There was some talk of taking away the “Scenes in the Life of Animals,” the caricatures in which had amused even my father and brought a smile to his lips. The effect of the incident was to attach me all the more strongly to the White Blackbird, who had nearly caused the book to be placed upon the Index. And I soon came to see what it undoubtedly was that distinguished Aunt Deen from the Lettered Martlet. The latter, with immaculate plumage, was in fact merely painted--covered over with a layer of flour which gave her that appearance of having fallen from the sky. The White Blackbird, who never suspected it, and thought he had discovered in the Martlet a creature unique in all the world, becoming suspicious of a mysterious pot of some white mixture, had a disastrous experience. His poems moving him to tenderness, he shed such profuse tears over his companion as to dissolve the plaster of paris with which she was covered, and reveal her as the most commonplace of blackbirds. Now I had often wept in Aunt Deen’s arms; she had bewailed my sorrows without losing anything of her colour. She made use neither of paste nor flour; no, decidedly, however beautiful the stories she made up, she would never be a woman of letters. Another bit of knowledge came to me from the White Blackbird. I learned from him to enjoy the charm of words for their own sake, independently of their meaning. After his conjugal mishap, he fled to the forest to confide his woes to the Nightingale, uttering to her this plaint: _I was co-ordinating fooleries while you were in the woods_. I did not clearly grasp the meaning, because of the co-ordination of fooleries, which eluded me, and yet I loved the melody of this phrase, and repeated it over and over to myself. The reply of the Nightingale, still more deeply charged with mystery, completely upset me. _I love the Rose_, he sighed. _Sadi the Persian has sung of her: I wear out my throat all night singing to her, but she sleeps, and hears me not. Her chalice is at this moment closed; she is cherishing an old Beetle there; and to-morrow morning, when I go back to my couch, exhausted with suffering and weariness, then she will open her petals that a bee may devour her heart_. I took no interest either in the old Beetle or in Sadi the Persian; the exhausted Nightingale, and that Rose with the devoured heart, communicated to me, by the magic of syllables, a sort of far-off presentiment of love-pain, in which I found a vague and ineffable sadness.