IN China, you know, the emperor is a Chinaman, and all the people around him are Chinamen, too. The emperor’s palace, at the time of this story, was more magnificent than any other in the world, for it was made entirely of the finest porcelain. In the garden bloomed the rarest flowers, and to the most beautiful ones were tied little silver bells which tinkled perpetually, so that no one could pass the flowers without looking at and admiring them. Every feature of the garden had been carefully planned, and it was so large that the gardener himself did not know where it ended. If, however, one walked straight on, one came at last to a forest of lofty trees, and beyond the forest was the sea, deep and blue. Close to the shore, amid the foliage of the trees, lived a nightingale, and it sang so sweetly that even the poor fishermen would stop and listen, when they were out at night drawing in their nets. “Heavens! how beautiful that is!” they would say.
But they could not listen long, for they had to attend to their work; yet if they came that way the next night they would again exclaim, “How beautifully that bird sings!”
Travelers came from all the countries in the world to the city of the emperor; and they admired everything very much, especially the palace and the garden. But when they heard the nightingale they would say, “That is best of all!”
After they got home they told of their experiences, and the learned ones wrote books about the things they had seen and heard in the domains of the Chinese emperor, and they never failed to praise the nightingale. Those who were poets wrote very beautiful verses about the nightingale in the wood by the deep, blue sea.
At length some of the books came into the hands of the emperor. He sat in his golden chair and read them, and he nodded his head, well pleased by the appreciative descriptions of his city and palace and garden. Then he came to the words, “But the nightingale is best of all.”
“What is this?” said he. “The nightingale—why, I know nothing about it. Can there be such a bird in my realm, yes, and in my own garden, which I have never seen or heard? Fancy my having to discover this from a book!”
He called his chamberlain, who was so grand that when any one of lower rank dared to speak to him or ask him a question, he would only answer, “Pooh!” which means nothing at all.
“Chamberlain,” said the emperor, “these books tell of a very wonderful bird called a nightingale in the palace garden. They declare it is the finest thing in my great empire. Why have I never been informed about it?”
“This is the first time I have heard it mentioned,” said the chamberlain. “It has never been presented at court.”
“My orders are that it shall appear in the palace this evening to sing to me,” said the emperor. “The whole world knows what I possess, while I myself do not.”
“I have never heard it mentioned before,” said the chamberlain; “but I will seek it, and I will find it.”
Yet where was it to be found? The chamberlain ran upstairs and downstairs, and in and out of all the rooms and corridors, but not one person among those he met had heard of the nightingale. So he ran back to the emperor and said the bird must be a myth invented by the people who wrote the books. “Your Imperial Majesty ought not to believe everything that books contain,” said he. “They are often mere fiction, and what we call the black art.”
“But the books in which I have been reading about the nightingale,” said the monarch, “were sent to me by the high and mighty Emperor of Japan; so there cannot be anything untrue in them. I will hear the nightingale, and I insist that it must sing to me tonight. It shall have my gracious protection, and if you fail to have it here the whole court shall be trampled on after supper.”
“Tsing-pe!” said the chamberlain, and away he ran again up and down the stairs and in and out of all the rooms and corridors. Half the court ran with him, for they none of them wished to be trampled on, and there was a great inquiry after the wonderful nightingale which was known to all the outside world, but to no one at court.
At last they found a poor little maid in the kitchen, who said: “Dear me, I know the nightingale very well, and it certainly can sing! Every evening I have permission to take home to my sick mother some of the scraps from the table. She lives by the seashore, and on my way back, when I am tired, I sit down to rest a while in the wood, and then I hear the nightingale. Its song makes the tears come into my eyes, and I feel as if my mother were kissing me!”
“Little maid,” said the chamberlain, “I will procure you a permanent position in the kitchen, and permission to see the emperor dining, if you will take us to the nightingale, for it must appear at the court this evening.”
