"He has shut up at last! that's very lucky!" said Roncherolle to himself, stretching himself out in his reclining chair. "Parbleu! I seem to have a new neighbor as to whom I must felicitate the master of this house. If that had gone on, I couldn't possibly have stood it. The man must be an idiot to try to teach the parrot such stuff.--I shall meet him soon enough." And Roncherolle yawned, closed his eyes, and was dozing again when suddenly the noise began anew beside him. "Dutaillis is lovely! Come now! Dutaillis is lovely!" "Good-day, Monsieur Brillant!" "You beast!--Applaud, clap Zizi!" "Zi--Zi--Zan--Zan--Monsieur Brillant. You make me sick!" "And so do you me, you beast!" "Par la mordieu! and you're a beast yourself!" cried Roncherolle, sitting up in his chair and grasping his cane again and hammering on the partition and on the floor. "Ah! you have the effrontery to keep on with your parrot lessons! Dare to begin again, and I will twist your pupil's neck, and throw his master out of the window! What a house! What service they have! Here I've been pounding and ringing for an hour, and no one comes! I say there! waiter! chambermaid!" Again Saint-Arthur and his parrot held their peace. But the little dandy also jerked all the bell-cords that he could find in the three rooms of which his apartment consisted. At that jangling of bells, the waiter and the chambermaid hastened up to their tenants on the third floor. The chambermaid no longer entered Roncherolle's room, because he had several times told her to go and wash herself, and then to go to the scrubber's. The waiter, who was called the "young man," and who had worked in the house for more than twenty years, was probably quite fifty-five years old. He was a man of medium height, but endowed with a very coquettish _embonpoint_, and a prominent abdomen, which, however, did not prevent him from having a wrinkled face, and a small wig which did not come down to his ears, and which he was constantly occupied in jerking to the right or to the left. Having never worn any other costume than a pair of short trousers and a small round jacket, like the waiters at restaurants, Beauvinet--that was the "young man's" name--always wore a white apron, one half of which he turned up to conceal the other half, when it had ceased to be spotlessly clean. All in all, Beauvinet was more presentable than the chambermaid and it was he who answered Roncherolle's bell when he rang.