THE BLACKBIRD
But—­

CHANTECLER From that hour, unresting, acting the sparrow night and day, the sparrow even in sleep, self-condemned to play the sparrow without respite, you have appeared—­famous jay!

THE BLACKBIRD
But—­

CHANTECLER Pathetic effort of a country birdkin, twisting his thick bill to talk with a city accent!  Ah, you wish to bite off bits of slang?  My friend, they are green!  Every grape you pick breaks in your jaws, for city grapes are glass bubbles!  Having taken from the sparrow only his make-up and grimace, you are just a clumsy understudy, a sort of vice-buffoon!  And you serve up stale old cynicisms picked up with crumbs in fashionable club-rooms, poor little bird, and think to astonish us with your budget of scandalous news—­

THE BLACKBIRD
But—­

CHANTECLER 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!  Very well, I hate to grieve you, but—­you know I can hear the sparrows when they come to steal my corn!—­you are not in it, you do not pull it off.  Your lingo is a fake!

THE BLACKBIRD
A—?

CHANTECLER
And your performance is a shine!

THE BLACKBIRD
He can talk slang?

CHANTECLER
I can talk anything!—­It’s the Paris article made in Germany!

THE BLACKBIRD
But—­

CHANTECLER
Fire away, I think you said.  I hope you don’t mind my air-gun?

THE BLACKBIRD
I—­

CHANTECLER
The Grand Master of Illuminations is entirely at your service.  What do
you say?

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!  It is that one can be sure of his gaiety of soul, since he is gay when he is hungry!  But you who, void of gaiety because void of love, have imagined that evil wit can take the place of good humour, and that one can play the sparrow when he is a sleek and vulgar trimmer, sniggering behind his wing, what I say to you is, “Guess again, Mock-sparrow, guess again!”