d had to sing alone. It was just as great a
success as the real one, and then it was so much prettier to look at; it
glittered like bracelets and breast-pins.

[Illustration: _Then it again burst into its sweet heavenly song.]

'That is the most delightful coquetting I have ever seen!' said the
ladies, and they took some water into their mouths to try and make the
same gurgling, thinking so to equal the nightingale._

It sang the same tune three and thirty times over, and yet it was
not tired; people would willingly have heard it from the beginning
again, but the emperor said that the real one must have a turn now--but
where was it? No one had noticed that it had flown out of the open
window, back to its own green woods.

'But what is the meaning of this?' said the emperor.

All the courtiers railed at it, and said it was a most ungrateful bird.

'We have got the best bird though,' said they, and then the artificial
bird had to sing again, and this was the thirty-fourth time that they
heard the same tune, but they did not know it thoroughly even yet,
because it was so difficult.

The music-master praised the bird tremendously, and insisted that it was
much better than the real nightingale, not only as regarded the outside
with all the diamonds, but the inside too.

'Because you see, my ladies and gentlemen, and the emperor before all,
in the real nightingale you never know what you will hear, but in the
artificial one everything is decided beforehand! So it is, and so it
must remain, it can't be otherwise. You can account for things, you can
open it and show the human ingenuity in arranging the waltzes, how they
go, and how one note follows upon another!'

'Those are exactly my opinions,' they all said, and the music-master got
leave to show the bird to the public next Sunday. They were also to hear
it sing, said the emperor. So they heard it, and all became as
enthusiastic over it as if they had drunk themselves merry on tea,
because that is a thoroughly Chinese habit.

Then they all said 'Oh,' and stuck their forefingers in the air and
nodded their heads; but the poor fishermen who had heard the real
nightingale said, 'It sounds very nice, and it is very like the real
one, but there is something wanting, we don't know what.' The real
nightingale was banished from the kingdom.

The artificial bird had its place on a silken cushion, close to the
emperor's bed: all the presents it had received of gold and pre