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!