“Why yes, on All Saints’ Day. In November every year it leaves us to go and warm up the stars.”
“And how do we get him back again?”
“We send three little birds to fetch him.”
“Oh, do tell me!”
There she is trotting along the road, all warmly snuggled in a jacket of soft white wool, looking like a little robin in her red hood. She doesn’t mind the cold, not she! but her fat cheeks are like rosy apples, and her little nose runs.
“Ah, this little candle needs the snuffers, is that because of Candlemas? and the lights in Heaven?”
“Oh, Grandfather, do tell about the three little birds.”
“Three little birds set off on a journey, three bold companions; the Wren, the Red-Breast, and their friend the Lark; Wren, brisk as quicksilver and proud as Artaban, soon spied a bright spark floating in the air. He snapped at it, crying, ‘I have it! I, I, I!’ The others joined in the same cry, but as Wren flew down he screamed, ‘Fire! I am burning!’ He rolled the hot morsel from one corner of his beak to the other, and at last his tongue was peeling, and he could bear no more, so he spit it out and hid it under his little wings. Did you ever notice the red spots, and his frizzled feathers?—Red-Breast rushed to help him. He seized the spark of fire and put it carefully on his soft waistcoat, but the fine waistcoat got red and redder and poor Red-Breast screamed, ‘Enough—my clothes are burning.’ Then came the Lark, the brave little friend, catching the spark which was flying off to Heaven, and quick, prompt, and swift as an arrow she fell to the earth; then with her little beak she buried the bright spark of sunshine in the frozen ground, and, oh, how glad it was to feel it!” My story came to an end, and it was Glodie’s turn to tell one; then when we got outside the town, I took her on my back as we climbed the hill. The sky is gray and the snow creaks under our wooden shoes; the delicate little skeletons of the trees and bushes are all wadded with white, and the smoke mounts up straight from the cottage chimneys slow and blue. There is no sound but the chirp of my little frog,—but here we are at the top. Below at our feet lies my town, wrapped about by the lazy Yonne and the trifling Beuvron, like silver ribbons, covered with snow, frozen, chilled and shivering, yet somehow it warms my heart only to look at the place.
City of bright reflections and rolling hills, the soft lines of tilled slopes surround you like the twisted straw of a nest. The undulations of five or six ranges of wooded mountains in the distance are faintly blue like the sea, but it is not the perfidious element which overthrew Ulysses and his fleet. Here are no storms, no ambuscades; all is calm, save that here and there a breath seems to swell the breast of a hill. From the crest of one wave to the other, the roads run deliberately straight, leaving, as it were, a wake behind them, and beyond the edge of the waters, far away the spires of St. Marie Madeleine of Vézelay rise like masts. Close by, in a bend of the Yonne, you can see the rocks of Basseville sticking up through the underbrush like boars’ tusks, and in the center of the circle of hills the town, carelessly adorned, leans over the water with her gardens, her buildings, her rags, and her jewels. Here is filth; but here also is the harmony of her long limbs, and her head crowned with the pierced tower. You see the snail admires his shell. The chimes of the church float up from the valley and their pure voices spread like a crystal flood through the thin clear air. As I stand happily drinking in the music, suddenly a ray of sunshine breaks through the gray mantle which hides the sky, and Glodie claps her hands, crying:
“Grandad, I hear him—the lark, the lark!” Her dear little fresh voice made me laugh as I kissed her and said: