Part 28

When will they arrive thither? and how? God has reserved to himself these mysteries.

All that we know is this: that he summons them--them also--to mount higher and yet higher.

They are, without metaphor, the little children of Nature, the nurslings of Providence, aspiring towards the light in order to act and think; stumbling now, they by Degrees shall advance much further.

"O pauvre enfantelet! du fil de tes pensées L'échevelet n'est encore débrouillé."

Poor feeble child! not yet of thy thought's thread Is the entangled skein unravellèd.

Souls of children, in truth, but far gentler, more resigned, more patient than those of human children. See with what silent good humour most of them (like the horse) support blows, and wounds, and ill-treatment! They all know how to endure disease and suffer death. They retire apart, surround themselves with silence, and lie down in concealment; this gentle patience often supplies them with the most efficacious remedies. If not, they accept their destiny, and pass away as if they slept.

Can they love as deeply as we love? How shall we doubt it, when we see the most timid suddenly become heroic in defence of their young and their family? The devotedness of the man who braves death for his children you will see exemplified every day in the martin, which not only resists the eagle, but pursues him with heroical ardour.

Would you wish to observe two things wonderfully analogous? Watch on the one side the woman's delight at the first step of her infant, and on the other the swallow at the first flight of her little nursling.

You see in both the same anxiety, the same encouragements, examples, and counsels, the same pretended security and lurking fear, the trembling "Take courage, nothing is more easy;"--in truth, the two mothers are inwardly shivering.

The lessons are curious. The mother raises herself on her wings; the fledgling regards her intently, and also raises himself a little; then you see her hovering--he looks, he stirs his wings. All this goes well, for it takes place in the nest--the difficulty begins when he essays to quit it. She calls him, she shows him some little dainty tit-bit, she promises him a reward, she attempts to draw him forth with the bait of a fly.

Still the little one hesitates. And put yourself in his place. You have but to move a step in the nursery, between your nurse and your mother, where, if you fell, you would fall upon cushions. This bird of the church, which gives her first lesson in flying from the summit of the spire, can scarcely embolden her son, perhaps can scarcely embolden herself at the decisive moment. Both, I am sure of it, measure more than once with their glances the abyss beneath, and eye the ground. I, for one, declare to you, the spectacle is moving and sublime. It is an urgent need that he should trust his mother, that she should have confidence in the wing of the little one who is still a novice. From both does Heaven require an act of faith, of courage. A noble and a sublime starting-point! But he has trusted, he has made the leap, he will not fall. Trembling, he floats in air, supported by the paternal breath of heaven, by the reassuring voice of his mother. All is finished. Thenceforth he will fly regardless of the wind and the storm, strong in that first great trial wherein he flew in faith.

The swallow, as Sir Humphrey Davy observes, cheers the sense of sight as much as the nightingale does the sense of hearing. He is the glad prophet of the year, the harbinger of its brightest season, and lives a life of free enjoyment amongst the loveliest forms of nature.

There is something peculiarly beautiful in his rapid, steady, well-balanced flight,--

"Which, ere a double pulse can beat, Is here and there with motion fleet, As Ariel's wing could scarce exceed; And, full of vigour as of speed, Forestalls the dayspring's earliest gleam, Nor fails with evening's latest beam."

To all nations he is welcome, and by all the poets has been celebrated with fond eulogium.--Translator.]

THE NIGHTINGALE.

ART AND THE INFINITE.

The celebrated Pré-aux-Clercs, now known as the Marché Saint Germain, is, as everybody knows, on Sundays, the Bird Market of Paris. The place has more than one claim on our curiosity. It is a vast menagerie, frequently renewed--a shifting, strange museum of French ornithology.

On the other hand, such an auction of living beings, of captives many of whom feel their captivity, of slaves whom the auctioneer exposes, sells, and values more or less adroitly, indirectly reminds one, after all, of the markets of the East, the auctions of human slaves. The winged slaves, without understanding our languages, do not the less vividly express the thought of servitude; some, born in this condition, are resigned to it; others, sombre and silent, dream ever of freedom. Not a few appear to address themselves to you, seem desirous of arresting the passer-by's attention, and ask only for a good master. How often have we seen an intelligent goldfinch, an amiable robin, regarding us with a mournful gaze, but a gaze by no means doubtful in its meaning, for it said: "Buy me!"

