CHANTECLER
[Stamping.] I shall be angry!

THE PHEASANT-HEN
No, no, don’t be angry—­Say “Coa—­” [They stand bill to bill.]

CHANTECLER
[Angrily.] Coa—­

THE PHEASANT-HEN
No, no!  Say it nicely—­

CHANTECLER
[In a long, tender coo.] Coa—­

THE PHEASANT-HEN
Look at me without laughing.  Your secret—­

CHANTECLER
Well?

THE PHEASANT-HEN
You are dying to tell it to me!

CHANTECLER Yes, I feel that I shall tell, and I know I shall do ill in telling.  And it’s all because of the gold on her dainty little head! [Going brusquely nearer to her.] Shall you prove worthy, at least, of having been chosen?  Is your breast true red to the core?

THE PHEASANT-HEN
Now tell me!

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.

CHANTECLER
Never!  I have never looked for such things.  I find them occasionally,
into the bargain, but disdainfully I give them to my Hens.

THE PHEASANT-HEN
Well, then, in your perpetual scratching, what is it you are looking
for?

CHANTECLER
The right spot!  For always before singing I carefully choose my stand. 
Pray, observe—­

THE PHEASANT-HEN
True, and then you ruffle your feathers.

CHANTECLER I never start to sing until my eight claws, after clearing a space of weeds and stones, have found the soft, dark turf underneath.  Then, placed in direct contact with the good earth, I sing!—­And that is already half the mystery, Pheasant-hen, half the mystery of my song, which is not of those songs one sings after composing them, but is received straight from the native soil, like sap!  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!

THE PHEASANT-HEN
Chantecler!