Part 9
The little court behind the shop has remained particularly vivid in my memory. That was the workshop. There, with both hands clasped around the tool that flung chips into his face, the artist would miraculously draw from a block of wood braced against his chest the form of a wooden shoe. Julius II, watching the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel as they sprang from Michael Angelo's brush, could not have been more impressed than was my youth before the prodigies performed by the shoemaker.
He, for the increase of my pleasure, seemed to share it; he accompanied the manoeuvres of his adze with commentaries calculated to drive well into my soul the particular merits of his work. He was a poor, pale, thin, fragile being, himself carved down as if by an adze, rubbed flat and hollowed out by sickness. Folds of white skin below his hairless chin trembled when he moved. His eyes were of no colour. He had a nasal, far-away voice, like that of a consumptive ventriloquist. I never knew anything about him. I do not believe he had any family--I never saw a petticoat that seemed to belong in the house. All day long he worked at his wooden shoes without a word, perhaps without a thought, happy in his little friend the bullfinch on whom were centred all the emotions of his existence.
Although I have forgotten the man's name, I remember the bullfinch's. It was Mignon. There was nothing to make him look different from the rest of his kind. As you entered the shop, you saw against the wall a large cage decorated with rude carvings, on which the shoemaker had lavished all the fancy of his art. In this, hopping from one wooden bar to the other, was a little bright red ball with a black head, lighted by two jet-black eyes gleaming with intelligence. The tiny hooked beak retreating into the throat did not appear fashioned for conversation, yet if during the shoemaker's absence you crossed the threshold, a muffled voice, which seemed to issue from the depths of the walls, greeted you with a cry, repeated over and over: "Someone in the shop, someone in the shop," etc., etc. By the smothered quality, the nasal tone, you recognized the master's voice. But it was not he who spoke, for you could see him coming from the courtyard with his mouth shut, while the sentinel's warning continued. It was the bullfinch, who with unfailing vigilance stood guard over the rows of wooden shoes.
For Mignon talked like a "real person," with a dainty articulation much clearer than that of the most accomplished parrot. The shoemaker had, I suppose, taken him from the nest, and taught him from tenderest infancy. In close association with, and under the suggestion of, a mentality which spared no pains in the education of a friend, the bird had by a loving effort raised himself to the level of the man who had lagged behind in the evolution of his own race. They had met on the same plane, and both having capacity for affection had seized upon each other with atomic grapnels better than they might have done had both been human.
To please his friend, Mignon had accepted articulate speech as a means of communication, for, needless to say, his vocabulary was not limited to the sentry challenge: "Who goes there?" but grew daily more extensive. On the other side, which was no less remarkable, the human teacher had let himself be taught the fluty language of his woodland friend. When the shoemaker wished to convey something to his feathered comrade, he would break forth in "twee-twees," accompanied by a sort of hoarse, throaty trill whose slightest inflection is comprehensible to all the bullfinches in the world. They had thus two languages at their disposal from which each could draw according to the inspiration of the moment. A strange dialogue, in which it was often the man who said "twee-twee," while the bird answered with dictionary words.
The door of the cage always stood open. But Mignon loved the peace of his home. In his natural state the bullfinch prefers the most secluded and silent spot in the forest. His character is both trusting and contemplative. I remember once finding a nest of bullfinches in an ancient oak. The father and mother could not believe that I was an enemy. They perched on a bough at hardly more than a yard's distance from me, without a flutter or a note of alarm, as if to give me time and opportunity to admire their little ones. They made no sound until my departure, when, as if to do the honours of the thicket, they uttered farewell "twee-twees." As he was afraid of cats and dogs, Mignon never went into the street. The shop and the courtyard were his whole domain, with the cage for meals and meditation.
In the courtyard, among the reddish alder logs, Mignon would come and go with evident enjoyment, scratching the wood to whet his beak, or searching it for dainty bits. I can still see those splendid shafts, golden yellow, marbled with sanguine red, on which the bird would sometimes stand motionless, swelling his copper-coloured throat, or at other times hop and flutter and cheep and softly twitter, to win a glance or a silent smile from his friend. Then he would fly straight to the shoemaker's shoulder and peck his face and say: "Good morning, my friend, I love you, indeed I do. Have you slept well?" The answer to which would be given in human "twee-twees," until the neglected wooden shoe recalled the forgetful workman to his duty.
Best of all was the song and dance.
"Come now, Mignon, dance the polka for your friend."
Mignon would stretch himself proudly to his full height, uttering three rhythmic "twee-twees," and hop from one foot to the other, keeping perfect time. He seemed to enjoy himself hugely, and the shoemaker, who supplemented the music by an exact imitation of it, expressed boundless delight by the contortions of his colourless face.
