THE PHEASANT-HEN
Doing what?

CHANTECLER
Trying never to appear a fool, and that’s hard work.

THE PHEASANT-HEN
Possibly—­but most unattractive! [They move towards the back.]

THE BLACKBIRD [With a glance at the PHEASANT-HEN’S scarlet breast.] Size up the highfalutin’ dame!—­Get on to the waistcoat will you?

CHANTECLER [Continuing the round.] The hay-cock.  The old wall.  The wall, when I sing, is alive with lizards, the hay-cock bends to listen.  I sing on the spot where you see the earth scratched up, and when I have sung, I drink in the bowl over there.

PHEASANT-HEN
Your song then is a matter of importance?

CHANTECLER
[Seriously.] The greatest.

THE PHEASANT-HEN
Why?

CHANTECLER
That is my secret.

THE PHEASANT-HEN
If I should ask you to tell me?

CHANTECLER [Turning the conversation, and showing a pile of brushwood tied in bundles.] My friends, the fagots.

THE PHEASANT-HEN
Stolen from my forest!—­So what they say is true?—­you have a secret?

CHANTECLER
[Dryly.] Yes, Madam.

THE PHEASANT-HEN
I suppose it would be useless to insist—­

CHANTECLER [Climbing on the wall at the back.] And from here you can see the remainder of the estate, to the edge of the kitchen-garden, where they ply at evening a serpent ending like a sprinkling can.

THE PHEASANT-HEN
What?—­This is all?

CHANTECLER
This is all.

THE PHEASANT-HEN
And do you imagine the world ends at your vegetable-patch?

CHANTECLER
No.

THE PHEASANT-HEN
Do you never, as you watch, far overhead, the wedge of the south-flying
birds, dream of vaster horizons?

CHANTECLER
No.

PHEASANT-HEN
But all these things about you are dreary and poor and flat!

CHANTECLER
And I can never become used to the richness and wonder of these things!

THE PHEASANT-HEN
It is always the same, you must agree!

CHANTECLER
Nothing is ever the same,—­nothing,—­ever,—­under the sun!  And that
because of the sun!—­For She changes everything!

THE PHEASANT-HEN
She—­Who?

CHANTECLER Light, the universal goddess!  That geranium planted by the farmer’s wife is never twice the same red!  And that old wooden shoe, spurting straw, what a sight, what a beautiful sight!  And the wooden comb hanging among the farmer’s smocks, with the green hair of the sward caught in its teeth!  The pitchfork, stood in the corner, like a misbehaving child, dozing as he stands and dreaming of the hay-fields!  And the bowl and skittles there,—­the trim-waisted skittles, shapely maids, whose orderly quadrilles Patou in his gambols clumsily upsets!  The great worm-eaten bowl whose curved expanse some ant is always crossing, travelling with no less pride than famed explorers,—­around her ball in 80 seconds!—­Nothing, I tell you, is two instants quite the same!—­And I, sweet lady, have been so susceptible ever, that a garden-rake in a corner, a flower in a pot, cast me long since into a helpless ecstasy, and that from gazing at a morning-glory I fell into the startled admiration which has made my eye so round!