“‘I—I would be a poet, sire.”
“What did you in Vernoy?”
“I minded my father’s flock of sheep.”
The king stirred again, and the film lifted from his eyes.
“Ah! in the fields!”
“Yes, sire.”
“You lived in the fields; you went out in the cool of the morning and lay among the hedges in the grass. The flock distributed itself upon the hillside; you drank of the living stream; you ate your sweet, brown bread in the shade, and you listened, doubtless, to blackbirds piping in the grove. Is not that so, the shepherd?”
“It is, sire,” answered David, with a sigh; “and to the bees at the flowers, and, maybe, to the grape gatherers singing on the hill.”
“Yes, yes,” said the king, impatiently; “maybe to them; but surely to the blackbirds. They whistled often, in the grove, did they not?”
“Nowhere, sire, so sweetly as in Eure-et-Loir. I have endeavoured to express their song in some verses that I have written.”
“Can you repeat those verses?” asked the king, eagerly. “A long time ago I listened to the blackbirds. It would be something better than a kingdom if one could rightly construe their song. And at night you drove the sheep to the fold and then sat, in peace and tranquillity, to your pleasant bread. Can you repeat those verses, shepherd?”
