_] 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!
THE PHEASANT-HEN
[_Thoughtfully.
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