CHAPTER I. THE REPUBLICAN

CHAPTER II. THE ARISTOCRAT

CHAPTER III. THE ELOQUENCE OF M. DE VILMORIN

CHAPTER IV. THE HERITAGE

CHAPTER V. THE LORD OF GAVRILLAC

CHAPTER VI. THE WINDMILL

CHAPTER VII. THE WIND

CHAPTER VIII. OMNES OMNIBUS

CHAPTER IX. THE AFTERMATH

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I. THE TRESPASSERS

CHAPTER II. THE SERVICE OF THESPIS

CHAPTER II. THE COMIC MUSE

CHAPTER IV. EXIT MONSIEUR PARVISSIMUS

CHAPTER V. ENTER SCARAMOUCHE

CHAPTER VI. CLIMENE

CHAPTER VII. THE CONQUEST OF NANTES

CHAPTER VIII. THE DREAM

CHAPTER IX. THE AWAKENING

CHAPTER X. CONTRITION

CHAPTER XI. THE FRACAS AT THE THEATRE FEYDAU

BOOK III.

CHAPTER I. TRANSITION

CHAPTER II. QUOS DEUS VULT PERDERE

CHAPTER III. PRESIDENT LE CHAPELIER

CHAPTER IV. AT MEUDON

CHAPTER V. MADAME DE PLOUGASTEL

CHAPTER VI. POLITICIANS

CHAPTER VII. THE SPADASSINICIDES

CHAPTER VIII. THE PALADIN OF THE THIRD

CHAPTER IX. TORN PRIDE

CHAPTER X. THE RETURNING CARRIAGE

CHAPTER XI. INFERENCES

CHAPTER XII. THE OVERWHELMING REASON

CHAPTER XIII. SANCTUARY

CHAPTER XIV. THE BARRIER

CHAPTER XV. SAFE-CONDUCT

CHAPTER XVI. SUNRISE

SCARAMOUCHE

BOOK I: THE ROBE

CHAPTER I. THE REPUBLICAN

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

And that was all his patrimony. His very paternity was obscure, although

the village of Gavrillac had long since dispelled the cloud of mystery

that hung about it. Those simple Brittany folk were not so simple as to

be deceived by a pretended relationship which did not even possess

the virtue of originality. When a nobleman, for no apparent reason,

announces himself the godfather of an infant fetched no man knew whence,

and thereafter cares for the lad’s rearing and education, the most

unsophisticated of country folk perfectly understand the situation. And

so the good people of Gavrillac permitted themselves no illusions on the

score of the real relationship between Andre-Louis Moreau--as the lad had

been named--and Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac, who dwelt in the

big grey house that dominated from its eminence the village clustering

below.

Andre-Louis had learnt his letters at the village school, lodged the

while with old Rabouillet, the attorney, who in the capacity of fiscal

intendant, looked after the affairs of M. de Kercadiou. Thereafter, at

the age of fifteen, he had been packed off to Paris, to the Lycee of

Louis Le Grand, to study the law which he was now returned to practise

in conjunction with Rabouillet. All this at the charges of his

godfather, M. de Kercadiou, who by placing him once more under the

tutelage of Rabouillet would seem thereby quite clearly to be making

provision for his future.

Andre-Louis, on his side, had made the most of his opportunities. You

behold him at the age of four-and-twenty stuffed with learning enough

to produce an intellectual indigestion in an ordinary mind. Out of

his zestful study of Man, from Thucydides to the Encyclopaedists, from

Seneca to Rousseau, he had confirmed into an unassailable conviction

his earliest conscious impressions of the general insanity of his own

species. Nor can I discover that anything in his eventful life ever

afterwards caused him to waver in that opinion.

In body he was a slight wisp of a fellow, scarcely above middle height,

with a lean, astute countenance, prominent of nose and cheek-bones, and

with lank, black hair that reached almost to his shoulders. His mouth

was long, thin-lipped, and humorous. He was only just redeemed from

ugliness by the splendour of a pair of ever-questing, luminous eyes, so

dark as to be almost black. Of the whimsical quality of his mind and

his rare gift of graceful expression, his writings--unfortunately but too

scanty--and particularly his Confessions, afford us very ample evidence.

Of his gift of oratory he was hardly conscious yet, although he had

already achieved a certain fame for it in the Literary Chamber of

Rennes--one of those clubs by now ubiquitous in the land, in which the

intellectual youth of France foregathered to study and discuss the

new philosophies that were permeating social life. But the fame he had

acquired there was hardly enviable. He was too impish, too caustic,

too much disposed--so thought his colleagues--to ridicule their sublime

theories for the regeneration of mankind. Himself he protested that

he merely held them up to the mirror of truth, and that it was not his

fault if when reflected there they looked ridiculous.

All that he achieved by this was to exasperate; and his expulsion from a

society grown mistrustful of him must already have followed but for

his friend, Philippe de Vilmorin, a divinity student of Rennes, who,

himself, was one of the most popular members of the Literary Chamber.

Coming to Gavrillac on a November morning, laden with news of the

political storms which were then gathering over France, Philippe found

in that sleepy Breton village matter to quicken his already lively

indignation. A peasant of Gavrillac, named Mabey, had been shot dead

that morning in the woods of Meupont, across the river, by a gamekeeper

of the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr. The unfortunate fellow had been caught

in the act of taking a pheasant from a snare, and the gamekeeper had

acted under explicit orders from his master.

Infuriated by an act of tyranny so absolute and merciless, M. de

Vilmorin proposed to lay the matter before M. de Kercadiou. Mabey was a

vassal of Gavrillac, and Vilmorin hoped to move the Lord of Gavrillac to

demand at least some measure of reparation for the widow and the three

orphans which that brutal deed had made.

But because Andre-Louis was Philippe’s dearest friend--indeed, his almost

brother--the young seminarist sought him out in the first instance. He

found him at breakfast alone in the long, low-ceilinged, white-panelled

dining-room at Rabouillet’s--the only home that Andre-Louis had ever

known--and after embracing him, deafened him with his denunciation of M.

de La Tour d’Azyr.

“I have heard of it already,” said Andre-Louis.

“You speak as if the thing had not surprised you,” his friend reproached

him.

“Nothing beastly can surprise me when done by a beast. And La Tour

d’Azyr is a beast, as all the world knows. The more fool Mabey for

stealing his pheasants. He should have stolen somebody else’s.”

“Is that all you have to say about it?”

“What more is there to say? I’ve a practical mind, I hope.”

“What more there is to say I propose to say to your godfather, M. de

Kercadiou. I shall appeal to him for justice.”

“Against M. de La Tour d’Azyr?” Andre-Louis raised his eyebrows.

“Why not?”

“My dear ingenuous Philippe, dog doesn’t eat dog.”

“You are unjust to your godfather. He is a humane man.”

“Oh, as humane as you please. But this isn’t a question of humanity.

It’s a question of game-laws.”

M. de Vilmorin tossed his long arms to Heaven in disgust. He was a tall,

slender young gentleman, a year or two younger than Andre-Louis. He was

very soberly dressed in black, as became a seminarist, with white bands

at wrists and throat and silver buckles to his shoes. His neatly clubbed

brown hair was innocent of powder.

“You talk like a lawyer,” he exploded.

“Naturally. But don’t waste anger on me on that account. Tell me what

you want me to do.”

“I want you to come to M. de Kercadiou with me, and to use your

influence to obtain justice. I suppose I am asking too much.”

“My dear Philippe, I exist to serve you. I warn you that it is a futile

quest; but give me leave to finish my breakfast, and I am at your

orders.”

M. de Vilmorin dropped into a winged armchair by the well-swept hearth,

on which a piled-up fire of pine logs was burning cheerily. And whilst

he waited now he gave his friend the latest news of the events in

Rennes. Young, ardent, enthusiastic, and inspired by Utopian ideals, he

passionately denounced the rebellious attitude of the privileged.

Andre-Louis, already fully aware of the trend of feeling in the ranks of

an order in whose deliberations he took part as the representative of

a nobleman, was not at all surprised by what he heard. M. de Vilmorin

found it exasperating that his friend should apparently decline to share

his own indignation.

“Don’t you see what it means?” he cried. “The nobles, by disobeying the

King, are striking at the very foundations of the throne. Don’t they

perceive that their very existence depends upon it; that if the throne

falls over, it is they who stand nearest to it who will be crushed?

Don’t they see that?”

“Evidently not. They are just governing classes, and I never heard of

governing classes that had eyes for anything but their own profit.”

“That is our grievance. That is what we are going to change.”

“You are going to abolish governing classes? An interesting experiment.

I believe it was the original plan of creation, and it might have

succeeded but for Cain.”

“What we are going to do,” said M. de Vilmorin, curbing his

exasperation, “is to transfer the government to other hands.”

“And you think that will make a difference?”

“I know it will.”

“Ah! I take it that being now in minor orders, you already possess the

confidence of the Almighty. He will have confided to you His intention

of changing the pattern of mankind.”

M. de Vilmorin’s fine ascetic face grew overcast. “You are profane,

Andre,” he reproved his friend.

“I assure you that I am quite serious. To do what you imply would

require nothing short of divine intervention. You must change man, not

systems. Can you and our vapouring friends of the Literary Chamber

of Rennes, or any other learned society of France, devise a system of

government that has never yet been tried? Surely not. And can they say

of any system tried that it proved other than a failure in the end? My

dear Philippe, the future is to be read with certainty only in the

past. Ab actu ad posse valet consecutio. Man never changes. He is always

greedy, always acquisitive, always vile. I am speaking of Man in the

bulk.”

