'
"Come now, who will renew his age or regale her youth with the divine
notes of nature's minstrel? Who will make me an offer for this vestal
virgin of song--the joy of the morning and the benediction of the
evening? What do I hear? The best of the wine to the last of the feast!
What do I hear?--five dollars--seven dollars--nine dollars--going at nine
dollars--ten dollars--Well, ladies and gentlemen, the bird can sing--ah,
voila !"
He stopped short for a moment, for as the evening sun swept its veil of
rainbow radiance over the scene, the bird began to sing. Its little
throat swelled, it chirruped, it trilled, it called, it soared, it lost
itself in a flood of ecstasy. In the applausive silence, the emotional
recess of the sale, as it were, the man to whom the bird and the song
meant most, pushed his way up to the stand where M. Manotel stood. When
the people saw who it was, they fell back, for there was that in his face
which needed no interpretation. It filled them with a kind of awe.
He reached up a brown, eager, affectionate hand--it had always been that
--fat and small, but rather fine and certainly emotional, though not
material or sensual.
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