No; man does not err in considering the swallow the best of the winged world.
And why? She is the happiest, because the freest.
Also, whatever attention I have paid to her language (she speaks amicably to her sisters, rather than sings), I have never heard her do aught but bless life and praise God.
_Libertà! molto e desiato bene!_ I revolved these words in my heart on the great piazza of Turin, where we never wearied of watching the flight of innumerous swallows, hearing a thousand little joyous cries. On their descent from the Alps they found there convenient habitations all prepared for their reception, in the apertures left by the scaffold-beams in the very walls of the palaces. At times, and frequently in the evening, they chattered very loudly and cried shrilly, to prevent us from understanding them. Often they darted down headlong, just skimming the ground, but rising again so quickly that one might have thought them loosened from a spring or shot from a bow. Unlike man, who is incessantly called back to earth, they seem to gravitate above. Never have I seen the image of a more sovereign liberty. Their tricks, their sports, were infinite.
We travellers regarded with pleased eyes these other travellers, which bore their pilgrimage so gaily and so lightly. The horizon, nevertheless, was heavy, and ringed by the Alps, which at that hour seemed close at hand. The black pine-woods were already darkened and overshadowed by the evening; the glaciers glittered again with a ghastly whiteness. The sorrowful barrier of these grand mountains separated us from France, towards which we were soon about to travel slowly.
[Illustration: HARMONIES OF THE TEMPERATE ZONE.]
Why do the swallow and so many other birds place their habitation so near to that of man? Why do they make themselves our friends, mingling with our labours, and lightening them by their songs? Why is that happy spectacle of alliance and harmony, which is the end of nature, presented only in the climates of our temperate zone?
For this reason, that here the two parties, man and the bird, are free from the burdensome fatalities which in the south separate them, and place them in antagonism to one another.
That which enervates man, on the contrary, excites the bird, endows him with ardent activity, inquietude, and the vehemence which finds vents in harsh cries. Under the Tropics both are in complete divergence, slaves of a despotic nature, which weighs upon them differently.