“Do you pretend that it is impossible to ameliorate the lot of the

people?” M. de Vilmorin challenged him.

“When you say the people you mean, of course, the populace. Will you

abolish it? That is the only way to ameliorate its lot, for as long as

it remains populace its lot will be damnation.”

“You argue, of course, for the side that employs you. That is natural, I

suppose.” M. de Vilmorin spoke between sorrow and indignation.

“On the contrary, I seek to argue with absolute detachment. Let us

test these ideas of yours. To what form of government do you aspire? A

republic, it is to be inferred from what you have said. Well, you have

it already. France in reality is a republic to-day.”

Philippe stared at him. “You are being paradoxical, I think. What of the

King?”

“The King? All the world knows there has been no king in France since

Louis XIV. There is an obese gentleman at Versailles who wears the

crown, but the very news you bring shows for how little he really

counts. It is the nobles and clergy who sit in the high places, with the

people of France harnessed under their feet, who are the real rulers.

That is why I say that France is a republic; she is a republic built

on the best pattern--the Roman pattern. Then, as now, there were great

patrician families in luxury, preserving for themselves power and

wealth, and what else is accounted worth possessing; and there was

the populace crushed and groaning, sweating, bleeding, starving, and

perishing in the Roman kennels. That was a republic; the mightiest we

have seen.”

Philippe strove with his impatience. “At least you will admit--you have,

in fact, admitted it--that we could not be worse governed than we are?”

“That is not the point. The point is should we be better governed if we

replaced the present ruling class by another? Without some guarantee of

that I should be the last to lift a finger to effect a change. And what

guarantees can you give? What is the class that aims at government? I

will tell you. The bourgeoisie.”

“What?”

“That startles you, eh? Truth is so often disconcerting. You hadn’t

thought of it? Well, think of it now. Look well into this Nantes

manifesto. Who are the authors of it?”

“I can tell you who it was constrained the municipality of Nantes to

send it to the King. Some ten thousand workmen--shipwrights, weavers,

labourers, and artisans of every kind.”

“Stimulated to it, driven to it, by their employers, the wealthy traders

and shipowners of that city,” Andre-Louis replied. “I have a habit of

observing things at close quarters, which is why our colleagues of the

Literary Chamber dislike me so cordially in debate. Where I delve they

but skim. Behind those labourers and artisans of Nantes, counselling

them, urging on these poor, stupid, ignorant toilers to shed their blood

in pursuit of the will o’ the wisp of freedom, are the sail-makers, the

spinners, the ship-owners and the slave-traders. The slave-traders! The

men who live and grow rich by a traffic in human flesh and blood in

the colonies, are conducting at home a campaign in the sacred name

of liberty! Don’t you see that the whole movement is a movement of

hucksters and traders and peddling vassals swollen by wealth into envy

of the power that lies in birth alone? The money-changers in Paris

who hold the bonds in the national debt, seeing the parlous financial

condition of the State, tremble at the thought that it may lie in

the power of a single man to cancel the debt by bankruptcy. To secure

themselves they are burrowing underground to overthrow a state and build

upon its ruins a new one in which they shall be the masters. And to

accomplish this they inflame the people. Already in Dauphiny we have

seen blood run like water--the blood of the populace, always the blood of

the populace. Now in Brittany we may see the like. And if in the end the

new ideas prevail? if the seigneurial rule is overthrown, what then?

You will have exchanged an aristocracy for a plutocracy. Is that worth

while? Do you think that under money-changers and slave-traders and

men who have waxed rich in other ways by the ignoble arts of buying

and selling, the lot of the people will be any better than under their

priests and nobles? Has it ever occurred to you, Philippe, what it

is that makes the rule of the nobles so intolerable? Acquisitiveness.

Acquisitiveness is the curse of mankind. And shall you expect less

acquisitiveness in men who have built themselves up by acquisitiveness?

Oh, I am ready to admit that the present government is execrable,

unjust, tyrannical--what you will; but I beg you to look ahead, and to

see that the government for which it is aimed at exchanging it may be

infinitely worse.”

Philippe sat thoughtful a moment. Then he returned to the attack.

“You do not speak of the abuses, the horrible, intolerable abuses of

power under which we labour at present.”

“Where there is power there will always be the abuse of it.”

“Not if the tenure of power is dependent upon its equitable

administration.”

“The tenure of power is power. We cannot dictate to those who hold it.”

“The people can--the people in its might.”

“Again I ask you, when you say the people do you mean the populace? You

do. What power can the populace wield? It can run wild. It can burn

and slay for a time. But enduring power it cannot wield, because power

demands qualities which the populace does not possess, or it would

not be populace. The inevitable, tragic corollary of civilization is

populace. For the rest, abuses can be corrected by equity; and equity,

if it is not found in the enlightened, is not to be found at all. M.

Necker is to set about correcting abuses, and limiting privileges. That

is decided. To that end the States General are to assemble.”

“And a promising beginning we have made in Brittany, as Heaven hears

me!” cried Philippe.

“Pooh! That is nothing. Naturally the nobles will not yield without a

struggle. It is a futile and ridiculous struggle--but then... it is human

nature, I suppose, to be futile and ridiculous.”

M. de Vilmorin became witheringly sarcastic. “Probably you will also

qualify the shooting of Mabey as futile and ridiculous. I should even be

prepared to hear you argue in defence of the Marquis de La Tour

d’Azyr that his gamekeeper was merciful in shooting Mabey, since the

alternative would have been a life-sentence to the galleys.”

Andre-Louis drank the remainder of his chocolate; set down his cup, and

pushed back his chair, his breakfast done.

“I confess that I have not your big charity, my dear Philippe. I am

touched by Mabey’s fate. But, having conquered the shock of this news to

my emotions, I do not forget that, after all, Mabey was thieving when he

met his death.”

M. de Vilmorin heaved himself up in his indignation.

“That is the point of view to be expected in one who is the assistant

fiscal intendant of a nobleman, and the delegate of a nobleman to the

States of Brittany.”

“Philippe, is that just? You are angry with me!” he cried, in real

solicitude.

“I am hurt,” Vilmorin admitted. “I am deeply hurt by your attitude. And

I am not alone in resenting your reactionary tendencies. Do you know

that the Literary Chamber is seriously considering your expulsion?”

Andre-Louis shrugged. “That neither surprises nor troubles me.”

M. de Vilmorin swept on, passionately: “Sometimes I think that you have

no heart. With you it is always the law, never equity. It occurs to me,

Andre, that I was mistaken in coming to you. You are not likely to be of

assistance to me in my interview with M. de Kercadiou.” He took up his

hat, clearly with the intention of departing.

Andre-Louis sprang up and caught him by the arm.

“I vow,” said he, “that this is the last time ever I shall consent to

talk law or politics with you, Philippe. I love you too well to quarrel

with you over other men’s affairs.”

“But I make them my own,” Philippe insisted vehemently.

“Of course you do, and I love you for it. It is right that you should.

You are to be a priest; and everybody’s business is a priest’s business.

Whereas I am a lawyer--the fiscal intendant of a nobleman, as you

say--and a lawyer’s business is the business of his client. That is the

difference between us. Nevertheless, you are not going to shake me off.”

“But I tell you frankly, now that I come to think of it, that I should

prefer you did not see M. de Kercadiou with me. Your duty to your client

cannot be a help to me.”

His wrath had passed; but his determination remained firm, based upon

the reason he gave.

“Very well,” said Andre-Louis. “It shall be as you please. But nothing

shall prevent me at least from walking with you as far as the chateau,

and waiting for you while you make your appeal to M. de Kercadiou.”

And so they left the house good friends, for the sweetness of M. de

Vilmorin’s nature did not admit of rancour, and together they took their

way up the steep main street of Gavrillac.

CHAPTER II. THE ARISTOCRAT

The sleepy village of Gavrillac, a half-league removed from the main

road to Rennes, and therefore undisturbed by the world’s traffic, lay

in a curve of the River Meu, at the foot, and straggling halfway up the

slope, of the shallow hill that was crowned by the squat manor. By the

time Gavrillac had paid tribute to its seigneur--partly in money and

partly in service--tithes to the Church, and imposts to the King, it was

hard put to it to keep body and soul together with what remained. Yet,

hard as conditions were in Gavrillac, they were not so hard as in many

other parts of France, not half so hard, for instance, as with the

wretched feudatories of the great Lord of La Tour d’Azyr, whose vast

possessions were at one point separated from this little village by the

waters of the Meu.

The Chateau de Gavrillac owed such seigneurial airs as might be claimed

for it to its dominant position above the village rather than to any

feature of its own. Built of granite, like all the rest of Gavrillac,

though mellowed by some three centuries of existence, it was a squat,

flat-fronted edifice of two stories, each lighted by four windows with

external wooden shutters, and flanked at either end by two square towers

or pavilions under extinguisher roofs. Standing well back in a garden,

denuded now, but very pleasant in summer, and immediately fronted by a

fine sweep of balustraded terrace, it looked, what indeed it was, and

always had been, the residence of unpretentious folk who found more

interest in husbandry than in adventure.

Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac--Seigneur de Gavrillac was all

the vague title that he bore, as his forefathers had borne before him,

derived no man knew whence or how--confirmed the impression that his

house conveyed. Rude as the granite itself, he had never sought the

experience of courts, had not even taken service in the armies of his

King. He left it to his younger brother, Etienne, to represent the

family in those exalted spheres. His own interests from earliest years

had been centred in his woods and pastures. He hunted, and he cultivated

his acres, and superficially he appeared to be little better than any of

his rustic metayers. He kept no state, or at least no state commensurate

with his position or with the tastes of his niece Aline de Kercadiou.

Aline, having spent some two years in the court atmosphere of Versailles

under the aegis of her uncle Etienne, had ideas very different from

those of her uncle Quintin of what was befitting seigneurial dignity.

But though this only child of a third Kercadiou had exercised, ever

since she was left an orphan at the early age of four, a tyrannical rule

over the Lord of Gavrillac, who had been father and mother to her, she

had never yet succeeded in beating down his stubbornness on that

score. She did not yet despair--persistence being a dominant note in

her character--although she had been assiduously and fruitlessly at work

since her return from the great world of Versailles some three months

ago.

She was walking on the terrace when Andre-Louis and M. de Vilmorin

arrived. Her slight body was wrapped against the chill air in a white

pelisse; her head was encased in a close-fitting bonnet, edged with

white fur. It was caught tight in a knot of pale-blue ribbon on the

right of her chin; on the left a long ringlet of corn-coloured hair had

been permitted to escape. The keen air had whipped so much of her cheeks

as was presented to it, and seemed to have added sparkle to eyes that

were of darkest blue.

Andre-Louis and M. de Vilmorin had been known to her from childhood. The

three had been playmates once, and Andre-Louis--in view of his spiritual

relationship with her uncle--she called her cousin. The cousinly

relations had persisted between these two long after Philippe de

Vilmorin had outgrown the earlier intimacy, and had become to her

Monsieur de Vilmorin.

She waved her hand to them in greeting as they advanced, and stood--an

entrancing picture, and fully conscious of it--to await them at the end

of the terrace nearest the short avenue by which they approached.

“If you come to see monsieur my uncle, you come inopportunely,

messieurs,” she told them, a certain feverishness in her air. “He is

closely--oh, so very closely--engaged.”

“We will wait, mademoiselle,” said M. de Vilmorin, bowing gallantly over

the hand she extended to him. “Indeed, who would haste to the uncle that

may tarry a moment with the niece?”

“M. l’abbe,” she teased him, “when you are in orders I shall take you

for my confessor. You have so ready and sympathetic an understanding.”

“But no curiosity,” said Andre-Louis. “You haven’t thought of that.”

“I wonder what you mean, Cousin Andre.”

“Well you may,” laughed Philippe. “For no one ever knows.” And then,

his glance straying across the terrace settled upon a carriage that was

drawn up before the door of the chateau. It was a vehicle such as was

often to be seen in the streets of a great city, but rarely in the

country. It was a beautifully sprung two-horse cabriolet of walnut,

with a varnish upon it like a sheet of glass and little pastoral scenes

exquisitely painted on the panels of the door. It was built to carry two

persons, with a box in front for the coachman, and a stand behind for

the footman. This stand was empty, but the footman paced before the

door, and as he emerged now from behind the vehicle into the range of M.

de Vilmorin’s vision, he displayed the resplendent blue-and-gold livery

of the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr.

“Why!” he exclaimed. “Is it M. de La Tour d’Azyr who is with your

uncle?”

“It is, monsieur,” said she, a world of mystery in voice and eyes, of

which M. de Vilmorin observed nothing.

“Ah, pardon!” he bowed low, hat in hand. “Serviteur, mademoiselle,” and

he turned to depart towards the house.

“Shall I come with you, Philippe?” Andre-Louis called after him.

“It would be ungallant to assume that you would prefer it,” said M. de

Vilmorin, with a glance at mademoiselle. “Nor do I think it would serve.

If you will wait...”

M. de Vilmorin strode off. Mademoiselle, after a moment’s blank pause,

laughed ripplingly. “Now where is he going in such a hurry?”

“To see M. de La Tour d’Azyr as well as your uncle, I should say.”

“But he cannot. They cannot see him. Did I not say that they are

very closely engaged? You don’t ask me why, Andre.” There was an arch

mysteriousness about her, a latent something that may have been elation

or amusement, or perhaps both. Andre-Louis could not determine it.

“Since obviously you are all eagerness to tell, why should I ask?” quoth

he.

“If you are caustic I shall not tell you even if you ask. Oh, yes, I

will. It will teach you to treat me with the respect that is my due.”

“I hope I shall never fail in that.”

“Less than ever when you learn that I am very closely concerned in the

visit of M. de La Tour d’Azyr. I am the object of this visit.” And she

looked at him with sparkling eyes and lips parted in laughter.

“The rest, you would seem to imply, is obvious. But I am a dolt, if you

please; for it is not obvious to me.”

“Why, stupid, he comes to ask my hand in marriage.”

“Good God!” said Andre-Louis, and stared at her, chapfallen.

She drew back from him a little with a frown and an upward tilt of her

chin. “It surprises you?”

“It disgusts me,” said he, bluntly. “In fact, I don’t believe it. You

are amusing yourself with me.”

For a moment she put aside her visible annoyance to remove his doubts.

“I am quite serious, monsieur. There came a formal letter to my uncle

this morning from M. de La Tour d’Azyr, announcing the visit and its

object. I will not say that it did not surprise us a little...”

“Oh, I see,” cried Andre-Louis, in relief. “I understand. For a moment I

had almost feared...” He broke off, looked at her, and shrugged.

“Why do you stop? You had almost feared that Versailles had been wasted

upon me. That I should permit the courtship of me to be conducted like

that of any village wench. It was stupid of you. I am being sought in

proper form, at my uncle’s hands.”

“Is his consent, then, all that matters, according to Versailles?”

“What else?”

“There is your own.”

She laughed. “I am a dutiful niece... when it suits me.”

“And will it suit you to be dutiful if your uncle accepts this monstrous

proposal?”

“Monstrous!” She bridled. “And why monstrous, if you please?”

“For a score of reasons,” he answered irritably.

“Give me one,” she challenged him.

“He is twice your age.”

“Hardly so much,” said she.

“He is forty-five, at least.”

“But he looks no more than thirty. He is very handsome--so much you will

admit; nor will you deny that he is very wealthy and very powerful; the

greatest nobleman in Brittany. He will make me a great lady.”

“God made you that, Aline.”

“Come, that’s better. Sometimes you can almost be polite.” And she moved

along the terrace, Andre-Louis pacing beside her.

“I can be more than that to show reason why you should not let this

beast befoul the beautiful thing that God has made.”

She frowned, and her lips tightened. “You are speaking of my future

husband,” she reproved him.

His lips tightened too; his pale face grew paler.

“And is it so? It is settled, then? Your uncle is to agree? You are to

be sold thus, lovelessly, into bondage to a man you do not know. I had

dreamed of better things for you, Aline.”

“Better than to be Marquise de La Tour d’Azyr?”

He made a gesture of exasperation. “Are men and women nothing more than

names? Do the souls of them count for nothing? Is there no joy in life,

no happiness, that wealth and pleasure and empty, high-sounding titles

are to be its only aims? I had set you high--so high, Aline--a thing

scarce earthly. There is joy in your heart, intelligence in your mind;

and, as I thought, the vision that pierces husks and shams to claim the

core of reality for its own. Yet you will surrender all for a parcel of

make-believe. You will sell your soul and your body to be Marquise de La

Tour d’Azyr.”

“You are indelicate,” said she, and though she frowned her eyes laughed.

“And you go headlong to conclusions. My uncle will not consent to more

than to allow my consent to be sought. We understand each other, my

uncle and I. I am not to be bartered like a turnip.”

He stood still to face her, his eyes glowing, a flush creeping into his

pale cheeks.

“You have been torturing me to amuse yourself!” he cried. “Ah, well, I

forgive you out of my relief.”

“Again you go too fast, Cousin Andre. I have permitted my uncle to

consent that M. le Marquis shall make his court to me. I like the look

of the gentleman. I am flattered by his preference when I consider his

eminence. It is an eminence that I may find it desirable to share. M. le

Marquis does not look as if he were a dullard. It should be interesting

to be wooed by him. It may be more interesting still to marry him, and

I think, when all is considered, that I shall probably--very

probably--decide to do so.”

He looked at her, looked at the sweet, challenging loveliness of that

childlike face so tightly framed in the oval of white fur, and all the

life seemed to go out of his own countenance.

“God help you, Aline!” he groaned.

She stamped her foot. He was really very exasperating, and something

presumptuous too, she thought.

“You are insolent, monsieur.”

“It is never insolent to pray, Aline. And I did no more than pray, as I

shall continue to do. You’ll need my prayers, I think.”

“You are insufferable!” She was growing angry, as he saw by the

deepening frown, the heightened colour.

“That is because I suffer. Oh, Aline, little cousin, think well of what

you do; think well of the realities you will be bartering for these

shams--the realities that you will never know, because these cursed shams

will block your way to them. When M. de La Tour d’Azyr comes to make his

court, study him well; consult your fine instincts; leave your own noble

nature free to judge this animal by its intuitions. Consider that...”

“I consider, monsieur, that you presume upon the kindness I have always

shown you. You abuse the position of toleration in which you stand. Who

are you? What are you, that you should have the insolence to take this

tone with me?”

