Crowded Out! and Other Sketches | Page 6

and the expansive shirt front is Giuseppe. Ah, he
sees me! Good evening, Giuseppe!"
"Good evening, Monsieur, good evening, good evening! De friend not
like de parrot, eh?"
The man was smiling at me with his hands crossed behind him. An
Italian Jew I dubbed him immediately.
"On the contrary, he admires it very much," said De Kock.
Following their eyes presently I saw the cage hanging from the centre
of the room, and in it a parrot as nearly pea-green in hue as it is
possible for a parrot to be.
"Tell my friend her name, Giuseppe," said De Kock, beginning on
some more asparagus.
Giuseppe stood in his patronizing way--quite the _grand seigneur_--
with the light falling on his solitaire, making it so brilliant that it
fascinated and at the same time fatigued my eyes.
"The name of my parrot? Monsieur De Kock, he know that well. It is

Félicité--you catch--Fé-li-ci-té. It was the name of my wife."
Then his wife was dead. De Kock must have made a mistake.
"It is an unusual name for a bird, is not it?" said I.
"Monsieur is right. Not often--not often--you meet with a bird that
name. My first wife--my first wife, gentlemen, she was English. You
are English--ah. Yes. So was she. The English are like this." Giuseppe
took a bottle out of the cruet-stand and set it on the table in front of him.
He went on, "When an Englishman an Englishwoman argue, they
say"--here he took the bottle up very slowly and gingerly and altered
his voice to a mincing and conventional tone--"Is it oil or is it vinegare?
Did you not say that it was vinegare? I thought that it was oil Oh! Now
I see that it is vinegare."
"Bravo!" exclaimed De Kock. "And so you did not get on with the
Englishwoman then I suppose, Giuseppe, and took Madame the next
time?" We were both laughing heartily at the man's mimicry when once
again the parrot shrieked. "But for goodness sake don't say I told you!"
Giuseppe walked off to speak to it and my friend and I were left alone.
"Was Félcité the name of his first or second wife!" I asked.
"Of his second, of course. Didn't you hear him say the first was an
Englishwoman? The second is a tall, rather good-looking pale
Frenchwoman. You may see her to-night, and on the other hand you
may not, she doesn't often appear in here. I wish she did, I am rather
fond of her myself, which is more than her husband is. It's pretty well
known that Mr. and Mrs. Joseph do not get on comfortably. In fact, he
hates her, or rather ignores her, while she doats upon him and is
tremendously jealous of the parrot"
"What, that green thing?"
"Well, its a lovely parrot, you must know, and the moment it came into
his possession--he has had it about three years--he seemed to transfer
whatever affection he had for his wife to that creature, with a great deal

beside. Why, he hugs it, and kisses it, and mows over it--look at him
now!"
Sure, enough, there was Martinetti with the bird on his finger, kissing it,
and otherwise making a fool of himself. He finished by actually putting
it away inside his coat in a kind of breast pocket, I should imagine.
"All this is good for business, perhaps," I said.
"What, the parrot and so on? Oh, yes I daresay, that has something to
do with it. Still they are a queer couple. I come here mostly on account
of this Chiante wine; you can't get it so good in many places in New
York, and besides I confess Monsieur and his wife interest me
somewhat. And the people one see here are immensely funny. That is
your English expression, isn't it? There are three actresses over there at
that table with _amis intimes_; they are 'restin' now, and can cut about
and dine out as much as they please. There is a French dressmaker who
lives on the floor above and is to be found here every day. She is
superbly built and is hopelessly ugly, isn't she? There is young Lord
Gurgoyle, an Englishman like yourself, you see--what the devil is he
staring at like that?"
From behind a _portière_ which fell across the end of the room came a
woman, tall, pale, and with a peculiar air of distinction about her.
Perhaps it was her very unusual pallor which so distinguished her for
there was nothing absolutely fine or handsome about the countenance.
It was a weak face I thought, with an ugly red mark over the upper lip,
and had she not been so very pale and so exceptionally well-dressed I
should not have looked at her