My room where I now scarcely ever installed myself to study, and which
I seldom entered except at night to sleep, became, during the beautiful
month of June, my palace of delight, and I went there after dinner to
enjoy the long, and mild, and beautiful twilights. I had invented a
sport which I deemed an improvement upon the rag-rat trick that the
dirty little street urchins whisked, at the end of long strings, about
the feet and legs of the passers-by. My game amused me greatly and I
prosecuted it with vivacity. It would, I think, amuse me still if I
dared play it, and I hope that my trick will be imitated by all the
youngsters who are imprudently allowed to read this chapter.
On the other side of the street, just opposite my window, and similarly
upon the second floor there lived the good old maid, Miss Victoire--(she
wore a great old-fashioned frilled cap and round spectacles). I had
obtained permission from her to fix to the fastening of her shutter a
string that I then brought all across the street and into my window, the
remainder of this string I rolled upon a stick, ball-fashion.
In the evening, as soon as the light waned, a bird of my own
manufacture--a sort of absurd and impossible crow, made out of iron wire
and with black silk wings--came slyly from between my venetian blinds
that I immediately closed after the exit of the creature, this bird
descended in a droll way and posed on the paving stones in the middle
of the street. A ring on which it was suspended, and which allowed it to
slip freely the length of the string, was not visible because of the
dim light, and from time to time I made the crow hop and skip comically
about on the ground.
And when the passers-by paused to gaze at this unlikely looking bird
that fluttered about so gayly--whiz! I would pull the string that I held
firmly in my hand, and the bird would leap from under their very noses
and mount high in the air.
Oh! how amused I was, those beautiful evenings, when I peeped out from
behind my venetian blinds; how I laughed to myself over the surprised
exclamations and the bewilderment of those fooled, and how I enjoyed
rehearsing to myself their probable reflections and guesses. And to me
the most astonishing part was that after the first moment of surprise,
the persons whom I tricked laughed as heartily as I; it should be
mentioned that the majority of those passing were neighbors who must
certainly have had some inkling of the mystifying joke about to be
played on them. I was much loved in the neighborhood at that time. Or
if the pedestrians chanced to be sailors, the easy going fellows,
themselves only grown children, were much delighted with my child's
play.
What will always remain an incomprehensible mystery to me is that in my
family, where we seldom sinned through an excess of reserve towards
each other, they shut their eyes to my trick, and thus tacitly gave me
permission to play it during the entire spring; I am not able to explain
to myself how it chanced that they failed to correct me, and the years
instead of clearing up this mystery only serve to intensify it.
That black bird has naturally become one of my many relics; at
intervals, during the past two or three years, I have looked at it; it
is somewhat dingy, but it always recalls to me the beautiful evenings
in June, now vanished, the delicious intoxication of that springtime of
long ago.