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An unseen choir of bird-voices was singing the sweetest requiem ever sung for the dead; yet Léomont in its majestic loneliness saddened us, even the irrepressible Puck. We were sad and rather silent all the way to Vitrimont; and Vitrimont, at first glance, was a sight to make us sadder than any we had seen.
There was a tremor in her voice and an anxious pleading look in her eyes. This look maddened me. Why should she plead to me unless she was guilty? I stamped my foot upon the rock without noticing that in so doing I kicked our whole collection of shells into the water. There was something more to ask, but I stood silent and sullen. The woods above the beach were choral with bird-voices.
And gladder still I was when astride my horse in the open, with the sweet broadside of the spring wind in my face, and all the white flowering trees and bushes bowing and singing with a thousand bird-voices, like another congregation before the Lord. I had not the honour to assist Mistress Mary to her saddle.
Summer with "buds and bird-voices" came singing in from the South, and clad the old ash-trees in deeper green, the Old Manse in profounder mystery. Gorgeous autumn came to visit the story-teller in his little western study, and, departing, wept rainbows among his trees.
I was poking about a marshy place in a low field one morning in early May, when, through the maze of bird-voices, laughter of robins, call of meadowlarks, song of bobolinks, ditty of sparrows, whistle of orioles, twitter of swallows, with which the air was filled, my ear suddenly caught an unfamiliar strain. I paused to listen: can it be possible, I thought, that I hear a lark, or am I dreaming?
Other bird-voices were swelling into sound a wild and flute-like music of cadences that came and went elusive as the laughter of wood-nymphs in an enchanted glade. And every one of that silent crowd of watchers saw the red light of dawn breaking through the trees of a dream-forest that no human foot had ever trod. Slowly the crimson lightened.
In the midst of the afternoon, we saw Gerbéviller as if by moonlight in the still silence of night. On the outskirts we forsook our three cars, and walked slowly through the dead town, awestruck and deeply thoughtful as if in a church where the body of some great man lay in state. There was not a sound except, as at Léomont, the unseen choir of bird-voices; but their song emphasized the silence.
If, during a chorus of bird-voices in the forest, only the shadow of an approaching hawk falls upon the ground, every sweet voice is hushed. Thus, if but one evil, hawk-like note is heard in the heart, all the nobler joys and aspirations depart. The higher life is at enmity with the lower, and this war is one of extermination.
But, quibbles apart, one thing I do remember: I sat for some time on the fence, in the shade of a tree, with an eye upon the cane-swamp and an ear open for bird-voices. Yes, and it comes to me at this moment that here I heard the first and only bull-frog that I heard anywhere in Florida. It was like a voice from home, and belonged with the fence. Other frogs I had heard in other places.
Then, with the sun breaking in a blaze upon the clearing, with the ground and trees flashing forth illuminated dew-drops, with a clangor of thousands of melodious bird-voices even the bereaved father song-sparrow was singing he was his own large self again, and went forth conquering and to conquer. He found the murdered nestling stranded down the creek, and buried it with ceremony.
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