Evening lit up the sky with its gleaming tints of copper; little by little the chattering family groups fell silent, and the darkling trees assumed the look of long-drawn, solemn colonnades. Alas! it was not under this familiar aspect that night fell for our captive goldfinch. A dirty whitewashed wall, on which hung strangely shaped objects, replaced the sable curtain spangled with stars that twilight spreads over the countryside. A guttering, flaring candle smoked on the table, bearing how faint a resemblance to the silver moon! and by its sordid light the hard-hearted wretch who had robbed him of his liberty was moving to and fro.
Ah! what right had he, this miserable birdcatcher, this highway robber, to tear him from the free air, the hedgerows and the green fields? Tiny though he be, is the bird therefore of no import to the leaves, the winds, the trees, which without him would be voiceless? Has the blue sky no need of his outspread wings, his echoing song, the flutter of his plumage?
What use the pool glittering in the woodland, if he was not there to dip his beak in it and absorb in a drop of water the red of dawn, the gold of noon, the deep shadow of the quivering leaves? Is not a little bird the less a disaster in the forests and orchard-closes, a voice silenced in the symphony of nature, a furrow left barren in the fields of space, a bright point vanished from the azure sky? Is not the universe disturbed for the loss of a little creature wherein all nature is summed up and glorified?
The man blew out the taper, and a moonbeam shot in at the garret-window and fell on the poor captive.
It formed, as it were, a luminous rail on which his thoughts glided; and they always travelled in one direction—to his little fiancée, who at that moment, softly cradled by the night wind, was fast asleep and dreaming of the great to-morrow.
The moon paled and daylight appeared.
Yonder no doubt all was ready; the harebells were ringing their peal, the drones were organing their deep music, while the trembling bride, white as the lilies, was asking herself why her bridegroom did not come.
The cuckoo clanged out the hour of dawn. One and all were ready for the fête; only his arrival was waited for.
The hours slipped by without his appearing, and little by little the murmuring and muttering, low at first, grew louder and louder, and rose into a perfect tempest of cries and jeers and gibes. The chaffinches were jubilant, the parents disconsolate. And what of her, the poor, despairing bride? Her pretty innocent eyes could not bear the light of day; stricken to the heart by this unaccountable desertion, she was borne away fainting, half dead with shame and sorrow.