"And, friends, would you rather have insects in the hay? You call the birds thieves, but they guard your farms. They drive the enemy from your cornfields and from your harvests.
"Even the blackest of them, the crow, does good. He crushes the beetle and wages war on the slug and the snail.
"And, what is more, how can I teach your children gentleness and mercy when you contradict the very thing I teach?"
But the farmers only shook their heads and laughed. "What does the teacher know of such things?" they asked. And they passed a law to have the birds killed.
So the dreadful war on birds began. They fell down dead, with bloodstains on their breasts. Some fluttered, wounded, away from the sight of man, while the young died of starvation in the nests.
II
The summer came, and all the birds were dead. The days were like hot coals. In the orchards hundreds of caterpillars fed. In the fields and gardens hundreds of insects of every kind crawled, finding no foe to check them. At last the whole land was like a desert.
From the trees caterpillars dropped down upon the women's bonnets, and they screamed and ran. At every door, the women gathered and talked.
"What will become of us?" asked one. "The men were wrong,—something must be done."