"It's all right!" he said. "Don't cry! He is still in the house and we shall find him again."
And he gave a kiss to the little girl, who was already smiling through her tears:
"You'll be sure to catch him again, won't you?" she asked.
"Trust me," replied our friend, confidentially. "I now know where he is."
You also, my dear little readers, now know where the Blue Bird is. Dear Light revealed nothing to the woodcutter's Children, but she showed them the road to happiness by teaching them to be good and kind and generous.
Suppose that, at the beginning of this story, she had said to them:
"Go straight back home. The Blue Bird is there, in the humble cottage, in the wicker cage, with your dear father and mother who love you."
The Children would never have believed her:
"What!" Tyltyl would have answered. "The Blue Bird, my dove? Nonsense: my dove is grey!... Happiness, in the cottage? With Daddy and Mummy? Oh, I say! There are no toys at home and it's awfully boring there: we want to go ever so far and meet with tremendous adventures and have all sorts of fun...."
That is what he would have said; and he and Mytyl would have set out in spite of everything, without listening to Light's advice, for the most certain truths are good for nothing if we do not put them to the test ourselves. It only takes a moment to tell a child all the wisdom in the world, but our whole lives are not long enough to help us understand it, because our own experience is our only light.