“Why then!” I exclaimed, revolted at my father’s injustice, “if that is the case, sir, don’t let that stand in your way! I will take myself off from your presence, I will spare your eyes the sight of this unfortunate white tail by which you drag me about all day long. I will depart, sir, I will flee; plenty other children will console your old age, since my mother lays three times a year; I will go far from you to hide my misery, and perhaps,” I added sobbing, “perhaps I shall find, in some neighbour’s kitchen-garden, or on the gutters, some earth-worms or some spiders to maintain my sad existence.”
“As you will,” replied my father, far from being softened at this speech; “let me never see you again! You are not my son; you are not a blackbird.”
“And what am I then, sir, if you please?”
“I have no idea, but you are not a blackbird.”
After these crushing words, my father went off with slow steps. My mother rose sadly, and went limping to have her cry out in her bowl. As for me, confounded and overcome, I took my flight as best I could, and I went, as I had announced, to perch myself on the gutter of a neighbouring house.
II
My father had the inhumanity to leave me for several days in this mortifying situation. In spite of his violence, he had a good heart, and, from the stolen looks which he directed towards me, I saw well that he would have liked to pardon me and recall me; my mother especially looked up to me constantly with eyes full of fondness, and sometimes even ventured to call me with a little plaintive cry; but my horrible white plumage caused them, in spite of themselves, a repugnance and a terror for which, I saw well, there was no remedy whatever.
“I am not a blackbird!” I repeated; and, in fact, when preening myself in the morning and gazing at my reflection in the water of the gutter, I recognized only too clearly how little I resembled my family. “O Heaven!” I repeated again, “do tell me what I am!”
One night, when it was raining in torrents, I was about to go to sleep, worn out by hunger and vexation, when I saw a bird settle beside me, more drenched, more pallid, and more lean than I thought possible. He was about my colour, so far as I could judge in the rain which was deluging us, he had scarcely feathers enough on his body to clothe a sparrow, and he was bigger than myself. He seemed to me, at first sight, a poor and necessitous bird indeed; but, in spite of the storm which maltreated his almost clean-plucked brow, he preserved an air of pride which charmed me. I modestly made him a profound reverence, to which he responded with a peck of his bill, which all but threw me down off the gutter. Seeing that I scratched my ear and took myself off with compunction, without trying to answer him in his own language:
“Who are you?” he asked in a voice which was as hoarse as his skull was bald.