an, and some years ago I made the
discovery that he is most intimately to be studied in the reflections of him
provided for the theatre."
     "That is a very original and profound discovery," said Pantaloon, quite
seriously. "It had never occurred to me. Yet  is it true. Sir, it is a truth
that dignifies our art. You are a man of parts, that is clear  to me. It has
been clear since first I met you.  I  can  read a man. I  knew  you from the
moment that you said 'good-morning.'  Tell me, now:  Do you  think you could
assist me  upon occasion in the preparation  of a  scenario? My  mind, fully
engaged  as it is with a thousand details  of organization, is not always as
clear as I would  have it for such work.  Could  you assist me there, do you
think?"
     "I am quite sure I could."
     "Hum,  yes.  I  was  sure you  would  be.  The other duties  that  were
Felicien's  you would  soon learn. Well, well, if you are willing,  you  may
come along with us. You'd want some salary, I suppose?"
     "If it is usual," said Andre-Louis.
     "What should you say to ten livres a month?"
     "I should say that it isn't exactly the riches of Peru."
     "I might go as far as fifteen," said Binet, reluctantly. "But times are
bad."
     "I'll make them better for you."
     "I've no doubt you believe it. Then we understand each other?"
     "Perfectly," said Andre-Louis, dryly,  and  was thus committed  to  the
service of Thespis.

        CHAPTER III. THE COMIC MUSEI


     The  company's  entrance into the township of Guichen,  if not  exactly
triumphal, as Binet had expressed the desire that it should be, was at least
sufficiently startling  and  cacophonous to  set the rustics gaping. To them
these fantastic  creatures appeared - as indeed  they  were  -  beings  from
another world.
     First went  the great travelling  chaise, creaking and  groaning on its
way, drawn by two of the Flemish horses. It  was Pantaloon  who drove it, an
obese and massive  Pantaloon in a tight-fitting suit of scarlet under a long
brown bed-gown, his countenance adorned by a colossal cardboard nose. Beside
him on the  box sat Pierrot  in a white smock, with sleeves  that completely
covered  his hands,  loose  white trousers,  and a black  skull-cap. He  had
whitened his face with flour, and he made hideous noises with a trumpet.
     On the  roof  of the  coach  were assembled  Polichinelle, Scaramouche,
Harlequin, and Pasquariel. Polichinelle in black and white,  his doublet cut
in the fashion of a century ago, with humps before and behind, a white frill
round  his neck and a black mask upon the  upper half of his face,  stood in
the middle, his feet planted  wide to  steady  him, solemnly  and  viciously
banging a big  drum. The other three were seated each at  one of the corners
of  the roof, their legs dangling over.  Scaramouche,  all in black  in  the
Spanish fashion of the seventeenth century, his face adorned with  a pair of
mostachios, jangled a  guitar discordantly. Harlequin, ragged and patched in
every colour of the rainbow, with his leather girdle and sword of lath,  the
upper  half of  his  face  smeared  in  soot,  clashed  a  pair  of  cymbals
intermittently. Pasquariel,  as an apothecary  in skull-cap and white apron,
excited the hilarity of the onlookers  by  his  enormous  tin clyster, which
emitted when pumped a dolorous squeak.
     Within the chaise itself, but showing themselves freely at the windows,
and  exchanging  quips  with the townsfolk,  sat the  three  ladies  of  the
company. Climene, the  amoureuse, beautifully gowned in  flowered satin, her
own clustering ringlets concealed under a pumpkin-shaped wig, looked so much
the lady of fashion  that you might have wondered what she  was dong in that
fantastic  rabble.  Madame,  as the mother, was also dressed with splendour,
but exaggerated  to  achieve  the ridiculous. Her headdress was  a monstrous
structure  adorned with flowers, and  superimposed by little ostrich plumes.
Columbine sat facing  them, her  back  to  the horses,  falsely  demure,  in
milkmaid bonnet of white muslin, and a striped gown of green and blue.
     The marvel was that the old chaise, which in its halcyon days  may have
served to carry some dignitary  of the Church,  did not  founder instead  of
merely groaning under that excessive and ribald load.
     Next came the house on wheels, led by the long, lean Rhodomont, who had
daubed his face red, and increased the terror of it by a  pair of formidable
mostachios.  He  was  in long  thigh-boots and  leather jerkin,  trailing an
enormous sword from  a  crimson baldrick. He wore a  broad felt hat  with  a
draggled  feather,  and  as he advanced he raised his great voice and roared
out  defiance,  and  threats of blood-curdling butchery to be performed upon
all  and  sundry. On  the roof of this  vehicle sat Leandre alone. He was in
blue satin, with ruffles, small sword, powdered hair, patches and spy-glass,
and red-heeled shoes:  the  complete  courtier,  looking very handsome.  The
women of  Guichen  ogled him coquettishly. He  took the  ogling as  a proper
tribute to his  personal  endowments,  and returned  it with interest.  Like
Climene, he looked out of place amid the bandits  who composed the remainder
of the company.
     Bringing  up the  rear  came Andre-Louis leading  the two donkeys  that
dragged the property-cart.  He  had insisted  upon  assuming a  false  nose,
representing as for  embellishment that which he intended for  disguise. For
the rest, he had retained his own garments. No one paid any attention to him
as he trudged along beside  his donkeys,  an insignificant rear guard, which
he was well content to be.
     They made the tour of the town, in which the activity was already above
the normal in  preparation  for next  week's fair. At intervals they halted,
the cacophony would cease abruptly, and  Polichinelle  would  announce  in a
stentorian voice that  at five o'clock that evening in  the  old  market, M.
Binet's famous company of  improvisers  would perform  a new comedy  in four
acts entitled, "The Heartless Father."
     Thus at last they came to the old market, which was the  groundfloor of
the town hall, and open to the  four  winds by  two archways on each side of
its length,  and one archway  on  each side of its breadth. These  archways,
with  two  exceptions,  had  been boarded up. Through  those two, which gave
admission to  what presently would be  the theatre,  the ragamuffins of  the
town,  and the niggards who  were reluctant to  spend  the necessary sous to
obtain proper admission, might catch furtive glimpses of the performance.
     That  afternoon   was  the   most  strenuous   of   Andre-Louis'  life,
unaccustomed as he  was to any  sort  of  manual  labour.  It  was spent  in
erecting and preparing the stage at one end of the market-hall; and he began
to realize  how hard-earned were to be his monthly fifteen livres.  At first
there  were four of them to the task - or really three, for Pantaloon did no
more than bawl  directions. Stripped of  their finery, Rhodomont and Leandre
assisted Andre-Louis in that carpentering. Meanwhile the other  four were at
dinner with the  ladies. When a half-hour or so later  they came to carry on
the work, Andre-Louis and his companions went to dine in their turn, leaving
Polichinelle to direct the operations as well as assist in them.
     They crossed the square to the cheap little inn where they had taken up
their quarters. In the  narrow passage Andre-Louis  came face to  face  with
Climene,  her  fine feathers  cast,  and  restored  by  now  to  her  normal
appearance
     "And how do you like it?" she asked him, pertly.
     He looked  her in the eyes. "It has  its compensations,"  quoth he,  in
that curious  cold tone of his that left one wondering  whether he  meant or
not what he seemed to mean.
     She  knit  her  brows.  "You...  you  feel  the need  of  compensations
already?"
     "Faith, I felt it from the beginning," said he. "It was  the perception
of them allured me."
     They were  quite  alone, the others having gone  on  into the room  set
apart for  them, where food was spread. Andre-Louis, who was as unlearned in
Woman  as he was learned  in Man,  was  not  to  know, upon  feeling himself
suddenly  extraordinarily  aware  of her  femininity, that it was she who in
some subtle, imperceptible manner so rendered him.
     "What,"   she   asked  him,   with   demurest  innocence,   "are  these
compensations?"
     He caught himself upon the brink of the abyss.
     "Fifteen livres a month," said he, abruptly.
     A moment she stared at him bewildered. He was very  disconcerting. Then
she recovered.
     "Oh, and  bed  and board,"  said she.  "Don't be leaving  that from the
reckoning,  as you  seem to be doing; for  your  dinner will  be going cold.
Aren't you coming?"
     "Haven't you dined?" he cried, and  she wondered had she  caught a note
of eagerness.
     "No," she answered, over her shoulder. "I waited."
     "What for?" quoth his innocence, hopefully.
     "I had  to  change,  of  course, zany,"  she answered,  rudely.  Having
dragged  him, as she imagined, to the chopping-block, she could not  refrain
from chopping. But then he was of those who must be chopping back.
     "And you  left  your manners upstairs  with  your  grand-lady  clothes,
mademoiselle. I understand."
     A  scarlet flame  suffused her face. "You are very insolent," she said,
lamely.
     "I've often been told so. But I  don't believe it."  He thrust open the
door for her, and bowing with an air which imposed upon her, although it was
merely  copied from Fleury of the Comedie Francaise, so often visited in the
Louis  le  Grand days,  he  waved her in.  "After you,  ma  demoiselle." For
greater  emphasis he deliberately broke  the  word  into  its two  component
parts.
     "I  thank you,  monsieur," she  answered, frostily, as near sneering as
was  possible  to so charming a person, and went in, nor addressed him again
throughout  the  meal.  Instead,  she  devoted  herself with an  unusual and
devastating  assiduity to the  suspiring Leandre, that  poor devil who could
not successfully play the lover with her on the stage because of his longing
to play it in reality.
     Andre-Louis ate  his  herrings and black  bread  with  a  good appetite
nevertheless. It  was  poor fare, but then poor fare  was the  common lot of
poor people  in  that winter  of  starvation, and since he had cast  in  his
fortunes with a company whose  affairs  were not flourishing, he must accept
the evils of the situation philosophically.
     "Have you  a name?"  Binet asked him once in the course of that  repast
and during a pause in the conversation.
     "It happens that I have," said he. "I think it is Parvissimus.
     "Parvissimus?" quoth Binet. "Is that a family name?"
     "In  such a company, where  only the leader enjoys  the privilege of  a
family name, the like would  be unbecoming its least  member. So I  take the
name that best becomes in me. And I think it is Parvissimus
     - the very least."
     Binet  was amused. It  was  droll; it showed a  ready fancy. Oh,  to be
sure, they must get to work together on those scenarios.
     "I shall prefer it to carpentering,"  said Andre-Louis. Nevertheless he
had to  go  back to it that afternoon,  and to labour strenuously until four
o'clock, when at last the autocratic Binet announced himself satisfied  with
the  preparations,  and proceeded, again  with the help  of Andre-Louis,  to
prepare the lights, which were supplied partly by tallow  candles and partly
by lamps burning fish-oil.
     At  five o'clock that evening  the three knocks  were  sounded, and the
curtain rose on "The Heartless Father."
     Among the  duties inherited  by Andre-Louis from  the departed Felicien
whom he replaced, was that of doorkeeper. This duty he discharged dressed in
a Polichinelle costume, and wearing a pasteboard nose. It was an arrangement
mutually  agreeable to M. Binet  and himself. M. Binet - who  had  taken the
further  precaution of  retaining Andre-Louis' own garments  -  was  thereby
protected  against the  risk  of his  latest  recruit  absconding  with  the
takings.  Andre-Louis, without  illusions  on  the score of Pantaloon's real
object, agreed  to it  willingly enough,  since it protected  him  from  the
chance of recognition by any acquaintance who might possibly be in Guichen.
