Tales of To-day and Other Days. Various Authors

for myself, I have never succeeded in finding one. When I was young it worried me exceedingly that I should be constantly hissed, but now I never think of it. I think that this opposition arises from the fact that the public read other works than ours: they seem to like to do so."

      "I am of your opinion; still, sir, you must admit that it is hard on a well-meaning creature that his audience should take to their heels the very moment ​that he is seized by a fine inspiration. Would you do me the favor to listen to me and tell me candidly what you think?"

      "With the greatest pleasure in the world," said Kacatogan; "I am all ears."

      I began to sing forthwith, and had the satisfaction of seeing that Kacatogan neither ran away nor went to sleep. He kept his eyes fixed intently on me and, every now and then, gave a little approving nod of the head accompanied by a low, flattering murmur. I soon perceived, however, that he was not listening at all and that his mind was on his poem. Taking advantage of a moment when I had stopped to breathe, he suddenly interrupted me.

      "Ah, that rhyme! I have found it at last!" he said, with a smile and a toss of the head; "that makes the sixty thousand seven hundred and fourteenth that has emanated from this brain! And yet people dare to say that I show the effects of age! I am going to read that to those good friends of mine; I am going to read it to them, and we'll see what they have to say!"

      So saying he took flight and disappeared, seemingly oblivious of the fact that he had ever met me.

V

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      Left thus solitary with my disappointment, there remained nothing better for me to do than profit by the daylight while it lasted and reach Paris in a single flight, if possible. Unfortunately I did not know the way; my journey with the carrier-dove had been attended with too much discomfort to leave a distinct impression on my memory, so that instead of ​keeping straight on I turned to the left at Bourget, and, the darkness descending suddenly upon me, I found myself obliged to look for a night's lodging in the woods of Morfontaine.

      When I reached there every one was making ready to retire for the night. The pies and jays, who, as is well known, are the worst sleepers on the face of the earth, were squabbling and wrangling on every side. The sparrows were squalling among the bushes, swarming and treading one another underfoot. On the bank of the stream two herons, the George Dandins of the locality, were stalking gravely to and fro, perched on their tall stilts, patiently waiting for their wives in an attitude of profound meditation. Huge crows, already more than half asleep, settled heavily upon the tops of the tallest trees and commenced to drone out their evening prayer. Below, the amorous tomtits were pursuing one another through the copses, while a disheveled woodpecker, marching in rear of his little household, endeavored to marshal it into the hollow of an old tree. Battalions of hedge-sparrows came in from the fields, whirling in the air like smoke-wreaths, and threw themselves upon a shrub which they quite concealed from sight; finches, blackcaps and redbreasts perched airily upon the projecting branches in little groups, like the crystal pendants on a girandole. From every side came the sound of voices that said as plainly as could be: "Come, wife!—Come, my daughter!—This way, pretty one!—Come here, darling!—Here I am, my dear!—Good-night, dear mistress!—Farewell, friends!—Sleep soundly, children!"

      Imagine what a predicament it was for a bachelor ​to have to take up his quarters in an inn like that! I thought that I would go to some birds of station similar to my own and request their hospitality. All birds are gray in the dark, I said to myself, and besides, what harm can it do people to have a young fellow sleeping beside them if he behaves himself?

      I first bent my steps toward a ditch where there was an assemblage of starlings. They were just making their toilet for the night and were devoting the most scrupulous attention to it, and I observed that most of them had their wings gilded and wore patent-leather claws: they were evidently the dandies of the forest. They were good enough fellows in their way and did not notice me, but their conversation was so shallow, they displayed such fatuousness in telling one another of their broils and their love affairs, and they crowded together so coarsely that I could not stand it.

      Next I went and perched upon a limb where half-a-dozen birds of different kinds were sitting in a row. I modestly took the last place, away out on the end of the limb, in the hope that they would suffer me to remain there. As my ill-luck would have it my neighbor was a dove well on in years, as withered and juiceless as a rusty weather-cock on a church steeple. At the moment of my approach she was devoting an affectionate solicitude to the scanty feathers that covered her old bones; she pretended to be smoothing them, but she was too much afraid that she might pull one out to do that: she was only counting them over to see if they were all there. I barely touched her with the tip of my wing when she drew herself up as majestically as you please.

      "What are you doing here, sir?" she cried, with a ​modesty that would not have disgraced the severest of British prudes, and giving me a great poke with her elbow she sent me tumbling from the branch with a vigor worthy of a railway baggageman.

      I fell into a brake where a big wood-hen was sleeping. My mother herself, in her porringer, never wore such a beatific air. She was so plump, so rotund and comfortable, with her well-filled stomach and her fluffy feathers, that one would have taken her for a pâté from which the crust had been eaten off. I crept furtively up to her. "She won't wake up," I said to myself, "and even if she does, such a jolly, fat old lady can't help but be good-natured." She did not turn out as I expected, however. She lazily opened her eyes half-way, and heaving a faint sigh, said:

      "You are crowding me, young fellow; clear out of here."

      At the same instant I heard my name called; it was a band of thrushes up in the top of a mountain-ash who were making signals to me to come to them. "There are some charitable souls, at last," thought I. They made room for me, laughing as if they were crazy, and I slipped into the midst of the feathered group as expeditiously as ever you saw a billet-doux disappear in a muff. It soon became evident to me, however, that the ladies had been partaking of the fruit of the vine more liberally than was good for them; it was as much as they could do to keep themselves from falling off their perches, and their equivocal pleasantries, their uproarious bursts of laughter and their indecent songs compelled me to leave their company.

      I was beginning to despair, and was about to search ​for some lonely corner where I might lay my head when a nightingale began to sing. Instantly silence reigned throughout the grove. Ah! how pure was her voice! Her very melancholy, how sweet did it appear! Far from disturbing the slumbers of others, her tuneful strains seemed to soothe them. No one thought of bidding her be silent, no one took it ill that she selected that hour for singing her song; her father did not beat her, her friends did not fly from her presence.

      "It is I alone, then," I cried, "to whom it is not given to be happy! Let us go, let us fly from this cruel world! Better is it to seek my way amid the shades of night and run the risk of making a meal for some wandering owl, than to linger here and have my heart lacerated by the spectacle of others' happiness!"

      Upon this reflection I started forth, and for a long time wandered without definite aim. The first light of breaking day revealed to me the towers of Notre Dame. Quick as a flash I reached them and from them scanned the horizon; it was long before I recognized our garden. I winged my way to it, swifter than the wind. Alas! it was empty. It was in vain that I called upon my parents: no one responded. The tree where my father had his seat, the bush, my mother's home, the beloved porringer, all had disappeared. The fatal ax had leveled all, and in place of the verdant alley where I was born there remained only a pile of firewood.

VI

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      The first thing that I did was to search through all the gardens of the neighborhood for my parents, but ​it was only labor lost; they had doubtless taken refuge in some distant quarter and I never heard of