Tales of To-day and Other Days. Various Authors
and the sparrows, the finches and the tomtits who live in our copses always find us ready to protect, feed and help them. Nowhere is cackling carried to greater perfection than among us and nowhere is there less scandal. There are plenty of bigoted old hen-pies who do nothing but say their prayers all day, but the friskiest of our young gossips can go right up to the severest old dowager and never get a scratch. To sum it all up, our life consists of pleasure, honor, chatter, glory, and the clothes we put on our backs."
"That is very nice, indeed, ma'am," I answered, "and it would certainly be a piece of very bad manners on my part not to obey your orders. Before doing myself the honor of following you, however, permit me, I pray you, to speak a word to this good damsel here—— Mademoiselle," I continued, addressing the turtle-dove, "I adjure you, speak frankly; do you think that I am really a Russian pie?"
At this question the turtle-dove drooped her head and her complexion changed to a light red, like Lolotte's ribbons.
"Why, sir, I don't know if I can——"
"Speak, mademoiselle, for Heaven's sake! I contemplate nothing that can possibly give you offense; quite the reverse: You both appear so charming to me that I call Heaven to witness, here and now, that I will make offer of my heart and claw to either of you that will accept them, the very instant that I learn whether I am a pie or something else; for," I added, lowering my voice a little to the young creature, "I feel an inexpressible turtle-dovish sensation as I gaze on you that causes a strange disquietude within me."
"Why, truly," said the turtle-dove, blushing more deeply still, "I don't know whether it is the sunlight striking on you through those poppies, but your plumage does seem to me to have a slight tint of——"
She dared say no more.
"Oh, perplexity!" I cried, "how am I to know what to depend on? how am I to decide to whom to give my heart when it is divided thus cruelly between you? O Socrates! how admirable was the precept that you gave us, but how difficult of observance, when you enjoined upon us: 'Know thyself'!"
I had not tried my voice since that day when my most unlucky song had so disturbed my father's equanimity, and now the idea occurred to me of making use of it as a means whereby I might arrive at the truth. "Parbleu!" I said to myself, "since monsieur my father turned me out of doors for the first couplet, it seems a reasonable enough conclusion that the second should produce an effect of some kind on these ladies." So, making a polite bow to start with as if appealing to their indulgence on account of the cold that I had caught in the rain-storm, I commenced by whistling, then I warbled, then I diverted my audience with a few trills, and finally I set to singing in earnest, vociferously, like a Spanish mule-driver in a gale of wind.
The little pie began to back away from me, and the louder I sang the further she retreated, at first with an air of surprise, which quickly changed to one of stupefaction, and finally terminated in a look of terror accompanied by deep disgust. She kept walking around me in a circle, as a cat walks around a piece of bacon, sizzling hot, against which she has burned her nose, but of which she thinks she would like to try another taste, notwithstanding. I saw how my experiment was turning out and wished to carry it to a conclusion, so, the more the poor marquise fretted and fumed, the more deliriously did I sing. She stood my melodious efforts for twenty-five minutes, but at last she succumbed and flew noisily away and retired to her palace of verdure. As for the turtle-dove, she had gone off into a sound slumber almost at the very beginning.
"Delightful effect of harmony!" I thought. "Oh, my dear native marsh! Oh, maternal porringer! More than ever am I firmly resolved to return to you!"
Just as I was poising myself in readiness for flight the turtle-dove opened her eyes.
"Farewell," she said, "pretty and tiresome stranger! My name is Gourouli; don't forget me!"
"Fair Gourouli," I replied, "you are gentle, kind and charming; I would like to live and die for you, but you are of the color of the rose; such happiness was never meant for me!"
IV
The distressing results of my singing could not but sadden me. "Alas, Music! alas, Poetry!" I said to myself as I winged, my way back to Paris, "how few are the hearts that are able to comprehend you!"
While pursuing these reflections I ran full tilt into a bird who was flying in a direction opposite to mine. The shock was so violent and so unexpected that we both fell into a tree, which, by great good luck, happened to be beneath us. When we had shaken ourselves, and pulled ourselves together a bit, I looked at the stranger, fully expecting that there was going to be a quarrel. I saw with surprise that he was white; his head was a little larger than mine, and rising from the middle of his forehead was a kind of plume that gave him an aspect half heroic, half comical. He carried his tail very erect, moreover, in a manner that bespoke an excessive intrepidity of soul; he did not, however, seem to be disposed to quarrel with me. We accosted each other very civilly and made our mutual excuses, after which we entered into conversation. I took the liberty of asking him what was his name and from what country he was.
"I am surprised," he said, "that you do not know me. Are you not one of our people?"
"Truly, sir," I replied, "I know not of what race I am. Every one asks me that very question and tells me the same thing; I think they must be carrying out a bet that they have made."
"You are joking, surely," he replied; "your plumage sets too well upon you that I should fail to recognize a confrère. You indubitably belong to that illustrious and venerable race that is known in Latin as Cacuata, in scientific nomenclature as Kakatoës, and in the vernacular of the vulgar as cockatoos."
"Faith, sir, that may be, and it would be a very great feather in my cap were it so. But favor me by acting as if it were not the case, and have the condescension to tell me to whom I have the honor of addressing myself."
"I am the great poet Kacatogan," the stranger, replied. "I have been a mighty traveler, sir, and many are the tiresome journeys that I have made through arid realms and ways of heaviness. I am not a rhymester of yesterday, and my muse has seen misfortune. I have sung love ditties under Louis XVL, sir; I have brawled for the republic, sung the empire in noble strains, applauded the restoration guardedly; even in these later days I have made an effort and bowed my neck to meet, the demands of this unlettered age. I have given to the world sparkling distichs, sublime odes, graceful dithyrambs, soulful elegies, stirring dramas, blood-curdling romances, vaudevilles in powder and tragedies in wig. In a word, I may flatter myself that I have added to the temple of the Muses some garlands of gallantry, some gloomy battlements and some graceful arabesques. What would you more? I have grown old in harness, but I keep on rhyming still with pristine vigor, and even as you behold me now I had my mind on a poem in one canto, to be not less than six pages long, when you came along and gave me that lump on my forehead. Nevertheless, I am entirely at your service, if I can be of use to you."
"To tell the truth, sir, you can," I replied, "for I am in great poetic tribulation just now. I won't venture to say that I am a poet, and, above all, a great poet like you," I added, with a low bow, "but nature has kindly fitted me with an organ that makes its existence felt whenever I am joyous or sorrowful. To be entirely candid with you I am absolutely ignorant of all the rules of poetry."
"You need not let that trouble you," said Kacatogan; "I myself have forgotten them."
"But there is a very disagreeable circumstance connected with my case," I continued; "my voice produces upon my hearers very much the same effect as did that of a certain Jean de Nivelle upon—— You know what I mean?"
"I know," said Kacatogan. "I have experienced that singular effect in my own person. The cause is unknown to me, but the effect is indisputable."
"Very well, sir. Could you, who seem to me to be the Nestor of poetry, think you, suggest a remedy for this painful state of affairs?"
"No,"