A childish amusement, some will say. Yet what is more important than loving? And if we love, what matters the way of expressing a deep mutual tenderness? The shoemaker did not exhibit his friend's accomplishments to the casual or the indifferent. The desire to "show off" was foreign to these two. They simply lived for each other, and their intimacy behind closed doors, far from jealous eyes, must have had exquisite sweetness.
I am aware that there should be some effective ending to my story. The truth is that I know nothing beyond what I have told. The maker of wooden shoes and the bullfinch have remained very much alive in my memory--the end of the episode has escaped it. Did I go there one day and not find them? Or is it not more likely that I ceased to go there? It was all so long ago!
I am certain that whichever of them went first was not long survived by the other. At least, I like to think so, for if the shoemaker had replaced Mignon by another bullfinch, or if Mignon had found it in his heart to dance the polka for Brossard, the nailer, who used to make such a racket on the other side of the street, I should lose a supreme illusion concerning the heart of man and bird. If we lose our faith in man, whom experience may lead us to suspect of selfishness, let us retain our respectful esteem for animals.
XV
ABOUT NESTS
Children are always interested in nests--thrilled by the mystery of them, filled with admiring wonder at the cunning of the little feathered creature in concealing its brood from the enemy, whether it be man or hawk, crow or magpie. The impulse to appropriate any living thing (an instinct inherited from his carnivorous ancestors), indeed, a whole collection of irresistible impulses direct the murderous sporting instinct of the future lord of creation toward the delicate feathery structure. Sympathy is as yet non-existent in the child man, for he has never suffered. He is carried away by delight in the unknown, his eyes widen with wonder, his hands reach out, and at the first touch irretrievable harm is done.
But no sooner has the nest been torn from the branch, and no sooner are the little ones, hideous in their grotesque nudity, scattered on the ground, than he is filled with dismay, like the school boy with all the parts of his watch spread on the table before him. Having looked at everything, analyzed it, touched it, he could go his way with a light heart if only he were able to fit the pieces together again, and reconstruct a whole. But it is too late. Our first impulse is a death-dealing one. A sense of the uselessness of destruction is necessary to awaken pity in us for whatever has life. I have sometimes seen those very school boys who massacre birds for fun, go back, ashamed of the stupid wrong committed, and awkwardly try to put the nest in its place, with the little ones in it, then go away, looking over their shoulder to witness the gratitude due to them from the despairing family for their generous effort. On the following day the boys return to look, and find a graveyard.
Many birds forsake their progeny at the least break in the usual course of things. Unaccountable panic seizes them, abruptly quenching the overmastering love that before had governed the activities of the pair. If you merely touch a young pigeon, the parents will from that moment onward hear his clamour for food with indifference--they will let him starve, while the drama of rearing new young dimly takes shape in their mysterious minds. Other more courageous birds will fight to the end without yielding, they will fly into snares in the attempt to reach their brood, they will come daily to feed their young in the cage, and if a strange egg has been introduced into their nest, whether by the hand of man or the cunning of the cuckoo, they will make no difference between the bastard and their legitimate offspring.
I have witnessed some fierce battles, notably that of a pair of warblers against a magpie, who, undeterred by the stones I was throwing, managed in less than five minutes to remove from their nest into her own, as a treat for her young magpies, all the little warblers just full-fed with succulent insects. Whither turn for help against the rivalry of appetites organized by Providence? "The reason of the strongest is always the best," sadly observes the poet philosopher. A sorrowful avowal, that, which leaves us, for sole comfort, the hypothetical felicity of another world. But what could be more unjust than to exclude from a celestial paradise these secondary creatures, victims of our common fate, who in the beginning possessed the earthly paradise, and were driven from it in the company of our erring ancestors, without having followed their sinful example?
Until the order of things changes, all that the weak can do is to cry out their protest, their vain appeal to universal justice, which, deaf, insensible, and paralyzed, sits in mute contemplation of the disorder composing the order of the world.
Man, the supreme arbiter of the destinies of his inferiors, has arrogated all rights. The child who lets a bird flutter at the end of a string only to jerk it to the ground when the poor creature finally thought itself free, lives in his own person the evolution from the frank cruelty of the savage to the decent hypocrisies of civilized barbarism. Man is, indeed, the first one whom animals learn to guard against. Wherever there are no men, or few, birds are among the first to become fearless. I have seen nests built in wide recesses and fully exposed to view, amid the desert ruins of the citadel of Corinth.
