There was a long silence, broken only by the sound of my oppressed breathing. At last the owl said, with a weary sigh:
"You wished to know my story. There it is, and you are welcome to the lessons it may give you. In the mean time I can only say that I pity you—pity your innocence, your candor, and your destiny."
And I replied, "You are right. I know life now, and its promises shall never delude me."
He smiled and repeated, "I pity you."
This history impressed me profoundly. I rehearsed the miserable details, and saw in his life my own. I was the credulous being who had trusted implicitly to life. The wretch who had sown kindness among his fellow men and reaped contempt, was again myself. Was I then to clamber the rocky path to the end only to see hope receding in the distance? Society became to me every day more unbearable; I avoided my companions with horror, and their railleries, which up to that time I had borne with indifference, seemed like so many poisoned arrows aimed at my heart. Intercourse with my old friend only increased my contempt for men and existence; yet in tins mute revolt against nature and humanity, I selected him as the sole confidant of my woes, and invariably left him with a heart more bitter and oppressed than before.
One day, toward sunset, I was wandering through the great arches of the forest, going as usual toward the retreat of my bosom friend. A serious silence was creeping slowly down from the tree-tops. The birds were still, the winds asleep; no sound or sign of life to be anywhere discerned, except the crushing of dried leaves beneath my tread. And as I went dreaming on amidst this solitude, I heard in spirit the melody of Nature dropping through the tender evening air, and I tried to give it words in this little song:
When Spring with loft maternal hand
Spreads all the earth with green,
And 'gainst the sun's too ardent gaze
Weaves many a leafy screen,
Build your neats, bright-plumed minstrels,
Forgetting not to praise
The bounty that so lavishly
Sheds gladness on your ways.
Think not, in missing old-time friends,
Some favorite bower or hedge,
That Nature has misused her power,
Or broken a sacred pledge:
This is Spring's immortality;
Youth must replace decay.
Grieve not that your turn too must come:
Less brief than bright your day!
Build your nests then, my chanters sweet:
Bloom flower, vine, and tree:
Let no discordant wail disturb
Spring's song of rapturous glee.
I reached the hermit's cell. He was not there as usual, crouched on the edge of his nest; and I called to him, thinking he had fallen asleep or wandered off, as he sometimes did, into a thicker gloom to meditate. No answer. I stood on tiptoe and looked uneasily into his retreat. There I saw in the confusing obscurity a greyish, motionless mass. I laid my hand upon it, and what was my horror to find my friend, my owl! I turned in upon him the last beams of the sun, hoping to rouse him. Alas! the light did not penetrate his eyeballs; the rays did not warm his frigid form. I lifted him up; the head dropped lifelessly, the wings were rigid, the shrivelled claws were cramped and clenched with the death struggle. He was dead! he suffered no longer.
I replaced him in his hole and stopped up its mouth with stones and turf, sweeping a great branch of ivy across this improvised tomb. When the wall crumbles, soft verdure will shield those poor remains. Oh! my dear, tired owl! I could only give thee a tomb; sleep well and peacefully therein! And so I turned away, thinking of my old friend and of his reverses, precepts, sufferings, and misanthropy.