Edmond Rostand

“ And the time above all when that sap arises in me,—the hour, briefly, in which I have genius, in which I can never doubt I have!—is the hour when dawn falters on the boundaries of the dark sky. Then, filled with the same quivering as leaves and grass, thrilled to the very tips of my wing quills, I feel myself a chosen instrument. I accentuate my curve of a hunting-horn, Earth speaks in me as in a conch, and ceasing to be an ordinary bird, I become the mouthpiece, in some sort official, through which the cry of the earth escapes toward the sky! ”

“ Chantecler
I am not Gallic if you give the word a base or ridiculous meaning. By Jove! Every Hen here knows whether my trumpet blast belongs to a soprano! But your perverse attempts to wring blushes from little baggages in convenient corners outrage my love of Love! It is true that I care more to retain love’s dream than these Cochin-Chinese, who, courting a giggle, use refinement in coarseness, research in vulgarity; true that my blood has swifter flow in a less ponderous body, and that I am not a feathered pig,—but a Cock!
The Pheasant-hen
Come, come away to the woods,—I love you! ”

“ The Pheasant-hen
Go and see your old Hen in her old broken basket.
Chantecler
Ah, forest of the Toads, forest of the Poacher, forest of the Nightingale, and of the Pheasant-hen, when my old peasant mother sees me home again, back from your green recesses where pain is so interwoven with love, what will she say?
Patou
[Imitating the Old Hen’s affectionate quaver.] How that Chick has grown!
Chantecler
[Emphatically.] Of course she will! [Turning to leave.]
The Pheasant-hen
He is going! When faithless they turn to leave, oh, that we had arms, arms to hold them fast,—but we have only wings! ”

“ I fall back, blinded by the red light bathing me, dazzled at having, I , the Cock, made the Sun to rise!
The Pheasant-hen
Then the whole secret of your song—?
Chantecler
Is that I dare assume that the East without me must rest in idleness! I sing, not to hear the echo repeat, a shade fainter, my song! I think of light and not of glory! Singing is my fashion of waging war and bearing witness. And if my song is the proudest of songs, it is that I sing clearly to make the day rise clear! ”

“ When that great shadow falls, it is not the fine, strange Cocks we trust to keep off the bird of prey!
Chantecler
[Suddenly grown great of size, his wounds forgotten, stands in the midst of them, and in an authoritative tone.] Yes, close around me, all of you, all! [All, huddled in their feathers, their heads drawn in between their wings, press against him.]
The Pheasant-hen
Dear, brave, and gentle heart!
Chantecler
[The shadow sweeps over the crowd a second time. The Game Cock makes himself small. Chantecler alone remains standing, in the midst of a heap of ruffled, trembling feathers.] ”

“ The Pheasant-hen
[Lured along and half persuaded by the madness of the Cock.] Such a thing might be, after all, since love is involved in the mystery!
Chantecler
Resume, horizon, at my command, your fringe of little poplars!
The Pheasant-hen
[Bending over the valley.] There emerges from the shadow, gradually, a world of your creation—
Chantecler
Sacred things you are witnessing—To sacred things I am initiating you!—Define your outlines, distant hills! Pheasant-hen, do you love me?
The Pheasant-hen
We shall always love to be in the secret of the Makers of Dawn! ”

“ The Pheasant-hen
Nothing, ever, can make you forget the time?
Chantecler
Nothing. I am conscious of darkness as too heavy a weight.
The Pheasant-hen
You are conscious of darkness as—Shall I tell you the truth? You think you sing for the Dawn, but you sing in reality to be admired, you—songster, you! [With contemptuous pity.] Is it possible you are not aware that your poor notes raise a smile right through the forest, accustomed to the fluting of the thrush? ”

