ay by the wings of a bird is the sigh of a soul from the
world!

"Put out the fire," said Karl, "it is getting daylight."

The sky was, in fact, beginning to grow pale, and the flights of ducks
made long, rapid streaks which were soon obliterated on the sky.

A stream of light burst out into the night; Karl had fired, and the two
dogs ran forward.

And then, nearly every minute, now he, now I, aimed rapidly as soon as
the shadow of a flying flock appeared above the rushes. And Pierrot and
Plongeon, out of breath but happy, retrieved the bleeding birds, whose
eyes still, occasionally, looked at us.

The sun had risen, and it was a bright day with a blue sky, and we were
thinking of taking our departure, when two birds with extended necks
and outstretched wings, glided rapidly over our heads. I fired, and one
of them fell almost at my feet. It was a teal, with a silver breast,
and then, in the blue space above me, I heard a voice, the voice of a
bird. It was a short, repeated, heart-rending lament; and the bird, the
little animal that had been spared began to turn round in the blue sky,
over our heads, looking at its dead companion which I was holding in my
hand.

Karl was on his knees, his gun to his shoulder watching it eagerly,
until it should be within shot. "You have killed the duck," he said,
"and the drake will not fly away."

He certainly did not fly away; he circled over our heads continually,
and continued his cries. Never have any groans of suffering pained me
so much as that desolate appeal, as that lamentable reproach of this
poor bird which was lost in space.

Occasionally he took flight under the menace of the gun which followed
his movements, and seemed ready to continue his flight alone, but as he
could not make up his mind to this, he returned to find his mate.

"Leave her on the ground," Karl said to me, "he will come within shot
by and by." And he did indeed come near us, careless of danger,
infatuated by his animal love, by his affection for his mate, which I
had just killed.

Karl fired, and it was as if somebody had cut the string which held the
bird suspended. I saw something black descend, and I heard the noise of
a fall among the rushes. And Pierrot brought it to me.

I put them--they were already cold--into the same game-bag, and I
returned to Paris the same evening.

THE INN

Like all the little wooden inns in the higher Alps, tiny auberges
situated in the bare and rocky go