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down the avenue of splendid old lime-trees
leading to the woods. Soon we were in a real
forest of elms and beeches with here and there
a magnificent oak. The woods were silent, only
now and then we heard the rhythmic tapping of
the wood-pecker or the cooing of a wild pigeon,
the sharp cry of a nut-hatch or the deep alto of
a blackbird singing the last strophes of his
ballad. Soon we emerged on a vast open stretch
of fields and meadows in full sunlight. There
he was, the beloved skylark, quivering on
invisible wings high up in the sky, pouring out his
very heart to heaven and earth with thrills of
joy of life. I looked at the little bird and blessed
him again as I had so often done before in the
frozen North when as a child I used to sit and
watch with grateful eyes the grey little messenger
of summer, sure at last that the long winter was
over.
“It is his last concert,” said the Count.
“His time is up, he will soon have to set to work
to help to feed his children and there will be no
more time for singing and skylarking. You are
right, he is the greatest artist of them all, he
sings from his very heart.”
“To think that there are men capable of
killing this harmless little songster! You have
only to go to Les Halles to find them in hundreds
and hundreds for sale to other men who have
the stomach to eat them. Their voices fill the
whole sky overhead with gladness but their poor
little dead bodies are so small that a child can
clasp them in the palm of his hand, and yet we
eat them with gluttony as though there was
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