     The performance was  in every sense unexciting; the audience meagre and
unenthusiastic.  The  benches  provided  in  the  front  half  of the market
contained some  twenty-seven  persons:  eleven  at twenty  sous  a  head and
sixteen at twelve. Behind these stood a rabble of some thirty others  at six
sous  apiece.  Thus the  gross takings  were two louis, ten livres, and  two
sous. By the time M. Binet had  paid for the use of the  market, his lights,
and the expenses of his company at the inn over Sunday, there was not likely
to be very much left towards the wages of his players. It is not surprising,
therefore, that M.  Binet's bonhomie should have been a trifle overcast that
evening.
     "And  what  do  you think of it?"  he asked Andre-Louis,  as  they were
walking back to the inn after the performance.
     "Possibly it could have been worse; probably it could not," said he.
     In sheer amazement M. Binet  checked in his stride, and  turned to look
at his companion.
     "Huh!" said he. "Dieu de Dien! But you are frank."
     "An unpopular form of service among fools, I know."
     "Well, I am not a fool," said Binet.
     "That  is  why  I  am  frank.  I  pay  you the  compliment of  assuming
intelligence in you, M. Binet."
     "Oh, you  do?"  quoth  M. Binet. "And who the devil  are you to  assume
anything? Your assumptions are presumptuous, sir." And  with that he  lapsed
into silence and the gloomy business of mentally casting up his accounts.
     But at table over supper a half-hour later he revived the topic.
     "Our latest recruit, this excellent M. Parvissimus," he announced, "has
the impudence to tell me that possibly our comedy could have been worse, but
that probably  it  could  not."  And  he blew out his great  round cheeks to
invite a laugh at the expense of that foolish critic.
     "That's bad,"  said the swarthy and sardonic Polichinelle. He was grave
as Rhadamanthus pronouncing  judgment. "That's  bad. But what is  infinitely
worse is that the audience had the impudence to be of the same mind."
     "An  ignorant pack of  clods,"  sneered Leandre,  with  a toss  of  his
handsome head.
     "You are wrong," quoth Harlequin. "You were born for love, my dear, not
criticism."
     Leandre  -  a   dull   dog,  as  you   will  have  conceived  -  looked
contemptuously down  upon the little man. "And you, what were you born for?"
he wondered.
     "Nobody knows," was the candid  admission. "Nor yet why. It is the case
of many of us, my dear, believe me."
     "But why" - M. Binet took him  up,  and thus spoilt the beginnings of a
very pretty quarrel - "why do you say that Leandre is wrong?"
     "To be general, because he is always wrong. To be particular, because I
judge  the  audience of  Guichen to be too sophisticated for  'The Heartless
Father.'"
     "You  would put it more happily," interposed Andre-Louis - who  was the
cause of  this discussion - "if you said that 'The Heartless Father'  is too
unsophisticated for the audience of Guichen."
     "Why, what's the difference?" asked Leandre.
     "I didn't imply a difference. I merely suggested that it is  a  happier
way to express the fact."
     "The gentleman is being subtle," sneered Binet.
     "Why happier?" Harlequin demanded.
     "Because  it  is  easier  to   bring  'The  Heartless  Father'  to  the
sophistication  of the  Guichen  audience, than the Guichen audience to  the
unsophistication of 'The Heartless Father.'"
     "Let  me think it out,"  groaned Polichinelle, and  he took his head in
his hands.
     But from the tail  of the  table Andre-Louis  was challenged by Climene
who sat there between Columbine and Madame.
     "You would alter the comedy, would you, M. Parvissimus?" she cried.
     He turned to parry her malice.
     "I would suggest that it be altered," he corrected, inclining his head.
     "And how would you alter it, monsieur?"
     "I? Oh, for the better."
     "But of course!" She was sleekest sarcasm. "And how would you do it?"
     "Aye, tell us that," roared M. Binet, and added:  "Silence, I pray you,
gentlemen and ladies. Silence for M. Parvissimus."
     Andre-Louis looked from father to  daughter, and smiled.  "Pardi!" said
he. "I am between bludgeon and dagger. If I escape  with my life, I shall be
fortunate. Why,  then, since you pin me to the very wall, I'll tell you what
I should do. I  should go  back to the original and help myself more  freely
from it."
     "The original?" questioned M. Binet - the author.
     "It  is called, I believe, 'Monsieur de  Pourceaugnac,' and was written
by Moliere."
     Somebody tittered, but that  somebody  was  not M.  Binet. He had  been
touched on  the raw, and the look in his little eyes betrayed the fact  that
his bonhomme exterior covered anything but a bonhomme.
     "You charge me with plagiarism,"  he  said at last;  "with filching the
ideas of Moliere."
     "There  is  always,  of  course,"  said  Andre-Louis,  unruffled,  "the
alternative possibility of two great minds working upon parallel lines."
     M. Binet studied the young man attentively a moment. He found him bland
and inscrutable, and decided to pin him down.
     "Then you do not imply that I have been stealing from Moliere?"
     "I advise you to do so, monsieur," was the disconcerting reply.
     M. Binet was shocked.
     "You  advise  me  to do  so!  You advise me, me, Antoine Binet, to turn
thief at my age!"
     "He is outrageous," said mademoiselle, indignantly.
     "Outrageous is  the word.  I thank  you for it, my dear. I take you  on
trust, sir. You sit at my  table, you have the  honour to  be included in my
company, and to my face you have the audacity to advise me to become a thief
- the worst kind of thief that is conceivable, a thief of  spiritual things,
a  thief of ideas!  It is insufferable,  intolerable! I  have been,  I fear,
deeply mistaken in you,  monsieur; just as you  appear to have been mistaken
in me. I am not the scoundrel you suppose  me, sir, and I will not number in
my company a man who dares to suggest that I should become one. Outrageous!"
     He was very angry. His voice  boomed through the  little room,  and the
company sat hushed and something scared, their  eyes  upon  Andre-Louis, who
was the only one entirely unmoved by this outburst of virtuous indignation.
     "You realize, monsieur," he said, very quietly, "that you are insulting
the memory of the illustrious dead?"
     "Eh?" said Binet.
     Andre-Louis developed his sophistries.
     "You insult the  memory of Moliere, the greatest ornament of our stage,
one of the greatest ornaments of our nation, when you suggest that there  is
vileness in doing that which he never hesitated to do, which no great author
yet  has  hesitated  to  do.  You cannot  suppose that Moliere ever troubled
himself to be original in the matter of ideas. You  cannot suppose  that the
stories he tells in his plays have never been told before. They were culled,
as you very well  know - though you seem momentarily to  have  forgotten it,
and  it is therefore necessary that I should  remind you - they were culled,
many of  them,  from the Italian  authors, who  themselves  had  culled them
Heaven alone knows where. Moliere took those old stories  and retold them in
his own language. That is precisely what I am suggesting that you should do.
Your company is a company of improvisers.  You  supply  the  dialogue as you
proceed,  which is rather  more than Moliere ever attempted. You may, if you
prefer it
     - though it would seem to me to be yielding to an excess of scruple
     - go straight to  Boccaccio  or Sacchetti.  But even then you cannot be
sure that you have reached the sources."
     Andre-Louis  came off with flying  colours  after that. You see what  a
debater was lost in him; how nimble he was in  the art of making white  look
black. The company was impressed, and  no one more that M. Binet, who  found
himself supplied with a crushing argument against those who  in future might
tax  him with the impudent plagiarisms which he undoubtedly perpetrated.  He
retired in the best order he could from the position he had taken  up at the
outset.
     "So  that  you think," he  said, at the  end  of  a  long  outburst  of
agreement, "you think  that  our  story  of 'The Heartless Father'  could be
enriched by dipping into 'Monsieur de Pourceaugnac,' to which I confess upon
reflection that it may present certain superficial resemblances?"
     "I  do;  most  certainly  I  do  -  always  provided  that  you  do  so
judiciously. Times have changed since Moliere." It was as a  consequence  of
this  that Binet  retired soon after, taking  Andre-Louis with him. The pair
sat together late that night, and  were again in close communion  throughout
the whole of Sunday morning.
     After  dinner M. Binet read to  the  assembled company the amended  and
amplified  canevas  of "The Heartless Father," which, acting upon the advice
of M. Parvissimus, he had been at great pains to prepare.  The  company  had
few doubts as to the real authorship  before  he began to read; none  at all
when he had read. There was a verve, a grip about this story; and, what  was
more,  those  of  them  who  knew  their  Moliere  realized  that  far  from
approaching the original more closely,  this  canevas had drawn farther away
from  it.  Moliere's original part -  the  title role  -  had  dwindled into
insignificance, to the great disgust  of  Polichinelle, to whom it fell. But
the other parts had all been built up into importance, with the exception of
Leandre, who  remained as before. The two great roles were now  Scaramouche,
in the character  of the  intriguing Sbrigandini, and  Pantaloon the father.
There was, too,  a comical part for Rhodomont, as the roaring bully hired by
Polichinelle to cut  Leandre into ribbons. And in view of the importance now
of Scaramouche, the play had been rechristened "Figaro-Scaramouche."
     This last had not been without a deal of opposition  from M. Binet. But
his relentless collaborator, who was in reality the real author
     - drawing shamelessly, but practically at last upon his great  store of
reading - had overborne him.
     "You must move with the times, monsieur. In Paris  Beaumarchais is  the
rage. 'Figaro' is known  to-day throughout the world. Let us borrow a little
of  his  glory. It will  draw the  people in. They  will come to  see half a
'Figaro'  when  they  will  not come  to see  a  dozen  'Heartless Fathers.'
Therefore let us cast the mantle of Figaro upon some one, and proclaim it in
our title."
     "But as I am the head of the company... " began M. Binet, weakly.
     "If you will be blind to your interests, you  will presently be  a head
without a  body. And what use is that?  Can the shoulders of Pantaloon carry
the mantle of Figaro? You laugh. Of course you  laugh. The notion is absurd.
The proper person for the mantle of Figaro is  Scaramouche, who is naturally
Figaro's twin-brother."
     Thus tyrannized, the tyrant Binet gave way, comforted by the reflection
that  if he understood anything at all about the theatre, he had for fifteen
livres a month acquired  something  that would presently  be earning  him as
many louis.
     The company's reception of the canevas now  confirmed him, if we except
Polichinelle, who, annoyed at having lost half his part in  the alterations,
declared the new scenario fatuous.
     "Ah! You call my work fatuous, do you?" M. Binet hectored him.
     "Your work?" said Polichinelle, to  add  with his tongue in  his cheek:
"Ah, pardon. I had not realized that you were the author."
     "Then realize it now."
     "You were  very close with M. Parvissimus over  this  authorship," said
Polichinelle, with impudent suggestiveness.
     "And what if I was? What do you imply?"
     "That you took him to cut quills for you, of course."
     "I'll  cut  your  ears  for  you  if  you're  not  civil," stormed  the
infuriated Binet.
     Polichinelle got up slowly, and stretched himself.
     "Dieu de  Dieu!" said he.  "If  Pantaloon is to play Rhodomont, I think
I'll leave you. He is not amusing in the part." And he swaggered  out before
M. Binet had recovered from his speechlessness.

        CHAPTER IV. EXIT MONSIEUR PARVISSIMUSV

     Ar   four   o'clock   on   Monday  afternoon   the   curtain  rose   on
"Figaro-Scaramouche"  to  an  audience that filled  three  quarters  of  the
market-hall.  M.  Binet attributed this good  attendance  to  the influx  of
people to Guichen for the fair, and to the magnificent parade of his company
through  the  streets  of the  township  at  the  busiest time  of  the day.
