Oh, those men! those men! The old bird knew them.
He had grown up among men, and, what was more, among the aristocracy. He had passed his childhood and youth at the great house close to the town.
But now, whenever he passed over the house, he soared high into the air, so as not to be recognized. For when he saw a female figure down in the garden, he thought it was the young lady of the house, wearing powdered hair and a white head-dress; whereas it was in reality her daughter, with snow-white curls and a widow’s cap.
Had he enjoyed his life among the aristocracy? Oh, that’s as you please to look at it. There was plenty to eat and plenty to learn; but, after all, it was captivity. During the first years his left wing was clipped, and afterwards, as his old master used to say, he was upon parole d’honneur.
This parole he had broken one spring when a glossy-black young she-raven happened to fly over the garden.
Some time afterwards—a few winters had slipped away—he came back to the house. But some strange boys threw stones at him; the old master and the young lady were not at home.
“No doubt they are in town,” thought the old raven; and he came again some time later. But he met with just the same reception.
Then the gentlemenly old bird—for in the meantime he had grown old—felt hurt, and now he flew high over the house. He would have nothing more to do with men, and the old master and the young lady might look for him as long as they pleased. That they did so he never doubted.
And he forgot all that he had learned, both the difficult French words which the young lady taught him in the drawing-room, and the incomparably easier expletives which he had picked up on his own account in the servants’ hall.
Only two human sounds clung to his memory, the last relics of his vanished learning. When he was in a thoroughly good humor, he would often say, “Bonjour, madame!” But when he was angry, he shrieked, “Go to the devil!”