_] Most likely, like great tenors one has heard of, you
gulp raw eggs--
CHANTECLER
You have guessed!--A second Ugolino!
THE BLACK HEN
[_Same business._] My idea is that taking snails out of their shells,
you pound them to a paste--
CHANTECLER
And make them into troches! Exactly!
ALL THREE HENS
Cock--!
CHANTECLER
Off with you all! Be off! [_The_ HENS _hastily start, he calls them
back._] A word before you go. When your blood-bright combs--now in, now
out of sight, now in again--shall flash among the sage and borage
yonder, like poppies playing at hide-and-seek,--to the real poppies, I
enjoin you, do no injury! Shepherdesses, counting the stitches of their
knitting, trample the grass all unaware that it's a crime to crush a
flower--even with a woman! But you, my Spouses, show considerate and
touching thought for the flowers whose only offence is growing wild. The
field-carrot has her right to bloom in beauty. Should you spy, as he
strolls across some flowery umbel, a scarlet beetle peppered with black
dots,--the stroller take, but spare his strolling-ground. The flowers of
one same meadow are sisters, as I hold, and should together fall beneath
the scythe!--Now you may go. [_They are leaving, he again calls them
back._] And remember, when chickens go to the--
A HEN
--fields--
CHANTECLER
--the foremost--
THE HENS ALL TOGETHER
--walks ahead!
CHANTECLER
You may go! [_They are again starting, he peremptorily calls them
back.
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