He bowed, instantly his cold, detached self again, and resumed the

mockery that was his natural habit.

“My congratulations, mademoiselle, upon the readiness with which you

begin to adapt yourself to the great role you are to play.”

“Do you adapt yourself also, monsieur,” she retorted angrily, and turned

her shoulder to him.

“To be as the dust beneath the haughty feet of Madame la Marquise. I

hope I shall know my place in future.”

The phrase arrested her. She turned to him again, and he perceived that

her eyes were shining now suspiciously. In an instant the mockery in him

was quenched in contrition.

“Lord, what a beast I am, Aline!” he cried, as he advanced. “Forgive me

if you can.”

Almost had she turned to sue forgiveness from him. But his contrition

removed the need.

“I’ll try,” said she, “provided that you undertake not to offend again.”

“But I shall,” said he. “I am like that. I will fight to save you, from

yourself if need be, whether you forgive me or not.”

They were standing so, confronting each other a little breathlessly, a

little defiantly, when the others issued from the porch.

First came the Marquis of La Tour d’Azyr, Count of Solz, Knight of the

Orders of the Holy Ghost and Saint Louis, and Brigadier in the armies

of the King. He was a tall, graceful man, upright and soldierly of

carriage, with his head disdainfully set upon his shoulders. He was

magnificently dressed in a full-skirted coat of mulberry velvet that was

laced with gold. His waistcoat, of velvet too, was of a golden

apricot colour; his breeches and stockings were of black silk, and his

lacquered, red-heeled shoes were buckled in diamonds. His powdered hair

was tied behind in a broad ribbon of watered silk; he carried a little

three-cornered hat under his arm, and a gold-hilted slender dress-sword

hung at his side.

Considering him now in complete detachment, observing the magnificence

of him, the elegance of his movements, the great air, blending in so

extraordinary a manner disdain and graciousness, Andre-Louis trembled

for Aline. Here was a practised, irresistible wooer, whose bonnes

fortunes were become a by-word, a man who had hitherto been the despair

of dowagers with marriageable daughters, and the desolation of husbands

with attractive wives.

He was immediately followed by M. de Kercadiou, in completest contrast.

On legs of the shortest, the Lord of Gavrillac carried a body that at

forty-five was beginning to incline to corpulence and an enormous head

containing an indifferent allotment of intelligence. His countenance

was pink and blotchy, liberally branded by the smallpox which had almost

extinguished him in youth. In dress he was careless to the point

of untidiness, and to this and to the fact that he had never

married--disregarding the first duty of a gentleman to provide himself

with an heir--he owed the character of misogynist attributed to him by

the countryside.

After M. de Kercadiou came M. de Vilmorin, very pale and self-contained,

with tight lips and an overcast brow.

To meet them, there stepped from the carriage a very elegant young

gentleman, the Chevalier de Chabrillane, M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s

cousin, who whilst awaiting his return had watched with considerable

interest--his own presence unsuspected--the perambulations of Andre-Louis

and mademoiselle.

Perceiving Aline, M. de La Tour d’Azyr detached himself from the others,

and lengthening his stride came straight across the terrace to her.

To Andre-Louis the Marquis inclined his head with that mixture of

courtliness and condescension which he used. Socially, the young lawyer

stood in a curious position. By virtue of the theory of his birth, he

ranked neither as noble nor as simple, but stood somewhere between the

two classes, and whilst claimed by neither he was used familiarly

by both. Coldly now he returned M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s greeting, and

discreetly removed himself to go and join his friend.

The Marquis took the hand that mademoiselle extended to him, and bowing

over it, bore it to his lips.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, looking into the blue depths of her eyes, that

met his gaze smiling and untroubled, “monsieur your uncle does me the

honour to permit that I pay my homage to you. Will you, mademoiselle,

do me the honour to receive me when I come to-morrow? I shall have

something of great importance for your ear.”

“Of importance, M. le Marquis? You almost frighten me.” But there was

no fear on the serene little face in its furred hood. It was not

for nothing that she had graduated in the Versailles school of

artificialities.

“That,” said he, “is very far from my design.”

“But of importance to yourself, monsieur, or to me?”

“To us both, I hope,” he answered her, a world of meaning in his fine,

ardent eyes.

“You whet my curiosity, monsieur; and, of course, I am a dutiful niece.

It follows that I shall be honoured to receive you.”

“Not honoured, mademoiselle; you will confer the honour. To-morrow at

this hour, then, I shall have the felicity to wait upon you.”

He bowed again; and again he bore her fingers to his lips, what time she

curtsied. Thereupon, with no more than this formal breaking of the ice,

they parted.

She was a little breathless now, a little dazzled by the beauty of the

man, his princely air, and the confidence of power he seemed to radiate.

Involuntarily almost, she contrasted him with his critic--the lean and

impudent Andre-Louis in his plain brown coat and steel-buckled shoes--and

she felt guilty of an unpardonable offence in having permitted even one

word of that presumptuous criticism. To-morrow M. le Marquis would

come to offer her a great position, a great rank. And already she had

derogated from the increase of dignity accruing to her from his very

intention to translate her to so great an eminence. Not again would

she suffer it; not again would she be so weak and childish as to permit

Andre-Louis to utter his ribald comments upon a man by comparison with

whom he was no better than a lackey.

Thus argued vanity and ambition with her better self and to her vast

annoyance her better self would not admit entire conviction.

Meanwhile, M. de La Tour d’Azyr was climbing into his carriage. He had

spoken a word of farewell to M. de Kercadiou, and he had also had a

word for M. de Vilmorin in reply to which M. de Vilmorin had bowed in

assenting silence. The carriage rolled away, the powdered footman in

blue-and-gold very stiff behind it, M. de La Tour d’Azyr bowing to

mademoiselle, who waved to him in answer.

Then M. de Vilmorin put his arm through that of Andre Louis, and said to

him, “Come, Andre.”

“But you’ll stay to dine, both of you!” cried the hospitable Lord of

Gavrillac. “We’ll drink a certain toast,” he added, winking an eye that

strayed towards mademoiselle, who was approaching. He had no subtleties,

good soul that he was.

M. de Vilmorin deplored an appointment that prevented him doing himself

the honour. He was very stiff and formal.

“And you, Andre?”

“I? Oh, I share the appointment, godfather,” he lied, “and I have a

superstition against toasts.” He had no wish to remain. He was angry

with Aline for her smiling reception of M. de La Tour d’Azyr and the

sordid bargain he saw her set on making. He was suffering from the loss

of an illusion.

CHAPTER III. THE ELOQUENCE OF M. DE VILMORIN

As they walked down the hill together, it was now M. de Vilmorin who

was silent and preoccupied, Andre-Louis who was talkative. He had

chosen Woman as a subject for his present discourse. He claimed--quite

unjustifiably--to have discovered Woman that morning; and the things he

had to say of the sex were unflattering, and occasionally almost gross.

M. de Vilmorin, having ascertained the subject, did not listen. Singular

though it may seem in a young French abbe of his day, M. de Vilmorin was

not interested in Woman. Poor Philippe was in several ways exceptional.

Opposite the Breton arme--the inn and posting-house at the entrance of

the village of Gavrillac--M. de Vilmorin interrupted his companion just

as he was soaring to the dizziest heights of caustic invective, and

Andre-Louis, restored thereby to actualities, observed the carriage of

M. de La Tour d’Azyr standing before the door of the hostelry.

“I don’t believe you’ve been listening to me,” said he.

“Had you been less interested in what you were saying, you might have

observed it sooner and spared your breath. The fact is, you disappoint

me, Andre. You seem to have forgotten what we went for. I have an

appointment here with M. le Marquis. He desires to hear me further in

the matter. Up there at Gavrillac I could accomplish nothing. The time

was ill-chosen as it happened. But I have hopes of M. le Marquis.”

“Hopes of what?”

“That he will make what reparation lies in his power. Provide for the

widow and the orphans. Why else should he desire to hear me further?”

“Unusual condescension,” said Andre-Louis, and quoted “Timeo Danaos et

dona ferentes.”

“Why?” asked Philippe.

“Let us go and discover--unless you consider that I shall be in the way.”

Into a room on the right, rendered private to M. le Marquis for so long

as he should elect to honour it, the young men were ushered by the host.

A fire of logs was burning brightly at the room’s far end, and by

this sat now M. de La Tour d’Azyr and his cousin, the Chevalier de

Chabrillane. Both rose as M. de Vilmorin came in. Andre-Louis following,

paused to close the door.

“You oblige me by your prompt courtesy, M. de Vilmorin,” said the

Marquis, but in a tone so cold as to belie the politeness of his words.

“A chair, I beg. Ah, Moreau?” The note was frigidly interrogative. “He

accompanies you, monsieur?” he asked.

“If you please, M. le Marquis.”

“Why not? Find yourself a seat, Moreau.” He spoke over his shoulder as

to a lackey.

“It is good of you, monsieur,” said Philippe, “to have offered me this

opportunity of continuing the subject that took me so fruitlessly, as it

happens, to Gavrillac.”

The Marquis crossed his legs, and held one of his fine hands to the

blaze. He replied, without troubling to turn to the young man, who was

slightly behind him.

“The goodness of my request we will leave out of question for the

moment,” said he, darkly, and M. de Chabrillane laughed. Andre-Louis

thought him easily moved to mirth, and almost envied him the faculty.

“But I am grateful,” Philippe insisted, “that you should condescend to

hear me plead their cause.”

