The nightingales lulled him to sleep with the melody of their concerts, the cock woke him with the shrill clarion-call of his crowing; all the day long he flitted and flew amid the endless twittering and warbling of linnets, tomtits, bullfinches, sparrows, and chaffinches, taking _his_ part too in the orchestra, and near bursting his little throat to produce his finest notes, with that vanity that makes us one, and believe Nature has implanted in us the soul of an artist—a great, mysterious, unappreciated artist. II But the summer passed into autumn, and drenching rains succeeded the sunny days; the poor goldfinch had to perch of nights in rain-soaked trees, where he had to sit cold and shivering, feeling his feathers getting wet and draggled one by one. Furious winds tore away the leaves, and lo! one morning when he opened his eyes, he saw a new and strange world—the ground was covered with snow, and far as sight could reach were only white roofs, white hedges, and white trees. Winter was come! Then oh! how bitterly he regretted his mother’s warm breast! How gladly would he have given the joys of the past summer to find himself once more pressed close to her side and feel her heart beating against his in the cosy nest! But all summer the wind had been busy confusing the pathways of the air, so that it was now impossible to discover the one that should have led him back to the nest; nay, a more blighting wind than all the rest blew out of the skies; the wind of forgetfulness had breathed upon his spirit, carrying away the memory of that happy road—the first that young folks forget. And now winter grew fierce and fell, devastating the orchards, bombarding the cottages with hailstones, driving hope from all breasts and killing the little birds in the nests—the young birds that are the hope of the verdant springtide and happy days to come. The little goldfinch was quite sure this horror would never end, that the trees would never grow green again, that never more would the harvest clothe the fields in green, that gaiety, sunshine, and youth were vanished away for good and all. Cowering in the hollow of an old branch, he watched the days go by like a procession of white phantoms, each uglier than the other, and his little feet all stiff with cold, his feathers frozen together with hoar-frost, sad and shivering, he thought many and many a time his last hour was come. In vain the old birds told him of a re-birth; he could not believe in the resurrection of things when this dreary time of mourning should be over. III