[CONCLUSION.]
At the very moment that I am about to pen the conclusion of this book, our illustrious master arrives from his great autumnal sport. Toussenel brings me a nightingale.
I had requested him to assist me with his advice, to guide me in choosing a singing nightingale. He does not write, but he comes; he does not advise, he looks about, finds, gives, realizes my dream. This, of a truth, is friendship.
Be welcome, bird, both for the sake of the cherished hand which brings thee, and for thy own, for thy hallowed muse, the genius which dwells within thee!
Wilt thou sing readily for me, and, by thy puissance of love and calm, shed harmony on a heart troubled by the cruel history of men?
It was an event in our family, and we established the poor artist-prisoner in a window-niche, but enveloped with a curtain; in such wise that, being both in solitude and yet in society, he might gradually accustom himself to his new hosts, reconnoitre the locality, and assure himself that he was under a safe, a peaceful, and benevolent roof.
No other bird lived in this saloon. Unfortunately, my familiar robin, which flies freely about my study, penetrated into the apartment. We had troubled ourselves the less about him, because he saw daily, without any emotion, canaries, bullfinches, nightingales; but the sight of the nightingale threw him into an incredible transport of fury. Passionate and intrepid, without heeding that the object of his hate was twice his own size, he pounced on the cage with bill and claws; he would fain have killed its inmate. The nightingale, however, uttered cries of alarm, and called for help with a hoarse and pitiful voice. The other, checked by the bars, but clinging with his claws to the frame of an adjacent picture, raged, hissed, crackled (the popular word petillait alone expresses his short, sharp cry), piercing him with his glances. He said, in effect:—
"King of song, what dost thou here? Is it not enough that in the woods thy imperious and absorbing voice should silence all our lays, hush our strains into whispers, and singly fill the desert? Yet thou comest hither to deprive me of the new existence which I have found for myself, of this artificial grove where I perch all the winter, a grove whose branches are the shelves of a library, whose leaves are books! Thou comest to share, to usurp the attention of which I was the object, the reverie of my master, and my mistress's smile! Woe to thee! I was loved!"
