Chantecler and Patou No.
The Blackbird
We are in for a hunting yarn!—Give me chloroform!
Briffaut
It sometimes happens—the thing is exceptional, of course—My master knows because he has read about it.—It sometimes happens—An extraordinary phenomenon to be sure! which is likewise observed among moor-fowl.—It happens—
Patou
What happens?
Briffaut
That the pheasant-hen—Ah, my dear fellows—!
Chantecler
[Stamping with impatience.] The pheasant-hen what?—what?
Briffaut
Makes up her mind one day that the cock-pheasant goes altogether too fine. When the male in springtime puts on his holiday feathers, she sees that he is handsomer than she—
The Blackbird
And it makes her sore!
Briffaut
She leaves off laying and hatching eggs. 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! [He sketches with his paw a slightly disrespectful gesture.]
Chantecler
[Dryly.] Pray, what do you know about it?