Bluebeard

“ While every hound has been eagerly winding the scent upon the circuitous route which the elk has made in grazing, Bluebeard would never waste his time in attempting to follow the innumerable windings, but, taking a fresh cast, he would invariably strike off to the jungle and try along the edge, until he reached the spot at which the elk had entered. ”

“ Musicians provided a continual succession of beautiful symphonies. Towards the end of the meal the schoolmaster and schoolmistress, followed by the boys and girls of the village, appeared before the guests, and read a complimentary address to the seigneur of Montragoux and his friends. An astrologer in a pointed cap approached the ladies, and foretold their future love-affairs from the lines of their hands, Bluebeard ordered drink to be given for all his vassals, and he himself distributed bread and meat to the poor families. ”

“ Anne replied, “but they are a great way off.”
“They must be our brothers,” Fatima said. “Heaven be praised! Oh, sign to them to hasten!”
By this time the enraged Bluebeard was howling so loud for his wife to come down that his voice shook the whole mansion. Fatima dared delay no longer, and she descended to 22 the great hall, threw herself at her wicked husband’s feet, and once more begged him to spare her life.
“Silence!” Bluebeard cried. “Your entreaties are wasted! You shall die!” ”

“ Studious historians or astute critics may dispute Perrault’s history of Bluebeard havingxiv been founded upon the life of Gilles de Retz, but the country people (the folk) of Brittany will simply smile at such erudition and continue in their former belief that Bluebeard represents a cruel, wicked man who lived here hundreds of years ago and who was executed for his many crimes against humanity ”

“ By them her husband on his return discovers her disobedience; and he orders her to prepare for death. Her sister bethinks her of the whistle and blows upon it thrice. Bluebeard growing impatient comes upstairs after his victim. Meantime the sister is watching for her brothers; and a dialogue takes place between the sisters as in Perrault's tale. At last the brothers arrive and burst into the house just as Bluebeard is breaking open the door of his wife's room. They slay him, seize his treasure and destroy the castle. ”

“ In order to make their better acquaintance, Bluebeard invited Anne and Jeanne de Lespoisse, with their mother, brothers, and a multitude of ladies and gentlemen to pass a fortnight at the castle of Guillettes. There was a succession of walking, hunting, and fishing parties, dances and festivities, dinners and entertainments of every sort. A young seigneur, the Chevalier de Merlus, whom the ladies Lespoisse had brought with them, organized the beats. ”

“ That fact, with the disastrous termination of the marriage with her, the fiasco of Anne of Cleves, and the catastrophe of Katharine Howard, is responsible for the somewhat mythical monster of popular imagination. The man who divorced two wives and beheaded two more is too suggestive of Bluebeard to be readily regarded as after all to some extent the victim of circumstance. ”

“ She went straight to her sister's chamber, where they again tried, but in vain, to remove the blood from the key. The voice of Blue Beard again calling for her, she was forced to return, and reluctantly to give him the fatal key.
On examining the key, Blue Beard burst into a terrible rage. "Pray Madam," said he, "how came this blood to be here?"
"I am sure I do not know," replied she, trembling, and turning pale.
"What! do you not know!" cried Blue Beard, in a voice like thunder, which made poor Fatima start with fear; "but I know well! You have been in the forbidden blue closet! ”

“ BIRD STORIES FROM BURROUGHS THE BLUEBIRD
It is sure to be a bright March morning when you first hear the bluebird's note; and it is as if the milder influences up above had found a voice and let a word fall upon your ear, so tender is it and so prophetic, a hope tinged with a regret.
There never was a happier or more devoted husband than the male bluebird. He is the gay champion and escort of the female at all times, and while she is sitting he feeds her regularly. It is very pretty to watch them building their nest. ”

“ The party felt so agreeable amidst these scenes of festivity, that they continued at the castle several days, during which the cunning Blue Beard, by every obsequious service, tried to gain the favour of his fair guests. Personal attentions, even although paid us by an ugly creature, seldom fail to make a favourable impression; it was therefore no wonder that Fatima, the youngest of the two sisters, began to think Blue Beard a very polite, pleasant, and civil gentleman; and that the beard, which she and her sister had been so much afraid of, was not so very blue. ”