Andre-Louis attributed it  entirely to the title. It  was the "Figaro" touch
that  had fetched in  the better-class bourgeoisie, which  filled  more than
half of the twenty-sous places and three quarters of  the twelve-sous seats.
The lure had drawn them. Whether it was  to continue to do  so  would depend
upon the manner in which the canevas over which he had laboured to the glory
of Binet was interpreted by the company. Of the merits of the canevas itself
he had no doubt.  The authors upon whom  he had drawn for the elements of it
were sound, and he had taken of their best, which he  claimed to  be no more
than the justice due to them.
     The company excelled itself. The audience followed with relish the  sly
intriguings  of  Scaramouche, delighted  in  the  beauty  and  freshness  of
Climene, was moved almost to tears by the hard fate which through four  long
acts kept  her from the hungering  arms of the  so beautiful Leandre, howled
its  delight  over  the  ignominy  of  Pantaloon, the  buffooneries  of  his
sprightly  lackey  Harlequin,  and  the  thrasonical   strut  and  bellowing
fierceness of the cowardly Rhodomont.
     The success  of the Binet troupe in Guichen was assured. That night the
company drank Burgundy at M. Binet's expense. The takings reached the sum of
eight louis, which was as good business as M. Binet had ever done in all his
career. He  was  very pleased.  Gratification rose like steam  from his  fat
body. He even condescended so far  as to attribute a share of the credit for
the success to M. Parvissimus.
     "His suggestion," he was careful to say, by way of  properly delimiting
that share, "was most valuable, as I perceived at the time."
     "And his  cutting of quills," growled Polichinelle. "Don't forget that.
It  is most  important  to  have by you  a man who understands how to  cut a
quill, as I shall remember when I turn author."
     But  not  even  that gibe could stir  M. Binet out  of  his lethargy of
content.
     On  Tuesday  the  success  was  repeated   artistically  and  augmented
financially.  Ten  louis  and  seven   livres  was  the  enormous  sum  that
Andre-Louis, the doorkeeper, counted over to M. Binet after the performance.
Never yet  had M. Binet made so  much money in one evening - and a miserable
little  village like Guichen was certainly  the last place in which he would
have expected this windfall.
     "Ah, but Guichen in time of fair," Andre-Louis reminded him. "There are
people  here  from as far as Nantes  and  Rennes to buy and sell. To-morrow,
being the last day  of the fair, the crowds  will  be greater than ever.  We
should better this evening's receipts."
     "Better them? I shall be quite satisfied if we do as well, my friend."
     "You  can  depend upon that," Andre-Louis assured him.  "Are we to have
Burgundy?"
     And  then the tragedy occurred. It announced itself  in a succession of
bumps and thuds, culminating in  a  crash outside the door that brought them
all to their feet in alarm.
     Pierrot sprang to open, and  beheld the tumbled body of a man  lying at
the foot  of the stairs. It emitted groans, therefore it was  alive. Pierrot
went forward  to turn it over, and disclosed the fact that the body wore the
wizened face of Scaramouche, a grimacing, groaning, twitching Scaramouche.
     The  whole  company,  pressing   after  Pierrot,  abandoned  itself  to
laughter.
     "I  always  said you  should change parts  with  me,"  cried Harlequin.
"You're such an excellent tumbler. Have you been practising?"
     "Fool!" Scaramouche snapped.  "Must you be  laughing when I've  all but
broken my neck?"
     "You are  right. We ought  to be  weeping because you didn't  break it.
Come, man, get up," and he held out a hand to the prostrate rogue.
     Scaramouche took the hand, clutched it, heaved himself from the ground,
then with a scream dropped back again.
     "My foot!" he complained.
     Binet rolled through the group of players, scattering them to right and
left.  Apprehension had  been quick to seize  him. Fate had played him  such
tricks before.
     "What ails your foot?" quoth he, sourly.
     "It's broken, I think," Scaramouche complained.
     "Broken? Bah!  Get up, man." He caught him under the armpits and hauled
him up.
     Scaramouche came howling to one foot; the other doubled under him  when
he attempted to set it down, and he must have collapsed again but that Binet
supported  him. He  filled the  place with  his plaint,  whilst  Binet swore
amazingly and variedly.
     "Must you bellow like a calf, you fool?  Be quiet. A  chair here,  some
one."
     A chair was thrust forward. He crushed Scaramouche down into it.
     "Let us look at this foot of yours."
     Heedless  of  Scaramouche's  howls  of pain,  he swept  away  shoe  and
stocking.
     "What ails it?" he asked, staring. "Nothing that I can see." He  seized
it, heel  in one  hand, instep in  the other,  and gyrated  it.  Scaramouche
screamed in agony, until Climene caught Binet's arm and made him stop.
     "My God,  have  you no feelings?" she reproved her father. "The lad has
hurt his foot. Must you torture him? Will that cure it?"
     "Hurt his  foot!"  said  Binet.  "I can see nothing the matter with his
foot - nothing to justify all this uproar. He has bruised it, maybe... "
     "A man with a bruised  foot doesn't scream like that," said Madame over
Climene's shoulder. "Perhaps he has dislocated it."
     "That is what I fear," whimpered Scaramouche.
     Binet heaved himself up in disgust.
     "Take him to bed," he bade them, "and fetch a doctor to see him."
     It was done, and the doctor came. Having seen the patient, he  reported
that nothing very serious had happened, but that in falling he had evidently
sprained his foot a little. A few days' rest and all would be well.
     "A few  days!" cried  Binet. "God of  God!  Do  you mean that he  can't
walk?"
     "It would be unwise, indeed impossible for more than a few steps."
     M.  Binet paid  the doctor's  fee,  and  sat down  to  think. He filled
himself  a  glass  of  Burgundy,  tossed  it  off without  a  word,  and sat
thereafter staring into the empty glass.
     "It is  of course the sort of thing that  must  always be  happening to
me,"  he grumbled to no one in particular. The  members of  the company were
all standing in silence before him, sharing his  dismay. "I might have known
that  this - or something like it - would  occur to  spoil the first vein of
luck that I have found in years. Ah, well, it is finished. To-morrow we pack
and  depart.  The  best  day  of  the fair, on  the crest of the wave of our
success - a good fifteen louis to be taken, and this happens! God of God!"
     "Do you mean to abandon to-morrow's performance?"
     All turned to stare with Binet at Andre-Louis.
     "Are we to play 'Figaro-Scaramouche' without Scaramouche?" asked Binet,
sneering.
     "Of  course  not."   Andre-Louis   came  forward.   "But  surely   some
rearrangement of the parts is possible. For instance, there is a fine  actor
in Polichinelle."
     Polichinelle swept him a bow. "Overwhelmed," said he, ever sardonic.
     "But he has a part of his own," objected Binet.
     "A small part, which Pasquariel could play."
     "And who will play Pasquariel?"
     "Nobody. We delete it. The play need not suffer."
     "He thinks of everything," sneered Polichinelle. "What a man!"
     But Binet was far from agreement. "Are you suggesting that Polichinelle
should play Scaramouche?" he asked, incredulously.
     "Why not? He is able enough!"
     "Overwhelmed again," interjected Polichinelle.
     "Play Scaramouche with that figure?" Binet heaved himself up to point a
denunciatory finger at Polichinelle's sturdy, thick-set shortness.
     "For lack of a better," said Andre-Louis.
     "Overwhelmed more than ever." Polichinelle's bow was superb  this time.
"Faith, I think I'll take the air to cool me after so much blushing."
     "Go to the devil," Binet flung at him.
     "Better  and better." Polichinelle made for the  door. On the threshold
he halted  and struck an attitude. "Understand me,  Binet. I do not now play
Scaramouche in any circumstances whatever." And he  went out.  On the whole,
it was a very dignified exit.
     Andre-Louis  shrugged, threw out his  arms, and  let them  fall to  his
sides  again. "You  have ruined everything,"  he  told M. Binet. "The matter
could easily have been arranged.  Well, well, it is you are master here; and
since you want us to pack and be off, that is what we will do, I suppose."
     He went out,  too.  M. Binet  stood in thought a  moment, then followed
him, his little eyes very  cunning. He caught him up in the doorway. "Let us
take a walk together, M. Parvissimus," said he, very affably.
     He  thrust his arm  through  Andre-Louis',  and  led  him  out into the
street, where  there was still considerable movement. Past the  booths  that
ranged  about the market they went, and down the hill towards the bridge. "I
don't think we shall pack to-morrow," said M. Binet, presently. "In fact, we
shall play to-morrow night."
     "Not if I know Polichinelle. You have... "
     "I am not thinking of Polichinelle."
     "Of whom, then?"
     "Of yourself."
     "I  am  flattered, sir. And  in what capacity  are you thinking of me?"
There was something  too sleek  and  oily  in Binet's voice for Andre-Louis'
taste.
     "I am thinking of you in the part of Scaramouche."
     "Day-dreams," said Andre-Louis. "You are amusing yourself, of course."
     "Not in the least. I am quite serious."
     "But I am not an actor."
     "You told me that you could be."
     "Oh, upon occasion... a small part, perhaps... "
     "Well, here  is a  big part  - the chance to arrive at a single stride.
How many men have had such a chance?"
     "It is a chance I do not covet, M. Binet. Shall we change the subject?"
He was very frosty, as much perhaps because he scented in M.  Binet's manner
something that was vaguely menacing as for any other reason.
     "We'll change the  subject when  I please,"  said M.  Binet, allowing a
glimpse of  steel to glimmer  through the silk of him. "To-morrow night  you
play Scaramouche. You are ready enough  in your  wits, your figure is ideal,
and  you have just the kind of mordant humour for the part. You should  be a
great success."
     "It is much more likely that I should be an egregious failure."
     "That won't matter," said Binet, cynically, and explained himself. "The
failure will be personal to yourself. The receipts will be safe by then."
     "Much obliged," said Andre-Louis.
     "We should take fifteen louis to-morrow night."
     "It  is  unfortunate   that  you  are   without  a  Scaramouche,"  said
Andre-Louis.
     "It  is  fortunate  that  I  have  one,  M.  Parvissimus."  Andre-Louis
disengaged his arm. "I begin to find you tiresome," said he. "I think I will
return."
     "A moment, M. Parvissimus. If I am to lose that fifteen louis...
     you'll not take it amiss that I compensate myself in other ways?"
     "That is your own concern, M. Binet."
     "Pardon, M. Parvissimus. It may possibly be also yours." Binet took his
arm again.  "Do me  the kindness to step  across the street with me. Just as
far as the post-office there. I have something to show you."
     Andre-Louis went. Before they reached that  sheet  of paper nailed upon
the door, he knew exactly what it would say. And in effect it was, as he had
supposed,  that twenty  louis would be  paid for information  leading to the
apprehension of one  Andre-Louis Moreau, lawyer of Gavrillac, who was wanted
by the King's Lieutenant in Rennes upon a charge of sedition.
     M.  Binet watched  him  whilst  he  read.  Their arms were linked,  and
Binet's grip was firm and powerful.
     "Now,  my friend,"  said  he,  "will  you be M.  Parvissimus  and  play
Scaramouche to-morrow, or will you be Andre-Louis Moreau of Gavrillac and go
to Rennes to satisfy the King's Lieutenant?"
     "And if it should happen that you are mistaken?" quoth Andre-Louis, his
face a mask.
     "I'll take the risk of that," leered M. Binet. "You mentioned, I think,
that you  were a lawyer. An indiscretion, my dear. It  is  unlikely that two
lawyers  will be in hiding at the same time in the same district. You see it
is  not  really clever  of  me.  Well,  M.  Andre-Louis  Moreau,  lawyer  of
Gavrillac, what is it to be?"
