What gives them confidence for such enterprises? Some may trust to their arms, the weakest to their numbers, and abandon themselves to fate. The stock-dove says: "Out of ten or a hundred thousand the assassin cannot slay more than ten, and doubtlessly I shall not be one of the victims." They seize their opportunity; the flying cloud passes at night; if the moon rise, against her silver radiance the black wings stand out clear and distinct; they escape, confused, in her pale lustre. The valiant lark, the national bird of our ancient Gaul and of the invincible hope, also trusts to his numbers; he sets out in the day-time, or rather, he wanders from province to province; decimated, hunted, he does not the less give utterance to his song.
But the lonely bird, which has neither the support of numbers nor of strength, what will become of him? What wilt thou do, poor solitary nightingale, which, like others of thy race, must confront this great adventure, but without assistance, without comrades? Thou, what art thou, friend? A voice! The very power which is in thee will be thy betrayal. In thy sombre attire, thou might well pass unseen by blending with the tints of the discoloured woods of autumn. But see now! The leaf is still purple; it wears not the dull dead brown of the later months.
Ah, why dost thou not remain? why not imitate the timorousness of those birds which in such myriads fly no further than Provence? There, sheltered behind a rock, thou shalt find, I assure thee, an Asiatic or African winter. The gorge of Ollioules is worth all the valleys of Syria.
"No; I must depart. Others may tarry; for they have only to gain the East. But me, my cradle summons me: I must see again that glowing heaven, those luminous and sumptuous ruins where my ancestors lived and sang; I must plant my foot once more on my earliest love, the rose of Asia; I must bathe myself in the sunshine. There is the mystery of life, there quickens the flame in which my song shall be renewed; my voice, my muse is the light."
Thus, then, he takes wing; but I think his heart must throb as he draws near the Alps, when their snowy peaks announce his approach to the terror-haunted gate on whose rocks are posted the cruel children of day and night, the vulture, the eagle—all the hooked and talon-armed robbers, athirst for the warm blood of life—the accursed species which inspire the senseless poetry of man—some, noble murderers, which bleed quickly and drain the flowing tide; others, ignoble murderers, which choke and destroy;—in a word, all the hideous forms of murder and death.
I imagine to myself, then, that the poor little musician whose voice is silenced—not his ingegno, nor his delicate thought—having no friend to consult, will halt to consider well before entering upon the long ambush of the pass of Savoy. He pauses at the threshold, on a friendly roof, well known to myself, or in the hallowed groves of the Charmettes,[23] deliberates and says: "If I pass during the day, they will all be there; they know the season; the eagle will pounce upon me; I die. If I pass by night, the great horn-owl (duc), the common owl (hibou), the entire host of horrible phantoms, with eyes enlarged in the darkness, will seize me, and carry me off to their young. Alas! what shall I do? I must endeavour to avoid both night and day. At the gloomy hour of dawn, when the cold, raw air chills in his eyrie the great fierce beast, which knows not how to build a nest, I may fly unperceived. And even if he see me, I shall be leagues away before he can put into motion the cumbrous machinery of his frozen wings."
The calculation is judicious, but nevertheless a score of accidents may disturb it. Starting at midnight, he may encounter in the face, during his long flight across Savoy, the east wind, which engulfs and delays him, neutralizes his exertions, and fetters his pinions. Heavens! it is morning now. Those sombre giants, already clothed in October in their snowy mantles, reveal upon their vast expanse of glittering white a black spot, which moves with terrible rapidity. How gloomy are they already, these mountains, and of what evil augury, draped in the long folds of their winter shrouds! Motionless as are their peaks, they create beneath them and around them an everlasting agitation of violent and antagonistic currents, which struggle with one another so furiously that at times they compel the bird to tarry. "If I fly in the lower air, the torrents which hurl through the shadows with their clanging floods, will snare me in their whirling vapours. And if I mount to the cold and lofty realms, which kindle with a light of their own, I give myself up to death; the frost will seize and slacken my wings."
An effort has saved him. With head bent low, he plunges, he falls into Italy. At Susa or towards Turin he builds a nest, and strengthens his pinions. He recovers himself in the depth of the gigantic Lombard corbeille, that great nursery of fruits and flowers where Virgil listened to his song. The land has in nowise changed; now, as then, the Italian, an exile from his home, the sad cultivator of another's fields,[24] the durus arator, pursues the nightingale. The useful insect-devourer is proscribed as an eater of grain. Let him cross then, if he can, the Adriatic, from isle to isle, despite the winged corsairs, which keep watch on the very rocks; he will arrive perhaps in the land ever consecrated to birds—in genial, hospitable, bountiful Egypt—where all are spared, nourished, blessed, and kindly welcomed.
Still happier land, if in its blind hospitality it did not also shelter the murderer. The nightingale and dove are gladly entertained, it is true, but no less so the eagle. On the terraces of sultans, on the balconies of minarets, ah, poor traveller, I see those flashing dreadful eyes which dart their gaze this way. And I see that they have already marked thee!