Suddenly her back curved like a bow

which is bent, and with one strong elastic bound she alighted on the perch. The parrot, seeing his danger, remarked in a deep bass voice, as low and solemn as that of M. Joseph Prudhomme, "Hast thou breakfasted, Jacquot?"

This remark created in the mind of the cat an evident dismay. She took a sudden leap backward. A blast from a trumpet, a pile of plates crashing to the floor, a pistol shot close to the ear, could not have inspired more sudden and giddy terror in an animal of her race. All her ornithological ideas were in one fell moment overturned.

"And on what? On the roast beef of the king?" continued the parrot.

The face of the cat now said, as distinctly as words, "This is not a bird. It is a gentleman! He speaks!"