     "We will talk it over as we walk back," said Andre-Louis.
     "What is there to talk over?"
     "One or  two things, I think. I must know where I stand.  Come, sir, if
you please."
     "Very well," said M. Binet, and they turned up the street again, but M.
Binet maintained a firm hold of his young friend's  arm, and kept himself on
the alert for any tricks that the young gentleman might be disposed to play.
It was an unnecessary  precaution. Andre-Louis was not the man to  waste his
energy futilely. He knew that in  bodily strength he was no match at all for
the heavy and powerful Pantaloon.
     "If I yield to your most eloquent and seductive persuasions, M. Binet,"
said  he, sweetly,  "what guarantee do you give me that you will not sell me
for twenty louis after I shall have served your turn?"
     "You have my word of honour for that." M. Binet was emphatic.
     Andre-Louis  laughed. "Oh, we are to talk of honour, are we? Really, M.
Binet? It is clear you think me a fool."
     In the  dark  he  did not see the flush  that leapt to M. Binet's round
face. It was some moments before he replied.
     "Perhaps you are right," he growled. "What guarantee do you want?"
     "I do not know what guarantee you can possibly give."
     "I have said that I will keep faith with you."
     "Until you find it more profitable to sell me."
     "You have it in your power to make it more profitable always  for me to
keep faith with you. It  is due to you that we have done so well in Guichen.
Oh, I admit it frankly."
     "In private," said Andre-Louis.
     M. Binet left the sarcasm unheeded.
     "What  you have done for us here with 'Figaro-Scaramouche,' you  can do
elsewhere  with other things. Naturally, I  shall not want to lose you. That
is your guarantee."
     "Yet to-night you would sell me for twenty louis."
     "Because - name of God! - you enrage me by refusing me  a service  well
within your powers. Don't you think, had I been entirely the rogue you think
me, I could have sold you  on Saturday last? I want you to understand me, my
dear Parvissimus."
     "I beg that  you'll  not apologize. You  would  be  more  tiresome than
ever."
     "Of course you will  be gibing. You never miss  a chance to gibe. It'll
bring you  trouble before you're done with life.  Come;  here we are back at
the inn, and you have not yet given me your decision."
     Andre-Louis  looked at  him.  "I  must yield,  of course. I  can't help
myself."
     M.  Binet released his arm  at last, and slapped him heartily upon  the
back. "Well declared, my lad. You'll never  regret it. If I know anything of
the  theatre,  I know that you have made the great  decision  of  your life.
To-morrow night you'll thank me."
     Andre-Louis  shrugged,  and stepped out ahead  towards the inn.  But M.
Binet called him back.
     "M. Parvissimus!"
     He turned. There stood the man's great bulk, the moonlight beating down
upon that round fat face of his, and he was holding out his hand.
     "M. Parvissimus, no rancour. It is a thing I do not admit into my life.
You will shake hands with me, and we will forget all this."
     Andre-Louis considered him a moment with disgust. He was growing angry.
Then, realizing this, he conceived himself ridiculous, almost  as ridiculous
as that  sly, scoundrelly Pantaloon. He laughed  and took  the  outstretched
hand. "No rancour?" M. Binet insisted.
     "Oh, no rancour," said Andre-Louis.

        CHAPTER V. ENTER SCARAMOUCHE


     Dressed in the close-fitting suit of a bygone age, all black, from flat
velvet cap  to  rosetted shoes, his  face  whitened  and  a slight up-curled
moustache  glued to  his upper  lip, a  small-sword at his side and a guitar
slung behind him, Scaramouche surveyed himself in a mirror, and was disposed
to be sardonic - which was the proper mood for the part.
     He reflected that  his life, which until lately had been of a stagnant,
contemplative quality, had suddenly become excessively active. In the course
of one  week  he  had  been lawyer, mob-orator,  outlaw,  property-man,  and
finally buffoon. Last Wednesday he had been engaged in moving an audience of
Rennes to anger; on this Wednesday  he was to move an audience of Guichen to
mirth. Then he had been concerned to draw tears; to-day it was his  business
to provoke laughter. There was a difference, and  yet  there was a parallel.
Then as  now he had been a  comedian; and the  part  that he had played then
was, when you came  to  think of it,  akin  to the part he was  to play this
evening.  For what had  he  been at Rennes  but a  sort of Scaramouche - the
little skirmisher, the astute intriguer, spattering the seed of trouble with
a sly hand? The only  difference lay  in the fact  that to-day he went forth
under the  name that  properly  described his type, whereas last week he had
been disguised as a respectable young provincial attorney.
     He bowed to his reflection in the mirror.
     "Buffoon!" he apostrophized it.  "At  last you have  found yourself. At
last you have come into your heritage. You should be a great success.
     Hearing his  new name called out by M. Binet, he went below to find the
company assembled, and waiting in the entrance corridor of the inn.
     He was, of course, an object of great interest to all the company. Most
critically was he  conned by M. Binet  and mademoiselle;  by the former with
gravely searching eyes, by the latter with a curl of scornful lip.
     "You'll  do," M. Binet commended his  make-up.  "At least  you look the
part."
     "Unfortunately  men  are  not  always  what they  look," said  Climene,
acidly.
     "That  is  a  truth that  does  not  at  present  apply  to  me,"  said
Andre-Louis. "For it is the first time in my life that I look what I am."
     Mademoiselle curled her lip a little further,  and turned  her shoulder
to him. But  the others  thought  him very witty -  probably  because he was
obscure. Columbine encouraged him with a friendly  smile  that displayed her
large  white teeth, and M. Binet swore yet  once  again that  he  would be a
great success, since he threw himself with such spirit into the undertaking.
Then in a  voice that for  the moment he appeared to have borrowed from  the
roaring captain, M. Binet marshalled them for the short parade across to the
market-hall.
     The new  Scaramouche  fell  into place  beside Rhodomont.  The old one,
hobbling on  a  crutch, had  departed an  hour  ago  to take  the  place  of
doorkeeper,  vacated  of  necessity  by  Andre-Louis.  So that  the exchange
between those two was a complete one.
     Headed by Polichinelle banging his  great drum and Pierrot blowing  his
trumpet,  they set out,  and were duly passed in review  by the  ragamuffins
drawn up  in files to enjoy so  much of the  spectacle as was to be obtained
for nothing.
     Ten minutes later the three knocks sounded, and the curtains were drawn
aside  to reveal  a battered set that was partly garden,  partly  forest, in
which  Climene  feverishly  looked for the  coming  of Leandre. In the wings
stood the beautiful, melancholy  lover, awaiting his  cue,  and  immediately
behind him the unfledged Scaramouche, who was anon to follow him.
     Andre-Louis was assailed with nausea in that dread moment. He attempted
to take a lightning mental review of the first act of this scenario of which
he  was himself the  author-in-chief; but found his  mind  a complete blank.
With the perspiration starting  from his skin, he stepped back to the  wall,
where above a dim  lantern  was pasted  a sheet bearing the brief outline of
the piece. He was still studying  it, when his arm was clutched, and he  was
pulled  violently  towards  the  wings.  He  had  a  glimpse  of Pantaloon's
grotesque face, its eyes blazing, and he caught a raucous growl:
     "Climene has spoken your cue three times already."
     Before he realized  it, he had  been bundled on to the stage, and stood
there  foolishly,  blinking in  the  glare of the footlights, with their tin
reflectors.  So utterly foolish and bewildered did he look that  volley upon
volley of laughter welcomed him from the audience, which this evening packed
the hall  from  end  to end. Trembling  a little,  his bewilderment at first
increasing, he stood there to receive that rolling tribute to his absurdity.
Climene was  eyeing  him  with expectant mockery,  savouring in  advance his
humiliation;  Leandre  regarded  him  in  consternation, whilst  behind  the
scenes, M. Binet was dancing in fury.
     "Name  of  a name," he- groaned  to the rather  scared  members  of the
company assembled there, "what will happen when they discover that he  isn't
acting?"
     But they  never  did  discover  it. Scaramouche's bewildered  paralysis
lasted  but  a few  seconds.  He realized that he  was being laughed at, and
remembered that his Scaramouche was a  creature to be laughed with,  and not
at.  He must save the situation; twist  it to his  own advantage as best  he
could. And  now his real bewilderment  and  terror was  succeeded  by  acted
bewilderment  and  terror  far  more  marked,  but  not  quite so  funny. He
contrived to make it clearly  appear that his terror was of some one off the
stage.  He  took cover behind a  painted shrub, and thence,  the laughter at
last beginning to subside, he addressed himself to Climene and Leandre.
     "Forgive  me,  beautiful  lady, if  the abrupt  manner  of  my entrance
startled you. The truth is that  I have  never been the same since that last
affair of mine with Almaviva. My heart is not what it used to be. Down there
at  the  end of the lane  I  came face to  face  with  an  elderly gentleman
carrying  a  heavy cudgel, and the horrible thought  entered my mind that it
might  be your father,  and  that our little stratagem  to  get  you  safely
married might already have been  betrayed to him. I think  it was the cudgel
put such notion in my head. Not that I am afraid. I am  not really afraid of
anything. But  I could not help  reflecting that,  if it should  really have
been your father, and  he had  broken my  head  with his cudgel, your  hopes
would have perished with me. For  without me, what should  you have done, my
poor children?"
     A ripple of laughter from  the audience  had been steadily enheartening
him,  and  helping him to recover his  natural  impudence. It was clear they
found him comical.  They were to find him far more  comical than ever he had
intended, and this was  largely due to a fortuitous  circumstance upon which
he had  insufficiently reckoned.  The  fear  of recognition by some one from
Gavrillac or Rennes had been strong upon him. His face was sufficiently made
up to baffle recognition; but there remained his voice. To dissemble this he
had  availed himself of the fact that Figaro was a  Spaniard. He had known a
Spaniard at Louis le Grand who spoke a fluent but most extraordinary French,
with a  grotesque excess of sibilant  sounds. It  was  an accent that he had
often  imitated, as  youths  will imitate  characteristics that excite their
mirth. Opportunely he had bethought him  of that Spanish student, and it was
upon his  speech that to-night he modelled his own. The audience of  Guichen
found  it  as  laughable  on  his  lips as he and  his fellows had found  it
formerly on the lips of that derided Spaniard.
     Meanwhile,  behind the scenes, Binet - listening to that glib impromptu
of which the scenario gave no indication - had recovered from his fears.
     "Dieu  de  Dieu!"  he whispered,  grinning.  "Did he  do  it,  then, on
purpose?"
     It seemed to  him impossible that a man who had been so terror-stricken
as he had  fancied Andre-Louis, could have recovered his wits so quickly and
completely. Yet the doubt remained.
     To resolve it after the  curtain had  fallen upon  a first act that had
gone with a verve unrivalled until this hour in the  annals of  the company,
borne almost  entirely upon  the slim shoulders  of the new  Scaramouche, M.
Binet bluntly questioned him.
     They  were standing  in the  space that did  duty  as  green-room,  the
company  all  assembled  there,  showering  congratulations  upon their  new
recruit. Scaramouche, a little exalted at the moment by his success, however
trivial  he  might  consider  it  to-morrow, took then a full  revenge  upon
Climene  for  the malicious  satisfaction  with which  she had  regarded his
momentary blank terror.
