Still lower down than the chaffinch, and in a very small and wretched cage, peopled pell-mell with half-a-dozen birds of very different sizes, I was shown a prisoner which I had not distinguished, a young nightingale caught that very morning. The fowler, by a skilful Machiavelism, had placed the little captive in a world of very joyous slaves, quite accustomed to their confinement. These were young troglodytes, recently born in a cage; he had rightly calculated that the sight of the sports of innocent infancy sometimes beguiles great grief.
Great evidently, nay, overpowering, was his, and more impressive than any of those sorrows which we express by tears. A dumb agony, pent up within himself, and longing for the darkness. He had withdrawn into the shade as far as might be, to the bottom of the cage, half hidden in a small eating-trough, making himself large and swollen with his slightly-bristling feathers, closing his eyes, never opening them even when he was disturbed, shaken by the frolicsome and careless pastimes of the young turbulents, which frequently drove one another against him. Plainly he would neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor console himself. These self-imposed shadows were, as I clearly saw, an effort, in his cruel suffering, not to be, an intentional suicide. With his mind he embraced death, and died, so far as he was able, by the suspension of his senses and of all external activity.
Observe that, in this attitude, there was no indication of malicious, bitter, or choleric feeling, nothing to remind one of his neighbour, the morose chaffinch, with his attitude of violent and torturing exertion. Even the indiscretion of the young birdlings which, without care or respect, occasionally threw themselves upon him, could call forth no mark of impatience. He said, obviously: "What matters it to one who is no more?" Although his eyes were closed, I did not the less easily read him. I perceived an artist's soul, all tenderness and all light, without rancour and without harshness against the barbarity of the world and the ferocity of fate. And it was through this that he lived, through this that he could not die, because he found within himself, in his great sorrow, the all-powerful cordial inherent in his nature: internal light, song. In the language of nightingales, these two words convey the same meaning.
I comprehended that he did not die, because even then, despite himself, despite his keen desire of death, he could not do otherwise than sing. His heart chanted a voiceless strain, which I heard perfectly well:—
"Lascia che io pianga!
La Libertà."
Liberty!-Suffer me to weep!
I had not expected to find here once more that song which, in the old time, and by another mouth (a mouth which shall never again be opened), had already pierced my heart, and left a wound which no time shall efface.
I demanded of his custodian if he were for sale. The shrewd fellow replied that he was too young to be sold, that as yet he did not eat alone; a statement evidently untrue, for he was not that year's bird; but the man wished to keep him for disposal in the winter, when, his voice returning, he would fetch a higher price.
Such a nightingale, born in freedom, which alone is the true nightingale, bears a very different value to one born in a cage: he sings quite differently, having known liberty and nature, and regretting both. The better part of the great artist's genius is suffering.
Artist! I have said the word, and I will not unsay it. This is not an analogy, a comparison of things having a resemblance: no, it is the thing itself.