can be opened and explained, so that people may understand how the
waltzes are formed, and why one note follows upon another.”
“This is exactly what we think,” they all replied, and then the music-
master received permission to exhibit the bird to the people on the
following Sunday, and the emperor commanded that they should be present
to hear it sing. When they heard it they were like people intoxicated;
however it must have been with drinking tea, which is quite a Chinese
custom. They all said “Oh!” and held up their forefingers and nodded, but a
poor fisherman, who had heard the real nightingale, said, “it sounds prettily
enough, and the melodies are all alike; yet there seems something wanting, I
cannot exactly tell what.”
And after this the real nightingale was banished from the empire, and the
artificial bird placed on a silk cushion close to the emperor’s bed. The
presents of gold and precious stones which had been received with it were
round the bird, and it was now advanced to the title of “Little Imperial
Toilet Singer,” and to the rank of No. 1 on the left hand; for the emperor
considered the left side, on which the heart lies, as the most noble, and the
heart of an emperor is in the same place as that of other people.
The music-master wrote a work, in twenty-five volumes, about the
artificial bird, which was very learned and very long, and full of the most
difficult Chinese words; yet all the people said they had read it, and
understood it, for fear of being thought stupid and having their bodies
trampled upon.
So a year passed, and the emperor, the court, and all the other Chinese
knew every little turn in the artificial bird’s song; and for that same reason it
pleased them better. They could sing with the bird, which they often did.
The street-boys sang, “Zi-zi-zi, cluck, cluck, cluck,” and the emperor
himself could sing it also. It was really most amusing.
One evening, when the artificial bird was singing its best, and the
emperor lay in bed listening to it, something inside the bird sounded
“whizz.” Then a spring cracked. “Whir-r-r-r” went all the wheels, running
