Nothing can describe the peace that surrounded the country parsonage. The
parish was small, moderately honest, prosperous, and was used to the old
priest, who had ruled it for thirty years. The town ended at the
parsonage, and there began meadows which sloped down to the river and were
filled in summer with the perfume of flowers and all the music of the
earth. Behind the great house a kitchen-garden encroached on the meadow.
The first ray of the sun was for it, and so was the last. Here the
cherries ripened in May, and the currants often earlier, and a week before
Assumption, usually, you could not pass within a hundred feet without
breathing among the hedges the heavy odor of the melons.
But you must not think that the abbé of St. Philémon was a gourmand. He
had reached the age when appetite is only a memory. His shoulders were
bent, his face was wrinkled, he had two little gray eyes, one of which
could not see any longer, and he was so deaf in one ear that if you
happened to be on that side you just had to get round on the other.
Mercy, no! he did not eat all the fruits in his orchard. The boys got
their share--and a big share--but the biggest share, by all odds, was
eaten by the birds--the blackbirds, who lived there very comfortably all
the year, and sang in return the best they could; the orioles, pretty
birds of passage, who helped them in summer, and the sparrows, and the
warblers of every variety; and the tomtits, swarms of them, with feathers
as thick as your fingers, and they hung on the branches and pecked at a
grape or scratched a pear--veritable little beasts of prey, whose only
"thank you" was a shrill cry like a saw.
Even to them, old age had made the abbé of St. Philémon indulgent. "The
beasts cannot correct their faults," he used to say; "if I got angry at
them for not changing I'd have to get angry with a good many of my
parishioners!"
And he contented himself with clapping his hands together loud when he
went into his orchard, so he should not see too much stealing.
Then there was a spreading of wings, as if all the silly flowers cut off
by a great wind were flying away; gray, and white, and yellow, and
mottled, a short flight, a rustling of leaves, and then quiet for five
minutes. But what minutes! Fancy, if you can, that there was not one
factory in the village, not a weaver or a blacksmith, and that the noise
of men with their horses and cattle, spreading over the wide, distant
plains, melted into the whispering of the breeze and was lost. Mills were
unknown, the roads were little frequented, the railroads were very far
away. Indeed, if the ravagers of his garden had repented for long the abbé
would have fallen asleep of the silence over his breviary.
Fortunately, their return was prompt; a sparrow led the way, a jay
followed, and then the whole swarm was back at work. And the abbé could
walk up and down, close his book or open it, and murmur: "They'll not
leave me a berry this year!"
It made no difference; not a bird left his prey, any more than if the good
abbé had been a cone-shaped pear-tree, with thick leaves, balancing
himself on the gravel of the walk.
The birds know that those who complain take no action. Every year they
built their nests around the parsonage of St. Philémon in greater numbers
than anywhere else. The best places were quickly taken, the hollows in the
trees, the holes in the walls, the forks of the apple-trees and the elms,
and you could see a brown beak, like the point of a sword, sticking out of
a wisp of straw between all the rafters of the roof. One year, when all
the places were taken, I suppose, a tomtit, in her embarrassment, spied
the slit of the letter-box protected by its little roof, at the right of
the parsonage gate. She slipped in, was satisfied with the result of her
explorations, and brought the materials to build a nest. There was nothing
she neglected that would make it warm, neither the feathers, nor the
horsehair, nor the wool, nor even the scales of lichens that cover old
wood.
One morning the housekeeper came in perfectly furious, carrying a paper.
She had found it under the laurel bush, at the foot of the garden.
"Look, sir, a paper, and dirty, too! They are up to fine doings!"
"Who, Philomène?"
"Your miserable birds; all the birds that you let stay here! Pretty soon
they'll be building their nests in your soup-tureens!"
"I haven't but one."
"Haven't they got the idea of laying their eggs in your letter-box! I
opened it because the postman rang and that doesn't happen every day. It
was full of straw and horsehair and spiders' webs, with enough feathers to
make a quilt, and, in the midst of all that, a beast that I didn't see
hissed at me like a viper!"
The abbé of St. Philémon began to laugh like a grandfather when he hears
of a baby's pranks.
"That must be a tomtit," said he, "they are the only birds clever enough
to think of it. Be careful not to touch it, Philomène."
"No fear of that; it is not nice enough!"
The abbé went hastily through the garden, the house, the court planted
with asparagus, till he came to the wall which separated the parsonage
from the public road, and there he carefully opened the letter-box, in
which there would have been room enough for all the mail received in a
year by all the inhabitants of the village.
Sure enough, he was not mistaken. The shape of the nest, like a pine-cone,
its color and texture, and the lining, which showed through, made him
smile. He heard the hiss of the brooding bird inside and replied:
"Rest easy, little one, I know you. Twenty-one days to hatch your eggs and
three weeks to raise your family; that is what you want? You shall have
it. I'll take away the key."
He did take away the key, and when he had finished the morning's
duties--visits to his parishioners who were ill or in trouble;
instructions to a boy who was to pick him out some fruit at the village:
a climb up the steeple because a storm had loosened some stones, he
remembered the tomtit and began to be afraid she would be troubled by the
arrival of a letter while she was hatching her eggs.
