"'An owl! an owl! Gracious, how ugly he is! What a queer sort of a dilettante! Just look at his solemn face and his great beak! and his great round eyes! and is feathers! He's too hideous—what a fright! There's a connoisseur for you! Ugh! the brute!
"'Let's peck him,' said the gentle nightingale.
"'Yes, yes, hurrah! let's peck him well!' assented the thrush.
"And then they all crowded round me—nightingales, woodpeckers, linnets, thrushes, blackbirds, tomtits, even to the turtle doves and wood pigeons themselves. I felt the strokes of twenty beaks fall upon me. It was like a quarry. 'Alas!' thought I, 'can such cruelty be allied to such genius?' And I struggled wildly, stupefied, panting, powerless amid the furious rattle. At last I succeeded in disengaging myself [{268}] and flew away in desperation to hide from my persecutors. Now at last I knew what evil was, and I asked myself, with odd simplicity, you will say, if it was not the contrary of good. It was true, then, as I had heard so often, that there were wicked beings in the world! Could it be true? And while such thoughts whirled confusedly through my unlucky brain, I flew to confess my defeat to my old friend.
"'Oh, well!' said he, 'I don't blame you; you yielded to an impulse of youthful confidence and learned a valuable lesson. Do you suppose that I don't see as well as you that spring is fair and this forest beautiful, and the linnet's song enchanting, and that everything bids us be happy? I know it all very well, and yet I stay all alone in my hole while everything outside is singing and rejoicing. You would not believe my words, perhaps you will believe your own experience. You thought there was no wickedness in the world, only innocence and virtue? Well, your ignorance came from a kind heart, and, after all you are happier in being good than your enemies in being victorious.'
"'But—just heaven! why did nature make these wretches so beautiful? or rather, why did she make such beautiful creatures so wicked? Why is not the perverseness of their hearts to be read on their faces?'
"'Ah, my son, that is a vexed question that many persons have agitated before now, and that no one has succeeded in solving. Why has nature made the good ridiculous and the wicked handsome? The best way is to resign ourselves to what we cannot understand.'
"'And then,' said I, 'they said I was ugly enough to scare anybody. But that cannot be true, for I look like my brothers, and my brothers—"
"'No, my son,' answered the hermit, smiling sadly, 'no, you are not ugly; nothing on earth is ugly excepting cruelty and vice. The beautiful goldfinch, with his ash-colored throat and yellow wings, was ugly to-day, and the linnet too, and all the pretty little birds who tormented you so. Yes, they are hideously ugly; their hearts are black as night, lovely though the plumage may be that covers them.
"'Then am I condemned to close my heart to love forever? Must I live alone because there is wickedness around us?'