Then they all went out into the wood where the nightingale sang. As they were going along at their best pace a cow began to bellow. “Oh,” said the courtiers, “that is it! What a wonderful power there is in the song for such a small creature! And we certainly have heard it before.”
“That is a cow bellowing,” said the little maid. “We are a long way yet from the place where the nightingale sings.”
Presently some frogs began to croak in a marsh. “Beautiful!” said the Chinese court chamberlain. “Now I hear it. The sound is just like the tinkling of tiny church bells.”
“Those are frogs,” said the little maid. “But I think we shall soon hear the nightingale now.”
Then the nightingale began to sing. “That’s it,” said the little maid. “Listen, listen; and look—there it sits!” She pointed to a little gray bird up among the branches.
“Is it possible?” said the chamberlain. “I should never have thought the nightingale was like that. How common it looks! I suppose it has lost its color through a faintness caused by the unexpected sight of so many grand people.”
“Little nightingale,” said the kitchen-maid, “our gracious emperor wishes you to sing to him.”
“I will do so with the greatest pleasure,” said the nightingale, and it warbled a song in the most delightful fashion.
“Its singing sounds just like crystal bells,” said the chamberlain. “See how it works its little throat. I wonder that we have never heard it before. It will be a great success at court.”
“Shall I sing again to the emperor?” asked the nightingale, who thought the monarch was present.
“My excellent little nightingale,” said the chamberlain, “I have the honor to invite your attendance at a court festival tonight, when you will charm his Imperial Majesty with your fascinating singing.”
“My singing sounds best among the trees,” said the nightingale, but it went with them willingly when it understood that the emperor wanted it to come.
The palace had been splendidly decorated for the occasion. The porcelain walls and floors reflected the light of many thousands of golden lamps; the most beautiful flowers, all of the tinkling kind, were arranged in the corridors; and there was such a running to and fro as kept the bells in constant motion and filled one’s ears full of the tinkling.
In the center of the great hall, where the emperor sat, a golden perch had been fixed for the nightingale. The whole court was present, and the little kitchen-maid was permitted to stand behind the door, for she had been promoted to be a real palace cook. All were dressed in their very best, and all had their eyes on the little gray bird, to whom the emperor nodded.
The nightingale sang so beautifully that tears came into the emperor’s eyes and ran down his cheeks. Indeed, the song touched the heart of every one who heard it. The emperor was so charmed that he said the nightingale should have his golden garter to wear around its neck. But the nightingale declined with thanks, saying that it had already received sufficient reward; “for I have seen tears in the emperor’s eyes,” it added, “and I could ask for nothing more.”
Then again it sang its heavenly song. “That is the sweetest possible sort of coquetry,” said the ladies; and they took some water into their mouths to try to make the same gurgling when any one spoke to them.
Everybody expressed satisfaction—even the footmen and chamber-maids, and that is saying a great deal, for they are always the most difficult people to please. In short, the nightingale was a great success.
It was now to remain at court and live in a cage. Twice a day and once at night it had liberty to go out, but whenever it left its cage it was accompanied by twelve servants, each holding a silken string attached to its leg. There was not much pleasure in an outing of that sort.
The whole city talked about the wonderful bird, and if two acquaintances met, one would say, by way of greeting, “Nightin,” and the other would say, “gale;” and then they sighed, and perfectly understood each other. Eleven tradesmen’s children were named after the bird, though not one of them grew up with the least ability to sing.
One day the emperor received a large parcel on which was written, “The Nightingale.”
“Here we have a new book about our celebrated bird,” said he.
It was no book, however, but a box that contained an artificial nightingale made much like the living one in size and shape, but covered all over with diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. When the imitation bird was wound up, it could sing one of the songs the real bird sang, and then it wagged its tail all glittering with silver and gold. Round its neck was tied a ribbon, on which was written, “The Emperor of Japan’s nightingale is poor compared with that of the Emperor of China.”
Everybody said, “Oh, how beautiful!” and he who had brought the artificial bird immediately received the title of Imperial Nightingale-Carrier-in-Chief.
