Part 17

The world of fishes is the world of silence. Men say, "Dumb as a fish."

The world of insects is the world of night. They are all light-shunners. Even those, which, like the bee, labour during the day-time, prefer the shades of obscurity.

The world of birds is the world of light--of song.

All of them live in the sun, fill themselves with it, or are inspired by it. Those of the South carry its reflected radiance on their wings; those of our colder climates in their songs; many of them follow it from land to land.

"See," says St. John, "how at morning time they hail the rising sun, and at evening faithfully congregate to watch it setting on our Scottish shores. Towards evening, the heath-cock, that he may see it longer, stands on tiptoe and balances himself on the branch of the tallest willow."

Light, love, and song, have for them but one meaning. If you would have the captive nightingale sing when it is not the season of his loves, cover up his cage, then suddenly let in the light upon him, and he recovers his voice. The unfortunate chaffinch, blinded by barbarous hands, sings with a despairing and sickly animation, creating for himself the light of harmony with his voice, becoming a sun unto himself in his internal fire.

I would willingly believe that this is the chief inspiration of the bird's song in our gloomy climates, where the sun appears only in vivid flashes. In comparison with those brilliant zones where he never quits the horizon, our countries, veiled in mist and cloud, but glowing at intervals, have exactly the effect of the cage, first covered, and then exposed, of the imprisoned nightingale. They provoke the strain, and, like light, awaken bursts of harmony.

Even the bird's flight is influenced by it. Flight depends on the eye quite as much as on the wing. Among species gifted with a keen and delicate vision, like the falcon, which from the loftiest heights of heaven can espy the worm in a thicket--like the swallow, which from a distance of one thousand feet can perceive a gnat--flight is sure, daring, and charming to look at in its infallible certainty. Far otherwise is it with the myopes, the short-sighted, as you may see by their gait; they fly with caution, grope about, and are afraid of falling.

The eye and the wing--sight and flight--that exalted degree of puissance which enables you incessantly to embrace in a glance, and to overleap, immense landscapes, vast countries, kingdoms--which permits you to see in complete detail, and not to contract, as in a geographical chart, so grand a variety of objects--to possess and to discern, almost as if you were the equal of God;--oh, what a source of boundless enjoyment! what a strange and mysterious happiness, scarcely conceivable by man!

Observe, too, these perceptions are so strong and so vivid that they grave themselves on the memory, and to such a degree that even an inferior animal like a pigeon retraces and recognizes every little accident in a road which he has only traversed once. How, then, will it be with the sage stork, the shrewd crow, the intelligent swallow?

Let us confess this superiority. Let us regard without envy those blisses of vision which may, perhaps, one day be ours in a happier existence. This felicity of seeing so much--of seeing so far--of seeing so clearly--of piercing the infinite with the eye and the wing, almost at the same moment,--to what does it belong? To that life which is our distant ideal. A life in the fulness of light, and without shadow!

Already the bird's existence is, as it were, a foretaste of it. It would here prove to him a divine source of knowledge, if, in its sublime freedom, it were not burdened by the two fatalities which chain our globe to a condition of barbarism, and render futile all our aspirations.

First, the fatal need of the stomach, which shackles all of us, but which especially persecutes that living flame, that devouring fire, the bird, which is forced incessantly to renew itself, to seek, to wander, to forget, condemned, without hope of relief, to the barren mobility of its too changeful impressions.

The other fatal necessity is that of night, of slumber, hours of shadow and ambush, when his wing is broken or captured, or, while defenceless, he loses the power of flight, strength, and light.

When we speak of light, we mean safety for all creatures.

It is the guarantee of life for man and the animal; it is, as it were, the serene, calm, and reassuring smile, the privilege of Nature. It puts an end to the sombre terrors which pursue us in the shadows, to the not unfounded fears, and to the torment also of cruel dreams--to the troublous thoughts which agitate and overthrow the soul.

In the security of civil association which has existed for so long a period, man can scarcely comprehend the agonies of savage life during these hours that Nature leaves it defenceless, when her terrible impartiality opens the way to death no less legitimate than life. In vain you reproach her. She tells the bird that the owl also has a right to live. She replies to man: "I must feed my lions."

