280 THE NIGHTINGALE. 



ingale caught that very morning. The fowler, by a skilful Machia- 

 velism, had placed the little captive in a world of very joyous slaves, 

 quite accustomed to their confinement. These were young troglodytes, 

 recently born in a cage ; he had rightly calculated that the sight of 

 the sports of innocent infancy sometimes beguiles great grief 



Great evidently, nay, overpowering, was his, and more impressi-ve 

 than any of those sorrows which we express by tears. A dumb 

 agony, pent up within himself, and longing for the darkness. He 

 had withdrawn into the shade as far as might be, to the bottom of 

 the cage, half hidden in a small eating-trough, making himself large 

 and swollen with his slightly-bristling feathers, closing his eyes, never 

 opening them even when he was disturbed, shaken by the frolicsome and 

 careless pastimes of the young turbulents, which frequently drove one 

 another against him. Plainly he would neither see, nor hear, nor eat, 

 nor console himself These self-imposed shadows were, as I clearly 

 saw, an effort, in his cruel suffering, not to be, an intentional suicide. 

 With his mind he embraced death, and died, so far as he was able, 

 by the suspension of his senses and of all external activity. 



Observe that, in this attitude, there was no indication of malicious, 

 bitter, or choleric feeling, nothing to remind one of his neighbour, the 

 morose chaffinch, with his attitude of violent and torturing exertion. 

 Even the indiscretion of the young birdlings which, without care or 

 respect, occasionally threw themselves upon him, could call forth no 

 mark of impatience. He said, obviously : " What matters it to one 

 who is no more?" Although his eyes were closed, I did not the 

 less easily read him. I perceived an artist's soul, all tenderness and 

 all light, without rancour and without harshness against the barbarity 

 of the world and the ferocity of fate. And it was through this that 

 he lived, through this that he could not die, because he found within 

 himself, in his great sorrow, the all-powerful cordial inherent in his 

 nature : internal light, song. In the language of nightingales, these 

 two words convey the same meaning. 



I comprehended that he did not die, because even then, despite 

 himself, despite his keen desire of death, he could not do otherwise 