     "I do not wonder  that you ask,"  said he. "Faith, I should have warned
you that I intended to do my best  from  the start to put  the audience in a
good humour with me. Mademoiselle very  nearly ruined everything by refusing
to reflect  any of  my terror. She  was not  even  startled.  Another  time,
mademoiselle, I shall give you full warning of my every intention."
     She  crimsoned under  her  grease-paint. But  before she could find  an
answer  of  sufficient  venom,  her  father was rating her soundly  for  her
stupidity  -  the more  soundly  because himself  he  had  been  deceived by
Scaramouche's supreme acting.
     Scaramouche's success in the first act was more than  confirmed  as the
performance proceeded. Completely master  of himself by now, and  stimulated
as only  success can stimulate, he warmed to his work. Impudent, alert, sly,
graceful, he incarnated the very ideal of Scaramouche, and he helped out his
own  native  wit  by  many  a remembered  line  from  Beaumarchais,  thereby
persuading  the  better informed  among  the  audience that here indeed  was
something of the real Figaro, and bringing them, as it were, into touch with
the great world of the capital.
     When at last the curtain fell for the last time, it was Scaramouche who
shared  with Climene  the honours of the evening, his name that  was coupled
with hers in the calls that summoned them before the curtains.
     As they stepped back,  and the  curtains screened  them again from  the
departing audience, M. Binet approached them, rubbing his  fat hands  softly
together.  This runagate young  lawyer,  whom  chance  had  blown  into  his
company, had evidently  been sent  by Fate to make his fortune for him.  The
sudden  success  at Guichen, hitherto  unrivalled, should  be  repeated  and
augmented elsewhere.  There  would  be  no more  sleeping  under  hedges and
tightening  of belts.  Adversity  was  behind  him.  He placed a  hand  upon
Scaramouche's shoulder, and  surveyed  him with a smile  whose oiliness  not
even his red paint and colossal false nose could dissemble.
     "And what have you to say to me now?" he asked him. "Was I wrong when I
assured you that you would succeed? Do you think I have followed my fortunes
in the theatre  for a lifetime without knowing a born actor when  I see one?
You are my discovery, Scaramouche. I have discovered you to yourself. I have
set your feet upon the road to fame and fortune. I await your thanks."
     Scaramouche laughed at him, and his laugh was not altogether pleasant.
     "Always Pantaloon!" said he.
     The great  countenance became  overcast. "I  see  that  you do  not yet
forgive me the  little stratagem by  which I forced you  to  do  justice  to
yourself. Ungrateful  dog!  As if I could have  had any purpose but  to make
you; and I  have  done  so. Continue as  you have begun, and you will end in
Paris. You may yet tread the stage  of the  Comedie Francaise, the  rival of
Talma, Fleury, and Dugazon. When that happens to you  perhaps you will  feel
the gratitude  that is  due to old Binet, for you  will owe  it all  to this
soft-hearted old fool."
     "If you were as good an actor on the stage as you are in private," said
Scaramouche,  "you  would  yourself have  won to  the Comedie Francaise long
since. But I bear no rancour, M. Binet." He laughed, and put out his hand.
     Binet fell upon it and wrung it heartily.
     "That, at  least,  is  something," he declared. "My  boy,  I have great
plans for you - for  us. To-morrow we go to Maure; there  is a fair there to
the end  of this  week. Then on Monday  we take our chances  at Pipriac, and
after that we must consider. It may be that I  am about to realize the dream
of  my  life. There must have been upwards of fifteen louis  taken to-night.
Where the devil is that rascal Cordemais?"
     Cordemais  was  the  name  of  the original  Scaramouche,  who  had  so
unfortunately  twisted  his  ankle.  That Binet  should refer to him  by his
secular designation was  a  sign that in the Binet company at least  he  had
fallen for ever from the lofty eminence of Scaramouche.
     "Let  us  go and find him, and then we'll  away to the inn and crack  a
bottle of the best Burgundy, perhaps two bottles."
     But Cordemais was not readily to be found. None of the company had seen
him since the close of the performance. M. Binet went round to the entrance.
Cordemais was not there.  At first he was  annoyed;  then as he continued in
vain to  bawl the  fellow's  name, he began  to grow  uneasy;  lastly,  when
Polichinelle,  who  was  with  them,  discovered Cordemais' crutch  standing
discarded  behind  the  door,  M. Binet became alarmed. A dreadful suspicion
entered his mind. He grew visibly pale under his paint.
     "But this  evening he couldn't walk without  the crutch!" he exclaimed.
"How then does he come to leave it there and take himself off?"
     "Perhaps he has gone on to the inn," suggested some one.
     "But he could n't walk without his crutch," M. Binet insisted.
     Nevertheless, since clearly  he was not anywhere about the market-hall,
to the inn they all trooped, and deafened the landlady with their inquiries.
     "Oh, yes, M. Cordemais came in some time ago."
     "Where is he now?"
     "He went away again at once. He just came for his bag."
     "For his bag!" Binet was on the point of an apoplexy. "How long ago was
that?"
     She glanced at the timepiece on the overmantel. "It would be about half
an  hour ago.  It  was  a  few minutes before  the Rennes  diligence  passed
through."
     "The  Rennes diligence!" M. Binet was almost inarticulate. "Could he...
could he walk?" he asked, on a note of terrible anxiety.
     "Walk? He ran like a hare when he left the inn. I thought, myself, that
his agility  was  suspicious,  seeing how  lame he  had  been since  he fell
downstairs yesterday. Is anything wrong?"
     M. Binet had collapsed into a chair. He took his head in his hands, and
groaned.
     "The scoundrel was shamming all the time!" exclaimed Climene. "His fall
downstairs was a trick. He was playing for this. He has swindled us."
     "Fifteen louis at least - perhaps  sixteen!" said  M.  Binet.  "Oh, the
heartless blackguard! To swindle me who have been  as a father to him -  and
to swindle me in such a moment."
     >From  the ranks of  the  silent,  awe-stricken company, each member of
which was  wondering by  how  much of the loss his own meagre pay  would  be
mulcted, there came a splutter of laughter.
     M. Binet glared with blood-injected eyes.
     "Who laughs?" he roared.  "What  heartless wretch has  the audacity  to
laugh at my misfortune?"
     Andre-Louis, still in the sable glories of Scaramouche, stood  forward.
He was laughing still.
     "It  is you, is it? You  may  laugh on another  note,  my friend,  if I
choose a way to recoup myself that I know of."
     "Dullard!" Scaramouche  scorned him. "Rabbit-brained elephant! What  if
Cordemais has gone  with fifteen louis? Hasn't  he left you  something worth
twenty times as much?"
     M. Binet gaped uncomprehending.
     "You  are  between two  wines,  I  think.  You've  been  drinking,"  he
concluded.
     "So I have - at the  fountain of Thalia. Oh,  don't you see?  Don't you
see the treasure that Cordemais has left behind him?"
     "What has he left?"
     "A unique idea for the groundwork of  a scenario. It unfolds itself all
before  me. I'll borrow part of the  title from Moliere. We'll  call it 'Les
Fourberies de Scaramouche,' and if we don't leave the audiences of Maure and
Pipriac with sides  aching  from laughter I'll play the dullard Pantaloon in
future."
     Polichinelle  smacked fist  into palm. "Superb!" he said, fiercely. "To
cull fortune  from  misfortune,  to turn loss into  profit, that is  to have
genius.
     Scaramouche  made  a leg. "Polichinelle,  you are a fellow after my own
heart.  I love a  man who can discern my  merit. If Pantaloon had half  your
wit, we should have Burgundy to-night in spite of the flight of Cordemais."
     "Burgundy?" roared M. Binet, and before  he could get farther Harlequin
had clapped his hands together.
     "That is the spirit, M. Binet.  You heard him, landlady. He  called for
Burgundy."
     "I called for nothing of the kind."
     "But you heard him, dear madame. We all heard him."
     The others made  chorus,  whilst Scaramouche smiled at him,  and patted
his shoulder.
     "Up, man, a little courage. Did you not say that fortune awaits us? And
have we not now the wherewithal to  constrain fortune? Burgundy, then, to...
to toast 'Les Fourberies de Scaramouche.'"
     And M. Binet, who was not blind to the force of the idea, yielded, took
courage, and got drunk with the rest.

        CHAPTER VI. CLIMENEI


     Diligent search among the many scenarios of the  improvisers which have
survived  their day, has  failed  to  bring  to  light the  scenario of "Les
Fourberies de Scaramouche," upon which we are told the fortunes of the Binet
troupe came to be soundly established. They played it for the first  time at
Maure in the following week,  with Andre-Louis  - who  was  known by now  as
Scaramouche to all the company, and to the public alike - in the title-role.
If he had acquitted himself well as Figaro-Scaramouche, he excelled  himself
in the new piece, the scenario  of which would  appear  to be very much  the
better of the two.
     After  Maure came Pipriac, where  four performances were given,  two of
each of the scenarios that now formed  the backbone of the Binet repertoire.
In both Scaramouche, who was beginning to find himself,  materially improved
his  performances. So  smoothly  now did the two pieces run that Scaramouche
actually suggested to Binet that after Fougeray, which they were to visit in
the following week,  they should tempt  fortune in  a  real  theatre  in the
important town of Redon. The notion terrified Binet  at first, but coming to
think of it,  and his ambition being fanned  by  Andre-Louis,  he  ended  by
allowing himself to succumb to the temptation.
     It seemed to Andre-Louis in those days  that  he  had  found  his  real
metier, and not  only was  he beginning to like  it,  but actually  to  look
forward to a career as actor-author that might indeed lead him in the end to
that Mecca of  all  comedians, the Comedie  Francaise. And  there were other
possibilities. From the writing  of skeleton scenarios  for improvisers,  he
might presently pass to writing plays of dialogue, plays in the proper sense
of the word, after the manner of Chenier, Eglantine, and Beaumarchais.
     The fact that he dreamed  such dreams  shows us how  very kindly he had
taken  to  the  profession into which  Chance and M.  Binet between them had
conspired to thrust him. That he had real talent both as author and as actor
I do not doubt, and I am persuaded that had things fallen out differently he
would have won for himself a lasting place among French dramatists, and thus
fully have realized that dream of his.
     Now, dream though it was, he did not neglect the practical side of it.
     "You realize," he told M. Binet,  "that I  have it in my power to  make
your fortune for you.
     He and Binet  were sitting alone together in the  parlour of the inn at
Pipriac, drinking  a very excellent  bottle of Volnay.  It  was on the night
after  the fourth  and  last performance  there  of  "Les  Feurberies."  The
business in Pipriac had been as excellent  as in Maure and Guichen. You will
have gathered this from the fact that they drank Volnay.
     "I  will  concede it, my  dear  Scaramouche, so that  I  may  hear  the
sequel."
     "I  am disposed to exercise this power if the inducement is sufficient.
You will realize  that for fifteen  livres a month  a man does not sell such
exceptional gifts as mine.
     "There is an alternative," said M. Binet, darkly.
     "There is no alternative. Don't be a fool, Binet."
     Binet sat up as if  he had been prodded. Members of his company did not
take this tone of direct rebuke with him.
     "Anyway,  I make you  a present  of  it,"  Scaramouche pursued, airily.
"Exercise it if you please. Step outside and inform the police that they can
lay hands upon one Andre-Louis Moreau. But that will be the end of your fine
dreams of going to Redon, and  for the first time in your life playing in  a
real theatre. Without me, you can't do it, and  you  know it;  and I  am not
going to  Redon or anywhere else,  in fact I  am not even going to Fougeray,
until we have an equitable arrangement."
