But the Ass, hardly turning his heavy head and without losing a single toothsome blade, makes them a sign with his ears that he is hungry, and that he does not hold his court to-day.  The birds persist; the Ass goes on browsing.  At last his hunger was appeased.  There were some trees planted by the edge of the meadow.  ‘Now, if you like,’ said he, ’you go there, I will follow; you shall sing, I will digest; I will listen, and I’ll give you my opinion.’

The birds instantly fly away, and perch on branches.  The Ass follows them with the air and the step of a chief justice crossing Westminster Hall:  he stretches himself flat on the ground, and says, ’Begin, the court listens.’

Says the Cuckoo:  ’My lord, there is not a word to lose.  I beg of you to seize carefully the character of my singing; above all things, deign, my lord, to mark its artifice and its method.’  Then filling its throat, and flapping its wings at each note, it sang out, ’Coucou, coucou, coucou, coucou, coucou, coucou.’  And after having combined this in every possible way, it fell silent.

The Nightingale, without any prelude, pours forth his voice at once, launches into the most daring modulations, pursues the freshest and most delicate melodies, cadences, pauses, and trills; now you heard the notes murmuring at the bottom of its throat, like the ripple of the brook as it loses itself among the pebbles; now you heard them rising and gradually swelling and filling the air, and lingering long-drawn in the skies.  It was tender, glad, brilliant, pathetic; but his music was not made for everybody.

Carried away by enthusiasm, he would be singing still; but the Ass, who had already yawned more than once, stopped him, and said, ’I suspect that all you have been singing there is uncommonly fine, but I don’t understand a word of it:  it strikes me as bizarre, incoherent, and confused.  It may be you are more scientific than your rival; but he is more methodic than you, and for my part, I’m for method.’

“And then the abbe, addressing M. Le Roy, and pointing to Grimm with his finger:  ‘There,’ he said, ’is the nightingale, and you the cuckoo; and I am the ass, who decide in your favour.  Good-night.’

“The abbes stories are capital, but he acts in a way that makes them better still.  You would have died with laughing to see him stretch his neck into the air, and imitate the fine note of the nightingale, then fill his throat, and take up the hoarse tone for the cuckoo; and all that naturally, and without effort.  He is pantomime from head to foot."[219]

Conversation.—­“’Tis a singular thing, conversation, especially when the company is tolerably large.  Look at the roundabout circuits we took; the dreams of a patient in delirium are not more incongruous.  Still, just as there is nothing absolutely unconnected in the head either of a man who dreams, or of a lunatic, so all hangs together in conversation; but it would often be extremely