She is the hunchback of my courtyard. She thinks of nothing but fighting because of her
hump. The fowls say nothing to her: suddenly she sets on them and harasses them. Then
she lowers her head, leans forward, and with all the speed of her skinny feet, she runs and
smites them with her hard beak the exact center of a turkey’s tail. This poseur provoked
her. Thus, with her bluish head, her lively wattles, fiercely aggressive, she rages from
morning to night. She fights for no reason, perhaps because she always imagines that they
laugh at her figure, at her bald head, and her mean, low tail. And incessantly she utters her
discordant cry, which pierces the air like a needle.

At times she leaves the courtyard and disappears. She gives the peace-loving fowls a
moment of respite. But she returns more boisterous more peevish. And, in a frenzy, she
wallows in the earth. Whatever is the matter with he? The crafty creature has played a
prank. She went to lay her egg in the country. I may look for it if I like. And she rolls in the
dust like a hunchback.

Texts by Jules Renard
Translations by Winifred Radford in The Interpretation of French Song by Pierre Bernac