In the evening, as soon as the light waned, a bird of my own manufacture--a sort of absurd and impossible crow, made out of iron wire and with black silk wings--came slyly from between my venetian blinds that I immediately closed after the exit of the creature, this bird descended in a droll way and posed on the paving stones in the middle of the street. A ring on which it was suspended, and which allowed it to slip freely the length of the string, was not visible because of the dim light, and from time to time I made the crow hop and skip comically about on the ground. And when the passers-by paused to gaze at this unlikely looking bird that fluttered about so gayly--whiz! I would pull the string that I held firmly in my hand, and the bird would leap from under their very noses and mount high in the air. Oh! how amused I was, those beautiful evenings, when I peeped out from behind my venetian blinds; how I laughed to myself over the surprised exclamations and the bewilderment of those fooled, and how I enjoyed rehearsing to myself their probable reflections and guesses. And to me the most astonishing part was that after the first moment of surprise, the persons whom I tricked laughed as heartily as I; it should be mentioned that the majority of those passing were neighbors who must certainly have had some inkling of the mystifying joke about to be played on them. I was much loved in the neighborhood at that time. Or if the pedestrians chanced to be sailors, the easy going fellows, themselves only grown children, were much delighted with my child's play. What will always remain an incomprehensible mystery to me is that in my family, where we seldom sinned through an excess of reserve towards each other, they shut their eyes to my trick, and thus tacitly gave me permission to play it during the entire spring; I am not able to explain to myself how it chanced that they failed to correct me, and the years instead of clearing up this mystery only serve to intensify it. That black bird has naturally become one of my many relics; at intervals, during the past two or three years, I have looked at it; it is somewhat dingy, but it always recalls to me the beautiful evenings in June, now vanished, the delicious intoxication of that springtime of long ago. CHAPTER LXXIV.