“That is the most delightful coquetting I have ever known,” said the ladies sitting round, and they took water into their mouths, in order to gurgle when anyone spoke to them, and they really thought they were like the Nightingale. Even the footmen and the chambermaids sent word that they, too, were satisfied, and that means a great deal, for these are the people whom it is most difficult to please. There was no doubt as to the Nightingale's success. It was sure to stay at Court, and have its own cage, with liberty to go out twice in the daytime, and once at night. Twelve servants went out with it, and each held a silk ribbon which was tied to the bird's leg, and they held it very tightly. There was not much pleasure in going out under those conditions. The whole town was talking of the wonderful bird, and when two people met, one said: “Nightin-” and the other said “gale,” and they sighed and understood one another. Eleven cheese-mongers' children were called after the bird, though none of them had a note in his voice. One day a large parcel came for the Emperor. Outside was written the word: “Nightingale.”
“Here we have a new book about our wonderful bird,” said the Emperor. But it was not a book; it was a little work of art which lay in a box—an artificial Nightingale, which was supposed to look like the real one, but it was set in diamonds, rubies and sapphires. As soon as you wound it up, it could sing one of the pieces which the real bird sang, and its tail moved up and down and glittered with silver and gold. Round its neck was a ribbon on which was written: “The Emperor of Japan's Nightingale is miserable compared with the Emperor of China's.”
“That is delightful,” they all said, and on the messenger who had brought the artificial bird they bestowed the title of “Imperial Nightingale-Bringer-in-Chief.”
“Let them sing together, and what a duet that will be!”
And so they had to sing, but the thing would not work, because the real Nightingale could only sing in its own way, and the artificial Nightingale could only play by clock-work.
“That is not its fault,” said the Band Master. “Time is its strong point, and it has quite my method.”
Then the artificial Nightingale had to sing alone. It had just as much success as the real bird, and then it was so much handsomer to look at: it glittered like bracelets and breast-pins. It sang the same tune three and thirty times, and it was still not tired: the people would willingly have listened to the whole performance over again from the start. But the Emperor suggested that the real Nightingale should sing for a while. But where was it? Nobody had noticed that it had flown out of the open window back to its green woods.
“But what is the meaning of all this?” said the Emperor. All the courtiers upbraided the Nightingale and said that it was a most ungrateful creature.
“We have the better of the two,” they said, and the artificial Nightingale had to sing again, and this was the thirty-fourth time they heard the same tune. But they did not know it properly even then, because it was so difficult, and the bandmaster praised the wonderful bird in the highest terms, and even asserted that it was superior to the real bird, not only as regarded the outside, with the many lovely diamonds, but also the inside as well.
“You see, ladies and gentlemen, and above all your Imperial Majesty, that with the real Nightingale, you can never predict what may happen, but with the artificial bird, everything is settled upon beforehand; so it remains and it cannot be changed. One can account for it. One can rip it open and show the human ingenuity, explaining how the cylinders lie, how they work, and how one thing is the result of another.”