Then they all said 'Oh,' and stuck their forefingers in the air and
nodded their heads; but the poor fishermen who had heard the real
nightingale said, 'It sounds very nice, and it is very like the real
one, but there is something wanting, we don't know what.' The real
nightingale was banished from the kingdom.

The artificial bird had its place on a silken cushion, close to the
emperor's bed: all the presents it had received of gold and precious
jewels were scattered round it. Its title had risen to be 'Chief
Imperial Singer of the Bed-Chamber,' in rank number one, on the left
side; for the emperor reckoned that side the important one, where the
heart was seated. And even an emperor's heart is on the left side. The
music-master wrote five-and-twenty volumes about the artificial bird;
the treatise was very long and written in all the most difficult Chinese
characters. Everybody said they had read and understood it, for
otherwise they would have been reckoned stupid, and then their bodies
would have been trampled upon.

[Illustration: _The music-master wrote five-and-twenty volumes about the
artificial bird; the treatise was very long and written in all the most
difficult Chinese characters._]

Things went on in this way for a whole year. The emperor, the court, and
all the other Chinamen knew every little gurgle in the song of the
artificial bird by heart; but they liked it all the better for this, and
they could all join in the song themselves. Even the street boys
sang 'zizizi' and 'cluck, cluck, cluck,' and the emperor sang it too.

But one evening when the bird was singing its best, and the emperor was
lying in bed listening to it, something gave way inside the bird with a