“ I have not exhausted my ammunition! You wish to imitate the sparrow? But the sparrow does not, slyly and meanly mischievous, make a cult of sprightliness is not funny with authority, is not the pedant of flippancy! You percher among low bushes, who never care to fly, you wish to imitate— [Turning to one of the exotic Cocks cackling behind him.] Silence, Cock of Japan! or I shall spoil a picture!
The Japanese Cock
[Hurriedly.] I beg your pardon!
Chantecler
[Continuing to the Blackbird.] You wish to imitate the sparrow, who, rising on light wing, underlines his words with a telegraph wire! ”

“ Chantecler
[Collecting himself and straightening up.] When one dwells in a soul, it is better, believe me, to meet with the Dawn there, than with nothing.
The Pheasant-hen
[Angrily.] No! the Dawn defrauds me of a great and undivided love!
Chantecler
There is no great love outside the shadow of a great dream! How should there not flow more love from a soul whose very business it is to open wide every day?
The Pheasant-hen
[Coming and going stormily.] I will sweep everything aside with my golden russet wing! ”

“ I say, my dear sir, that these resplendent gentlemen are manufactured wares, the work of merchants with highly complex brains, who to fashion a ridiculous Chicken have taken a wing from that one, a topknot from this. I say that in such Cocks nothing remains of the true Cock. They are Cocks of shreds and patches, idle bric-a-brac, fit to figure in a catalogue, not in a barnyard with its decent dunghill and its dog. I say that those befrizzled, beruffled, bedeviled Cocks were never stroked and cherished by Nature’s maternal hand. I say that it’s all Aviculture, and Aviculture is flapdoodle! ”

“ And I say that those preposterous parrots, without style, without beauty, without form, whose bodies have not even kept the pleasing oval of the egg they were hatched from, look like so many desperate fowls escaped from some hen-coop of the Apocalypse!
A Cock
My dear sir—
Chantecler
[With rising spirit.] And I add that the whole duty of a Cock is to be an embodied crimson cry! And when a Cock is not that, it matters little that his comb be shaped like a toadstool, or his quills twisted like a screw, he will soon vanish and be heard of no more, having been nothing but a variety of a variety! ”

“ Chantecler
The Glow-worms have lighted their small, green lamps. All that is good comes forth, while hate shrinks back to its lair. Now they that shall be eaten lay themselves down in the grass by the side of them that shall eat them. The Star of a sudden looks nearer to earth, and forsaking her web the Spider draws herself up toward your song, climbing by her own silken thread. ”

“ A tree, too—a tree must rustle in the breeze, for a bullfinch warbles his little native song; and a blackbird whistling the song he has caught by ear, implies, we may presume, a wicker cage.
The rattling of a wagon run out of a shed—the dripping of a bucket drawn up overfull—the patter of doves’ feet alighting on a roof—Surely it is a farmyard—unless it be a mill! ”

“ The Nightingale
[In a supplicating sob.] He fought for a friend of mine, the Rose!
The Pheasant-hen
Let him live! And I will dwell in the farmyard beside the ploughshare and the hoe! And renouncing for his sake all that in my pride I made a burden and torment to him, I will own, O Sun, that when you made his shadow you marked out my place in the world!
[Daylight grows. On all sides, rustles and murmurs.]
The Woodpecker
[Singing.] The air is blue!
A Crow
[Cawing as he flies past.] Daylight grows!
The Pheasant-hen
The forest is astir—
All the Birds
[Waking among the trees.] Good-morning! ”

“ The Pheasant-hen
Oh, I understand, of course. We are the illustrious Cock! Not a Hen in the world but preens her feathers in the hope—the very touching hope, certainly—of offering us a moment’s distraction, some day, between two songs. We are so sure of ourself that we never hesitate, not even when the lady is a visitor, and not quite the ordinary short-kirtled Hen whom one can engage without further ceremony by such advances—
Chantecler
But—
The Pheasant-hen
I do not bestow my affections quite so lightly. For my taste, anyhow, you are altogether too frankly Cock of the Walk! ”

“ 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! ”

