The birds awoke. Like gray balls of down, they fell from bough to bough. Flaming crossbills pecked with their crooked beaks the knots on the tallest firs. On the end of the fir-branches sang a white Apollyon titmouse, waving its long, rudder-like tail, looking askance suspiciously with its black, beady eyes at the net which I had spread. And suddenly the whole forest, which a minute ago had been solemnly pensive, was filled with the sound of a thousand bird-voices, with the bustle of living beings, the purest on the earth. In their image, man, the father of earthly beauty, created for his own consolation, elves, cherubim, and seraphim, and all the ranks of angels. I was rather sorry to catch the little songsters, and had scruples about squeezing them into cages. I would rather have merely looked at them; but the hunter's passion and the desire to earn money drove away my pity. The birds mocked me with their artfulness. The blue titmouse, after a careful examination of the trap, understood her danger, and, approaching sidewise without running any risk, helped herself to some seed between the sticks of the trap. Titmouses are very clever, but they are very curious, and that is their undoing. The proud bullfinches are stupid, and flocks of them fall into the nets, like over-fed citizens into a church. When they find themselves shut up, they are very astonished, roll their eyes, and peck my fingers with their stout beaks. The crossbill entered the trap calmly and seriously. This grasping, ignorant bird, unlike all the others, used to sit for a long time before the net, stretching out his long beak, and leaning on his thick tail. He can run up the trunk of trees like the woodpecker, always escorting the titmouse. About this smoke-gray singing-bird there is something unpleasant. No one loves it. And it loves no one. Like the magpie, it likes to steal and hide bright things. Before noon I had finished my catch, and went home through the forest. If I had gone by the high-road past the villages, the boys and young men would have taken my cages away from me and broken up my tackle. I had already experienced that once. I arrived home in the evening tired and hungry, but I felt that I had grown older, had learned something new, and had gained strength during that day. This new strength gave me the power to listen calmly and without resentment to grandfather's jeers; seeing which, grandfather began to speak sensibly and seriously.