Note 2 — Chapter XX · FABRE’S WRITINGS (CONTINUED)
Bernard Miall translation
François Coppée, in a delightful story, shows us an austere landscape gardener fiercely destroying all the sparrows and, above all, the blackbirds, which disturb and dishonour the magnificent symmetry of his paths, which were clipped straight with the aid of a taut cord. Our gentleman does not leave a single one alive.… But on the other side of the party wall is a true poet, who, not having the same æsthetic, buys every day a quantity of birds in the market, and indefatigably “puts back the blackbirds” into his neighbour’s shrubberies.2