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The Neighboring Families

"We make it lively around the house!" said the mother sparrow. "People say that a swallow's nest brings luck, so they're glad to have us. But our neighbors here - a great rosebush like that against the wall only makes the place damp. I think they'll dig it up soon, and then perhaps corn will grow there. Roses are only to look at and smell, or at the most to stick in hats. Every year, I know from my mother, they fall to pieces; the peasant's wife collects them and sprinkles salt on them; they're given some French name that I can't pronounce, and don't care to, and then they're thrown into the fire to make a nice smell. You see, that's their life; they live only to please the ears and nose. Now you know!"

As it became evening and the gnats danced in the warm air, where the clouds glowed so red, the nightingale came and sang to the roses. He sang that beauty was like the sunshine of the world, and that the beautiful lives forever. But the roses imagined that the nightingale was singing about himself, and indeed that may have been true. They never would have thought that the song might have been addressed to them, but it pleased them, and they wondered if the young sparrows might also become nightingales.

"I understood quite well what that bird was singing about," said the young sparrow. "There was only one word I didn't understand. What is 'the beautiful'?"

"That's nothing," said their mother. "It's just an appearance. Up at the manor house the doves have a house of their own, and peas and grains of corn are spread out for them every day in the yard. I've dined with them, and you shall too sometime. 'Tell me who you go with, and I'll tell you who you are.' Well, up there at the manor house they have two birds with green necks and crests on their heads; the tail of each can spread out as though it were a large wheel, and has so many colors that it hurts your eyes to look at it. Peacocks, they are called, and they are 'the beautiful.' They should be stripped of their feathers; then they wouldn't look any differently than we others.

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