XV
ABOUT NESTS
Children are always interested in nests—thrilled by the mystery of them, filled with admiring wonder at the cunning of the little feathered creature in concealing its brood from the enemy, whether it be man or hawk, crow or magpie. The impulse to appropriate any living thing (an instinct inherited from his carnivorous ancestors), indeed, a whole collection of irresistible impulses direct the murderous sporting instinct of the future lord of creation toward the delicate feathery structure. Sympathy is as yet non-existent in the child man, for he has never suffered. He is carried away by delight in the unknown, his eyes widen with wonder, his hands reach out, and at the first touch irretrievable harm is done.
But no sooner has the nest been torn from the branch, and no sooner are the little ones, hideous in their grotesque nudity, scattered on the ground, than he is filled with dismay, like the school boy with all the parts of his watch spread on the table before him. Having looked at everything, analyzed it, touched it, he could go his way with a light heart if only he were able to fit the pieces together again, and reconstruct a whole. But it is too late. Our first impulse is a death-dealing one. A sense of the uselessness of destruction is necessary to awaken pity in us for whatever has life. I have sometimes seen those very school boys who massacre birds for fun, go back, ashamed of the stupid wrong committed, and awkwardly try to put the nest in its place, with the little ones in it, then go away, looking over their shoulder to witness the gratitude due to them from the despairing family for their generous effort. On the following day the boys return to look, and find a graveyard.
Many birds forsake their progeny at the least break in the usual course of things. Unaccountable panic seizes them, abruptly quenching the overmastering love that before had governed the activities of the pair. If you merely touch a young pigeon, the parents will from that moment onward hear his clamour for food with indifference—they will let him starve, while the drama of rearing new young dimly takes shape in their mysterious minds. Other more courageous birds will fight to the end without yielding, they will fly into snares in the attempt to reach their brood, they will come daily to feed their young in the cage, and if a strange egg has been introduced into their nest, whether by the hand of man or the cunning of the cuckoo, they will make no difference between the bastard and their legitimate offspring.
I have witnessed some fierce battles, notably that of a pair of warblers against a magpie, who, undeterred by the stones I was throwing, managed in less than five minutes to remove from their nest into her own, as a treat for her young magpies, all the little warblers just full-fed with succulent insects. Whither turn for help against the rivalry of appetites organized by Providence? "The reason of the strongest is always the best," sadly observes the poet philosopher. A sorrowful avowal, that, which leaves us, for sole comfort, the hypothetical felicity of another world. But what could be more unjust than to exclude from a celestial paradise these secondary creatures, victims of our common fate, who in the beginning possessed the earthly paradise, and were driven from it in the company of our erring ancestors, without having followed their sinful example?
Until the order of things changes, all that the weak can do is to cry out their protest, their vain appeal to universal justice, which, deaf, insensible, and paralyzed, sits in mute contemplation of the disorder composing the order of the world.
Man, the supreme arbiter of the destinies of his inferiors, has arrogated all rights. The child who lets a bird flutter at the end of a string only to jerk it to the ground when the poor creature finally thought itself free, lives in his own person the evolution from the frank cruelty of the savage to the decent hypocrisies of civilized barbarism. Man is, indeed, the first one whom animals learn to guard against. Wherever there are no men, or few, birds are among the first to become fearless. I have seen nests built in wide recesses and fully exposed to view, amid the desert ruins of the citadel of Corinth.
Better still, I once knew—it is now more than fifty years ago—a wonderful garden, in part cultivated, in part allowed to follow the fancies of vegetation running wild, where two old people, of beloved memory, used to walk and take their last pleasures as life neared its close. A large, typically French garden, with symmetrical flower beds bordered with box. A long arbour formed a wall at the farther side, and had at each end a circular bower, bright in springtime with the rosy blaze of Judas trees. In the centre was a fountain covered by a high white dome upheld by three slender Ionic columns, delicately mottled with rose-coloured lichens. At the summit of the dome the sculptor had carved a vase of formal shape, from which sprang a sheaf of flowers that took from the mosses overgrowing it an appearance of life. Under the arch was a bird with spread wings, bearing the motto of the former masters of the domain, whose name you will find in Hozier: "Altiora contendimus omnes." The monument dated from the end of the 16th century. Its remains, scattered in "artistic ruins," now decorate an ornamental grove.