Many a time have I sat on the head of one of the statues of the Palais Royal, where I might be seen with my plumes ruffled, my head between my shoulders, and, with one eye closed on the world, reflecting on our rights, our duties, and our future. Grave questions forced themselves upon me. Where do sparrows come from? Where do they go to? Why can’t they weep? Why don’t they form themselves into societies like crows? Why don’t French sparrows settle everything by arbitration, since they enjoy such a sublime language?
Great changes were taking place around; houses were supplanting gardens, and depriving birds of the insects and grubs found in the shrubs and soil. The result, as might have been expected, was to draw the line still more markedly between the rich and poor, and to set up “caste” as it exists among certain types of the human race. The sparrows in the densely-populated quarters were reduced to living on offal, while the aristocracy fed daintily, and perched as near heaven as the trees of the Champs d’Elysées would allow them.
This defective constitution could not last long; one half of the feathered tribe chirping joyously in the fulness of their stomachs, surrounded by superb families, and the other half brawling and clamouring for filthy refuse. The latter, driven to desperation, determined indeed to use, if need be, their horny beaks to improve their social condition.
With this laudable object in view, a deputation waited on a bird who had lived in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and assisted at the taking of the Bastille. This bird was appointed to the command of the { 37} sufferers, who organised themselves into a body, each one feeling the necessity of implicit obedience.
Judge of the surprise of the Parisians who beheld thousands of small birds ranged on the roofs of the houses in the Rue de Rivoli; the right wing towards the Hôtel de Ville, the left on the Madeleine, and the centre on the Tuileries. The aristocratic birds, seized with panic-fear at sight of this demonstration, and dreading the loss of their power and position, despatched a fledgling of their number to address the rioters in these words:—“Is it not well that we should reason together and not fight?”