Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 6).djvu/123

 Lundestad.

[Evasively.] Play your cards neatly.

[Looks for his hat and slips quietly towards the door.

Stensgård.

Yes, I will make a speech!

The Young Ladies.

Bravo! Bravo!

Stensgård.

Fill your glasses, ladies and gentlemen! I am going to make a speech which shall begin with a fable; for here I seem to breathe the finer air of fable-land.

Erik.

[To the Ladies.] Hush! Listen!

[The Chamberlain takes his glass from the card-table on the right, beside which he remains standing. Ringdal, Fieldbo, and one or two other gentlemen come in from the garden.

Stensgård.

It was in the spring time. There came a young cuckoo flying over the uplands. Now the cuckoo is an adventurer. There was a great Bird-Parliament on the meadow beneath him, and both wild and tame fowl flocked to it. They came tripping out of the hen-yards; they waddled up from the goose-ponds; down, from Stonelee hulked a fat capercailzie, flying low and noisily; he settled down, and ruffled his feathers and flapped his wings, and made himself even broader than he was; and every now and then he crowed: "Krak, krak,