Read in books of travels the panic of unfortunate castaways lost in the solitudes of Africa, of the miserable fugitive slave who only escapes the barbarity of man to fall into the hands of a barbarous nature. What tortures, as soon as at sunset the lion's ill-omened scouts, the wolves and jackals, begin to prowl, accompanying him at a distance, preceding him to scent his prey, or following him like ghouls! They whine in your ears: "To-morrow we shall seek thy bones!" But, O horror! see here, at but two paces distant! He sees you, watches you, sends a deep roar from the cavernous recesses of his throat of brass, sums up his living prey, exacts and lays claim to it! The horse cannot be held still; he trembles, a cold sweat pours over him, he plunges to and fro. His rider, crouching between the watch-fires, if he succeeds in kindling any, with difficulty preserves sufficient strength to feed the rampart of light which is his only safeguard.

Night is equally terrible for the birds, even in our climates, where it would seem less dangerous. What monsters it conceals, what frightful chances for the bird lurk in its obscurity! Its nocturnal foes have this characteristic in common--their approach is noiseless. The screech-owl flies with a silent wing, as if wrapped in tow (comme étoupée de ouate). The weasel insinuates its long body into the nest without disturbing a leaf. The eager polecat, athirst for the warm life-blood, is so rapid, that in a moment it bleeds both parents and progeny, and slaughters a whole family.

It seems that the bird, when it has little ones, enjoys a second sight for these dangers. It has to protect a family far more feeble and more helpless than that of the quadruped, whose young can walk as soon as born. But how protect them? It can do nothing but remain at its post and die; it cannot fly away, for its love has broken its wings. All night the narrow entry of the nest is guarded by the father, who sinks with fatigue, and opposes danger with feeble beak and shaking head. What will this avail if the enormous jaw of the serpent suddenly appears, or the horrible eye of the bird of death, immeasurably enlarged by fear?

Anxious for its young, it has little care for itself. In its season of solitude Nature spares it the tortures of prevision. Sad and dejected rather than alarmed, it is silent, it sinks down and hides its little head under its wings, and even its neck disappears among the plumes. This position of complete self-abandonment, of confidence, which it had held in the egg--in the happy maternal prison, where its security was so perfect--it resumes every evening in the midst of perils and without protection.

Heavy for all creatures is the gloom of evening, and even for the protected. The Dutch painters have seized and expressed this truth very forcibly in reference to the beasts grazing at liberty in the meadows. The horse of his own accord draws near his companion, and rests his head upon him. The cow, followed by her calf, returns to the fence, and would fain find her way to the byre. For these animals have a stable, a lodging, a shelter against nocturnal snares. The bird has but a leaf for its roof!

How great, then, its happiness in the morning, when terrors vanish, when the shadows fade away, when the smallest coppice brightens and grows clear! What chattering on the edge of every nest, what lively conversations! It is, as it were, a mutual felicitation at seeing one another again, at being still alive! Then the songs commence. From the furrow the lark mounts aloft, with a loud hymn, and bears to heaven's gate the joy of earth.

As with the bird, so with man. Every line in the ancient Vedas of India is a hymn to the light, the guardian of life--to the sun which every day, by unveiling the world, creates it anew and preserves it. We revive, we breathe again, we traverse our dwelling-places, we regain our families, we count over our herds. Nothing has perished, and life is complete. No tiger has surprised us. No horde of beasts of prey have invaded us. The black serpent has not profited by our slumbers. Blessed be thou, O sun, who givest us yet another day!

All animals, says the Hindu, and especially the wisest, the elephant, the Brahmin of creation, salute the sun, and praise it gratefully at dawn; they sing to it from their own hearts a hymn of thankfulness.

But a single creature utters it, pronounces it for all of us, sings it. Who? One of the weak--which fears most keenly the night, and hails with eagerest joy the morning--which lives in and by the light--whose tender, infinitely sensitive, extended, penetrating vision, discerns all its accidents--and which is most intimately associated with the decline, the eclipses, and the resurrection of light.

The bird for all nature chants the morning hymn and the benediction of the day. He is her priest and her augur, her divine and innocent voice.

STORM AND WINTER.