No other bird lived in this saloon. Unfortunately, my familiar robin, which flies freely about my study, penetrated into the apartment. We had troubled ourselves the less about him, because he saw daily, without any emotion, canaries, bullfinches, nightingales; but the sight of the nightingale threw him into an incredible transport of fury. Passionate and intrepid, without heeding that the object of his hate was twice his own size, he pounced on the cage with bill and claws; he would fain have killed its inmate. The nightingale, however, uttered cries of alarm, and called for help with a hoarse and pitiful voice. The other, checked by the bars, but clinging with his claws to the frame of an adjacent picture, raged, hissed, _crackled_ (the popular word _petillait_ alone expresses his short, sharp cry), piercing him with his glances. He said, in effect:--
"King of song, what dost thou here? Is it not enough that in the woods thy imperious and absorbing voice should silence all our lays, hush our strains into whispers, and singly fill the desert? Yet thou comest hither to deprive me of the new existence which I have found for myself, of this artificial grove where I perch all the winter, a grove whose branches are the shelves of a library, whose leaves are books! Thou comest to share, to usurp the attention of which I was the object, the reverie of my master, and my mistress's smile! Woe to thee! I _was_ loved!"
The robin does, in reality, attain to a very high degree of familiarity with man. The experience of a long winter proves to me that he much prefers human society to that of his own kind. In our absence he shares in the small talk of the birds of the aviary; but as soon as we arrive, he abandons them, and comes curiously to place himself before us, remains with us, seems to say, "You are here, then! But where have you been? And why have you absented yourself so long from home?"
The invasion of the robin, which we soon forgot, was not forgotten, it appears, by his timorous victim. The unfortunate nightingale fluttered about ever afterwards with an air of alarm, and nothing could reassure him.
Care was taken, however, that no one should approach him. His mistress had charged herself with the necessary attentions. The peculiar mixture which alone can nourish this ardent centre of life (blood, hemp, and poppy), was conscientiously prepared. Blood and flesh, these are the substance; hemp is the herb of intoxication; but the poppy neutralizes it. The nightingale is the only creature which it is necessary to feed incessantly with sleep and dreams.