The Marquis stared at him over his shoulder. “Whose cause?” quoth he.

“Why, the cause of the widow and orphans of this unfortunate Mabey.”

The Marquis looked from Vilmorin to the Chevalier, and again the

Chevalier laughed, slapping his leg this time.

“I think,” said M. de La Tour d’Azyr, slowly, “that we are at

cross-purposes. I asked you to come here because the Chateau de

Gavrillac was hardly a suitable place in which to carry our discussion

further, and because I hesitated to incommode you by suggesting that you

should come all the way to Azyr. But my object is connected with certain

expressions that you let fall up there. It is on the subject of those

expressions, monsieur, that I would hear you further--if you will honour

me.”

Andre-Louis began to apprehend that there was something sinister in the

air. He was a man of quick intuitions, quicker far than those of M. de

Vilmorin, who evinced no more than a mild surprise.

“I am at a loss, monsieur,” said he. “To what expressions does monsieur

allude?”

“It seems, monsieur, that I must refresh your memory.” The Marquis

crossed his legs, and swung sideways on his chair, so that at last he

directly faced M. de Vilmorin. “You spoke, monsieur--and however mistaken

you may have been, you spoke very eloquently, too eloquently almost, it

seemed to me--of the infamy of such a deed as the act of summary justice

upon this thieving fellow Mabey, or whatever his name may be. Infamy was

the precise word you used. You did not retract that word when I had the

honour to inform you that it was by my orders that my gamekeeper Benet

proceeded as he did.”

“If,” said M. de Vilmorin, “the deed was infamous, its infamy is not

modified by the rank, however exalted, of the person responsible. Rather

is it aggravated.”

“Ah!” said M. le Marquis, and drew a gold snuffbox from his pocket. “You

say, ‘if the deed was infamous,’ monsieur. Am I to understand that you

are no longer as convinced as you appeared to be of its infamy?”

M. de Vilmorin’s fine face wore a look of perplexity. He did not

understand the drift of this.

“It occurs to me, M. le Marquis, in view of your readiness to assume

responsibility, that you must believe justification for the deed which

is not apparent to myself.”

“That is better. That is distinctly better.” The Marquis took snuff

delicately, dusting the fragments from the fine lace at his throat. “You

realize that with an imperfect understanding of these matters, not being

yourself a landowner, you may have rushed to unjustifiable conclusions.

That is indeed the case. May it be a warning to you, monsieur. When

I tell you that for months past I have been annoyed by similar

depredations, you will perhaps understand that it had become necessary

to employ a deterrent sufficiently strong to put an end to them. Now

that the risk is known, I do not think there will be any more prowling

in my coverts. And there is more in it than that, M. de Vilmorin. It is

not the poaching that annoys me so much as the contempt for my absolute

and inviolable rights. There is, monsieur, as you cannot fail to have

observed, an evil spirit of insubordination in the air, and there is

one only way in which to meet it. To tolerate it, in however slight

a degree, to show leniency, however leniently disposed, would entail

having recourse to still harsher measures to-morrow. You understand me,

I am sure, and you will also, I am sure, appreciate the condescension

of what amounts to an explanation from me where I cannot admit that any

explanations were due. If anything in what I have said is still obscure

to you, I refer you to the game laws, which your lawyer friend there

will expound for you at need.”

With that the gentleman swung round again to face the fire. It appeared

to convey the intimation that the interview was at an end. And yet this

was not by any means the intimation that it conveyed to the watchful,

puzzled, vaguely uneasy Andre-Louis. It was, thought he, a very curious,

a very suspicious oration. It affected to explain, with a politeness of

terms and a calculated insolence of tone; whilst in fact it could only

serve to stimulate and goad a man of M. de Vilmorin’s opinions. And that

is precisely what it did. He rose.

“Are there in the world no laws but game laws?” he demanded, angrily.

“Have you never by any chance heard of the laws of humanity?”

The Marquis sighed wearily. “What have I to do with the laws of

humanity?” he wondered.

M. de Vilmorin looked at him a moment in speechless amazement.

“Nothing, M. le Marquis. That is--alas!--too obvious. I hope you will

remember it in the hour when you may wish to appeal to those laws which

you now deride.”

M. de La Tour d’Azyr threw back his head sharply, his high-bred face

imperious.

“Now what precisely shall that mean? It is not the first time to-day

that you have made use of dark sayings that I could almost believe to

veil the presumption of a threat.”

“Not a threat, M. le Marquis--a warning. A warning that such deeds as

these against God’s creatures... Oh, you may sneer, monsieur, but they

are God’s creatures, even as you or I--neither more nor less, deeply

though the reflection may wound your pride. In His eyes...”

“Of your charity, spare me a sermon, M. l’abbe!”

“You mock, monsieur. You laugh. Will you laugh, I wonder, when God

presents His reckoning to you for the blood and plunder with which your

hands are full?”

“Monsieur!” The word, sharp as the crack of a whip, was from M.

de Chabrillane, who bounded to his feet. But instantly the Marquis

repressed him.

“Sit down, Chevalier. You are interrupting M. l’abbe, and I should like

to hear him further. He interests me profoundly.”

In the background Andre-Louis, too, had risen, brought to his feet by

alarm, by the evil that he saw written on the handsome face of M. de La

Tour d’Azyr. He approached, and touched his friend upon the arm.

“Better be going, Philippe,” said he.

But M. de Vilmorin, caught in the relentless grip of passions long

repressed, was being hurried by them recklessly along.

“Oh, monsieur,” said he, “consider what you are and what you will be.

Consider how you and your kind live by abuses, and consider the harvest

that abuses must ultimately bring.”

“Revolutionist!” said M. le Marquis, contemptuously. “You have the

effrontery to stand before my face and offer me this stinking cant of

your modern so-called intellectuals!”

“Is it cant, monsieur? Do you think--do you believe in your soul--that

it is cant? Is it cant that the feudal grip is on all things that live,

crushing them like grapes in the press, to its own profit? Does it not

exercise its rights upon the waters of the river, the fire that bakes

the poor man’s bread of grass and barley, on the wind that turns the

mill? The peasant cannot take a step upon the road, cross a crazy bridge

over a river, buy an ell of cloth in the village market, without meeting

feudal rapacity, without being taxed in feudal dues. Is not that enough,

M. le Marquis? Must you also demand his wretched life in payment for the

least infringement of your sacred privileges, careless of what widows

or orphans you dedicate to woe? Will naught content you but that your

shadow must lie like a curse upon the land? And do you think in your

pride that France, this Job among the nations, will suffer it forever?”

He paused as if for a reply. But none came. The Marquis considered him,

strangely silent, a half smile of disdain at the corners of his lips, an

ominous hardness in his eyes.

Again Andre-Louis tugged at his friend’s sleeve.

“Philippe.”

Philippe shook him off, and plunged on, fanatically.

“Do you see nothing of the gathering clouds that herald the coming of

the storm? You imagine, perhaps, that these States General summoned

by M. Necker, and promised for next year, are to do nothing but devise

fresh means of extortion to liquidate the bankruptcy of the State?

You delude yourselves, as you shall find. The Third Estate, which you

despise, will prove itself the preponderating force, and it will find

a way to make an end of this canker of privilege that is devouring the

vitals of this unfortunate country.”

M. le Marquis shifted in his chair, and spoke at last.

“You have, monsieur,” said he, “a very dangerous gift of eloquence. And

it is of yourself rather than of your subject. For after all, what

do you offer me? A rechauffe of the dishes served to out-at-elbow

enthusiasts in the provincial literary chambers, compounded of the

effusions of your Voltaires and Jean-Jacques and such dirty-fingered

scribblers. You have not among all your philosophers one with the wit to

understand that we are an order consecrated by antiquity, that for our

rights and privileges we have behind us the authority of centuries.”

“Humanity, monsieur,” Philippe replied, “is more ancient than nobility.

Human rights are contemporary with man.”

The Marquis laughed and shrugged.

“That is the answer I might have expected. It has the right note of cant

that distinguishes the philosophers.”

And then M. de Chabrillane spoke.

“You go a long way round,” he criticized his cousin, on a note of

impatience.

“But I am getting there,” he was answered. “I desired to make quite

certain first.”

“Faith, you should have no doubt by now.”

“I have none.” The Marquis rose, and turned again to M. de Vilmorin, who

had understood nothing of that brief exchange. “M. l’abbe,” said he once

more, “you have a very dangerous gift of eloquence. I can conceive of

men being swayed by it. Had you been born a gentleman, you would not so

easily have acquired these false views that you express.”

M. de Vilmorin stared blankly, uncomprehending.

“Had I been born a gentleman, do you say?” quoth he, in a slow,

bewildered voice. “But I was born a gentleman. My race is as old, my

blood as good as yours, monsieur.”

From M. le Marquis there was a slight play of eyebrows, a vague,

indulgent smile. His dark, liquid eyes looked squarely into the face of

M. de Vilmorin.

“You have been deceived in that, I fear.”

“Deceived?”

“Your sentiments betray the indiscretion of which madame your mother

must have been guilty.”

The brutally affronting words were sped beyond recall, and the lips that

had uttered them, coldly, as if they had been the merest commonplace,

remained calm and faintly sneering.

