If he chose
to make his way into my apartment, he would be very welcome. I feel
a strong impulse to try him with that unique patois word, which,
whistled after a peculiar manner, when I was a boy never failed to
succeed in the mountains of Orb--Beni! Beni! Viens! Viens! I dare
not! He might take fright and fly away altogether."
In effect, the Cevenol bird, true to call, introduces Norine, his
rightful owner, whose husband Justin is slowly dying. Towards the
end of a hard life, faithful to their mountain ideal, they have not
lost their dignity, though in a comparatively sordid medium: [132]
"As for me, my dear Arribas, I remained in deep agitation, an
attentive spectator of the scene; and while Justin and Norine, set
both alike in the winepress of sorrow, le pressoir de la douleur, as
your good books express it, murmured to each other their broken
consoling words, I saw them again, in thought, young, handsome, in
the full flower of life, under the cherry-trees, the swarming
goldfinches, of blind Barthelemy Jalaguier. Ah me! It was thus
that, five-and-forty years after, in this dark street of Paris, that
festive day was finishing, blessed, in the plenitude of nature, by
that august old man, celebrated by the alternate song of all the
birds of Rocaillet.
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