THE BLACKBIRD 190 



the fare is but middling and the society it meets not very 

 amusing. The time of merry-making is over. My Lord 

 Blackbird is obliged to come back to the tlict oi grub 

 and worms, and even tliese are not always tountl in sutii- 

 cient quantity. All his boon comj)anions, being afraid of 

 cold, have emigrated towards warmer climes. His only 

 society are titmice, whom we know as cross-grained, 

 peevish, and positive people; busy birds, indeed, little 

 inclined to listen to the fooleries of the black!)ird; he also 

 finds golden-crested wrens, who being of a reserved dispo- 

 sition, fly from the vicinity of our big noisy blackbird. 



Happily, he is a ])liilosopher. He repeals to himself 

 for his own benefit all his waggish tales, like an old, long 

 forgotten actor who plays over again foi- liimself all those 

 scenes in which he used to be applauded in his best 

 days. And then he consoles himself by saying to himself 

 that bad days will pass by as well as happy ones, and that 

 after all, winter is not everlasting. Already at the end of 

 January he perches on the topmost branch of a fir tree and 

 watches attentively the lengthening days and the rising- 

 temperature. On Saint-Antony's day days « lengthen the 

 length of a monk's meal, » and at Gandlemass « they leng- 

 then an hour »; and with all that the latter end of winter 

 is at hand. By a peculiar instinct, midst rainshowers and 

 February storms, the blackbird knows that spring-time is 

 near. It sees the catkins on hazel-nut trees growing lon- 

 ger; it sees that in the thickets the black hellebore is 



