Thereupon I flew away, always weeping; and the wind, which is the Fate
of birds, bore me to a branch in Morfontaine. This time they were all
in bed.--” What a marriage!” I said to myself, “What a business! No
doubt it was with a good intention that the poor child made herself
white; but I am none the less to be pitied, and she is none the less
russet.”
The nightingale was singing again. Alone, in the bosom of the night,
he was enjoying whole-heartedly his divine gift, which makes him so
superior to the poets, and was uttering his thought freely to the
silence that surrounded him. I could not resist the temptation of going
up to him and addressing him.
“How happy you are!” I said to him. “Not only do you sing as much as
you wish, and very well, too, and all the world listens to you; but
you have a wife and children, your nest, your friends, a good pillow
of moss, full moon, and no newspapers. Rubini and Rossini are nothing
compared to you: you are as good as the one, and you anticipate the
other. I too have sung, sir, and it was pitiable. I have drawn up words
in serried rows like so many Prussian soldiers, I have strung stale
commonplaces together, while you were in the wood. Is your secret to be
discovered?”
“Yes,” the nightingale replied to me, “but it is not what you imagine.
My wife bores me, I do not love her at all; I am in love with the rose;
Sadi the Persian has mentioned it. I sing myself hoarse for her all
night long, but she sleeps and does not hear me. Her chalice is shut at
the present moment: she is nursing an old beetle in it--and to-morrow
morning, when I reach my bed worn out with suffering and fatigue, then
she will spread herself out to let a bee devour her heart!”