My father had the inhumanity to leave me for several days in this
mortifying situation. In spite of his violence, he had a good heart,
and, from the stolen looks which he directed towards me, I saw well
that he would have liked to pardon me and recall me; my mother
especially looked up to me constantly with eyes full of fondness,
and sometimes even ventured to call me with a little plaintive cry;
but my horrible white plumage caused them, in spite of themselves, a
repugnance and a terror for which, I saw well, there was no remedy
whatever.
“I am not a blackbird!” I repeated; and, in fact, when preening myself
in the morning and gazing at my reflection in the water of the gutter,
I recognized only too clearly how little I resembled my family. “O
Heaven!” I repeated again, “do tell me what I am!”
One night, when it was raining in torrents, I was about to go to sleep,
worn out by hunger and vexation, when I saw a bird settle beside me,
more drenched, more pallid, and more lean than I thought possible. He
was about my colour, so far as I could judge in the rain which was
deluging us, he had scarcely feathers enough on his body to clothe
a sparrow, and he was bigger than myself. He seemed to me, at first
sight, a poor and necessitous bird indeed; but, in spite of the storm
which maltreated his almost clean-plucked brow, he preserved an air of
pride which charmed me. I modestly made him a profound reverence, to
which he responded with a peck of his bill, which all but threw me down
off the gutter. Seeing that I scratched my ear and took myself off with
compunction, without trying to answer him in his own language:
“Who are you?” he asked in a voice which was as hoarse as his skull was
bald.
“Alas, your Lordship,” I answered (fearing a second thrust), “I have no
idea. I thought I was a blackbird, but they have convinced me that I am
not one.”
The singularity of my answer, and my air of sincerity, interested
him. He came beside me, and made me tell my story, a task of which I
acquitted myself with all the sadness and all the humility which were
suitable to my position and the fearful weather which we were having.
“If you were a carrier-pigeon like me,” he said, after having heard me,
“the petty annoyances at which you distress yourself would not disturb
you one moment. We travel, that is our life, and we have our loves,
it is true, but I do not know who my father is. To cleave the air,
to traverse space, to see the mountains and plains beneath our feet,
to breathe the very azure of the heavens, not the exhalations of the
earth, to fly like the arrow to an appointed mark which never escapes
us, that is our pleasure and our existence. I travel farther in one day
than a man can do in ten.”
“Upon my word, sir,” I said, somewhat emboldened, “you are a Bohemian
bird.”
“That’s another thing about which I don’t much trouble,” he replied. “I
have no country at all; I know only three things: my travels, my wife,
and my little ones. Where my wife is, there is my country.”
“But what have you hanging there at your neck? It’s like an old,
tattered curl-paper.”
“These are papers of importance,” he replied, puffing himself out; I
am going to Brussels this trip, and I am taking news to the celebrated
banker X---- which will make the funds fall one franc seventy-eight
centimes.”
“Gracious goodness!” I exclaimed, “it is a fine life yours, and
Brussels, I am sure, must be a town well worth seeing. Could you
not take me with you? Since I am not a blackbird, I am perhaps a
carrier-pigeon.”
“If you were one,” he replied, “you would have returned that peck which
I gave you a moment ago.”
“Why, sir, I’ll return it to you; don’t let us quarrel over such a
trifle. See, the morning is appearing and the storm is subsiding. Pray
let me follow you! I am lost, I have nothing left me in the world;--if
you refuse me, there is nothing for it but to drown myself in this
gutter.”
“Very well then, go ahead! Follow me if you can.”
I took a last look at the garden where my mother was sleeping. A tear
rolled from my eyes; the wind and rain carried it away. I spread my
wings, and set out.