Chantecler

“ Chantecler
Look at me, Pheasant-hen, and try, if indeed it be possible, try to recognise, by yourself, sign by sign, the vocation of which my body is the symbol. Guess, to begin with, at my destiny from my shape, and see how, curved like a sort of living hunting-horn, I am as much formed for sound to turn and gain volume within me, as the wild duck is formed to swim!—Wait!—Mark the fact that, impatient and proud, scratching up the earth with my claws, I appear always to be seeking something in the soil—
The Pheasant-hen
You are seeking for grains of corn, seeds, I suppose. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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! ”

“ Chantecler is the intense idealist, whose mission is light and truth. His soul is aglow with deep human sympathies, and his great purpose in life is to dispel the night. He keeps aloof from mediocrity; indeed, he has little knowledge of his immediate surroundings. Like all great visionaries, Chantecler is human, "all too human"; therefore subject to agonizing soul depressions and doubts. Always, however, he regains confidence and strength when he is close to the soil; when he feels the precious sap of the earth surging through his being. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Chantecler
All those Rabbits looking on make it a trifle—
The Pheasant-hen
[Suddenly flaps her wings; the frightened Rabbits start, on all sides white tails disappear into rabbit-holes. The Pheasant-hen coming back to Chantecler.] There! [They bill.] Do you love my forest?
Chantecler
I love it, for no sooner had I crossed its verdant border than I got back my song. Let us go to roost. I must sing very early to-morrow. ”

“ Chantecler
She is distractingly lovely, so much is certain!
Patou
He is never going to fall in love with a woman dressed as a man!
The Blackbird
[Who has again hopped down from his cage.] I must go and tell the Guinea-hen that a golden bird has blown into town. She’ll have a fit! She will invite her! [Off.]
Chantecler
So you come to us from the East, like the Dawn?
The Pheasant-hen
My life has the picturesque disorder of a poem. If I came from the East, it was by way of Egypt. ”

“ In this beautiful ode, Edmond Rostand really enriched French literature with an image of the greatest thing in the universe as it may appear to the humblest living being; and, despite here and there an ugly, trivial turn of phrase (we shudder at tu l’apothéoses) , despite the hard, happy-go-lucky lilt of the verse, its simplicity is full of a natural magic.
No less than man, just as naturally, and (owing to his more limited imagination) even more fervently, Chantecler considers himself the centre of the universe. ”

“ The Pheasant-hen
His feathers!
Chantecler
[Bending over the body which is shaken by a last throe.] Peace, little poet!
[Rustling of leaves and snapping of twigs; from a thicket projects Patou’s shaggy head.]
Scene Seventh
The same, Patou, emerging for a moment from the brush.
Chantecler
[To Patou.] You! [Reproachfully.] You have come to get him?
Patou
[Ashamed.] Forgive me! The poacher compels me—
Chantecler
[Who had sprung before the body, to protect it, uncovers it.] A Nightingale!
Patou
[Hanging his head.] Yes. The evil race of man loves to shower lead into a singing tree. ”

“ The Pheasant-hen
[Who is watching the horizon between the trees.] The darkness is lightening.
Chantecler
What fountain, in which each finds water for his thirst? [Listening with greater attention.] To me he speaks of the Day, which arises and shines at my song! ”

“ In watching Chantecler I had the same painful impression of how we are handicapped by the multiplicity of necessities we have created for ourselves in modern days as I had in watching the flood. Our evolution has bound us fast with chains of our own forging. Physically and mentally, we have manufactured so many props to lean upon that we can no longer stand on our own feet. Chantecler cannot be compared with the animal plays of Aristophanes for in Greek drama there was no attempt to present to the spectators a visual image in harmony with the audile image. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Cries
[Furiously keeping time with the blows showering upon Chantecler.] In the neck! On the nut! On the wing! On the— [Sudden silence.]
Chantecler
[Amazed.] What is this? The ring breaks up, the shouting dies— [He looks around. The White Pile has drawn away and backed against the hedge. A strange commotion agitates the crowd. Chantecler, exhausted, bleeding, tottering, does not understand, and murmurs.] What joke are they preparing against my end? [And suddenly.] Joy, Patou, joy! ”

“ 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. ”

“ His passion teaches him to understand life and the frailties of his fellow creatures. He learns the greatest of all truths, -that " it is the struggle for, rather than the attainment of, the ideal, which must forever in" spire the sincere, honest idealist." Indeed, it is life which teaches Chantecler that if he cannot wake the dawn, he must rouse mankind to greet the sun. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Chantecler, like Don Quixote, is absurd; and yet not merely lovable, but honourable in his absurdity. If his adventure proves anything, it is that an illusion and a chimera are necessary to prevent us from lapsing into scepticism or savagery.
Chantecler, with his valiance, his vain-glory, and his optimism, is one type of French character (a noble or military sort of type) ”

“ 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! ”

“ The White Pile
[Astonished.] Fool? Coxcomb? What? What? What?
Chantecler
[Beak to beak with the Game Cock.] What? What? What? [A pause. They arch themselves, with bristling neck-hackle.]
The White Pile
[Emphatically.] In America, during my grand tour, I killed three Claybornes in a day. I have killed two Sherwoods, three Smoks, and one Sumatra. I have killed—let me advise anyone fighting me to take something beforehand to keep down his pulse!—three Red-game at Cambridge and ten Braekels at Bruges!
Chantecler
[Very simply.] I my dear sir, have never killed anything. ”

“ 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 Tufted Hen
You may think this is fun! Now everything we eat will taste of gasoline!
Scene Third
Chantecler, the Blackbird in his cage, the Cat still asleep on the wall, the Grey Hen behind the Old Hen’s basket.
Chantecler
[To himself, after a pause.] No, I will not trust a frivolous soul with such a weighty secret. Let me try rather to cast off the burden of it myself—forget and [Shaking his feathers.] just rejoice in being a rooster! [He struts up and down.] I am beautiful. I am proud. I walk—then I stand still. ”

“ The Blackbird
[Sticking his bill under the Guinea-hen’s wing so as to keep the pair in sight.] I believe she has thoughts of annexing his comb.
The Pheasant-hen
[To Chantecler.] Come, dearest, come away!
Chantecler
[Resisting.] No, I must sing where Destiny placed me. I am useful here, I am beloved—
The Pheasant-hen
[Remembering what she overheard the night before in the farmyard.] Are you so sure?—Come away to the woods, where we shall hear real pigeons cooing tenderly to each other! ”

“ Chantecler
With power to see, capacity to suffer, one may come to understand all things. In an insect’s death are hinted all disasters. Through a knot-hole can be seen the sky and marching stars!
The Old Hen
[Appearing.] None knows the heavens like the water in the well!
Chantecler
[Presenting her to the Pheasant-hen before the basket-lid drops.] My foster-mother!
The Pheasant-hen
[Politely approaching.] Delighted!
The Old Hen
[Slyly winking at her.] He’s a fine Cock! ”

“ Patou
—some Hen may get you too to go!
Chantecler
Me?
Patou
You!
Chantecler
Me?—
Patou
Led by the end of your beak.
Chantecler
[In high wrath.] Me?—
Patou
For when a new Hen heaves in sight, you can’t help yourself, you know—you lose your balance-wheel—
The Blackbird
You slowly circumambulate the fair one— [He imitates the Cock walking around a Hen.] “Yes, it’s me.—Here I am!” And you say, “Coa—”
Chantecler
I never knew a more idiotic bird!
The Blackbird
[Continuing to mimic him.] You let your wing hang, sentimentally—your foot performs a sort of stately jig— [A shot is heard.] Ha! ”