A dead silence followed. Andre-Louis’ wits were numbed. He stood aghast,

all thought suspended in him, what time M. de Vilmorin’s eyes continued

fixed upon M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s, as if searching there for a meaning

that eluded him. Quite suddenly he understood the vile affront. The

blood leapt to his face, fire blazed in his gentle eyes. A convulsive

quiver shook him. Then, with an inarticulate cry, he leaned forward, and

with his open hand struck M. le Marquis full and hard upon his sneering

face.

In a flash M. de Chabrillane was on his feet, between the two men.

Too late Andre-Louis had seen the trap. La Tour d’Azyr’s words were but

as a move in a game of chess, calculated to exasperate his opponent into

some such counter-move as this--a counter-move that left him entirely at

the other’s mercy.

M. le Marquis looked on, very white save where M. de Vilmorin’s

finger-prints began slowly to colour his face; but he said nothing more.

Instead, it was M. de Chabrillane who now did the talking, taking up his

preconcerted part in this vile game.

“You realize, monsieur, what you have done,” said he, coldly, to

Philippe. “And you realize, of course, what must inevitably follow.”

M. de Vilmorin had realized nothing. The poor young man had acted upon

impulse, upon the instinct of decency and honour, never counting the

consequences. But he realized them now at the sinister invitation of M.

de Chabrillane, and if he desired to avoid these consequences, it was

out of respect for his priestly vocation, which strictly forbade such

adjustments of disputes as M. de Chabrillane was clearly thrusting upon

him.

He drew back. “Let one affront wipe out the other,” said he, in a dull

voice. “The balance is still in M. le Marquis’s favour. Let that content

him.”

“Impossible.” The Chevalier’s lips came together tightly. Thereafter he

was suavity itself, but very firm. “A blow has been struck, monsieur. I

think I am correct in saying that such a thing has never happened before

to M. le Marquis in all his life. If you felt yourself affronted, you

had but to ask the satisfaction due from one gentleman to another. Your

action would seem to confirm the assumption that you found so

offensive. But it does not on that account render you immune from the

consequences.”

It was, you see, M. de Chabrillane’s part to heap coals upon this fire,

to make quite sure that their victim should not escape them.

“I desire no immunity,” flashed back the young seminarist, stung by

this fresh goad. After all, he was nobly born, and the traditions of his

class were strong upon him--stronger far than the seminarist schooling in

humility. He owed it to himself, to his honour, to be killed rather than

avoid the consequences of the thing he had done.

“But he does not wear a sword, messieurs!” cried Andre Louis, aghast.

“That is easily amended. He may have the loan of mine.”

“I mean, messieurs,” Andre-Louis insisted, between fear for his friend

and indignation, “that it is not his habit to wear a sword, that he has

never worn one, that he is untutored in its uses. He is a seminarist--a

postulant for holy orders, already half a priest, and so forbidden from

such an engagement as you propose.”

“All that he should have remembered before he struck a blow,” said M. de

Chabrillane, politely.

“The blow was deliberately provoked,” raged Andre-Louis. Then he

recovered himself, though the other’s haughty stare had no part in

that recovery. “O my God, I talk in vain! How is one to argue against a

purpose formed! Come away, Philippe. Don’t you see the trap...”

M. de Vilmorin cut him short, and flung him off. “Be quiet, Andre. M. le

Marquis is entirely in the right.”

“M. le Marquis is in the right?” Andre-Louis let his arms fall

helplessly. This man he loved above all other living men was caught in

the snare of the world’s insanity. He was baring his breast to the knife

for the sake of a vague, distorted sense of the honour due to himself.

It was not that he did not see the trap. It was that his honour

compelled him to disdain consideration of it. To Andre-Louis in that

moment he seemed a singularly tragic figure. Noble, perhaps, but very

pitiful.

CHAPTER IV. THE HERITAGE

It was M. de Vilmorin’s desire that the matter should be settled out

of hand. In this he was at once objective and subjective. A prey to

emotions sadly at conflict with his priestly vocation, he was above

all in haste to have done, so that he might resume a frame of mind more

proper to it. Also he feared himself a little; by which I mean that his

honour feared his nature. The circumstances of his education, and the

goal that for some years now he had kept in view, had robbed him of much

of that spirited brutality that is the birthright of the male. He had

grown timid and gentle as a woman. Aware of it, he feared that once the

heat of his passion was spent he might betray a dishonouring weakness,

in the ordeal.

M. le Marquis, on his side, was no less eager for an immediate

settlement; and since they had M. de Chabrillane to act for his cousin,

and Andre-Louis to serve as witness for M. de Vilmorin, there was

nothing to delay them.

And so, within a few minutes, all arrangements were concluded, and you

behold that sinisterly intentioned little group of four assembled in

the afternoon sunshine on the bowling-green behind the inn. They were

entirely private, screened more or less from the windows of the house by

a ramage of trees, which, if leafless now, was at least dense enough to

provide an effective lattice.

There were no formalities over measurements of blades or selection

of ground. M. le Marquis removed his sword-belt and scabbard, but

declined--not considering it worth while for the sake of so negligible an

opponent--to divest himself either of his shoes or his coat. Tall, lithe,

and athletic, he stood to face the no less tall, but very delicate and

frail, M. de Vilmorin. The latter also disdained to make any of the

usual preparations. Since he recognized that it could avail him nothing

to strip, he came on guard fully dressed, two hectic spots above the

cheek-bones burning on his otherwise grey face.

M. de Chabrillane, leaning upon a cane--for he had relinquished his sword

to M. de Vilmorin--looked on with quiet interest. Facing him on the

other side of the combatants stood Andre-Louis, the palest of the four,

staring from fevered eyes, twisting and untwisting clammy hands.

His every instinct was to fling himself between the antagonists, to

protest against and frustrate this meeting. That sane impulse was

curbed, however, by the consciousness of its futility. To calm him, he

clung to the conviction that the issue could not really be very serious.

If the obligations of Philippe’s honour compelled him to cross swords

with the man he had struck, M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s birth compelled him

no less to do no serious hurt to the unfledged lad he had so grievously

provoked. M. le Marquis, after all, was a man of honour. He could intend

no more than to administer a lesson; sharp, perhaps, but one by which

his opponent must live to profit. Andre-Louis clung obstinately to that

for comfort.

Steel beat on steel, and the men engaged. The Marquis presented to his

opponent the narrow edge of his upright body, his knees slightly flexed

and converted into living springs, whilst M. de Vilmorin stood squarely,

a full target, his knees wooden. Honour and the spirit of fair play

alike cried out against such a match.

The encounter was very short, of course. In youth, Philippe had received

the tutoring in sword-play that was given to every boy born into his

station of life. And so he knew at least the rudiments of what was

now expected of him. But what could rudiments avail him here? Three

disengages completed the exchanges, and then without any haste the

Marquis slid his right foot along the moist turf, his long, graceful

body extending itself in a lunge that went under M. de Vilmorin’s clumsy

guard, and with the utmost deliberation he drove his blade through the

young man’s vitals.

Andre-Louis sprang forward just in time to catch his friend’s body under

the armpits as it sank. Then, his own legs bending beneath the weight of

it, he went down with his burden until he was kneeling on the damp turf.

Philippe’s limp head lay against Andre-Louis’ left shoulder; Philippe’s

relaxed arms trailed at his sides; the blood welled and bubbled from the

ghastly wound to saturate the poor lad’s garments.

With white face and twitching lips, Andre-Louis looked up at M. de La

Tour d’Azyr, who stood surveying his work with a countenance of grave

but remorseless interest.

“You have killed him!” cried Andre-Louis.

“Of course.”

The Marquis ran a lace handkerchief along his blade to wipe it. As he

let the dainty fabric fall, he explained himself. “He had, as I told

him, a too dangerous gift of eloquence.”

And he turned away, leaving completest understanding with Andre-Louis.

Still supporting the limp, draining body, the young man called to him.

“Come back, you cowardly murderer, and make yourself quite safe by

killing me too!”

The Marquis half turned, his face dark with anger. Then M. de

Chabrillane set a restraining hand upon his arm. Although a party

throughout to the deed, the Chevalier was a little appalled now that it

was done. He had not the high stomach of M. de La Tour d’Azyr, and he

was a good deal younger.

“Come away,” he said. “The lad is raving. They were friends.”

“You heard what he said?” quoth the Marquis.

“Nor can he, or you, or any man deny it,” flung back Andre-Louis.

“Yourself, monsieur, you made confession when you gave me now the reason

why you killed him. You did it because you feared him.”

“If that were true--what, then?” asked the great gentleman.

“Do you ask? Do you understand of life and humanity nothing but how to

wear a coat and dress your hair--oh, yes, and to handle weapons against

boys and priests? Have you no mind to think, no soul into which you can

turn its vision? Must you be told that it is a coward’s part to kill the

thing he fears, and doubly a coward’s part to kill in this way? Had you

stabbed him in the back with a knife, you would have shown the courage

of your vileness. It would have been a vileness undisguised. But you

feared the consequences of that, powerful as you are; and so you shelter

your cowardice under the pretext of a duel.”

The Marquis shook off his cousin’s hand, and took a step forward,

holding now his sword like a whip. But again the Chevalier caught and

held him.

“No, no, Gervais! Let be, in God’s name!”

“Let him come, monsieur,” raved Andre-Louis, his voice thick and

concentrated. “Let him complete his coward’s work on me, and thus make

himself safe from a coward’s wages.”

M. de Chabrillane let his cousin go. He came white to the lips, his eyes

glaring at the lad who so recklessly insulted him. And then he checked.

