Haunted by this horrible doubt, I formed a plan for delivering myself from it. I made the purchase of a barometer, and waited eagerly for it to be a wet day. I meant to take my wife to the country, to choose a doubtful Sunday, and try the experiment of a drenching. But we were in the middle of July; it was frightfully fine weather.
The semblance of happiness and the habit of writing had stimulated my sensibility exceedingly. Artless as I was, it sometimes happened, when I was at work, that sentiment was stronger than thought, and I began to weep whilst waiting for a rhyme. My wife loved those rare occasions immensely: any masculine weakness charms feminine pride. One night when I was polishing an erasure, according to Boileau’s precept, it so happened that I opened my heart.
“O thou!” I said to my dear lady blackbird, “thou, my only and best beloved! Thou without whom my life is a dream, thou whose look, whose smile metamorphoses the universe for me, life of my heart, knowest thou how much I love thee? A little study and attention would easily enable me to find words to put into verse a commonplace idea, already worn threadbare by other poets; but where will I ever find them to express that with which thy beauty inspires me? Could the memory of my past pains, even, furnish me with a word to describe to thee my present happiness? Before thou camest to me, my isolation was that of an orphan in exile; to-day it is that of a king. In this feeble body, of which I have the form until death make of it a ruin, in this fevered little brain, where an unavailing thought ferments, dost thou know, my angel, dost thou comprehend, my fair one, that there can be nothing but what is thine? Hear what little my brain can express, and understand how much greater is my love! O that my genius were a pearl, and that thou wert Cleopatra!”
Whilst raving thus, I shed tears on my wife, and she changed colour visibly. At each tear that dropped from my eyes, appeared a feather, not even black, but of the most faded russet (I do believe she had already bleached herself elsewhere). After some minutes of tender outpouring, I found myself in presence of a bird stripped of paste and flour, exactly like the most common and everyday blackbirds.
What could I do or say? what measures could I take? Reproaches were useless. No doubt I was fully entitled to consider the matter redhibitory and have my marriage declared null; but how dare to publish my shame? Had I not misfortune enough already? I took my courage in my claws, I resolved to forsake the world, to abandon my literary career, to flee into a desert, if that were possible, to shun for ever the sight of a living creature, and to seek, like Alceste,
... some solitary place,
Where a white blackbird may be white in perfect peace!
IX
Thereupon I flew away, always weeping; and the wind, which is the Fate of birds, bore me to a branch in Morfontaine. This time they were all in bed.—” What a marriage!” I said to myself, “What a business! No doubt it was with a good intention that the poor child made herself white; but I am none the less to be pitied, and she is none the less russet.”
The nightingale was singing again. Alone, in the bosom of the night, he was enjoying whole-heartedly his divine gift, which makes him so superior to the poets, and was uttering his thought freely to the silence that surrounded him. I could not resist the temptation of going up to him and addressing him.
“How happy you are!” I said to him. “Not only do you sing as much as you wish, and very well, too, and all the world listens to you; but you have a wife and children, your nest, your friends, a good pillow of moss, full moon, and no newspapers. Rubini and Rossini are nothing compared to you: you are as good as the one, and you anticipate the other. I too have sung, sir, and it was pitiable. I have drawn up words in serried rows like so many Prussian soldiers, I have strung stale commonplaces together, while you were in the wood. Is your secret to be discovered?”