The fear was almost groundless, because the people of St. Philémon did not
receive any more letters than they sent. The postman had little to do on
his rounds but to eat soup at one house, to have a drink at another and,
once in a long while, to leave a letter from some conscript, or a bill for
taxes at some distant farm. Nevertheless, since St. Robert's Day was near,
which, as you know, comes on the 29th of April, the abbé thought it wise
to write to the only three friends worthy of that name, whom death had
left him, a layman and two priests: "My friend, do not congratulate me on
my saint's day this year, if you please. It would inconvenience me to
receive a letter at this time. Later I shall explain, and you will
appreciate my reasons."
They thought that his eye was worse and did not write.
The abbé of St. Philémon was delighted. For three weeks he never entered
his gate one time without thinking of the eggs, speckled with pink, that
were lying in the letter-box, and when the twenty-first day came round he
bent down and listened with his ear close to the slit of the box. Then he
stood up beaming:
"I hear them chirp, Philomène; I hear them chirp. They owe their lives to
me, sure enough, and they'll not be the ones to regret it any more than
I."
He had in his bosom the heart of a child that had never grown old.
Now, at the same time, in the green room of the palace, at the chief town
of the department, the bishop was deliberating over the appointments to be
made with his regular councillors, his two grand vicars, the dean of the
chapter, the secretary-general of the palace, and the director of the
great academy. After he had appointed several vicars and priests he made
this suggestion:
"Gentlemen of the council, I have in mind a candidate suitable in all
respects for the parish of X------; but I think it would be well, at
least, to offer that charge and that honor to one of our oldest priests,
the abbé of St. Philémon. He will undoubtedly refuse it, and his modesty,
no less than his age, will be the cause; but we shall have shown, as far
as we could, our appreciation of his virtues."
The five councilors approved unanimously, and that very evening a letter
was sent from the palace, signed by the bishop, and which contained in a
postscript: "Answer at once, my dear abbé; or, better, come to see me,
because I must submit my appointments to the government within three
days."
The letter arrived at St. Philémon the very day the tomtits were hatched.
The postman had difficulty in slipping it into the slit of the box, but it
disappeared inside and lay touching the base of the nest, like a white
pavement at the bottom of the dark chamber.
The time came when the tiny points on the wings of the little tomtits
began to be covered with down. There were fourteen of them, and they
twittered and staggered on their little feet, with their beaks open up to
their eyes, never ceasing, from morning till night, to wait for food, eat
it, digest it, and demand more. That was the first period, when the baby
birds hadn't any sense. But in birds it doesn't last long. Very soon they
quarrelled in the nest, which began to break with the fluttering of their
wings, then they tumbled out of it and walked along the side of the box,
peeped through the slit at the big world outside, and at last they
ventured out.
The abbé of St. Philémon, with a neighboring priest, attended this
pleasant garden party. When the little ones appeared beneath the roof of
the box--two, three--together and took their flight, came back, started
again, like bees at the door of a hive, he said:
"Behold, a babyhood ended and a good work accomplished. They are hardy and
strong, every one."
The next day, during his hour of leisure after dinner, the abbé came to
the box with the key in his hand. "Tap, tap," he went. There was no
answer. "I thought so," said he. Then he opened the box and, mingled with
the débris of the nest, the letter fell into his hands.
"Good Heavens!" said he, recognizing the writing. "A letter from the
bishop; and in what a state! How long has it been here?"
His cheek grew pale as he read.
"Philomène, harness Robin quickly."
She came to see what was the matter before obeying.
"What have you there, sir?"
"The bishop has been waiting for me three weeks!"
"You've missed your chance," said the old woman.
The abbé was away until the next evening. When he came back he had a
peaceful air, but sometimes peace is not attained without effort and we
have to struggle to keep it. When he had helped to unharness Robin and had
given him some hay, had changed his cassock and unpacked his box, from
which he took a dozen little packages of things bought on his visit to the
city, it was the very time that the birds assembled in the branches to
tell each other about the day. There had been a shower and the drops still
fell from the leaves as they were shaken by these bohemian couples looking
for a good place to spend the night.
Recognizing their friend and master as he walked up and down the gravel
path, they came down, fluttered about him, making an unusually loud noise,
and the tomtits, the fourteen of the nest, whose feathers were still not
quite grown, essayed their first spirals about the pear-trees and their
first cries in the open air.
The abbé of St. Philémon watched them with a fatherly eye, but his
tenderness was sad, as we look at things that have cost us dear.
"Well, my little ones, without me you would not be here, and without you I
would be dead. I do not regret it at all, but don't insist. Your thanks
are too noisy."
He clapped his hands impatiently.
He had never been ambitious, that is very sure, and, even at that moment,
he told the truth. Nevertheless, the next day, after a night spent in
talking to Philomène, he said to her:
"Next year, Philomène, if the tomtit comes back, let me know. It is
decidedly inconvenient."
But the tomtit never came again--and neither did the letter from the
bishop!