Better still, I once knew--it is now more than fifty years ago--a wonderful garden, in part cultivated, in part allowed to follow the fancies of vegetation running wild, where two old people, of beloved memory, used to walk and take their last pleasures as life neared its close. A large, typically French garden, with symmetrical flower beds bordered with box. A long arbour formed a wall at the farther side, and had at each end a circular bower, bright in springtime with the rosy blaze of Judas trees. In the centre was a fountain covered by a high white dome upheld by three slender Ionic columns, delicately mottled with rose-coloured lichens. At the summit of the dome the sculptor had carved a vase of formal shape, from which sprang a sheaf of flowers that took from the mosses overgrowing it an appearance of life. Under the arch was a bird with spread wings, bearing the motto of the former masters of the domain, whose name you will find in Hozier: "Altiora contendimus omnes." The monument dated from the end of the 16th century. Its remains, scattered in "artistic ruins," now decorate an ornamental grove.
Never was a spot less disturbed by the activities of the world, nowhere was solitude more calculated to win man from his fellows and leave him to the companionship of trees and animals. Beyond the arbour lay a meadow, a brook, woods. No human habitation anywhere near. Peace--the great peace of nature. Sheltered by the high wall, animals lived happy and unafraid of man, from whom they received only kindness. I can remember goldfinch nests among the rose bushes within reach of my hand. I was early taught to touch them only with my eyes.
In her very bedroom, the lady of the manor gave shelter to swallows. Traces of nests may still be seen on the great rafters of the ceiling. In spring, one day at dawn, the travellers, arriving from their great journey, would come tapping with beak and claw at the high windows. The aged dame would immediately rise and let in her friends. Greetings would ensue--enthusiastic greetings after the long separation. Three or four birds, sometimes half a dozen, would wheel about the vast chamber, with little sharp cries expressing joy in their return and their hospitable reception. They perched on the great wardrobes, and twittered for happiness, their little ruby throats swelling below their black hoods. All day long they came and went. Soon, one might see a swallow drop on to the water of a trench, and rest there with wings outspread, then rise into the air, and gather on her wet feathers the dust of earth needed to make mortar for her nest. Then began the work of masonry. The basket-shaped wall rose quickly, formed of thin layers of clay, one above another, and as soon as the nest was finished, an indentation fashioned in the edge by the dainty black beak informed one that the laying of eggs had begun.
Three or four nests among the rafters became in time a whole aviary, for the young birds, returning the following year, often selected their birthplace as a home. There they reared their family. At first peep of dawn, the father from outside and the mother from inside begged to have the window opened. They met each other with expressions of delight and flew skyward in quest of the supply of insects imperiously demanded by the noisy and hungry nestlings. As soon as the successful hunter appeared, and before he could fairly get his claws into the earthen parapet, six gaping throats were outstretched to catch the prey. This business filled the day. A newspaper, spread on the floor, received all incongruous happenings. In the evening, when the lamp was lighted, we were sometimes startled by a sudden outburst of quarrelling up among the rafters. It might be that a small bird was out of his customary place, and was beginning his apprenticeship in life by defending his rights, as well as he could, against the selfish infringements of an enterprising brother. A muffled call from the mother stilled the tumult, and fear of punishment brought the children back to moderation, or perhaps resignation. And then autumn took on the sharpness of winter, and all the swallows, assembled on the summit of a neighbouring elm, held a great council of departure. They talked the whole day. But their discussion, unlike ours, was a preface to action. They started before sunrise of the day after. Sadly their old friend bade them farewell: "Go, my dear ones, you intend to come back, but the time is not far when I shall no longer be here to open the window at your home coming!" The swallows still return. But for a long time, a very long time, the window has not been opened.
Alas! the loveliest part of the setting has likewise disappeared. The white dome of the fountain, with its rosy colonnade, has been broken up, and replaced by a hideous rockery in the style of Chatou. The seemly classic rectangular flower beds, with their severe arrangement, have made room for a wide lawn dotted with artistic plots of shrubbery. The long arbour and the Judas trees have blazed in the fireplace on winter evenings. But, near or far, imagination can restore them. I find myself walking through twisted underbrush to spy upon domestic scenes in nests. I have retained a particularly vivid memory of the tragedy which revealed to me for the first time the distressing vicissitudes of the struggle for life.
At the foot of the long arbour lay a dying birdling. He had as yet no feathers, but a thin black down covered his bluish skin now painfully heaving with the last spasms of agony. My first motion was to climb in search of the nest from which the victim had fallen. I had not mounted a yard from the ground before I found a little dead body similar to the one I had just seen, and while I peered upward into the shadow, what should tumble on to my head but a third member of the same brood. I finally distinguished the nest, and soon little, stifled cries warned me of something going on in it. I bent to one side, to get a better view, and discovered in the midst of the down-lined dwelling a great grayish black bird surrounded by three wretched wee ones who had not as yet been tossed into the abyss, but who were rendered miserably uncomfortable by the inordinate growth of their big brother.
