While thus raving, I wept over my wife, and as each tear-drop fell upon her back, she visibly changed colour. Feathers, one by one, not {261} even black, but red appeared—she must have coloured red to fill some other _rôle_. Soon I found myself _vis-à-vis_ with a creature unpasted, unfloured, and nothing more than a vulgar Blackbird. How dare I publish my shame! I plucked up courage and resolved to quit the gay world, to give up my career, to flee to a desert, if that were possible, to shun the sight of every living creature. IX. I flew away broken-hearted, and the wind, the good angel of birds, wafted me on its wings to a branch at Mortfontaine. It was night, the birds were asleep, but the Nightingale still sang. Alone in the darkness his heart overflowed with his song to God for His goodness, his breast expanded with the sacred theme, and with a rapture unfelt by the most gifted poets who sing for the ears of men. I could not resist the temptation of addressing him. “Happy Nightingale, you sing because your heart is bursting with joy. You are indeed highly favoured, you have a wife and little ones which you sing to sleep on their pillow of moss. You have a full moon to cheer you, plenty to eat, and no journals to praise or condemn you. Rubini and Rosini are as nothing to you. You are equal to the one, and divine when compared with the other. I, sir, have wasted my life in pursuing the empty vanities of fame, while you have secured real happiness in the wood. May your secret be learned?” “Yes,” replied the Nightingale, “but it is not what you imagine. My wife bothers me, I do not love her! I am passionately fond of the Rose; Sadi, the Persian, has spoken of it. I sing all night to her while she sleeps and is deaf to my praise. Her petals are closed at this hour. She cradles an old Scarab, and when the gray dawn breaks sadly over the wood, and my eyes are closing in sleep, then she will open her breast, and the Bee will be welcomed with the dainty pollen from the lips of her lover.” {262} THE QUEEN’S HUSBAND. The first political act in which I took part made so deep an impression on me, that I attribute the strange vicissitudes of my life to its influence. Permit me to begin my narrative without further introduction. [Illustration] I had reached maturity and become a citizen of the hive, when one morning I was roused by a knocking at the partition, and some one calling on me by name. “What is wanted?” I inquired. “Come out at once!” was the instant rejoinder. “You are wanted. Monsieur is about to be executed, and you are required as one of the guards of honour.” These awful words, which I scarcely comprehended, filled me with horror. I was, for all that, aware beforehand of the impending doom of Monsieur, but had no notion that my services would be required at the ghastly ceremony.