ess crow. The latter has neither hens nor
chicks, and only thinks of himself and perspires verdigris. No, the
yard cock is really a cock! His step is a dance! His crowing is music,
and wherever he goes one knows what a trumpeter is like! If he would
only come in here! Even if he ate me up stump, stalk, and all, and I
had to dissolve in his body, it would be a happy death," said the
cucumber.

In the night there was a terrible storm. The hens, chicks, and
even the cock sought shelter; the wind tore down the planks between
the two yards with a crash; the tiles came tumbling down, but the
weather-cock sat firm. He did not even turn round, for he could not;
and yet he was young and freshly cast, but prudent and sedate. He
had been born old, and did not at all resemble the birds flying in the
air--the sparrows, and the swallows; no, he despised them, these
mean little piping birds, these common whistlers. He admitted that the
pigeons, large and white and shining like mother-o'-pearl, looked like
a kind of weather-cock; but they were fat and stupid, and all their
thoughts and endeavours were directed to filling themselves with food,
and besides, they were tiresome things to converse with. The birds
of passage had also paid the weather-cock a visit and told him of
foreign countries, of airy caravans and robber stories that made one's
hair stand on end. All this was new and interesting; that is, for
the first time, but afterwards, as the weather-cock found out, they
repeated themselves and always told the same stories, and that's
very tedious, and there was no one with whom one could associate,
for one and all were stale and small-minded.

"The world is no good!" he said. "Everything in it is so stupid."

The weather-cock was puffed up, and that quality would have made
him interesting in the eyes of the cucumber if it had known it, but it
had eyes only for the yard cock, who was now in the yard with it.

The wind had blown the planks, but the storm was over.

"What do you think of that crowing?" said the yard cock to the
hens and chickens. "It was a little rough--it wanted elegance."

And the hens and chickens came up on the dung-hill, and the cock
strutted about like a lord.

"Garden plant!" he said to the cucumber, and in that one word
his deep learning showed itself, and it forgot that he was pecking
at her and eating it up. "A happy death!"

The hens and the chickens came, for where one runs the others
run too; th