“ THE BLUEBIRD I know the song that the bluebird is singing,
Out in the apple-tree where he is swinging;
Brave little fellow, the skies may look dreary;
Nothing cares he while his heart is so cheery.
Hark! how the music leaps out from his throat,
Hark! was there ever so merry a note?
Listen awhile and you'll hear what he's saying,
Up in the apple-tree swinging and swaying.
"Dear little blossoms down under the snow,
You must be weary of winter, I know;
Hark, while I sing you a message of cheer;
Summer is coming and spring-time is here!
"Little white snowdrop! I pray you arise ”

“ Bluebirds have their full share of sentiment, or both voice and behavior are rank deceivers. Concerning this aspect of the case, however, the frivolous yellow-rumps cared not a farthing. They sat in a small apple tree conveniently near, and as often as a bluebird ventured upon the wing, one or two of them started instantly in pursuit. If he alighted upon a fence-post, down they dropped upon the next rail and waited for him to make another sally. Once I heard a bluebird utter a pretty sharp note of remonstrance, but that, we may guess, only made the fun the greater. Birds will be birds. ”

“ As her guests had arrived long before the time appointed them for the entertainment. Fatima took them thro' every apartment in the castle, and displayed all the wealth she had acquired by her marriage with Blue Beard. They went from room to room, and from wardrobe to wardrobe, expressing fresh wonder and delight at every new object they came to; but their surprise was increased when they entered the drawing-rooms, and saw the grandeur of the furniture.
During the day, Fatima was so much engaged, that she never once thought of the blue closet, which Blue Beard had ordered her not to open ”

“ This was Cecil Rolleston, the eldest daughter of the house, or rather she stood in that relation to the Colonel, being the offspring of his first wife.
"Come out and play croquet, Bluebell," said she; "the children are having a game; they only let me go on condition of bringing you,"—and she led the way through the window into a charming garden, with large shady maple-trees just beginning to drop their deep-dyed, variegated leaves on the turf; the bluebirds were already gone, but the red and ashen-hued robin, nearly the size of a jay, still rustled through the boughs. ”

“ No one can help feeling the comfort and sympathy of the bluebird. The very drifts soften as he appears. He comes some March morning in a flurry of snow, or drops down out of a cheerless, soaking sky, and assures us that he has just left the South and has hurried ahead at considerable hazard to tell us that spring is on the way. Yet, here is another voice, earlier than the bluebird's often, with the bluebird's message, and with even more than the bluebird's authority; but who will listen to a frog? A prophet is not without honor save in his own country. ”

“ The nest is a thick, soft, warm structure, securely fastened in the fork of a maple or an apple-tree.
None of our familiar birds endear themselves to us more than does the bluebird. The first bluebird in the spring is as welcome as the blue sky itself. ”

“ The people around stared and smiled, but he continued to gaze, in a mournful and approving way, at Bluebell, while his wife sat in a state of repressed endurance, calculating how many more minutes he would have for exposing himself before the tug separated friends from passengers.
After a playful feint to throw one of his children overboard, he became calmer, and relapsed into a maudlin monologue till the bell rang, when he was hustled off, much to Bluebell's relief as well as his wife's, whose set mouth relaxed as if a care had rolled away. ”

“ In this manner, under the dim-flickering light of an "oilie cruizie," in a straggling [Pg 182] village in Perthshire, did I learn first of Blue Beard and Jack the Giant Killer, and many another hero of chapbook literature. And my experience, I am sure, was by no means singular. Rather, I feel certain that while telling thus my own, I am expressing no less truly the experience of many thousands of men and women now beyond middle life who similarly were born and bred in any rural parish in Scotland. And, oh, the weird fascination of it all! There was no doubting of Blue Beard's reality ”

