of indisposition. Moreover, as she was rather polyglot in her flirtations, and received visitors from all parts of the world, the parrot spoke all languages, and would sometimes let out a lingua Franca of oaths enough to shock the sailors to whom “Vert-Vert” owed his profitable education. The company of this bird, which might be instructive and amusing for ten minutes, became a positive torture when prolonged. The neighbors had often complained; the actress insolently disregarded their complaints. Two or three other tenants of the house, respectable fathers of families, indignant at the scandalous state of morals into which they were initiated by the indiscretions of the parrot, had given warning to the landlord. But the actress had got on his weak side; whoever might go, she stayed.

The Englishman whose sitting-room Schaunard now entered, had suffered with patience for three months. One day he concealed his fury, which was ready to explode, under a full-dress suit, and sent in his card to Mademoiselle Dolores.

When she beheld him enter, arrayed almost as he would have been to present himself before Queen Victoria, she at first thought it must be Hoffmann, in his part of Lord Spleen; and wishing to be civil to a fellow-artist, she offered him some breakfast.

The Englishman understood French; he had learnt it in twenty-five lessons of a Spanish refugee. Accordingly he replied:

“I accept your invitation on condition of our eating this disagreeable bird,” and he pointed to the cage of the parrot, who, having already smelt an Englishman, saluted him by whistling “ God Save the King.”