Fortunately, we were in the season when this skillful songster utters his delicious accents; hence, I could employ him as my teacher. I went constantly to the wood of Romainville, the skirt of which almost joined the street in which I lived, and, laying myself on a soft bed of moss in the densest foliage, I challenged my master to give me lessons. (The nightingale sings both by night and day in Continental Europe, and the slightest whistle, in tune or not, makes him strike up directly.) I wanted to imprint on my memory the musical phrases with which the bird composes its melodies. The following are the most striking among them; _tiou-tiou-tiou_, _ut-ut-ut-ut-ut_, _tchit-chou_, _tchit-chou_, _tchit-tchit_, _rrrrrrrrrrrrrouit_, _&c._ I had to analyse these strange sounds, these numberless chirps, these impossible rrrrouits, and recompose them by a musical process. Now, here was the difficulty. I only knew so much of music as a natural taste had taught me, and my knowledge of harmony was hence a very feeble resource. I must add that in order to imitate this flexibility of throat, and produce these harmonious modulations, I had a small copper tube, about the size and length of a quill, in which a steel piston moving very freely, produced the different sounds I required; this tube represented in some respects the nightingale’s throat. This instrument would have to work mechanically; clock work set in motion the bellows, opened or closed a valve which produced the twittering, the modulation, and the sliding notes, while it guided the piston according to the different degrees of speed and depth I wanted to reach. I had also to impart motion to the bird: it must move its beak in accordance with the sounds it produced, flap its wings, leap from branch to branch, &c. But this part of my task troubled me much less than the other, as it was purely mechanical. I will not attempt to describe to the reader all the trials and investigations I had to make; suffice it to say that, after repeated experiments, I created a system, half musical, half mechanical, which only required to be improved by fresh studies. Provided with this instrument, I hurried off to the wood of Romainville, where I seated myself under an oak, near which I had often heard a nightingale sing, which I thought was the “star” among the virtuosi. I wound up the clockwork, and it began playing in the midst of profound silence; but the last notes had scarce died away ere a concert commenced from various parts of the wood, which I was almost inclined to regard as a general protest against my clumsy imitation.