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The following week they learned of the death of Monsieur Bourais, in Lower Brittany, in an inn. The rumour of suicide was confirmed: doubts rose about his honesty. Madame Aubain studied her accounts, and was not long in finding the whole list of his evil deeds; embezzlement of arrears, pretended sales of wood, false receipts, etc.

These acts of baseness afflicted her greatly. In March 1853 she was seized by a pain in the chest; her tongue seemed covered with smoke; leeches did not calm the fever; and on the eighth day she died, being exactly seventy-two years old.

She was considered younger, because of her brown hair, whose folds surrounded her pale face, marked with the smallpox. Few friends mourned her, her way of living had displayed a haughtiness which kept people at a distance.

Felicity wept for her, as masters are not wept for. That madame should die before her upset her ideas, seemed to her contrary to the order of things, inadmissible and monstrous.

Ten days after (the time to rush to Besançon) the heirs arrived; the daughter-in-law went through the drawers, chose the best of the furniture, sold the rest; then they went down to the Registry Office again.

Madame’s chair, her table, her footwarmer, the eight chairs were gone. The place of the engravings was marked by yellow squares on the walls. They had taken away the two little beds, with their mattresses, and in the cupboard none of Virginia’s belongings were seen any more. Felicity climbed the stairs, drunk with grief.

The next day there was a notice on the door: the apothecary shouted in her ear that the house was for sale.

She staggered and was obliged to sit down.

What distressed her most was leaving her room—so convenient for poor Loulou. Enveloping him with a look of anguish she implored the Holy Ghost, and contracted the idolatrous habit of saying her prayers on her knees before the parrot. Sometimes the sun, entering through the dormer window, fell on his glass eye, and caused it to shoot out a fine luminous beam, which put her in ecstasies.

She had an income of three hundred and eighty francs, a legacy from her mistress. The garden furnished her with vegetables. As to dresses, she possessed enough of them to clothe her to the end of her days, and she saved light by going to bed at dusk.

She hardly ever went out, so as to avoid the second-hand dealer’s shop, where was displayed some of the old furniture. Since her attack of dizziness she limped in one leg, and, her strength diminishing, Mother Simon, ruined in the grocery business, came every morning to cut her wood and to pump her water.

Her eyes grew weaker. The shutters were no longer opened. Many years passed. And the house was not let, nor sold.

In terror lest she should be sent away Felicity did not ask for any repairs. The laths of the roof were rotting. During the whole of one winter, her pillow was damp. After Easter she spat blood.

Then Mother Simon had recourse to a doctor. Felicity wanted to know what was the matter with her. But, too deaf to hear, a single word reached her, ‘Pneumonia!’ It was one she knew, and she replied quietly: ‘Ah, like madame’, finding it natural to follow her mistress.

The time for setting up the street altars drew near. The first was always at the foot of the hill, the second before the posthouse, the third about the middle of the road. There were rival factions about that one; and the parishioners finally chose Madame Aubain’s courtyard.

Her difficulty in breathing and fever grew worse. Felicity was wretched at doing nothing for the altar. If she had had something to put there at least! Then she thought of the parrot. It was not suitable, the neighbours objected. But the priest granted permission for it; she was so happy that she begged him to accept, when she should be dead, Loulou, her only treasure.