“Now the two birds must sing together,” said the courtiers. “What a lovely duet that will be!”
So they had to sing together, but they did not get on very well, for the real bird sang its own way, and did not keep time with the mechanical bird.
“The discords are not the new one’s fault,” said the music-master, “for it sings in perfect time and in every way is entirely correct.”
Afterward the imitation bird was made to sing alone. Singing thus, it was just as great a success as the real bird; and of course it was much prettier to look at, for it glittered like bracelets and breastpins. Thirty-three times it sang the same tune over, and still it was not tired. The courtiers would willingly have heard it from the beginning again, but the emperor said that the live nightingale must have a turn now. Where was it? No one had noticed that it had flown out of the open window back to its own green woods.
“What is the meaning of this?” said the emperor.
The courtiers all blamed the nightingale, and thought it a most ungrateful creature. “Anyway, we have the best bird,” they said.
Then the imitation bird had to sing again, which made the thirty-fourth time they had heard the same tune. But they did not know the tune thoroughly, even then, it was so difficult. The music-master praised the bird exceedingly, and insisted that it was much better than a live nightingale, not only as regarded its outside with all the diamonds, but the inside, too. “Because,” said he, “we never know what song is coming next from the real nightingale, but with the artificial one everything is decided beforehand. So it is, and so it must remain; it can’t be otherwise. You can open the bird, you can explain it, and show the ingenuity of it, how the wheels go, and how one note follows another.”
“Those are exactly my opinions,” they all said; and the music-master received permission to show the bird to the people on the following Sunday.
So the people saw the imitation nightingale and heard it sing, and they were all very enthusiastic over it, and they all said, “Oh!” and stuck their forefingers up into the air and nodded their heads.
But the poor fishermen who had heard the real bird said: “The song of this bird is very nice, and it is much like that of the live bird, but there is something wanting—we don’t know what.”
The real nightingale was banished from the empire, while the artificial bird was given a place on a silk cushion close to the emperor’s bed. All the presents which it had received lay around it, and the title of Chief Imperial Singer of the Bedchamber on the Left Side was conferred on it. The emperor considered the left side, where the heart is, the more important, for even an emperor has his heart on the left side just like other people.
A treatise in twenty-five volumes was written by the music-master about the artificial bird, and this treatise was so learned and long, and so full of the most difficult Chinese words, that all the people said they had read and understood it, for otherwise they would have been thought stupid.
A year passed, and the emperor and his court and all the other Chinamen knew every little gurgle in the song of the artificial bird. That was why it pleased them. They could sing with it, and often did so. Even the street boys sang: “Tsee, tsee, tsee! Cluck, cluck, cluck!” and the emperor did just the same. It really was most enjoyable.
But one evening, when the bird was singing its best, and the emperor was lying in bed listening to it, something inside of the bird gave way with a sudden snap. Then whir-r-r went all the wheels, and the music stopped.
The emperor jumped out of bed and sent for his private physicians, but what good could they do? They had a watchmaker come, and after a good deal of talking and examining and tinkering he got the works to go again somehow. But he said the bird must be used sparingly, for the works were much worn, and he could not renew them so as to be sure that the music would go right. This caused great sorrow. The imitation bird could only be allowed to sing once a year. Each time the music-master made a little speech full of difficult words, and affirmed that the singing was just as good as ever. After being thus reassured the court listened to the bird with all their former pleasure.
At the end of five years a great grief came on the nation. The Chinese were all very fond of their emperor, and now he was ill, and it was reported that he had not long to live. A new emperor had been selected, and would be proclaimed ruler of the empire as soon as the old emperor was dead. Cloth had been laid down in all the rooms and corridors to deaden the sound of footsteps, and the palace was very, very quiet. Outside, about the entrance, many people had gathered, and they asked the chamberlain how their emperor was getting on.
“Pooh!” he said, and shook his head.
