226 A TOUE ROUND MY GARDEN. 



spikes of fire-coloured berries, ivies whose fruits become black 

 with frost, laurustines with dark-blue fruits, azerolias or small 

 medlars covered with little red apples, — in order that they 

 might find food in abundance during the whole winter. In 

 certain parts of my rivulet, I have even lessened the depth 

 that they may bathe without danger. 



And how richly have all these cares been repaid ! In 

 winter, the redbreasts come and live in my greenhouse, and 

 familiarly hop about in other parts of my dwelling. In 

 summer, the linnets make their nests in the bushes, and the 

 wrens in the angles of the walls. All allow themselves to be 

 approached and to be seen ; all seem to fly around me without 

 flying away, and all fill my garden with enchanting music. 



Instead of being seated, crammed into a theatre without 

 fresh air, to hear for the hundredth time the same tenor, with 

 the same apricot-coloured tunic and the same chocolate boots, 

 sing the same air, accompanied by the same cries of admira- 

 tion of people who wish to make part of the spectacle, I had 

 three operas a day. 



In the morning, at the break of day, the chaffinch warbled 

 upon the highest branches of the trees, whilst the flowers 

 open their corollas, whilst the rising sun tinted the heavens 

 with rose and saffron. 



Amidst the ardour of noontide heat, the male linnet, con- 

 cealed beneath the shade of the linden-tree, raised his melo- 

 dious voice, whilst his mate sat upon her eggs in her little 

 nest of hair and grass. 



But in the evening, when everything slept — when the stars 

 sparkled in the heavens, when the moonbeams played through 

 the trees, when the evening-primroses with their yellow cups 

 exhaled a sweet perfume, when the glowworms twinkled in 

 the grass, the nightingale raised its full and solemn voice, 

 and sang throughout the night its religious and loving 

 hymns ! 



And this Edmond comes with his gun to alarm, perhaps to 

 send away all my musicians, to falsify my long and careful 

 hospitality, which is now nothing more or less than treachery, 

 since without it perhaps, without the confidence it had 

 inspired, my poor blackbird would not have allowed any one 

 to come near enough to him to make him so easy a victim, 