One Sunday in summer we paid a visit to this mart, which we shall never forget. It was not well stocked, still less harmonious; the season of moulting and of silence had begun. We were not the less keenly attracted by and interested in the naïve attitude of a few individuals. Ordinarily their song and their plumage, the bird's two principal attributes, preoccupy us, and prevent us from observing their lively and original pantomime. One bird, the American mocking-bird, has a comedian's genius, distinguishing all his songs by a mimicry strictly appropriate to their character, and often very ironical. Our birds do not possess this singular art; but, without skill, and unknown to themselves, they express, by significant and frequently pathetic movements, the thoughts which traverse their brain.

On this particular day, the queen of the market was a black-capped warbler, an artist-bird of great value, set apart in the display from the other birds, like a peerless jewel. She fluttered, svelte and charming all in her was grace. Accustomed to captivity by a long training, she seemed to regret nothing, and could only communicate to the soul happy and gentle impressions. She was plainly a being of perfect geniality, and of such harmony of song and movement, that in seeing her move I thought I heard her sing.

Lower, very much lower, in a narrow cage, a bird somewhat larger in size, very inhumanly confined, gave me a curious and quite opposite impression. This was a chaffinch, and the first which I had seen blind. No spectacle could be more painful. The man who would purchase by such a deed of cruelty this victim's song, must have a nature alien to all harmony, a barbarous soul. His attitude of labour and torture rendered his song very painful to me. The worst of it is that it was human; it reminded one of the turns of the head and the ungracious motions of the shoulders which short-sighted persons, or men become blind, indulge in. Such is never the case with those born blind. With a violent but continual effort, grown habitual, the head inclined to the right, with empty eyes he sought the light. The neck was outstretched, to sink again between the shoulders, and swelled out to gain new strength--the neck short, the shoulders bent. This unhappy virtuoso, whose song, like himself, was dissembled and deformed, had been a mean image of the ugliness of the slave-artist, if not ennobled by that indomitable effort to pursue the light, seeking it always on high, and ever centering his song in the invisible sun which he had treasured up in his soul.

Moderately capable of profiting by instruction, this bird repeats, with a marvellous metallic timbre, the song of his native wood, and preserves the particular accent of the country in which he was born; there being as many dialects of chaffinches as there are different districts. He remains faithful to his own; he sings only his cradle-song, and that with an uniform rate, but with a wild passion and an extraordinary emulation. Set opposite a rival, he will repeat it eight hundred successive times; occasionally he dies of it. I am not astonished that the Belgians enthusiastically celebrate the combats of this hero of the national song, the chorister of their forest of Ardennes, decreeing prizes, crowns, even triumphal arches, to those acts of supreme devotion in which life is yielded for victory.

Still lower down than the chaffinch, and in a very small and wretched cage, peopled pell-mell with half-a-dozen birds of very different sizes, I was shown a prisoner which I had not distinguished, a young nightingale caught that very morning. The fowler, by a skilful Machiavelism, had placed the little captive in a world of very joyous slaves, quite accustomed to their confinement. These were young troglodytes, recently born in a cage; he had rightly calculated that the sight of the sports of innocent infancy sometimes beguiles great grief.

Great evidently, nay, overpowering, was his, and more impressive than any of those sorrows which we express by tears. A dumb agony, pent up within himself, and longing for the darkness. He had withdrawn into the shade as far as might be, to the bottom of the cage, half hidden in a small eating-trough, making himself large and swollen with his slightly-bristling feathers, closing his eyes, never opening them even when he was disturbed, shaken by the frolicsome and careless pastimes of the young turbulents, which frequently drove one another against him. Plainly he would neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor console himself. These self-imposed shadows were, as I clearly saw, an effort, in his cruel suffering, not to be, an intentional suicide. With his mind he embraced death, and died, so far as he was able, by the suspension of his senses and of all external activity.

Observe that, in this attitude, there was no indication of malicious, bitter, or choleric feeling, nothing to remind one of his neighbour, the morose chaffinch, with his attitude of violent and torturing exertion. Even the indiscretion of the young birdlings which, without care or respect, occasionally threw themselves upon him, could call forth no mark of impatience. He said, obviously: "What matters it to one who is no more?" Although his eyes were closed, I did not the less easily read him. I perceived an artist's soul, all tenderness and all light, without rancour and without harshness against the barbarity of the world and the ferocity of fate. And it was through this that he lived, through this that he could not die, because he found within himself, in his great sorrow, the all-powerful cordial inherent in his nature: internal light, song. In the language of nightingales, these two words convey the same meaning.

I comprehended that he did not die, because even then, despite himself, despite his keen desire of death, he could not do otherwise than sing. His heart chanted a voiceless strain, which I heard perfectly well:--

"Lascia che io pianga! La Libertà."