Prisoners in the streets, moving in green-coated gangs; prisoners in the
gutters, pushing long scoops to stay the everlasting tide of mud; thin,
hungry, fierce and sad, green-coated prisoners like bedraggled parrots,
out-numbered the population.
The candle of the world was snuffed out--and the wick smoked.
The light was gone--the blinding light of the Chantilly snows, the
lights on the Precy river--moonlight, sunlight--the little boat
crossing at moonrise, sunrise.
"Ah, that long journey! How I pressed on, how I fled from Amiens!"
"What, not Charleville yet?" I said. "Isn't it Charleville soon? What
hurry was there then to get there?"
The stuffed bird eyed her from his unstirring branch, and that yellow
eye seemed to answer: "None, none..."
"This is his home; his country. He told me it was beautiful. But I
cannot see beauty. I am empty of happiness. Where is the beauty?"
And the vile bird, winking in the candle's light, replied: "Nowhere."
But he lied.
Perhaps she had been sent, stuffed as he was, from Paris. Perhaps he had
never flown behind the town, and seen the wild mountains that began at
the last house on the other bank of the river. Or the river itself,
greener than any other which flowed over black rocks, in cold gulleys
--the jade-green Meuse flowing to Dinant, to Namur. Perhaps from his
interminable boulevard he had never seen the lovely Spanish Square of
red and yellow, its steep-roofed houses standing upon arches--or the
proud Duc Charles de Gonzague who strutted for ever upon his pedestal,
his stone cape slipping from one shoulder, his gay Spaniard's hat upon
his head--holding back a smile from his handsome lips, lest the town
which he had come over the mountains to found should see him tolerant
and sin beneath his gaze.
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