Undoubtedly the swallow has seized upon our dwellings without ceremony; she lodges under our windows, under our eaves, in our chimneys. She does not hold us in the slightest fear.
It might have been said that she trusted to her unrivalled wing, had she not placed her nest and her children within our reach. The true reason why she has become the mistress of our house is, that she has taken possession not only of our house, but of our heart.
In the rural mansion where my father-in-law educated his children, he would hold his class during summer in a greenhouse in which the swallows rested without disturbing themselves about the movements of the family, quite unconstrained in their behaviour, wholly occupied with their brood, passing out at the windows and returning through the roof, chattering very loudly with one another, and still more loudly when the master would make a pretence of saying, as St. Francis said, "Sister swallows, can you not be silent?"
Theirs is the hearth. Where the mother has built her nest, the daughter and the grand-daughter build. They return there every year; their generations succeed to it more regularly than do our own. A family dies out or is dispersed, the mansion passes into other hands; but the swallow constantly returns to it, and maintains its right of occupation.
It is thus that our traveller has come to be accepted as a symbol of the permanency of home. She clings to it with such fidelity, that though the house may be repaired, or partially demolished, or long disturbed by masons, it is still retaken possession of, re-occupied by these faithful birds of persevering memory.
She is the bird of return. And if I bestow this title upon her, it is not alone on account of her annual return, but on account of her general conduct, and the direction of her flight, so varied, yet nevertheless circular, and always returning upon itself.
She incessantly wheels and veers, indefatigably hovers about the same area and the same locality, describing an infinity of graceful curves, which, however varied, are never far distant from one another. Is it to pursue her prey, the gnat which dances and floats in the air? Is it to exercise her power, her unwearying wing, without going too far from her nest? It matters not; this revolving flight, this incessantly returning movement, has always attracted our eyes and heart, throwing us into a reverie, into a world of thought.
We see her flight clearly, but never, or scarcely ever, her little black face. Who, then, art thou, thou who always concealest thyself, who never showest me aught but thy trenchant wings—scythes rapid as that of Time? But Time goes forward without pause; thou, thou always returnest. Thou drawest close to my side; it seems as if thou wouldst graze me, wouldst touch me?—So nearly dost thou caress me, that I feel in my face the wind, almost the whirr of thy wings. Is it a bird? Is it a spirit? Ah, if thou art a soul, tell me so frankly, and reveal to me the barrier which separates the living from the dead.
But let us not anticipate, nor let loose the waters of bitterness. Rather let us trace this bird in the people's thoughts, in the good old popular wisdom, close akin, undoubtedly, to the wisdom of Nature.