     "But what heat!"  complained  Binet, "and all for  what?  Why  must you
assume  that I have  the soul of a  usurer? When our  little arrangement was
made, I had no idea how could I? - that you would prove as valuable to me as
you are? You had but to remind me, my dear Scaramouche. I am a just man.  As
from to-day you shall have thirty livres a month.  See, I double it at once.
I am a generous man."
     "But you are not ambitious. Now listen to me, a moment."
     And he proceeded to unfold a scheme that filled Binet with a paralyzing
terror.
     "After Redon, Nantes," he said. "Nantes and the Theatre Feydau."
     M.  Binet choked in the act of drinking. The Theatre  Feydau was a sort
of provincial Comedie Francaise. The  great Fleury had played  there  to  an
audience  as critical as any in France. The very thought of Redon, cherished
as it  had  come  to be  by  M. Binet,  gave him at moments a  cramp in  the
stomach,  so  dangerously ambitious  did it  seem to  him. And  Redon was  a
puppet-show  by comparison with Nantes. Yet  this raw lad whom he had picked
up by chance three weeks ago,  and  who  in  that  time had blossomed from a
country attorney into author and actor, could talk of Nantes and the Theatre
Feydau without changing colour.
     "But  why not Paris and the Comedie Francaise?" wondered M. Binet, with
sarcasm, when at last he had got his breath.
     "That may come later," says impudence.
     "Eh? You've been drinking, my friend."
     But  Andre-Louis detailed  the plan that  had been forming in his mind.
Fougeray  should  be  a  training-ground for  Redon, and Redon  should  be a
training-ground for Nantes. They would stay in Redon as long  as Redon would
pay adequately to come and see them, working hard to  perfect themselves the
while. They would add three or four new players of talent to the company; he
would write three or four  fresh  scenarios, and these  should be tested and
perfected until the troupe was  in possession of at least half a dozen plays
upon which they could depend; they would lay out a portion of  their profits
on  better  dresses  and better scenery, and finally in a couple  of months'
time, if all went  well, they should  be ready  to make  their real  bid for
fortune  at Nantes. It was quite true that  distinction was usually demanded
of the  companies appearing at  the Feydau, but on the other hand Nantes had
not  seen a troupe of improvisers for a generation and longer. They would be
supplying a novelty to which all Nantes should flock provided that the  work
were really well done, and Scaramouche undertook - pledged himself - that if
matters were  left  in his own hands, his projected revival  of the Commedia
dell' Arte in all its glories would exceed whatever expectations  the public
of Nantes might bring to the theatre.
     "We'll  talk   of   Paris   after  Nantes,"  he   finished,   supremely
matter-of-fact, "just as we will definitely decide on Nantes after Redon."
     The persuasiveness that could sway a mob ended by sweeping M. Binet off
his feet. The prospect which  Scaramouche unfolded,  if terrifying, was also
intoxicating,  and  as  Scaramouche  delivered  a  crushing answer  to  each
weakening  objection  in  a measure  as  it was  advanced,  Binet  ended  by
promising to think the matter over.
     "Redon will point the way," said Andre-Louis, "and I  don't doubt which
way Redon will point."
     Thus  the great adventure of Redon dwindled to insignificance.  Instead
of  a  terrifying  undertaking in itself, it became  merely  a rehearsal for
something greater. In his momentary exaltation Binet proposed another bottle
of Volnay. Scaramouche waited until the cork was drawn before he continued.
     "The  thing  remains possible," said  he then, holding his glass to the
light, and speaking casually, "as long as I am with you."
     "Agreed,  my  dear  Scaramouche,  agreed.  Our  chance  meeting  was  a
fortunate thing for both of us."
     "For  both of us," said Scaramouche,  with stress. "That is  as I would
have it. So  that  I  do  not  think you will surrender me  just  yet to the
police."
     "As if  I could think  of such a thing!  My dear Scaramouche, you amuse
yourself.  I beg that you will  never,  never  allude to that little joke of
mine again."
     "It is  forgotten," said Andre-Louis. "And now for the remainder of  my
proposal. If I am to become the architect of your fortunes, if I am to build
them as I have planned them, I  must  also and in the same degree become the
architect of my own."
     "In the same degree?" M. Binet frowned.
     "In the same degree. From to-day, if  you  please, we will  conduct the
affairs of this company in a proper manner, and we will keep account-books."
     "I am an artist," said M. Binet, with pride. "I am not a merchant."
     "There is a business side  to your art, and that shall be conducted  in
the business  manner. I  have thought it all out for you.  You  shall not be
troubled  with  details that might hinder the  due exercise of your art. All
that you have to do is to say yes or no to my proposal."
     "Ah? And the proposal?"
     "Is  that  you constitute  me  your partner, with an equal share in the
profits of your company."
     Pantaloon's  great countenance grew  pale, his little  eyes  widened to
their  fullest  extent  as he  conned  the face of  his  companion.  Then he
exploded.
     "You are mad, of course, to make me a proposal so monstrous."
     "It has its injustices, I admit. But I have provided for them. It would
not, for instance, be fair that in addition to all that I am proposing to do
for you, I should also play Scaramouche and write your scenarios without any
reward outside of the half-profit which  would come to me as a partner. Thus
before the profits come to  be divided, there  is a  salary to be paid me as
actor, and a small sum for  each  scenario with which I provide the company;
that is a matter for mutual agreement. Similarly, you shall be paid a salary
as Pantaloon.  After those expenses are cleared up, as well as all the other
salaries and disbursements, the residue  is the profit to be divided equally
between us."
     It was not, as you can imagine, a proposal  that M. Binet would swallow
at a draught. He began with a point-blank refusal to consider it.
     "In that  case, my friend," said Scaramouche, "we part company at once.
To-morrow I shall bid you a reluctant farewell."
     Binet fell to raging. He spoke of ingratitude in feeling terms; he even
permitted himself another sly allusion to that little jest of his concerning
the police, which he had promised never again to mention.
     "As to that, you may do as you please. Play the informer, by all means.
But consider that you will just as  definitely  be deprived of  my services,
and  that without  me you  are nothing  -  as you were  before I joined your
company."
     M.  Binet  did not care what  the consequences might be.  A fig for the
consequences!  He would teach this impudent young  country attorney  that M.
Binet was not the man to be imposed upon.
     Scaramouche  rose.  "Very  well," said  he,  between  indifference  and
resignation.  "As you wish. But before you act, sleep on  the matter. In the
cold  light of  morning  you  may  see our  two proposals  in  their  proper
proportions. Mine spells fortune for both of us. Yours spells  ruin for both
of us. Good-night, M. Binet. Heaven help you to a wise decision.
     The decision to  which M.  Binet finally came  was, naturally, the only
one possible  in the face of so firm a resolve  as  that of Andre-Louis, who
held the trumps. Of course there  were  further discussions,  before all was
settled, and M. Binet was brought to an agreement only after an infinity  of
haggling surprising  in one who was an artist and not a man of business. One
or two concessions were made by Andre-Louis; he  consented, for instance, to
waive  his claim to  be  paid  for  scenarios, and he also consented that M.
Binet should appoint himself a salary that was out of all proportion to  his
deserts.
     Thus in the end the matter was  settled, and the announcement duly made
to the assembled company. There were, of course, jealousies and resentments.
But these were not deep-seated,  and they were readily swallowed when it was
discovered  that under the new arrangement the lot of the entire company was
to be materially improved from  the  point of  view of salaries. This  was a
matter  that  had  met with considerable opposition  from M.  Binet. But the
irresistible Scaramouche swept away all objections.
     "If we are to play at the Feydau, you want a company of self-respecting
comedians, and not a pack of cringing starvelings. The better we pay them in
reason, the more they will earn for us."
     Thus was conquered the company's resentment of this too swift promotion
of its latest recruit. Cheerfully now  - with one exception -  they accepted
the dominance of Scaramouche, a dominance  soon to be so firmly  established
that M. Binet himself came under it.
     The  one  exception  was  Climene. Her failure  to  bring to heel  this
interesting  young stranger, who had  almost  literally  dropped  into their
midst that  morning outside Guichen,  had begotten in her a malice which his
persistent ignoring of her had been steadily inflaming. She had remonstrated
with her father when  the new partnership was first formed. She had lost her
temper with him, and called  him a fool, whereupon M. Binet - in Pantaloon's
best manner - had lost his temper in  his turn and boxed her ears. She piled
it  up to the  account of Scaramouche, and spied her opportunity to pay  off
some of  that ever-increasing score. But opportunities were few. Scaramouche
was  too occupied just then. During the week  of preparation at Fougeray, he
was  hardly seen  save at the performances, whilst when  once they  were  at
Redon, he came and went like the wind between the theatre and the inn.
     The Redon  experiment had  justified itself  from the first. Stimulated
and  encouraged by this, Andre-Louis worked day  and night  during the month
that  they spent in that busy little town. The moment had been well  chosen,
for the trade in chestnuts of which Redon is the centre was just then at its
height. And  every afternoon the little theatre was packed  with spectators.
The fame of  the troupe had gone forth, borne by the chestnut-growers of the
district, who were  bringing their  wares to Redon market, and the audiences
were made up of people from the  surrounding country,  and from neighbouring
villages  as far  out as Allaire, Saint-Perrieux and Saint-Nicholas. To keep
the  business from slackening, Andre-Louis  prepared  a  new  scenario every
week.  He wrote three in  addition  to  those two with which he had  already
supplied  the company;  these  were  "The  Marriage  of Pantaloon," "The Shy
Lover," and "The  Terrible  Captain."  Of these the  last  was  the greatest
success. It  was based  upon the "Miles  Gloriosus"  of Plautus,  with great
opportunities for Rhodomont, and a good part for  Scaramouche as the roaring
captain's  sly  lieutenant. Its success was largely  due to  the  fact  that
Andre-Louis amplified the scenario to the extent of indicating very fully in
places the lines which the dialogue should follow, whilst  here and there he
had gone  so far  as to  supply  some of the  actual dialogue to be  spoken,
without, however, making it obligatory upon the actors to keep to the letter
of it.
     And  meanwhile as the business prospered, he became busy  with tailors,
improving  the  wardrobe  of  the  company,  which  was sorely  in  need  of
improvement. He ran to earth a couple of needy artists, lured them into  the
company to play small parts - apothecaries and notaries  - and  set them  to
beguile their leisure in painting new scenery, so as to be ready for what he
called the conquest of  Nantes, which was to  come in the new year. Never in
his life had  he worked so hard; never in his life had he  worked at all  by
comparison with his activities  now. His  fund of energy and  enthusiasm was
inexhaustible, like that of his good humour. He came and went, acted, wrote,
conceived, directed, planned, and executed, what time M. Binet took his ease
at  last in  comparative  affluence, drank Burgundy  every  night, ate white
bread  and other  delicacies,  and began  to  congratulate himself upon  his
astuteness in  having  made this industrious,  tireless fellow  his partner.
Having discovered how idle had been his fears of performing at Redon, he now
began to  dismiss the terrors with which  the  notion of Nantes had  haunted
him.
     And his  happiness  was reflected throughout the ranks of his  company,
with the  single exception  always  of Climene. She had  ceased to sneer  at
Scaramouche, haying realized at last that her sneers left him  untouched and
recoiled upon  herself.  Thus  her almost indefinable resentment of him  was
increased  by being stifled, until, at all costs,  an outlet for it must  be
found.
     One day  she threw herself  in  his way  as he was leaving the  theatre
after the  performance.  The others had  already gone, and she had  returned
upon pretence of having forgotten something.
     "Will you tell me what I have done to you?" she asked him, point-blank.
