C‘était mon meilleur ami!
Here we see a Cardinal in full crimson regalia sobbing into a handkerchief, staring mournfully at an empty birdcage. The title, 'He was my best friend!', reveals the punchline: this high-ranking church official is grieving his pet bird. Brunery, a master of 19th-century academic genre painting, often used these scenes to gently mock the eccentricities and loneliness of the upper class, contrasting their immense wealth with very human, sometimes silly, emotions.