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Her agony and death took all energy and heart out of Lucien. He sank into a low chair at the foot of the bed, and never took his eyes off her till Death brought the end of her suffering. It was five o'clock in the morning. Some singing-bird lighting upon a flower-pot on the window-sill, twittered a few notes.
"The old woman keeps her mewed up like a singing-bird," said the second; "and if a fellow wants speech of her, it's as much as his crown is worth; for Dame Elsie has a strong arm, and her distaff is known to be heavy." "Upon my word," said the first cavalier, stopping and throwing a glance backward, "where do they keep her?"
"The singing-bird must not mate with the owl," rang continually in his ears. It was her real sentiment he knew, and his heart ached so hard as he thought how he had staked his all on her and lost it. "Begin," she said, "Tell me where you first met my mother."
To the ungracious complaint-charge of his want of racy nativity and special originality, I shall only say that America and the world may well be reverently thankful can never be thankful enough for any such singing-bird vouchsafed out of the centuries, without asking that the notes be different from those of other songsters; adding what I have heard Longfellow himself say, that ere the New World can be worthily original, and announce herself and her own heroes, she must be well saturated with the originality of others, and respectfully consider the heroes that lived before Agamemnon.
"That's just like the cat, she's a villain," said the Portuguese duck. "I remember her ways when I had children of my own. How can such a creature be allowed to live, and wander about upon the roofs. I don't think they allow such things in Portugal." She pitied the little singing-bird, and so did all the other ducks who were not Portuguese.
Be sure of this, that a religion which is dumb will very soon tend to lose its possession of the truth, and that if you carry that great gift hid away in your heart it will be like locking up some singing-bird in a box. When you come to open it, the bird will be dead.
This habit of varying his notes through so many permutations, and the singularly fine intonations of many of them, entitle the Song-Sparrow to a very high rank as a singing-bird. There is a manifest difference in the expression of these several tunes. The one which I have marked as No. 3 is particularly plaintive, and is usually in common time.
They had been lying asleep for some time, when suddenly something was thrown into the yard for them to eat. It came down with such a bang, that the whole company started up and clapped their wings. The Portuguese awoke too, and rushed over to the other side: in so doing she trod upon the little singing-bird. "Tweet," he cried; "you trod very hard upon me, madam."
The Persian poets brought the nightingale much into their songs of praise of earthly joys. The bulbul, of which they wrote and sang, was the European nightingale, which visits Persia in spring to sing and love and nest. They pass as far South as Shiraz, where they meet the plump little Indian bulbul, which is often mistaken for the Shiraz poets' singing-bird.
Even Chateaubriand, who first tried the primitive-forest-cure, and whose description of the wilderness in its imaginative effects is unmatched, fancies the "people of the air singing their hymns to him." So far as my own observation goes, the farther one penetrates the sombre solitudes of the woods, the more seldom does he hear the voice of any singing-bird.
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