Page:The fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen (c1899).djvu/37

 to the barrel. “It is not the fault of the latter,” observed the musical conductor, “for the bird is a good timeist, quite after my school.” So the artificial bird was made to sing alone. It obtained just as much success as the real bird, and then it was thought so much prettier to look at, for it sparkled like bracelets and breast-pins.

Three-and-thirty times did it sing the same piece without being tired. The company would willingly have heard it anew, but the emperor said that it was time the living nightingale should take her turn. But where was she? Nobody had remarked that she had flown out at the open window and back to her green woods.

“How comes this?” said the emperor. And all the courtiers blamed her, and set down the nightingale for a most ungrateful animal.

“But we have the best bird left,” said they; and accordingly the artificial bird was made to sing again, and they heard the same tune for the four-and-thirtieth time. Only they had not yet learned it by heart completely, for it was difficult to catch. “And the conductor praised the bird to the skies, and even maintained that it was superior to a real nightingale, not only as regards outward appearance and the profusion of diamonds, but in point of intrinsic merit.

“For you perceive, my gracious lord and emperor of us all,” said he, “with a real nightingale you can never depend on what is coming; but with an artificial bird all is laid out beforehand. One can analyze it, one can open it, and show the human skill that contrived its mechanism, and how the barrels lie, how they work, and how one thing proceeds from another.”

“Those are quite my own thoughts,” said all present; and the musical conductor was allowed to exhibit the bird to the people on the following Sunday. And the emperor commanded that the people should likewise hear it sing. They accordingly heard it, and were as delighted as though they had got drunk with tea, for it was so thoroughly Chinese. And they all cried out “Oh!” and held up their forefingers, and nodded their heads. But the poor fisherman, who had heard the real nightingale, said: “It sounds prettily enough, and the melodies are all alike; but there's a something wanting, though I can’t tell what.”

The real nightingale was banished from the land.

The artificial bird was placed on a silk cushion beside the emperor’s bed. All the presents of gold and precious stones which had been showered upon it lay around, and the bird had risen to the title of Imperial Toilet-singer, and to the rank of number one on the left side. For the emperor reckoned the left side the noblest, as being the seat of the heart; for an emperor's heart is on the left, just as other people’s are. And the conductor of the music wrote a work in twenty-five volumes about the artificial bird, which was so learned, and so long, and so full of the hardest Chinese words, that everybody said they had read it and understood it, for fear of being thought stupid, or being trampled to death.

A whole year passed by. The emperor and his court, and all other Chinese, now knew by heart every little flourish in the artificial bird’s song. But that was the very reason why it pleased them better than ever, because they could now sing with the bird—which they accordingly did. The boys in the street would go about singing “Zi-zi-zi—cluck-cluck—cooo-oo”; and the emperor sang it likewise. It was really quite delightful!

But one evening, when the artificial bird was singing its best, and the emperor lay in