Page:Edmund Dulac's picture-book for the French Red cross.djvu/56

THE NIGHTINGALE From every land travellers came to see the emperor's palace and walk in the wonderful garden, but those who heard the Nightingale sing said, 'There is nothing here so entrancing as that song.' And these went away carrying the music in their hearts and the tale of it on their lips to tell in their own lands. Thus the wonder of the Nightingale was known afar, and learned men wrote books about it, describing at length the beauty of the emperor's palace and garden only as a fit setting for the crowning wonder of all — the bird whose entrancing song lifted all this earthly splendour to heaven. Many were the poems written and sung about the far-off Nightingale which filled and thrilled the woods with music by the deep-blue sea. The books and the poems went through the whole world, and of course many of them reached the emperor.

Sitting in his golden chair reading, he nodded his head with a smile of pleasure at the splendid descriptions of palace and garden and all they contained; but, when he read that all this splendour was of minor account compared to the glorious singing of a Nightingale in the woods by the sea, he sat up straight and said, 'A Nightingale? What is this? A wonder in my own home, my own garden—a wonder that travels afar and yet I have never heard of it till now! What strange things we read about in books, to be sure. But I'll soon settle the matter.'

With this he summoned his gentleman-in-waiting—a very important personage; so important, indeed, that when one of less importance dared to address him on even a matter more important than either of them, he would simply answer, 'Ph!'—which, as you know, means nothing at all.

'They say,' said the emperor, 'ahem! they say there is a wonderful bird here called a Nightingale, compared with whose delicious song my palace and garden are of small account. Why have I not been informed of this marvel?'

The gentleman-in-waiting protested that he knew nothing whatever of such a thing as a Nightingale—at least, he was certain it had never been presented at court. 30