"Ah, that long journey! How I pressed on, how I fled from Amiens!"
"What, not Charleville yet?" I said. "Isn't it Charleville soon? What hurry was there then to get there?"
The stuffed bird eyed her from his unstirring branch, and that yellow eye seemed to answer: "None, none…"
"This is his home; his country. He told me it was beautiful. But I cannot see beauty. I am empty of happiness. Where is the beauty?"
And the vile bird, winking in the candle's light, replied: "Nowhere."
But he lied.
Perhaps she had been sent, stuffed as he was, from Paris. Perhaps he had never flown behind the town, and seen the wild mountains that began at the last house on the other bank of the river. Or the river itself, greener than any other which flowed over black rocks, in cold gulleys —the jade-green Meuse flowing to Dinant, to Namur. Perhaps from his interminable boulevard he had never seen the lovely Spanish Square of red and yellow, its steep-roofed houses standing upon arches—or the proud Duc Charles de Gonzague who strutted for ever upon his pedestal, his stone cape slipping from one shoulder, his gay Spaniard's hat upon his head—holding back a smile from his handsome lips, lest the town which he had come over the mountains to found should see him tolerant and sin beneath his gaze.
That bird knew the rain would stop—knew it in his dusty feathers, but he would not kindle hope. He knew there was a yellow spring at hand—but he left her to mourn for the white lustre of Chantilly. Vile bird!… She blew out the candle that he might wink no more.
"To-morrow I will buy a padlock and a key. If among these gilt mirrors I can have no other charm, I will have solitude!" And having hung a thought, a plan, a hope before her in the future, she slept till day broke—the second day in Charleville.
* * * * *