Читать книгу Tales of To-day and Other Days - Various Authors - Страница 12

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Thereupon I flew away, still dissolved in tears, and the wind, which is to birds what chance is to men, landed me on a branch in Morfontaine wood. At that hour every one was a-bed. "What a marriage!" I said to myself, "what a catastrophe! That poor child certainly meant well in getting herself up in white, but for all that I am none the less to be pitied, and she is none the less mangy."

The nightingale was singing still. Alone in the silence of the night he was recreating himself with that gift of the Almighty that renders him so superior to the poet, and was pouring out, unhindered, his secrets upon the surrounding stillness. I could not resist the temptation of drawing near and speaking to him.

"What a lucky bird you are!" said I. "Not only ​can you sing as much as you wish—and very well you do it, too, and every one is pleased to listen to you—but you have a wife and children, your nest, your friends, a comfortable pillow of moss, the full moon, and never a newspaper to criticize you. Rubini and Rossini are nothing compared to you; you are the equal of the one and you interpret the other. I, too, sir, have been a singer, and my case is pitiable. While you have been here in the forest I have been marshaling words like Prussian soldiers in array of battle and dovetailing insipidities. May one know your secret?"

"Yes," replied the nightingale, "but it is not what you think. My wife is tiresome; I do not love her. I am in love with the rose: Saadi, the Persian, has mentioned the circumstance. All night long for her sake do I strain my throat in singing, but she sleeps and hears me not. Her petals are closed now and she has an old scarabee sheltered there——and to-morrow morning, when I seek my bed, worn out with fatigue and suffering, then, then she will open them to receive a bee who is consuming her heart!"