Edmond Rostand

Chantecler


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[Shaking his head.] Chantecler, how do we know?

      CHANTECLER [Considering him.] Your appearance is in fact peculiar What actually is your breed?

      PATOU I am a horrible mixture, issue of every passer-by! I can feel barking within me the voice of every blood. Retriever, mastiff, pointer, poodle, hound—my soul is a whole pack, sitting in circle, musing. Cock, I am all dogs, I have been every dog!

      CHANTECLER

       Then what a sum of goodness must be stored in you!

      PATOU Brother, we are framed to understand each other. You sing to the sun and scratch up the earth. I, when I wish to do myself a good and a pleasure—

      CHANTECLER

       You lie on the earth and sleep in the sun!

      PATOU [With a pleased yap.] Aye!

      CHANTECLER

       We have ever had in common our love for those two things.

      PATOU I am so fond of the sun that I howl at the moon. And so fond of the earth that I dig great holes and shove my nose in it!

      CHANTECLER

       I know! The gardener's wife has her opinion of those holes.—But what

       are the dangers you discern? All lies quiet beneath the quiet sky.

       Nothing appears to be threatening my humble sunlit dominions.

      THE OLD HEN [Lifting the basket-lid with her head.] The egg looks like marble until it gets smashed! [The lid drops.]

      CHANTECLER [To PATOU.] What dangers, friend?

      PATOU

       There are two. First, in yonder cage—

      CHANTECLER

       Well?

      PATOU

       That satirical whistling.

      CHANTECLER

       What about it?

      PATOU

       Pernicious.

      CHANTECLER

       In what way?

      PATOU

       In every way!

      CHANTECLER [Ironical.] Bad as all that, is it? [The PEACOCK'S squall is heard in the distance: "Ee—yong!"]

      PATOU

       And then that cry, the Peacock's!

      [The PEACOCK, further off: "Ee—yong!"]

      PATOU

       More out of tune all by itself than a whole village singing society!

      CHANTECLER

       Come, what have they done to you, that whistler and that posturer?

      PATOU [Grumbling.] They have done to me—that I know not what they may do to you! They have done to me—that among us simple, kindly folk they have introduced new fashions, the Blackbird of being funny, the Peacock of putting on airs! Fashions which the latter in his grotesque bad taste picked up parading on the marble terraces of the vulgar rich, and the former—Heaven knows where! along with his cynicism and his slang. Now the one, travelling salesman of blighting corrosive laughter, and the other, brainless ambassador of Fashion, their mission to kill among us love and labour, the first by persiflage, the second by display—they have brought to us, even here in our peaceful sunny corner, the two pests, the saddest in the world, the jest which insists on being funny at any cost, and the cry which insists on being the latest scream! [The BLACKBIRD is heard tentatively whistling, "How sweet to fare afield".] You, Cock, who had the sense to prefer the grain of true wheat to the pearl, how can you allow yourself to be taken in by that villainous Blackbird! A bird who practises a tune!

      CHANTECLER [Indulgently.] Come, he whistles his tune like many another!

      PATOU [Unwillingly agreeing, in a drawling growl.] Ye-e-es, but he never whistles it to the end!

      CHANTECLER [Watching the BLACKBIRD hopping about.] A light-hearted fellow!

      PATOU [Same business.] Ye-e-es, but he lies heavy on our hearts. A bird who takes his exercise indoors!

      CHANTECLER

       You must own he is intelligent!

      PATOU [In a longer, more hesitant growl.] Ye-e-e-es! But not so very! For his eye never brightens with wonder and admiration. He preserves before the flower—of whose stalk he sees more than of its chalice—the glance which deflowers, the tone which depreciates!

      CHANTECLER

       Taste, my dear fellow, he unmistakably has!

      PATOU Ye-e-e-es! But not much taste! To wear black is too easy a way of having taste! One should have the courage of colours on his wing.

      CHANTECLER You will admit at least that he has an original fancy. No denying that he is amusing.

      PATOU Ye-e-es—No! Why is it amusing to adopt a few stock phrases and make them do service at every turn? Why amusing to miscall, exaggerate, and vulgarise?

      CHANTECLER

       His mind has a diverting, unexpected turn—

      PATOU Ready but cheap! I cannot think it particularly brilliant to remark, with a knowing wink, at sight of an innocent cow at pasture, "The simple cow knows her way to the hay!" Nor do I regard it as evidence of notable mental gifts to answer the greeting of the inoffensive duck, "The quack shoots off his mouth!" No, the extravagances of that Blackbird, who makes me bristle, no more constitute wit than his slang achieves style!

      CHANTECLER He is not altogether to blame. He wears the modern garb. See him there in correct evening dress. He looks, in his neat black coat—

      PATOU Like a beastly little undertaker who, after burying Faith, hops with relief and glee!

      CHANTECLER

       There, there! You make him blacker than he is!

      PATOU

       I do believe a blackbird is just a misfit crow!

      CHANTECLER

       His diminutive size, however—

      PATOU [Vigorously shaking his ears.] Oh, be not deceived by his size! Evil makes his models first on a tiny scale. The soul of a cutlass dwells in the pocket-knife; blackbird and crow are of the selfsame crape, and the striped wasp is a tiger in miniature!

      CHANTECLER [Amused at PATOU'S violence.] The blackbird in short is wicked, stupid, ugly—

      PATOU

       The chief thing about the Blackbird is—that you can't tell what he is!

       Is there thought in that head? feeling in that breast? Hear him!

       "Tew-tew-tew-tew tew—"

      CHANTECLER

       But what harm does he do?

      PATOU He tew-tew-tews! And nothing is so mortal to thought and sentiment as that same derisive tew-tewing, disingenuous and non-committal! Day by day, and that is why I roll my rs, I must witness this debasing of language and ideals. It's enough to produce rabies!

      CHANTECLER

       Come, Patou!—

      PATOU In their objectionable jargon, they have the ha-ha on all of us! I am no fastidious King Charles, but I dislike, I tell you, being referred to as His Whiskers!—Oh, to be gone, escape, follow the heels of some poor shepherd without a crust in his wallet, but at least, at evening drinking from the glassy pond, to have—oh, better than all marrow-bones!—the fresh illusion of lapping up the stars!

      CHANTECLER [Surprised at PATOU'S having