Pale and motionless lay the emperor in his great splendid bed, and presently the courtiers thought he was dead. So they all went away to pay their respects to the new emperor. The pages ran out to gossip about it, and the chambermaids had a grand teaparty.
But the emperor was not dead yet. There he lay on the gorgeous bed with its velvet hangings and heavy gold tassels. A window stood open, and the moon shone in on him and the artificial bird. He could hardly breathe, and he felt burdened by a weight on his chest. He opened his eyes and saw that Death was sitting on his chest and wore the emperor’s golden crown on his head. In one hand he held the emperor’s golden sword, and in the other the emperor’s imperial banner. Round about, from among the folds of the velvet hangings peered many strange faces, some hideous, and others gentle and pleasant. These were all the emperor’s bad and good deeds staring at him now that Death was sitting on his heart.
“Do you remember this?” they whispered one after the other. “Do you recollect this?” And they told him so many things that the perspiration ran down from his brow.
“Say no more,” begged the emperor, and then shouted: “Music, music! Sound the great drum so that I may not hear what these faces are saying.”
But they went on questioning him, and Death sat nodding his approval to all that they said.
“Music, music!” shrieked the emperor. “You precious little golden bird, sing, sing! I have given you costly jewels, and I have hung my golden garter round your neck. Sing, I tell you, sing!”
But the bird was silent. It could not sing without being wound up, and there was no one at hand to do that. Death continued to gaze at the emperor with the great empty sockets of his eyes, and all was still—terribly still.
Suddenly, through the open window, there came the sound of sweetest singing. The living nightingale was perched on a bough outside. It had heard of the emperor’s illness, and had come to bring comfort and hope to him by its singing. As it sang, the ghostly faces around became fainter and fainter, and the blood coursed with fresh vigor through the emperor’s veins, and strengthened his feeble limbs. Even Death listened and said, “Go on, little nightingale, go on!”
“Yes,” said the nightingale, “I will go on if you will give me the emperor’s beautiful golden sword and imperial banner and jeweled crown.”
“I will relinquish each of the three treasures in exchange for a song,” said Death.
So the nightingale sang three songs, and the last was about the quiet churchyard where the roses bloom, and the flowers of the elder scent the air, and where the grass is ever moistened by the tears of the mourners. This song made Death desire to be in his own garden, and like a cold gray mist he floated out through the window.
“Thanks, thanks!” said the emperor. “You heavenly little bird, I know you well. I banished you from my empire, and yet you have charmed the evil visions away from my bed by your song, and removed Death from my heart. How can I reward you?”
“You have rewarded me,” said the nightingale, “by the tears I brought to your eyes the very first time I sang to you. Those are the jewels which gladden the heart of a singer, and I shall never forget them. But sleep now, that you may get well and strong.”
Again the nightingale sang, and the emperor fell into a refreshing slumber. When he awoke, the sun was shining in on him through the window, and he found himself vigorous and well. None of his attendants had yet come back to him, for they thought he was dead, but the nightingale still sat singing.
“You must always stay with me,” said the emperor, “and I will smash the imitation bird into a thousand pieces.”
“Don’t do that,” said the nightingale. “It did the best it could. Keep it as before. As for me, I cannot build my nest and live in the palace. Let me come when I like, and I will sit on this bough in the evening and sing to you. I will sing to cheer you and to make you think. I will sing of those who are happy and of those who suffer. I will sing of what is good and what is evil around you. The little singing bird flies far and wide—to the poor fishermen, to the peasants in their humble cottages, and to many others who are distant from you and your court. I love your heart more than your crown, and I will come and sing to you, but you must grant me one request.”
“That I will do, whatever it may be,” said the emperor, who had now risen from his bed and put on his imperial robes.
“I only ask,” said the nightingale, “that you let no one know that you have a little bird which tells you everything. It will be better so.”
Then the nightingale flew away. Immediately afterward the attendants came in to look after their dead emperor. They stood aghast at sight of him, and the emperor said, “Good morning!”