     "Done  to me, mademoiselle?" He did  not understand. She made a gesture
of impatience. "Why do you hate me?"
     "Hate you,  mademoiselle? I do not hate anybody. It  is the most stupid
of all the emotions. I have never hated - not even my enemies."
     "What Christian resignation!"
     "As for hating you, of all people!  Why...  I consider you  adorable. I
envy Leandre every day of my life.  I have  seriously thought of setting him
to play Scaramouche, and playing lovers myself."
     "I don't think you would be a success," said she.
     "That is the  only consideration that restrains me. And  yet, given the
inspiration  that  is  given  Leandre,  it  is  possible  that  I  might  be
convincing."
     "Why, what inspiration do you mean?"
     "The inspiration of playing to so adorable a Climene."
     Her lazy eyes were now alert to search that lean face of his.
     "You are laughing at me," said she, and swept past him into the theatre
on her pretended quest.  There was nothing to be done with such a fellow. He
was utterly without feeling. He was not a man at all.
     Yet  when she  came forth again  at the end  of  some five minutes, she
found him still lingering at the door.
     "Not gone yet?" she asked him, superciliously.
     "I was waiting  for you, mademoiselle.  You will be walking to the inn.
If I might escort you... "
     "But what gallantry! What condescension!"
     "Perhaps you would prefer that I did not?"
     "How could I prefer that, M.  Scaramouche? Besides, we  are  both going
the same way, and the streets are common to all. It is that I am overwhelmed
by the unusual honour."
     He looked into her piquant little  face, and noted how  obscured it was
by its cloud of dignity. He laughed.
     "Perhaps I feared that the honour was not sought."
     "Ah, now I understand," she cried. "It is for me to seek these honours.
I  am to woo a  man before he will pay me the homage of civility. It must be
so, since you, who clearly know everything,  have said so. It remains for me
to beg your pardon for my ignorance."
     "It amuses you to  be cruel," said Scaramouche. "No  matter.  Shall  we
walk?"
     They set out together, stepping briskly to warm their blood against the
wintry  evening  air.  Awhile they  went  in  silence,  yet  each  furtively
observing the other.
     "And  so,  you find  me cruel?" she  challenged him at length,  thereby
betraying the fact that the accusation had struck home.
     He looked at her with a half smile. "Will you deny it?"
     "You are the first man that ever accused me of that."
     "I  dare not suppose myself the first man to whom you have been  cruel.
That  were an assumption  too flattering  to myself. I must prefer  to think
that the others suffered in silence."
     "Mon  Dieu!  Have  you  suffered?"  She  was  between  seriousness  and
raillery.
     "I place the confession as an offering on the altar of your vanity."
     "I should never have suspected it."
     "How could you? Am I not what your father calls  a natural actor? I was
an actor long before I became Scaramouche. Therefore I have laughed. I often
do when I am hurt. When  you were pleased  to be disdainful, I acted disdain
in my turn."
     "You acted very well," said she, without reflecting.
     "Of course. I am an excellent actor."
     "And why this sudden change?"
     "In response to the change in you. You have grown weary of your part of
cruel madam - a dull part, believe me, and unworthy of your talents., Were I
a woman and had I your  loveliness and your grace, Climene, I should disdain
to use them as weapons of offence."
     "Loveliness and grace!" she echoed,  feigning amused  surprise. But the
vain baggage was mollified. "When was it that you discovered this beauty and
this grace, M. Scaramouche?"
     He looked at her a moment, considering the sprightly beauty of her, the
adorable femininity that from the first had so irresistibly attracted him.
     "One morning when I beheld you rehearsing a love-scene with Leandre."
     He caught the  surprise that leapt to her eyes, before  she veiled them
under drooping lids from his too questing gaze.
     "Why, that was the first time you saw me."
     "I had no earlier occasion to remark your charms."
     "You ask me to believe  too  much," said she, but her tone  was  softer
than he had ever known it yet.
     "Then  you'll refuse to believe  me if I confess that it was this grace
and  beauty that determined my  destiny that day by urging me  to join  your
father's troupe."
     At that  she  became  a little  out of breath. There  was no longer any
question of finding an outlet for resentment. Resentment was all forgotten.
     "But why? With what object?"
     "With the object of asking you one day to be my wife."
     She halted  under the  shock of that, and swung round  to face him. Her
glance met  his own  without, shyness  now; there was a hardening glitter in
her eyes,  a faint  stir of  colour in  her cheeks. She suspected him  of an
unpardonable mockery.
     "You go very fast, don't you?" she asked him, with heat.
     "I do. haven't you observed it? I am a man of sudden impulses. See what
I  have made of  the  Binet troupe in less  than a couple of months. Another
might have laboured for a year  and not achieved the  half of it. Shall I be
slower in love than in work? Would  it be reasonable  to expect it?  I  have
curbed and repressed myself not to scare you by precipitancy. In that I have
done  violence to  my  feelings, and more  than all in using  the same  cold
aloofness with which you chose to treat me. I have waited - oh! so patiently
- until you should tire of that mood of cruelty."
     "You are an amazing man," said she, quite colourlessly.
     "I am," he agreed with her.  "It is only the  conviction  that I am not
commonplace that has permitted me to hope as I have hoped."
     Mechanically, and as if by tacit consent, they resumed their walk.
     "And I ask you to observe," he said, "when you complain that I  go very
fast, that, after all, I have so far asked you for nothing."
     "How?" quoth she, frowning.
     "I have merely told you of my hopes. I am not so rash as to ask at once
whether I may realize them."
     "My faith, but that is prudent," said she, tartly.
     "Of course."
     It  was his  self-possession that  exasperated her; for after that  she
walked the short  remainder of  the way in silence, and so,  for the moment,
the matter was left just there.
     But that night, after they had supped, it chanced that when Climene was
about to retire, he and she were alone together in the room abovestairs that
her father kept exclusively for his company. The Binet Troupe, you see,  was
rising in the world.
     As Climene now rose to withdraw  for  the night, Scaramouche rose  with
her  to  light her candle. Holding it in her left hand, she offered him  her
right, a long, tapering, white hand at the end  of a softly rounded arm that
was bare to the elbow.
     "Good-night,  Scaramouche," she said, but  so softly, so tenderly, that
he caught his breath, and stood conning her, his dark eyes aglow.
     Thus  a  moment, then he took the tips of her fingers in his grasp, and
bowing over the hand, pressed his lips upon it. Then he looked at her again.
The intense femininity of her lured him on, invited him, surrendered to him.
Her face was pale, there was a glitter in her eyes, a curious smile upon her
parted lips, and under its fichu-menteur her bosom rose and fell to complete
the betrayal of her.
     By  the  hand  he continued to hold, he drew her  towards him. She came
unresisting. He took the candle from her, and  set it  down on the sideboard
by which she stood. The next moment her slight, lithe body  was in his arms,
and he was kissing her, murmuring her name as if it were a prayer.
     "Am  I cruel now?" she asked him, panting. He kissed her again for only
answer. "You made me cruel because you would  not see," she told him next in
a whisper.
     And then  the  door opened, and  M. Binet came in to have his  paternal
eyes regaled by this highly indecorous behaviour of his daughter.
     He stood at gaze, whilst they quite leisurely, and in a self-possession
too complete to be natural, detached each from the other.
     "And  what may be the  meaning of this?" demanded M. Binet,  bewildered
and profoundly shocked.
     "Does  it require explaining?" asked Scaramouche. "Doesn't it speak for
itself  - eloquently? It  means that Climene and I  have taken  it  into our
heads to be married."
     "And doesn't it matter what I may take into my head?"
     "Of course. But you could have neither the  bad taste nor the bad heart
to offer any obstacle."
     "You take that for granted? Aye, that is your way, to be sure - to take
things for granted. But my daughter is not to  be taken for granted. I  have
very  definite  views  for my  daughter. You have  done an  unworthy  thing,
Scaramouche. You have betrayed my trust in you. I am very angry with you."
     He  rolled  forward  with his ponderous yet  curiously  noiseless gait.
Scaramouche turned to her, smiling, and handed her the candle.
     "If you will leave  us, Climene, I will ask your hand of your father in
proper form."
     She vanished, a little fluttered, lovelier than ever in  her mixture of
confusion and timidity. Scaramouche closed the door and faced the enraged M.
Binet, who had flung himself  into  an  armchair at  the  head of the  short
table, faced him with  the  avowed  purpose of asking for Climene's hand  in
proper form. And this was how he did it:
     "Father-in-law," said he, "I congratulate you. This will certainly mean
the Comedie Francaise for Climene, and that before long, and you shall shine
in the glory she  will reflect. As the  father of Madame Scaramouche you may
yet be famous."
     Binet,  his  face  slowly  empurpling,  glared  at  him  in  speechless
stupefaction. His  rage was  the more utter from his  humiliating conviction
that whatever he might say or do, this irresistible fellow would bend him to
his will. At last speech came to him.
     "You're a damned corsair," he cried, thickly, banging his ham-like fist
upon the  table.  "A  corsair! First you sail in and plunder  me of half  my
legitimate gains; and  now you want  to  carry off my daughter.  But I'll be
damned  if  I'll give her to a  graceless, nameless scoundrel like you,  for
whom the gallows are waiting already."
     Scaramouche pulled  the  bell-rope, not at all discomposed. He  smiled.
There was a flush on his cheeks and a gleam in his eyes. He was very pleased
with  the  world  that  night.  He  really  owed  a  great  debt  to  M.  de
Lesdiguieres.
     "Binet," said  he, "forget for once that you are Pantaloon,  and behave
as  a  nice,  amiable  father-in-law  should  behave  when  he has secured a
son-in-law  of  exceptionable  merits.  We  are going  to  have a  bottle of
Burgundy at my  expense,  and it shall  be the best bottle of Burgundy to be
found in Redon. Compose yourself  to do fitting honour to it. Excitations of
the bile invariably impair the fine sensitiveness of the palate."

        CHAPTER VII. THE CONQUEST OF NANTESII


     The Binet Troupe opened in  Nantes -  as you may discover  in surviving
copies  of  the  "Courrier Nantais" - on the Feast of the  Purification with
"Les Fourberies de Scaramouche." But they did not come to Nantes as hitherto
they  had gone  to little  country  villages and  townships, unheralded  and
depending entirely upon the parade of their entrance to attract attention to
themselves. Andre-Louis  had  borrowed  from the  business  methods  of  the
Comedie  Francaise. Carrying matters with a high  hand entirely  in  his own
fashion,  he had  ordered at Redon the printing of playbills, and four  days
before the  company's descent upon Nantes,  these bills  were pasted outside
the Theatre Feydau and elsewhere about the town, and had attracted
     -  being  still  sufficiently  unusual  announcements  at  the  time  -
considerable attention.  He had entrusted the matter to one of the company's
latest recruits, an intelligent young man named Basque, sending him on ahead
of the company for the purpose.
