“Evil overtook him. On hearing of the death of her two brothers, Meleager’s mother loses her reason from grief. She draws from a cupboard, where she has kept it with the greatest care, a firebrand blackened at one end. With a hand trembling with anguish, she takes this firebrand, this precious firebrand for which hitherto she would have given her very eyes, life itself, and throws it into the fire, where it is straightway consumed. Ah, what has she done, the unhappy mother, what has she done! At that moment her son Meleager is dying, consumed by an inner fire; he is dying, he is dead, for the firebrand has just given its last flicker. In her despair the poor mother kills herself. [[85]]
“The connection between this firebrand that was reduced to ashes and Meleager’s end escapes you; I hasten to throw some light on this point. I will tell you then that at Meleager’s birth a firebrand suddenly sprang from beneath the ground and began to burn in the middle of the room, while a voice from the depths, like an infernal rumbling, said: ‘This child will live until the firebrand is consumed.’ ”
“Why, this is nothing but a fairy tale!” Jules exclaimed.
“Very true. History here gives place to fable. Now the firebrand was burning on the floor and threatened soon to be entirely consumed. They hastened to pick it up and extinguish it with water. From that time the mother preserved it with the greatest care, as the most precious thing she had, persuaded that her son would live to a great age, when, crazed with grief at the news of her brothers’ death, she threw it into the fire. As the subterranean voice had said, the moment the firebrand was consumed Meleager succumbed, devoured by an inner fire.”
“It’s a good story,” was Emile’s comment, “but I don’t at all see what it has to do with the guinea-fowl.”
“You will see in a minute,” his uncle reassured him. “Inconsolable at the death of their brother, Meleager’s sisters unceasingly shed tears that rolled like pearls over their mourning garments; night and day they filled the house with their distressing sobs. Heaven had pity on them and changed them into [[86]]birds until then unknown, into guinea-hens, whose plumage is still sprinkled with the tears of the unhappy girls, and whose unceasing cries are the continuation of their sobs. Such, according to the ancients, is the origin of guinea-fowls, called by them Meleagridæ in honor of the hero of the legend.
“The childish imagination of the ancients elaborated this story of the metamorphosis of Meleager’s sisters out of the two most prominent traits of the guinea-fowl, its plumage and its cry. On a background of bluish gray, the color of mourning, are sprinkled innumerable round white spots. Those are the tears, running in pearly drops over the bird as they ran over the somber garments of the inconsolable sisters. The guinea-fowl’s voice is a discordant, continuous, unendurable cry, in which the fable recognizes, unquestioningly, the painful sobs of Meleager’s sisters.”
“Those resemblances are ingenious,” said Louis, “but they do not take the place of real knowledge of the guinea-fowl’s origin. Not even in those old days could every one have believed in the singular tale you have just told us.”
“Many were satisfied with it and sought no further information. And even in our day, my friend, in this so-called enlightened century, is it so unusual that the more absurd a thing is the more easily it takes root in our minds? Many were satisfied with the story, but the wise knew well that the bird came to us from Africa, and for that reason called it the African fowl. [[87]]
“These old names are now out of use and are replaced by the word guinea-fowl, or pintade, which some, not without reason write peintade (painted). In fact, the white spots, spread over the bluish-gray ground of the plumage, are so round and so regularly distributed that one might say they were traced with a brush by a painter. The bird looks painted; hence its name.