“You are not so fair; but you are fair too,” and he took it.
And others came, brightly coloured, singing pleasant songs, till all the
grains were finished. And the hunter gathered all his birds together,
and built a strong iron cage called a new creed, and put all his birds
in it.
Then the people came about dancing and singing.
“Oh, happy hunter!” they cried. “Oh, wonderful man! Oh, delightful
birds! Oh, lovely songs!”
No one asked where the birds had come from, nor how they had been
caught; but they danced and sang before them. And the hunter too was
glad, for he said:
“Surely Truth is among them. In time she will moult her feathers, and I
shall see her snow-white form.”
But the time passed, and the people sang and danced; but the hunter’s
heart grew heavy. He crept alone, as of old, to weep; the terrible
desire had awakened again in his breast. One day, as he sat alone
weeping, it chanced that Wisdom met him. He told the old man what he had
done.
And Wisdom smiled sadly.
“Many men,” he said, “have spread that net for Truth; but they have
never found her. On the grains of credulity she will not feed; in the
net of wishes her feet cannot be held; in the air of these valleys she
will not breathe. The birds you have caught are of the brood of Lies.
Lovely and beautiful, but still lies; Truth knows them not.”