A cuckoo had deposited her egg there, and the parents, stupidly deceived, lavishing the same care upon the intruder as upon their own young, had succeeded only in absurdly favouring the strongest. Meanwhile, he had grown to twice or thrice the size of his "brothers," and without, presumably, seeking any satisfaction but his "liberty," as the economists put it, he was taking up the room of others, for the sole reason that the development of his organs required it.
Like all young birds, the baby cuckoo automatically flapped his wings, to exercise his joints. In a normal nest, this movement of each inmate is limited and regulated by the same movement on the part of the others. But here, too great strength was in conflict with too great weakness, and the cuckoo's thick, stumpy wings, on which feathers were already appearing, spread to the very edge of the nest, lifting the feeble little ones on to the monster's back, whence a shake flung them overboard. The crime occurred even while I watched. The worst of it was seeing the stupid parents, in spite of all, diligently feeding the infamous fratricide. Careless of the lamentations of their own children, they could see in the nest only the huge hollow of a voracious beak, which gobbled whatever they brought, notwithstanding the timid efforts of the competitors, doomed beforehand to defeat. And so the disproportion in growth augmented daily, the one taking everything, and the others condemned to watch him helplessly. The social question is repeated in every thicket on earth!
_For the principle of the thing_, I replaced two little birds in the nest. They were promptly hurled to the ground. Next day, the whole crime was accomplished, and the false father and the false mother were still idiotically wearing themselves out to nourish their children's murderer. What to do about it? How many human stories there are, in the likeness of that incident! One cannot even justly blame the cuckoo, if the great principle: "Remove yourself, that I may have your place!" remains in this universe the watchword added by Providence to the express recommendation to love one another.
XVI
A DOMESTIC DRAMA
I am fond of observing animals, real ones, whose spirit has not been perverted by the insufferable pretence and affectations which are all too often accompaniments of the human form. Whoever watches them with a seeing eye may gather deep lessons from the activities of animal life. In man and beast the motions of being are governed by one philosophy, however much trouble the sacristans of letters may take to separate under the heads of "instinct" and "thought" phenomena differing in degree but identical in nature.
Analogies of structure and function in the entire hierarchy of the organic world were one day perceived, and Lamarck and Darwin drew from these their well-known conclusions, to the confusion of biblical tradition. Comparative anatomy and comparative physiology are now flourishing sciences of which academicians find it less easy to assimilate the results than to proclaim the failure. At the point we have reached in the knowledge of vital manifestations all along the scale of living creatures, unlimited material is day by day accumulating for the science of comparative psychology which will soon be established.
While experts are elaborating general laws, the profane may be permitted to set down the observations suggested to them by the passing show of life. In this character I wish to relate a domestic drama the scene of which, I grieve to say, was my own garden. The actors, fair readers, were simple pigeons. The difference between feathers and hair will perhaps seem to you to excuse many things. You shall compare and judge. My only ambition is to point out analogies resulting from the nature of things, and lead such of my contemporaries as do me the honour to read what I write, to a wider comprehension of the human soul.
Our natural tendency is to observe the thoughts and feelings of our equals rather than those of animals. They touch us more nearly, and we often need, in the course of our study of humanity, to balance the indulgence of our judgments upon ourselves by the severity of our judgments upon others. Only, man under observation has the advantage of articulate speech, which is, of course, a disadvantage to the observer. For everyone will agree that man makes use of this chiefly to pervert, to conceal, or at the very least to disguise, the truth. Hence arise difficulties of analysis, which are not encountered among the innocent beasts of the field whom the imperfection of their organism obliges to show themselves as nature made them. In defining the characteristics of man, it has been said that he alone among animals is gifted with laughter, with ability to light a fire, and to state abstractions by means of articulate speech. We must not neglect to mention his conspicuous faculty for lying. Animals can dissimulate, for the purpose of seizing the weaker, or escaping from the stronger. Man alone has received from Providence the gift of a perfect mendacity. So he often disparages animals, and accuses them of cynicism! Ah--if dogs could speak!
But this tale is concerned with pigeons, and when I tell you that sitting at my work table I have my dovecote all day under my eyes, you will understand that I am necessarily familiar with the manoeuvres of the amorous tribe. The pigeon has a reputation for sentimentality. He is inclined toward voluptuousness, and has officially but one mate. His fidelity has been sufficient to arouse the wonder of man. Poetry, music, and art, after long centuries, still find a rich subject in the attachment of turtle doves.
"Two pigeons loved with a tender love----"
It is still usual for the fruit vender in Rue St. Denis, swooning in the conjugal arms, to call her spouse "My pigeon!" and for him to answer in a sigh, "My dove!" Well--at the risk of bringing disillusion to these ingenuous souls, and driving them to search for other comparisons, I feel obliged to establish facts in their truth, and show pigeons guilty of human frailty.