he leaves were shaken in the clear, burning green; and, on a sudden,
a multitude of goldfinches, the heads red in the wind, the wings half
spread, were fluttering from branch to branch. I could have fancied,
amid the quivering of the great bunches of fruit, that they were
cherries on the wing. Justin suffered his pipe to die away: the birds
were come at his invitation, and performed their prelude."

It is forty years afterwards that the narrator, now a man of letters in
Paris, writes to his old friend, with tidings of Justin and Norine:--

"In 1842 (he observes) you were close on fifteen; I scarcely twelve. In
my eyes your age made you my superior. And then, you were so strong,
so tender, so amiteux, to use a word from up there--a charming word.
And so God, Who had His designs for you, whereas I, in spite of my
pious childhood, wandered on [131] my way as chance bade me, led you by
the hand, attached, ended by keeping you for Himself. He did well
truly when He chose you and rejected me!"

His finding the pair in the wilds of Paris is an adventure, in which,
in fact, a goldfinch again takes an important part--a goldfinch who is
found to understand the Cevenol dialect:--

"The goldfinch (escaped from its cage somewhere, into the dreary court
of the Institute) has seen me: is looking at me. If he chose to make
his way into my apartment, he would be very welcome. I feel a strong
impulse to try him with that unique patois word, which, whistled after
a peculiar manner, when I was a boy never failed to succeed in the
mountains of Orb--Beni! Beni! Viens! Viens! I dare not! He might
take fright and fly away altogether."

In effect, the Cevenol bird, true to call, introduces Norine, his
rightful owner, whose husband Justin is slowly dying. Towards the end
of a hard life, faithful to their mountain ideal, they have not lost
their dignity, though in a comparatively sordid medium: [132]

"As for me, my dear Arribas, I remained in deep agitation, an attentive
spectator of the scene; and while Justin and Norine, set both alike in
the winepress of sorrow, le pressoir de la douleur, as your good books
express it, murmured to each other their broken consoling words, I saw
them again, in thought, young, handsome, in the full flower of life,
under the cherry-trees, the swarming goldfinches, of blind Barthelemy
Jalaguier. Ah me! It was thus that, five-and-forty years after, in
this dark street of Paris, that festive day w