Bambi looked at them and did not stir. They looked like his mother and Aunt Ena. But their heads were crowned with gleaming antlers covered with brown beads and bright white prongs. Bambi was completely overcome. He looked from one to the other. One was smaller and his antlers narrower. But the other one was stately and beautiful. He carried his head up and his antlers rose high above it. They flashed from dark to light, adorned with the splendor of many black and brown prongs.
“O,” cried Faline in admiration. “O,” Gobo repeated softly. But Bambi said nothing. He was entranced and silent. Then they both moved and, turning away from each other, walked slowly back into the woods in opposite directions. The stately stag passed close to the children and Bambi’s mother and Aunt Ena. He passed by in silent splendor, holding his noble head royally high and honoring no one with so much as a glance.
The children did not dare to breathe till he had disappeared into the thicket. They turned to look after the other one, but at that very moment the green door of the forest closed on him.
Faline was the first to break the silence. “Who were they?” she cried. But her pert little voice trembled.
“Who were they?” Gobo repeated in a hardly audible voice. Bambi kept silent.
Aunt Ena said solemnly, “Those were your fathers.”
Nothing more was said, and they parted. Aunt Ena led her children into the nearest thicket. It was her trail. Bambi and his mother had to cross the whole meadow to the oak in order to reach their own path. He was silent for a long time before he finally asked, “Didn’t they see us?”
His mother understood what he meant and replied, “Of course, they saw all of us.”
Bambi was troubled. He felt shy about asking questions, but it was too much for him. “Then why …” he began, and stopped.
His mother helped him along. “What is it you want to know, son?” she asked.
“Why didn’t they stay with us?”
“They don’t ever stay with us,” his mother answered, “only at times.”
Bambi continued, “But why didn’t they speak to us?”
His mother said, “They don’t speak to us now; only at times. We have to wait till they come to us. And we have to wait for them to speak to us. They do it whenever they like.”
With a troubled heart, Bambi asked, “Will my father speak to me?”
“Of course he will,” his mother promised. “When you’re grown up he’ll speak to you, and you’ll have to stay with him sometimes.”
Bambi walked silently beside his mother, his whole mind filled with his father’s appearance. “How handsome he is!” he thought over and over again. “How handsome he is!”
As though his mother could read his thoughts, she said, “If you live, my son, if you are cunning and don’t run into danger, you’ll be as strong and handsome as your father is sometime, and you’ll have antlers like his, too.”
Bambi breathed deeply. His heart swelled with joy and expectancy.
V
Time passed, and Bambi had many adventures and went through many experiences. Every day brought something new. Sometimes he felt quite giddy. He had so incredibly much to learn.
He could listen now, not merely hear, when things happened so close that they struck the ear of their own accord. No, there was really no art in that. He could really listen intelligently now to everything that stirred, no matter how softly. He heard even the tiniest whisper that the wind brought by. For instance, he knew that a pheasant was running through the next bushes. He recognized clearly the soft quick tread that was always stopping. He knew by ear the sound the field mice make when they run to and fro on their little paths. And the patter of the moles when they are in a good humor and chase one another around the elder bushes so that there is just the slightest rustling. He heard the shrill clear call of the falcon, and he knew from its altered, angry tones when a hawk or an eagle approached. The falcon was angry because she was afraid her field would be taken from her. He knew the beat of the wood-doves’ wings, the beautiful, distant, soaring cries of ducks, and many other things besides.
He knew how to snuff the air now, too. Soon he would do it as well as his mother. He could breathe in the air and at the same time analyze it with his senses. “That’s clover and meadow grass,” he would think when the wind blew off the fields. “And Friend Hare is out there, too. I can smell him plainly.”
Again he would notice through the smell of leaves and earth, wild leek and wood mustard, that the ferret was passing by. He could tell by putting his nose to the ground and snuffing deeply that the fox was afoot. Or he would know that one of his family was somewhere nearby. It might be Aunt Ena and the children.
By now he was good friends with the night and no longer wanted to run about so much in broad daylight. He was quite willing to lie all day long in the shade of the leafy glade with his mother. He would listen to the air sizzling in the heat and then fall asleep.
From time to time, he would wake up, listen and snuff the air to find out how things stood. Everything was as it should be. Only the titmice were chattering a little to each other, the midges who were hardly ever still, hummed, while the wood-doves never ceased declaiming their ecstatic tenderness. What concern was it of