It may be that he remembered suddenly the relationship in which this

young man was popularly believed to stand to the Seigneur de Gavrillac,

and the well-known affection in which the Seigneur held him. And so he

may have realized that if he pushed this matter further, he might find

himself upon the horns of a dilemma. He would be confronted with the

alternatives of shedding more blood, and so embroiling himself with the

Lord of Gavrillac at a time when that gentleman’s friendship was of the

first importance to him, or else of withdrawing with such hurt to his

dignity as must impair his authority in the countryside hereafter.

Be it so or otherwise, the fact remains that he stopped short; then,

with an incoherent ejaculation, between anger and contempt, he tossed

his arms, turned on his heel and strode off quickly with his cousin.

When the landlord and his people came, they found Andre-Louis, his arms

about the body of his dead friend, murmuring passionately into the deaf

ear that rested almost against his lips:

“Philippe! Speak to me, Philippe! Philippe... Don’t you hear me? O God

of Heaven! Philippe!”

At a glance they saw that here neither priest nor doctor could avail.

The cheek that lay against Andre-Louis’s was leaden-hued, the half-open

eyes were glazed, and there was a little froth of blood upon the

vacuously parted lips.

Half blinded by tears Andre-Louis stumbled after them when they bore the

body into the inn. Upstairs in the little room to which they conveyed

it, he knelt by the bed, and holding the dead man’s hand in both his

own, he swore to him out of his impotent rage that M. de La Tour d’Azyr

should pay a bitter price for this.

“It was your eloquence he feared, Philippe,” he said. “Then if I can

get no justice for this deed, at least it shall be fruitless to him. The

thing he feared in you, he shall fear in me. He feared that men might be

swayed by your eloquence to the undoing of such things as himself. Men

shall be swayed by it still. For your eloquence and your arguments shall

be my heritage from you. I will make them my own. It matters nothing

that I do not believe in your gospel of freedom. I know it--every word of

it; that is all that matters to our purpose, yours and mine. If all else

fails, your thoughts shall find expression in my living tongue. Thus

at least we shall have frustrated his vile aim to still the voice he

feared. It shall profit him nothing to have your blood upon his soul.

That voice in you would never half so relentlessly have hounded him and

his as it shall in me--if all else fails.”

It was an exulting thought. It calmed him; it soothed his grief, and he

began very softly to pray. And then his heart trembled as he considered

that Philippe, a man of peace, almost a priest, an apostle of

Christianity, had gone to his Maker with the sin of anger on his soul.

It was horrible. Yet God would see the righteousness of that anger. And

in no case--be man’s interpretation of Divinity what it might--could that

one sin outweigh the loving good that Philippe had ever practised, the

noble purity of his great heart. God after all, reflected Andre-Louis,

was not a grand-seigneur.

CHAPTER V. THE LORD OF GAVRILLAC

For the second time that day Andre-Louis set out for the chateau,

walking briskly, and heeding not at all the curious eyes that followed

him through the village, and the whisperings that marked his passage

through the people, all agog by now with that day’s event in which he

had been an actor.

He was ushered by Benoit, the elderly body-servant, rather

grandiloquently called the seneschal, into the ground-floor room known

traditionally as the library. It still contained several shelves of

neglected volumes, from which it derived its title, but implements

of the chase--fowling-pieces, powder-horns, hunting-bags,

sheath-knives--obtruded far more prominently than those of study. The

furniture was massive, of oak richly carved, and belonging to another

age. Great massive oak beams crossed the rather lofty whitewashed

ceiling.

Here the squat Seigneur de Gavrillac was restlessly pacing when

Andre-Louis was introduced. He was already informed, as he announced at

once, of what had taken place at the Breton arme. M. de Chabrillane

had just left him, and he confessed himself deeply grieved and deeply

perplexed.

“The pity of it!” he said. “The pity of it!” He bowed his enormous head.

“So estimable a young man, and so full of promise. Ah, this La Tour

d’Azyr is a hard man, and he feels very strongly in these matters.

He may be right. I don’t know. I have never killed a man for holding

different views from mine. In fact, I have never killed a man at all.

It isn’t in my nature. I shouldn’t sleep of nights if I did. But men are

differently made.”

“The question, monsieur my godfather,” said Andre-Louis, “is what is to

be done.” He was quite calm and self-possessed, but very white.

M. de Kercadiou stared at him blankly out of his pale eyes.

“Why, what the devil is there to do? From what I am told, Vilmorin went

so far as to strike M. le Marquis.”

“Under the very grossest provocation.”

“Which he himself provoked by his revolutionary language. The poor

lad’s head was full of this encyclopaedist trash. It comes of too much

reading. I have never set much store by books, Andre; and I have never

known anything but trouble to come out of learning. It unsettles a man.

It complicates his views of life, destroys the simplicity which makes

for peace of mind and happiness. Let this miserable affair be a warning

to you, Andre. You are, yourself, too prone to these new-fashioned

speculations upon a different constitution of the social order. You

see what comes of it. A fine, estimable young man, the only prop of

his widowed mother too, forgets himself, his position, his duty to that

mother--everything; and goes and gets himself killed like this. It is

infernally sad. On my soul it is sad.” He produced a handkerchief, and

blew his nose with vehemence.

Andre-Louis felt a tightening of his heart, a lessening of the hopes,

never too sanguine, which he had founded upon his godfather.

“Your criticisms,” he said, “are all for the conduct of the dead, and

none for that of the murderer. It does not seem possible that you should

be in sympathy with such a crime.”

“Crime?” shrilled M. de Kercadiou. “My God, boy, you are speaking of M.

de La Tour d’Azyr.”

“I am, and of the abominable murder he has committed...”

“Stop!” M. de Kercadiou was very emphatic. “I cannot permit that you

apply such terms to him. I cannot permit it. M. le Marquis is my friend,

and is likely very soon to stand in a still closer relationship.”

“Notwithstanding this?” asked Andre-Louis.

M. de Kercadiou was frankly impatient.

“Why, what has this to do with it? I may deplore it. But I have no

right to condemn it. It is a common way of adjusting differences between

gentlemen.”

“You really believe that?”

“What the devil do you imply, Andre? Should I say a thing that I don’t

believe? You begin to make me angry.”

“‘Thou shalt not kill,’ is the King’s law as well as God’s.”

“You are determined to quarrel with me, I think. It was a duel...”

Andre-Louis interrupted him. “It is no more a duel than if it had been

fought with pistols of which only M. le Marquis’s was loaded. He invited

Philippe to discuss the matter further, with the deliberate intent of

forcing a quarrel upon him and killing him. Be patient with me, monsieur

my god-father. I am not telling you of what I imagine but what M. le

Marquis himself admitted to me.”

Dominated a little by the young man’s earnestness, M. de Kercadiou’s

pale eyes fell away. He turned with a shrug, and sauntered over to the

window.

“It would need a court of honour to decide such an issue. And we have no

courts of honour,” he said.

“But we have courts of justice.”

With returning testiness the seigneur swung round to face him again.

“And what court of justice, do you think, would listen to such a plea as

you appear to have in mind?”

“There is the court of the King’s Lieutenant at Rennes.”

“And do you think the King’s Lieutenant would listen to you?”

“Not to me, perhaps, Monsieur. But if you were to bring the plaint...”

“I bring the plaint?” M. de Kercadiou’s pale eyes were wide with horror

of the suggestion.

“The thing happened here on your domain.”

“I bring a plaint against M. de La Tour d’Azyr! You are out of your

senses, I think. Oh, you are mad; as mad as that poor friend of yours

who has come to this end through meddling in what did not concern him.

The language he used here to M. le Marquis on the score of Mabey was

of the most offensive. Perhaps you didn’t know that. It does not at all

surprise me that the Marquis should have desired satisfaction.”

“I see,” said Andre-Louis, on a note of hopelessness.

“You see? What the devil do you see?”

“That I shall have to depend upon myself alone.”

“And what the devil do you propose to do, if you please?”

“I shall go to Rennes, and lay the facts before the King’s Lieutenant.”

“He’ll be too busy to see you.” And M. de Kercadiou’s mind swung a

trifle inconsequently, as weak minds will. “There is trouble enough in

Rennes already on the score of these crazy States General, with which

the wonderful M. Necker is to repair the finances of the kingdom. As

if a peddling Swiss bank-clerk, who is also a damned Protestant, could

succeed where such men as Calonne and Brienne have failed.”

“Good-afternoon, monsieur my godfather,” said Andre-Louis.

“Where are you going?” was the querulous demand.

“Home at present. To Rennes in the morning.”

“Wait, boy, wait!” The squat little man rolled forward, affectionate

concern on his great ugly face, and he set one of his podgy hands on

his godson’s shoulder. “Now listen to me, Andre,” he reasoned. “This is

sheer knight-errantry--moonshine, lunacy. You’ll come to no good by it if

you persist. You’ve read ‘Don Quixote,’ and what happened to him when

he went tilting against windmills. It’s what will happen to you, neither

more nor less. Leave things as they are, my boy. I wouldn’t have a

mischief happen to you.”

Andre-Louis looked at him, smiling wanly.

“I swore an oath to-day which it would damn my soul to break.”

“You mean that you’ll go in spite of anything that I may say?” Impetuous

as he was inconsequent, M. de Kercadiou was bristling again. “Very well,

then, go... Go to the devil!”

“I will begin with the King’s Lieutenant.”