“ The English sparrow will build his nest in any impossible place to which he takes a fancy, but he greatly prefers, in choosing a new site, one that has a convenient perch close by the entrance. So these undesirable citizens decided that [Pg 177] they did not care for my bird boxes and let them alone, much to my delight. Then came the bluebirds, bringing to our cold, raw spring their flashes of blue like bits of a heaven that is fairer than ours, a blue that is hope and dreams of happiness and all things noble yet gentle. ”

“ I heard the farmer say one day, “Isn’t it nice to hear the Bluebird sing? He must be very happy.” And I am, too, for by this time there are four or five little ones in the nest.
Little Bluebirds are like little boys—they are always hungry. We work hard to find enough for them to eat. We feed them nice fat worms and bugs, and when their little wings are strong enough, we teach them how to fly. Soon they are large enough to hunt their own food, and can take care of themselves.
The summer passes, and when we feel the breath of winter we go south again, for we do not like the cold. ”

“ Bluebirds to fly ahead in quest of material, gayly singing, while their mates selected and carried and builded the nest? What poetry would there be in life for her, she would like to know, under such circumstances, and then, when all was done, to sit for hours and days on the eggs she had laid in order to rear a brood. Oh, no! She was not ready to give up all the pleasures of life yet, and then—and then—Miss Bluebird lowered her eyes and stammered something about being too young to leave her mother. ”

“ In the Middle States, with every mild winter’s day, the Bluebirds come [Pg 64] out from their retreats, and again disappear on the return of severer weather. Later in the season, or early in March, they return and make a permanent stay.
When well treated, as the Bluebirds almost universally are, they return year after year to the same box, coming always in pairs. The marked attentions of the male bird are very striking, and have been noticed by all our writers. He is very jealous of a rival, driving off every intruder of his own species who ventures upon the domain he calls his own. ”

“ The purple-blue flowers of the Bluebell droop gracefully at intervals along their slender stems and bloom all summer long. The plants grow but a few inches tall in the alpine regions where each bears but a single blossom, but they are sometimes 3 ft. high at lower altitudes, especially in the shade. They are found on foothills and in mountain meadows and aspen woodlands at 6000-13000 ft. This species is the true Bluebell of Scotland. ”

“ Long “wedges” of wild-geese are seen cleaving the sky in their northward flight. The little pussies on the willows are coaxed from their winter nest, and creep out upon the stem. The solitary bluebird makes his appearance, flitting along the thickets and stone walls with little hesitating warble, as if it were not yet the appointed time to sing; and down among the bogs, that cautious little pioneer, the swamp-cabbage flower, peers above the ground beneath his purple-spotted hood. He knows the fickle month which gives him birth, and keeps well under cover. ”

“ Before more than the first notes of spring song have sounded in the distance, Bluebirds are to be seen by twos and threes about the edge of old orchards along open roads, where the skirting trees have crumbled or decaying knot-holes have left tempting nooks for the tree-trunk birds, with whom the Bluebird may be classed. For, though he takes kindly to a bird-box, or a convenient hole in a fencepost, telegraph pole or outbuilding, a tree hole must have been his first home and consequently he has a strong feeling in its favor. ”

“ A second bluebird is caroling. Every additional one is cause for thankfulness. Imagine a place where bluebirds should be as thick as English sparrows are in our American cities! Imagine heaven! A crested flycatcher screams, an olive-side calls pip, pip, a robin cackles, an oven-bird recites his piece with schoolboy emphasis, an alder flycatcher queeps, and a vesper sparrow sings. And at the end, as if for good measure, a Maryland yellow-throat adds his witchery, witchery. ”

“ For the Bluebird was the first of all poets,—even before man had blazed a trail in the wilderness or set up the sign of his habitation and tamed his thoughts to wear harness and travel to measure. And so he came to inherit the earth before man, and this, our country, is all The Bluebird's County, for at some time of the year he roves about it from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Mexico to Nova Scotia, though westward, after he passes the range of the Rocky Mountains, he wears a different dress and bears other longer names. ”