Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/71

Rh "No, sir, he catches them himself."

"How does he catch them himself? and where?"

"Up there, on the roof,"—and so saying, he pointed to a roof, in which I could certainly make out a piece of mechanism, the ingenious details of which the distance made it impossible to distinguish.

I am a great fowler myself, though I do not carry my passion for ornithology to the same insane and extravagant lengths as our worthy Brussels amateur. I have limed and netted hundreds of birds as a boy; so these details began to rouse my curiosity.

"But tell me now," I urged the man, "how does your master manage? The raven is one of the cleverest, most cunning, wily, shy birds in all nature."

"It is so, sir, against the old methods, gun, poison, limed twig; but not when the bass viol is used."

"What do you mean,—when the bass viol is used?"

"I mean this, sir. A raven is pretty sure to be afraid of a man holding a gun, or even a man holding nothing, in his hands; but is he likely to be afraid of a man playing the bass viol? "

"So your master adopts Orpheus' tactics and lures the ravens to him by playing the bass viol?"

"No, I don't mean that quite."

"Well, what do you mean?"

"See here, I will explain the thing;,my master keeps a decoy."

"A decoy, eh?"

"Yes, a tame raven. Look, the old villain is hopping about yonder in the garden," and he pointed to a raven pottering about the garden walks, a fellow with a ruff and almost white with age.

"He gets up at four o'clock in the morning."

"The raven?"

"No, no, my master. Oh! the raven, he never goes to sleep; day and night he keeps his eyes always open, plotting mischief all the while. I don't believe myself he's a real raven at all, I think he's a devil. Well, my master gets up at four in the morning, before day. light; he comes down in his dressing-gown and sets his old ruffain of a decoy bird in the centre of the net you see up there in the roof, at the far end of the garden. He ties the string that works the net to his foot; then he takes his bass viol and begins playing Une fièvre brûlante. His tame raven croaks, and the ravens of St. Gudule hear him; they fly up, only to see a friend eating white cheese and a gentleman playing the bass viol. Why should they be afraid, I should like to know? They come and sit cheek by jowl with the decoy, and the more my master rumbles, rumbles, rumbles with his bow on the strings, the more they come. Then crack! suddenly he pulls in his foot; the net closes, the silly things are caught, and there you are!"

"And then your master nails them to the wall? "

"Oh! my master, you know, ceases to be a man then and turns into a tiger. He drops his instrument, unties the string, runs to the wall, scrambles up a ladder, grips the ravens, jumps down again, crams his mouth full of nails, seizes a hammer, and tap! tap! there's a raven crucified, caw, caw, caw as much as ever he likes. It excites my master, all this duet. There, you see how it is."

"Is it long since your master was taken with this mania?"

"Oh! ten years ago, sir. It's his life, it's meat and drink to him. If he were to go three days without catching a raven, he would fall ill; if it lasted a week, it would kill him. Now, would you like to see the tomtits' gallery?"

"Certainly I should."

The long room, papered with dead birds, the air impregnated with the dusty miasma of corruption, the convulsive struggles and hoarse screams of the dying ravens, all this was like to raise my gorge if I tarried much longer.

Once more we crossed the garden, and it was only then, when I looked at the decoy raven with the ruff out of one eye and the old manservant out of the other, that I observed the striking similarity of their movements when engaged in the discovery and execution of insects. Evidently either the raven had copied the servant, or the servant had copied the raven.

For my own part, inasmuch as it was matter of common knowledge that the raven lives to be a hundred and twenty years old, and the servantman was only forty, I suspect the latter of being the pagiarist.

We soon came to the tomtits' gallery. This was a small detached building standing in the opposite corner of the garden. The walls were covered with the wings