“ Chantecler, the Blackbird, Patou, the Pheasant-hen
Chantecler
[After a moment, to the Blackbird who from his cage, which he has returned, can see off over the wall.] Is he gone?
The Blackbird
He is nearly out of sight!
Chantecler
[Going toward Patou’s kennel.] Madam, come forth!
The Pheasant-hen
[Appearing at the threshold of the kennel.] Well?—A rebellious, self-freed slave I am—even as that dog was saying! But of great lineage, and proud as I am free—A pheasant of the woods!
The Blackbird
Whew! We hate ourself, don’t we! ”

“ Nature then gives her back her purple and her gold, and the pheasant-hen proud and magnificent Amazon, preferring to put on her back blue, green, yellow, all the colours of the prism, rather than under a sober grey wing to shelter a brood of young pheasants, flies freely forth—Light-mindedly she sheds the virtues of her sex, and having done it—sees life! ”

“ The Blackbird
[Hastily.] Nothing! [He tries to get away.]
Chantecler
You wish to ape the sparrow of city streets! But his impudence is not a manner of prudence, an art of remaining vague, an elegant method of having no opinion. His eyes always express either wrath or delight. Do you care to know the secret by which the little beggar, with his “Chappie” and his “See” can steal away our hearts? It is that he is frank and fearless that he believes, that he loves, that the railings of a balcony where some child strews crumbs for him are the only cage he ever knew! ”

“ 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 Blackbird
I should say so! It’s the time of day when fluffy Aurora gets busy, as it were, and plays ball!
Chantecler
But what do you say when you see the dawn shining upon the mountains?
The Blackbird
Mountains, I say, what on earth are you blushing about?
Chantecler
And what do you say when you hear me singing in the furrow long before the cricket is awake?
The Blackbird
Cricket, I say, you scandalous slug-a-bed! [He hops out of the way.] ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yes, Fashion, to be accounted of thy flock, these chuckle-headed Cocks craved to be Super-cocks. But know ye not, ye crazy Cocks, one cannot be so queer a Cock, but there may occur a queerer Cock? Let some Cock come whose coccyx boasts a more flamboyant shock, and you pass like childish measles, croup or chicken-pox! Consider that to-morrow, high Cockalorums, fancy Cocks, consider that day after to-morrow, cheese-capped goblet-crested Cocks, in spite of curly hackle and cauliflowered hocks, a more fantastic Cock than ever may creep out of a—box! ”

“ A plain red-pepper comb, an ordinary garlic clove ear—
The Guinea-hen
Of course, of course, we will excuse you. You came in your business suit!
Chantecler
Nay, my best! Pardon if my best combines merely the green of all April with the gold of all October! I stand abashed. I am the Cock, just the Cock, without further addition. The Cock such as he is still found in some old-fashioned barnyard. A Cock shaped like a Cock, whose outline persists in the vane on the steeple-top in the artist’s eye, and the humble toy which a child’s hand finds among shavings in a little wooden box. ”

“ All the Forest
[In a moan of ecstasy.] Ah!
[And the forest lies as if under a spell; the moonlight is softer, the tender green fire of the glow-worm shines blinking among the moss; on all sides, between the tree-boles creep, shadow-like, the charmed beasts; eyes shine, moist muzzles point toward the source of the music. The Woodpecker stands at his bark window, dreamily nodding; all the Rabbits, with uppricked ears, sit at their earthen doors.]
Chantecler
When he sings thus without words, what is he singing, Squirrel? ”

“ Patou
She is caught!
The Pheasant-hen
[Struggling in the net.] He is lost!
Patou
[Wildly.] She is—He is—
[All the Rabbits have thrust out their heads to see.]
The Pheasant-hen
[Crying in an ardent prayer.] Daybreak protect him!
The Owls
[Rocking themselves gleefully among the branches.] The gun-barrel shines, shines—
The Pheasant-hen
Dawn, touch the cartridge with your dewy wing! Trip the foot of the hunter in a tangle of grass! He is your Cock! He drove off the darkness and the shadow of the Hawk! And he is going to die. Nightingale, you, say something! Speak! ”