Whoever dances in the morning will break a leg at night." Lysander nodded assent.
"Then go into the house, Chloris, and fetch this king of hens a jug of wine, some bread, and two cheeses." "How many cheeses ?" asked the housekeeper.
"Two," replied Lysander.
"One will be more than enough," cried Semestre--"Bring only one, Chloris." The invalid smilingly shrugged his shoulders, clasped Xanthe's hand as she stood beside him, and said in so low a tone that the old woman could not hear: "Haven't I grown like little thick-skull's hens?
Semestre commands and I must obey.

There she goes after Chloris, to save the second cheese." Xanthe smiled assent.

Her father raised his voice and called to the juggler: "Well, my little friend, show what your actors can do .-- You young people, Mopsus and Dorippe, for aught I care, can dance as long as the monaulus sounds, and Semestre stays in the house." "We want first to see what the hens can do," cried the dark-haired girl, clinging to her lover's arm, and turning with Mopsus toward the exhibition, which now began again.
There was many an exclamation of astonishment, many a laugh, for, when the little man ordered his largest cock to show its skill in riding, it jumped nimbly on the donkey's back; when he ordered it to clean its horse, it pulled a red feather out of the ornaments on the ass's head; and finally proved itself a trumpeter, by stretching its neck and beginning to crow.
The hens performed still more difficult feats, for they drew from a wooden box for each spectator a leaf of a tree, on which certain characters were visible.
The scrawl was intelligible only to the conjurer, but was said to contain infallible information about the future, and the little man offered to interpret the writing to each individual.
This trainer of hens was a clever dwarf, with very quick ears.

He had distinctly understood that, through Semestre, he was to lose a nice cheese, and, when the housekeeper returned, ordered a hen to tell each person present how many years he or she had lived in the world.
The snow-white bird, with the yellow head, scratched seventeen times before Xanthe, and, on reaching Mopsus, twenty-three times, which was perfectly correct.
"Now tell us this honorable lady's age too," said the conjurer to the hen.
Semestre told Chloris to repeat what the little man had said, and was already reflecting whether she should not let him have the second cheese, in consideration of the "honorable lady," when the hen began to scratch again.
Up to sixty she nodded assent, as she watched the bird's claw; at sixty-five she compressed her lips tightly, at seventy the lines on her brow announced a coming storm, at eighty she struck the ground violently with her myrtle-staff, and, as the hen, scratching faster and faster, approached ninety, and a hundred, and she saw that all the spectators were laughing, and her master was fairly holding his sides, rushed angrily into the house.
As soon as she had vanished behind the doors, Lysander threw the man half a drachm, and, clapping his hands, exclaimed: "Now, children, kick up your heels; we sha'n't see Semestre again immediately.

You did your business well, friend: but now come here and interpret your hen's oracles." The conjurer bowed, by bending his big head and quickly raising it again, for his short back seemed to be immovable, approached the master of the house, and with his little round fingers grasped at the leaf in Lysander's hand; but the latter hastily drew it back, saying: "First this girl, then I, for her future is long, while mine--" "Yours," interrupted the dwarf, standing before Lysander--"yours will be a pleasant one, for the hen has drawn for you a leaf that means peaceful happiness." "A violet-leaf!" exclaimed Xanthe.