So he urged her again and again. It seemed his duty, and it was also his desire; he was a man of noble temperament, he had no sinister thought; he meant to do for her what Joconda would have wished done; more, if possible. She seemed so young and so intelligent that he thought there would be little difficulty to make of her a grand and thoughtful woman, although he knew that it is hard to tame the nightingale that has had a single year in the woods; so hard that it dies under the effort.
With all the eloquence that sincere longing to succeed could inspire in him, he used every argument he could think of to shake her resolution, and induce her to trust herself to another land and to another life. But it was utterly in vain.
Musa heard him more or less patiently, but his persuasions passed over her head as if they were thistle-down flying on a breeze.
'Go and see if you can drive a grey-lag goose[1] into your poultry-byre,' she said once, with a little low laugh; 'do you think you can? You know nothing of wild birds'
- ↑ The anser cinereus which migrates here in winter; not of course the chens hyperboreus.
