The robin was a smart little soul and had practised whistling since his fledgling days. He had received his earliest education in an ecclesiastical school; then he had served as regimental clerk; and as soon as he had learned the rules of correct punctuation he had begun to edit, without preliminary censorship, a newspaper: _The Forest Gazette_. But, somehow or other, he could never get it right: whenever he touched upon a subject, it turned out to be taboo; whenever he refrained from mentioning a subject, that subject particularly ought to have been mentioned; and for all these mistakes he used to get hard knocks on his poor little head. So at last he decided: “I will enter the service of the Eagle; all I shall have to do will be to sing his praises every morning; and no one will punish me for that.” The thrush was a modest and studious person, who led a strictly solitary life; he had no acquaintances (many even believed him to be a drunkard, like all very learned persons), but would sit for whole days alone upon a fir-branch, cramming up information. He managed to plod through a perfect desert of historical investigations: “The Ancestral Records of a Bogie,” “Was the old Woman who rode on a Broomstick married?” “What Sex should be ascribed to Witches in the Register-Papers?” and so forth. But, however hard the poor bird crammed, he could not find a publisher for his pamphlets. At last it occurred to him too: “I’ll engage myself as Court-Historiographer to the Eagle; perhaps he will print my investigations in rook’s dung!” As for the nightingale, he couldn’t complain of the cruelty of fate; he sang so exquisitely that not only the mighty fir-trees, but even the Moscow shopkeepers were quite touched when they heard him. All the world adored him; all the world held its breath to listen when he poured out torrents of divine song from among the branches of some silent grove. But the nightingale was ambitious beyond measure, and desperately given to falling in love. He was not content with making the forest ring with his wild melodies, or filling sad hearts with the harmony of sound ... he kept on thinking how the Eagle would hang round his neck a shining chain of ants’ eggs, and decorate his breast with live beetles, and how the female Eagle would appoint secret meetings with him by moonlight.... In short, all three birds gave the falcon no peace till he undertook to speak on their behalf. The Eagle listened attentively to the falcon’s assurances of the necessity of encouraging science and art; but did not quite understand. He sat sharpening his claws, and his eyes flashed back the sunlight like polished gems. He had never seen a newspaper in his life; he had never taken the slightest interest in either witches or the old woman who rode on a broomstick; and about the nightingale he had only heard that it was a little bit of a bird not worth soiling one’s beak over. “I daresay you don’t even know that Buonaparte is dead,” said the falcon.