Short Fiction, Xavier de Maistre [books to read in your 20s txt] 📗

against this cursed partition, that it shook the roof of the house, the sparrows asleep in the tiles took to their wings in alarm, and the shock of the recoil sent me three paces backwards. VIII

While I was thus walking about to excite my literary genius, a pretty young lady, who lived in the rooms below, astonished at the racket I was making, and perhaps thinking I was giving a ball, sent her husband to find out the cause of the disturbance. I was still giddy from the blow I had received, when the door opened a little, and an elderly man, with a melancholy face, put his head in and cast an inquiring glance round the room.

Having recovered his surprise at finding me alone, he said, with an angry air, “Sir, my wife has a bad headache, allow me to point out to you⁠—”

I immediately interrupted him, and my speech reflected the loftiness of my thoughts.

“Worthy messenger of my beautiful neighbour,” said I, in the language of the bards, “Wherefore gleam your eyes beneath their shaggy brows, like two meteors in the dark forest of Cromba? Thy lovely companion is a ray of light, and I would rather undergo a thousand deaths than disturb her rest; but thy aspect, oh worthy messenger! thy aspect is as dark as the deepest grotto in the caverns of Camora, when the gathering thunderclouds obscure the face of night, and lie heavy on the silent fields of Morven.”

My neighbour, who had probably never read the poems of Ossian, most unfortunately mistook the enthusiastic strain which animated me for a fit of madness and appeared much embarrassed. As it was not my intention to offend him, I offered him a chair and begged him to be seated, but I beheld him retiring, quietly crossing himself, and saying in a low voice, “Mad, by Bacchus, quite mad!”

IX

I permitted him to go out, as I did not wish to enquire what foundation there might be for his observation, and, as is my wont, I sat down at my bureau to make a note of these events. But scarcely had I opened a drawer, in which I hoped to find some paper, than I shut it again abruptly, disturbed by one of the most unpleasant thoughts one can experience, the loss of one’s self esteem. The kind of surprise with which I was seized on this occasion, resembles that which a thirsty traveller experiences when he applies his lips to the brink of a limpid fountain and sees a frog gazing at him from the bottom of the water. It was, however, only the mechanism and carcase of an artificial dove, which, following the example of Archytas, I had once intended to make fly. I had worked untiringly at this model for more than three months. The day of trial came. I placed it on the edge of a table. But first I carefully closed the door, so that my secret might not be discovered, and so as to give a pleasant surprise to my friends. A single thread held back the mechanism. Who can imagine the beating of my heart and the anxiety of my self-esteem when I seized the scissors and cut the fatal bond. Bah! the machinery inside the dove started off, and whizzed round and round. I looked up to see it fly, but, after having turned a few somersaults, it fell down and was lost to sight under the table. Rose, who lay there asleep, rose mournfully and got out of its way. Rose, who never saw a chicken, or a pigeon, or even the smallest bird, without attacking and pursuing it, did not even deign to cast a glance at my dove, which was fluttering on the floor⁠ ⁠… that was the last straw to my self-esteem, and I went out for a stroll on the ramparts.

X

Such was the fate of my artificial dove. Whilst mechanical science intended it to follow the eagle in the sky, destiny bestowed on it the instincts of a mole. I was walking about sadly discouraged, as one always is after the failure of a great hope, when I perceived a flock of cranes flying over my head. I stopped to look at them. They advanced in a triangular order, like the English at the battle of Fontenoy. I saw them crossing the sky from cloud to cloud. “Ah! how well they fly,” said I to myself, “with what confidence they seem to glide along the unseen path they wish to pursue.” Alas! May God forgive me! but for one moment, only one, a horrible feeling of envy entered my soul⁠—it was on account of the cranes. With envious looks I followed them to the extreme limit of the horizon. For a long time, standing motionless in the midst of the passing crowd, I watched the movements of some swallows, and I was astonished to see them suspended in the air, as if I had never before beheld that phenomenon. A feeling of profound admiration, till then unknown to me, flashed across my soul. I thought that I saw nature for the first time. I heard with wonder the buzzing of flies, the song of birds, and that mysterious and confused murmur of a living creation, which involuntarily proclaims its author. Ineffable concert in which man alone has the sublime privilege of being able to join with hymns of intelligent thanksgiving! “Who is the Author of this wonderful mechanism?” I exclaimed. “What manner of Being is He who opened His creative Hand and launched the first swallow on the wind? At Whose command the trees sprang from the earth and flung their branches towards heaven? And thou, entrancing creature, who walkest majestically beneath their shades, whose looks compel respect and love, Who placed thee on the surface of the earth to embellish it? What mind was it that designed thy divine form, and was able to