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Updated: July 3, 2025
With his scarlet wings and emerald body, it was really the image of Loulou. Having bought the picture, she hung it near the one of the Comte d'Artois so that she could take them in at one glance. They associated in her mind, the parrot becoming sanctified through the neighbourhood of the Holy Ghost, and the latter becoming more lifelike in her eyes, and more comprehensible.
"That is too much," said Madame de Permont, shaking her head. "The toy for Loulou would have been quite enough. But this present to Cecilia shows that you took her jest in earnest, and were hurt by it."
In Fraulein Malvine's kind heart there lurked a vague feeling that she must come to Wilhelm's help, and overcoming her natural shyness, she said to him: "It must be very hard for you to tear yourself away under the circumstances." She was thinking of his attachment to Loulou, which in her innocence she quite envied.
Nevertheless, he sought society; for on Sunday, when the ladies Rochefeuille, Monsieur de Houppeville and the new habitues, Onfroy, the chemist, Monsieur Varin and Captain Mathieu, dropped in for their game of cards, he struck the window-panes with his wings and made such a racket that it was impossible to talk. Bourais' face must have appeared very funny to Loulou.
What people said was really nothing to him, and he considered himself free to act as his innermost judgment counseled. But might not Loulou herself believe that her father's money added something to her attractions? He recognized that this feeling indicated a weakness, a want of self-reliance, but the idea that she might be capable of such a thought made him angry. Her money did not attract him!
He stayed a few days longer at the Schloss hotel, and cherished the remembrance of his time there with Loulou, dreaming for hours in the dearly-loved spots. In this tender frame of mind he received another letter from Paul Haber, who wrote thus: "DEAREST WILHELM: Your letter of the 13th astonished me so much that it took me several days to recover.
To save Loulou he at last took the step which no respect for his own peace or honor had allowed him to take before. He went to the Ellrichs' house the next day at the usually early hour of eleven o'clock, and asking for the young lady, he was shown into the little blue boudoir, where he hoped to find Loulou alone. But he was painfully surprised.
They held conversations together, Loulou repeating the three phrases of his repertory over and over, Félicité replying by words that had no greater meaning, but in which she poured out her feelings. In her isolation, the parrot was almost a son, a lover.
His answers were short and rather compressed. The knowledge that they would be seen by her prosaic parents, and that Loulou herself would hardly trouble to read anything in the midst of her whirl of gayety, deprived him of words, stopped the flow of his feelings, and turned his expressions into mere Philistinisms.
In the hope that as a millionaire you will still be the same to me, I am your heartily congratulatory Wilhelm was painfully surprised. What a mercy that the letter had not come sooner. It might have influenced his manner so much as to spoil his relations with Loulou. Now that the Ellrichs were gone, it could for the moment do no harm. A brilliant company filled the Ellrichs' drawing-rooms.
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