     You  may  see for  yourself one  of these  playbills in  the Carnavalet
Museum. It details the players by their stage names only, with the exception
of M. Binet and his  daughter, and leaving out of account  that he who plays
Trivelin  in one piece appears as Tabarin in  another, it makes  the company
appear to be at least half as numerous again as it really was. It  announces
that they will open with "Les Fourberies de Scaramouche," to  be followed by
five  other plays  of which it gives  the titles,  and by others  not named,
which  shall  also  be  added should the patronage  to  be received  in  the
distinguished and enlightened  city of  Nantes encourage the Binet Troupe to
prolong its sojourn  at the Theatre Feydau. It  lays  great stress  upon the
fact that  this  is a  company of improvisers in the old Italian manner, the
like of which has not been seen in France for half a century, and it exhorts
the  public  of  Nantes  not  to miss this  opportunity of  witnessing these
distinguished mimes who are reviving for them  the glories of the Comedie de
l'Art. Their visit to Nantes - the announcement proceeds - is preliminary to
their visit to  Paris,  where they  intend to  throw  down the  glove to the
actors of the Comedie Francaise, and  to show the world  how superior is the
art of the  improviser to that  of the actor who depends upon an author  for
what  he shall  say, and who consequently says always the same  thing  every
time that he plays in the same piece.
     It is an audacious bill, and  its  audacity  had scared M. Binet out of
the little sense left him  by  the Burgundy which  in  these  days he  could
afford  to abuse.  He had offered the most vehement opposition. Part of this
Andre-Louis had swept aside; part he had disregarded.
     "I admit that it  is audacious," said Scaramouche. "But at your time of
life you should  have  learnt  that in  this  world  nothing  succeeds  like
audacity."
     "I forbid it; I absolutely forbid it," M. Binet insisted.
     "I knew  you  would. Just as I know that you'll be very grateful  to me
presently for not obeying you.
     "You are inviting a catastrophe."
     "I  am inviting fortune. The worst catastrophe that can overtake you is
to be back in the market-halls of the country villages from which I  rescued
you. I'll have you in Paris yet in spite of yourself. Leave this to me."
     And he went out to attend to the printing. Nor did his preparations end
there. He wrote a piquant article on the  glories  of the Comedie  de l'Art,
and its resurrection by the improvising troupe of  the  great mime Florimond
Binet. Binet's name was  not Florimond; it  was just Pierre. But Andre-Louis
had a  great sense of the theatre.  That article was an amplification of the
stimulating matter contained  in the playbills; and he persuaded Basque, who
had relations in Nantes, to use all  the influence he could command, and all
the bribery they could afford, to get that article printed  in the "Courrier
Nantais" a couple of days before the arrival of the Binet Troupe.
     Basque had  succeeded, and, considering  the undoubted  literary merits
and intrinsic interest of the article, this is not at all surprising.
     And so it was upon an already expectant city that Binet and his company
descended  in  that first  week of  February. M. Binet  would have made  his
entrance in the usual manner  - a full-dress parade  with banging  drums and
crashing  cymbals.  But to  this  Andre-Louis  offered  the  most relentless
opposition.
     "We should but discover our poverty,"  said he. "Instead, we will creep
into  the city unobserved, and  leave  ourselves  to the imagination  of the
public."
     He had his way, of course. M. Binet, worn already with battling against
the strong waters of  this young man's will, was altogether unequal  to  the
contest now that he found CLIMENE in  alliance with Scaramouche,  adding her
insistence  to his, and joining  with  him in reprobation  of  her  father's
sluggish and reactionary wits.  Metaphorically, M. Binet threw up  his arms,
and cursing the day on which he had taken this young man into his troupe, he
allowed the current to carry him whither it would. He was  persuaded that he
would be  drowned  in  the end.  Meanwhile he would drown  his  vexation  in
Burgundy. At least there was abundance of Burgundy. Never in his life had he
found Burgundy so plentiful. Perhaps things were not as bad as he  imagined,
after all. He reflected that, when all was said, he had to thank Scaramouche
for the Burgundy. Whilst fearing the worst, he would hope for the best.
     And it was very much the worst that he feared as he waited in the wings
when  the curtain  rose  on that  first performance of theirs at the Theatre
Feydau to a house that  was tolerably filled by a public whose curiosity the
preliminary announcements had thoroughly stimulated.
     Although  the  scenario  of "Lee  Fourberies  de  Scaramouche" has  not
apparently survived, yet we know from Andre-Louis'  "Confessions" that it is
opened by Polichinelle in the character of an arrogant and fiercely  jealous
lover shown in the act of beguiling the waiting-maid, Columbine, to play the
spy upon her mistress, Climene. Beginning with cajolery, but failing in this
with the saucy Columbine, who likes cajolers to be at least  attractive  and
to pay a due deference to her own very piquant charms, the fierce humpbacked
scoundrel passes on to threats of the terrible vengeance he  will wreak upon
her if  she betrays him  or neglects to obey him  implicitly;  failing here,
likewise, he finally has recourse to bribery, and after he  has bled himself
freely to  the  very expectant  Columbine,  he  succeeds  by these  means in
obtaining  her consent to spy  upon  Climene, and  to report to him upon her
lady's conduct.
     The  pair played the scene well together, stimulated, perhaps, by their
very  nervousness  at  finding themselves  before so imposing  an  audience.
Polichinelle  was everything that is fierce,  contemptuous,  and  insistent.
Columbine  was the essence of  pert indifference under his cajolery, saucily
mocking under his threats, and finely sly in extorting the very maximum when
it came to  accepting  a  bribe. Laughter rippled  through  the audience and
promised well.  But M. Binet,  standing trembling  in the wings, missed  the
great guffaws of the rustic spectators to whom they had played hitherto, and
his fears steadily mounted.
     Then, scarcely has  Polichinelle departed by the door than  Scaramouche
bounds  in  through the  window.  It  was  an  effective  entrance,  usually
performed with a broad comic effect that set the people in a roar. Not so on
this occasion. Meditating in bed  that  morning, Scaramouche had  decided to
present  himself in a totally different  aspect. He would  cut  out all  the
broad  play,  all  the usual  clowning which  had delighted their past  rude
audiences,  and he would  obtain his effects  by subtlety instead. He  would
present  a  slyly  humorous  rogue,  restrained,  and of a certain  dignity,
wearing a countenance of complete solemnity, speaking his lines drily, as if
unconscious  of the humour  with  which he  intended to  invest them.  Thus,
though  it might  take the  audience longer to understand and discover  him,
they would like him all the better in the end.
     True to that resolve, he  now played  his part as the  friend and hired
ally of the lovesick Leandre, on whose  behalf  he came for news of Climene,
seizing the opportunity  to further his  own  amour with Columbine  and  his
designs  upon  the  money-bags  of  Pantaloon.  Also  he  had taken  certain
liberties  with the  traditional costume of  Scaramouche; he had  caused the
black doublet and breeches to be slashed with red, and the doublet to be cut
more to a peak,  a la  Henri III. The  conventional  black velvet cap he had
replaced by a conical  hat with a turned-up  brim, and a tuft of feathers on
the left, and he had discarded the guitar.
     M.  Binet listened  desperately for  the roar of laughter that  usually
greeted the entrance of Scaramouche, and his dismay  increased when  it  did
not  come. And then he became conscious of  something alarmingly unusual  in
Scaramouche's manner. The sibilant foreign accent was there, but none of the
broad boisterousness their audiences had loved.
     He wrung his hands in  despair. "It  is all over!" he said. "The fellow
has ruined us! It serves me right for being a fool, and allowing him to take
control of everything!"
     But he was profoundly mistaken.  He began  to have an inkling  of  this
when  presently  himself he took the stage, and found the  public attentive,
remarked  a  grin of quiet  appreciation on every upturned face. It was not,
however, until the  thunders of applause  greeted the fall of the curtain on
the first act  that he felt quite sure they would be allowed to  escape with
their lives.
     Had the part of Pantaloon in "Les Fourberies" been other than that of a
blundering,  timid  old  idiot,  Binet   would   have  ruined   it   by  his
apprehensions. As it was, those  very apprehensions, magnifying as  they did
the  hesitancy   and  bewilderment  that  were  the  essence  of  his  part,
contributed to the success. And a success it proved that more than justified
all the heralding of which Scaramouche had been guilty.
     For Scaramouche himself this success was not confined to the public. At
the  end of  the  play  a  great  reception awaited him from  his companions
assembled in the green-room of the theatre. His talent, resource, and energy
had  raised  them  in  a  few weeks from a pack of  vagrant mountebanks to a
self-respecting  company  of   first-rate  players.  They  acknowledged   it
generously  in a speech entrusted to Polichinelle, adding the tribute to his
genius that,  as they had conquered Nantes, so would they conquer the  world
under his guidance.
     In their enthusiasm they were a little neglectful of the feelings of M.
Binet. Irritated enough had he been already  by the  overriding of his every
wish, by the consciousness of his weakness when opposed to Scaramouche. And,
although  he had suffered  the  gradual process of  usurpation of  authority
because  its every step  had been attended  by his own  greater profit, deep
down in him the resentment abode to stifle every spark of that gratitude due
from him  to his partner. To-night his nerves had been  on  the rack, and he
had suffered agonies of apprehension, for all of which he blamed Scaramouche
so bitterly  that not even the ultimate success - almost miraculous when all
the elements are considered - could justify his partner in his eyes.
     And  now, to find himself, in addition,  ignored  by this company - his
own company, which he had so laboriously and  slowly  assembled and selected
among the men  of ability whom he had  found here and there in  the dregs of
cities was something that stirred his bile, and aroused the malevolence that
never did more than slumber in him. But deeply though his rage was moved, it
did not  blind him  to the folly of betraying it. Yet that he should  assert
himself  in this  hour  was imperative  unless he  were for ever to become a
thing  of no  account in this troupe over which  he had lorded it  for  long
months  before  this  interloper came amongst  them  to fill  his  purse and
destroy his authority.
     So  he stepped  forward  now when  Polichinelle  had done. His  make-up
assisting  him to mask his bitter  feelings, he  professed to add his own to
Polichinelle's acclamations of  his dear partner. But  he did it  in  such a
manner as to make it clear that what Scaramouche had done, he had done by M.
Binet's favour,  and  that in all  M. Binet's  had been the guiding hand. In
associating himself with Polichinelle, he desired to thank Scaramouche, much
in the  manner  of  a lord  rendering  thanks  to  his steward for  services
diligently rendered and orders scrupulously carried out.
     It  neither  deceived the  troupe nor  mollified himself.  Indeed,  his
consciousness  of the mockery of it  but increased  his bitterness.  But  at
least it saved his  face  and rescued him from nullity -  he who  was  their
chief.
     To say, as I have said, that it did not deceive them, is perhaps to say
too much, for it  deceived them at least on the score of his  feelings. They
believed, after discounting the insinuations in which he  took all credit to
himself, that  at  heart he was filled  with gratitude, as  they  were. That
belief was shared by Andre-Louis himself,  who in his brief, grateful answer
was  very generous to M. Binet, more than endorsing the claims that M. Binet
had made.
     And  then followed  from  him  the  announcement that their  success in
Nantes  was the  sweeter  to him  because  it  rendered  almost  immediately
attainable  the dearest wish  of  his  heart, which was to  make Climene his
wife.  It was a felicity of which  he was the first to acknowledge his utter
unworthiness. It was  to bring him into still closer relations with his good
friend M. Binet, to whom he owed all  that he  had achieved for himself  and
for  them. The  announcement  was  joyously received,  for the world of  the
theatre loves a lover as dearly as does the greater world. So they acclaimed
the  happy pair,  with the exception of poor Leandre,  whose eyes were  more
melancholy than ever.
     They were a happy family that night in  the upstairs room of their  inn
on the Quai La Fosse - the same inn from  which Andre-Louis had set out some
weeks ago to  play a vastly different role before an audience of Nantes. Yet
was it so different, he wondered? Had he not then been a sort of Scaramouche
- an intriguer, glib and specious, deceiving folk, cynically misleading them
with opinions that were not really his own? Was it at all surprising that he
should have  made  so  rapid and  si