“And if you get into the trouble you are seeking, don’t come whimpering

to me for assistance,” the seigneur stormed. He was very angry now.

“Since you choose to disobey me, you can break your empty head against

the windmill, and be damned to you.”

Andre-Louis bowed with a touch of irony, and reached the door.

“If the windmill should prove too formidable,” said he, from the

threshold, “I may see what can be done with the wind. Good-bye, monsieur

my godfather.”

He was gone, and M. de Kercadiou was alone, purple in the face, puzzling

out that last cryptic utterance, and not at all happy in his mind,

either on the score of his godson or of M. de La Tour d’Azyr. He was

disposed to be angry with them both. He found these headstrong, wilful

men who relentlessly followed their own impulses very disturbing and

irritating. Himself he loved his ease, and to be at peace with his

neighbours; and that seemed to him so obviously the supreme good of life

that he was disposed to brand them as fools who troubled to seek other

things.

CHAPTER VI. THE WINDMILL

There was between Nantes and Rennes an established service of three

stage-coaches weekly in each direction, which for a sum of twenty-four

livres--roughly, the equivalent of an English guinea--would carry you the

seventy and odd miles of the journey in some fourteen hours. Once a week

one of the diligences going in each direction would swerve aside

from the highroad to call at Gavrillac, to bring and take letters,

newspapers, and sometimes passengers. It was usually by this coach

that Andre-Louis came and went when the occasion offered. At present,

however, he was too much in haste to lose a day awaiting the passing of

that diligence. So it was on a horse hired from the Breton arme that he

set out next morning; and an hour’s brisk ride under a grey wintry sky,

by a half-ruined road through ten miles of flat, uninteresting country,

brought him to the city of Rennes.

He rode across the main bridge over the Vilaine, and so into the upper

and principal part of that important city of some thirty thousand

souls, most of whom, he opined from the seething, clamant crowds that

everywhere blocked his way, must on this day have taken to the streets.

Clearly Philippe had not overstated the excitement prevailing there.

He pushed on as best he could, and so came at last to the Place Royale,

where he found the crowd to be most dense. From the plinth of the

equestrian statue of Louis XV, a white-faced young man was excitedly

addressing the multitude. His youth and dress proclaimed the student,

and a group of his fellows, acting as a guard of honour to him, kept the

immediate precincts of the statue.

Over the heads of the crowd Andre-Louis caught a few of the phrases

flung forth by that eager voice.

“It was the promise of the King... It is the King’s authority they

flout... They arrogate to themselves the whole sovereignty in Brittany.

The King has dissolved them... These insolent nobles defying their

sovereign and the people...”

Had he not known already, from what Philippe had told him, of the events

which had brought the Third Estate to the point of active revolt, those

few phrases would fully have informed him. This popular display of

temper was most opportune to his need, he thought. And in the hope that

it might serve his turn by disposing to reasonableness the mind of the

King’s Lieutenant, he pushed on up the wide and well-paved Rue Royale,

where the concourse of people began to diminish. He put up his hired

horse at the Come de Cerf, and set out again, on foot, to the Palais de

Justice.

There was a brawling mob by the framework of poles and scaffoldings

about the building cathedral, upon which work had been commenced a year

ago. But he did not pause to ascertain the particular cause of that

gathering. He strode on, and thus came presently to the handsome

Italianate palace that was one of the few public edifices that had

survived the devastating fire of sixty years ago.

He won through with difficulty to the great hall, known as the Salle

des Pas Perdus, where he was left to cool his heels for a full half-hour

after he had found an usher so condescending as to inform the god who

presided over that shrine of Justice that a lawyer from Gavrillac humbly

begged an audience on an affair of gravity.

That the god condescended to see him at all was probably due to the

grave complexion of the hour. At long length he was escorted up the

broad stone staircase, and ushered into a spacious, meagrely furnished

anteroom, to make one of a waiting crowd of clients, mostly men.

There he spent another half-hour, and employed the time in considering

exactly what he should say. This consideration made him realize the

weakness of the case he proposed to set before a man whose views of law

and morality were coloured by his social rank.

At last he was ushered through a narrow but very massive and richly

decorated door into a fine, well-lighted room furnished with enough gilt

and satin to have supplied the boudoir of a lady of fashion.

It was a trivial setting for a King’s Lieutenant, but about the King’s

Lieutenant there was--at least to ordinary eyes--nothing trivial. At the

far end of the chamber, to the right of one of the tall windows that

looked out over the inner court, before a goat-legged writing-table with

Watteau panels, heavily encrusted with ormolu, sat that exalted being.

Above a scarlet coat with an order flaming on its breast, and a billow

of lace in which diamonds sparkled like drops of water, sprouted the

massive powdered head of M. de Lesdiguieres. It was thrown back to scowl

upon this visitor with an expectant arrogance that made Andre-Louis

wonder almost was a genuflexion awaited from him.

Perceiving a lean, lantern-jawed young man, with straight, lank black

hair, in a caped riding-coat of brown cloth, and yellow buckskin

breeches, his knee-boots splashed with mud, the scowl upon that august

visage deepened until it brought together the thick black eyebrows above

the great hooked nose.

“You announce yourself as a lawyer of Gavrillac with an important

communication,” he growled. It was a peremptory command to make this

communication without wasting the valuable time of a King’s Lieutenant,

of whose immense importance it conveyed something more than a hint. M.

de Lesdiguieres accounted himself an imposing personality, and he had

every reason to do so, for in his time he had seen many a poor devil

scared out of all his senses by the thunder of his voice.

He waited now to see the same thing happen to this youthful lawyer from

Gavrillac. But he waited in vain.

Andre-Louis found him ridiculous. He knew pretentiousness for the

mask of worthlessness and weakness. And here he beheld pretentiousness

incarnate. It was to be read in that arrogant poise of the head, that

scowling brow, the inflexion of that reverberating voice. Even more

difficult than it is for a man to be a hero to his valet--who has

witnessed the dispersal of the parts that make up the imposing whole--is

it for a man to be a hero to the student of Man who has witnessed the

same in a different sense.

Andre-Louis stood forward boldly--impudently, thought M. de Lesdiguieres.

“You are His Majesty’s Lieutenant here in Brittany,” he said--and it

almost seemed to the august lord of life and death that this fellow had

the incredible effrontery to address him as one man speaking to another.

“You are the dispenser of the King’s high justice in this province.”

Surprise spread on that handsome, sallow face under the heavily powdered

wig.

“Is your business concerned with this infernal insubordination of the

canaille?” he asked.

“It is not, monsieur.”

The black eyebrows rose. “Then what the devil do you mean by intruding

upon me at a time when all my attention is being claimed by the obvious

urgency of this disgraceful affair?”

“The affair that brings me is no less disgraceful and no less urgent.”

“It will have to wait!” thundered the great man in a passion, and

tossing back a cloud of lace from his hand, he reached for the little

silver bell upon his table.

“A moment, monsieur!” Andre-Louis’ tone was peremptory. M. de

Lesdiguieres checked in sheer amazement at its impudence. “I can state

it very briefly...”

“Haven’t I said already...”

“And when you have heard it,” Andre-Louis went on, relentlessly,

interrupting the interruption, “you will agree with me as to its

character.”

M. de Lesdiguieres considered him very sternly.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Andre-Louis Moreau.”

“Well, Andre-Louis Moreau, if you can state your plea briefly, I will

hear you. But I warn you that I shall be very angry if you fail to

justify the impertinence of this insistence at so inopportune a moment.”

“You shall be the judge of that, monsieur,” said Andre-Louis, and he

proceeded at once to state his case, beginning with the shooting of

Mabey, and passing thence to the killing of M. de Vilmorin. But he

withheld until the end the name of the great gentleman against whom he

demanded justice, persuaded that did he introduce it earlier he would

not be allowed to proceed.

He had a gift of oratory of whose full powers he was himself hardly

conscious yet, though destined very soon to become so. He told his story

well, without exaggeration, yet with a force of simple appeal that was

irresistible. Gradually the great man’s face relaxed from its forbidding

severity. Interest, warming almost to sympathy, came to be reflected on

it.

“And who, sir, is the man you charge with this?”

“The Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr.”

The effect of that formidable name was immediate. Dismayed anger, and an

arrogance more utter than before, took the place of the sympathy he had

been betrayed into displaying.

“Who?” he shouted, and without waiting for an answer, “Why, here’s

impudence,” he stormed on, “to come before me with such a charge against

a gentleman of M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s eminence! How dare you speak of

him as a coward....”

“I speak of him as a murderer,” the young man corrected. “And I demand

justice against him.”

“You demand it, do you? My God, what next?”

“That is for you to say, monsieur.”

It surprised the great gentleman into a more or less successful effort

of self-control.

“Let me warn you,” said he, acidly, “that it is not wise to make

wild accusations against a nobleman. That, in itself, is a punishable

offence, as you may learn. Now listen to me. In this matter of

Mabey--assuming your statement of it to be exact--the gamekeeper may have

exceeded his duty; but by so little that it is hardly worth comment.

Consider, however, that in any case it is not a matter for the King’s

Lieutenant, or for any court but the seigneurial court of M. de La Tour

d’Azyr himself. It is before the magistrates of his own appointing that

such a matter must be laid, since it is matter strictly concerning his

own seigneurial jurisdiction. As a lawyer you should not need to be told

so much.”

“As a lawyer, I am prepared to argue the point. But, as a lawyer I also

realize that if that case were prosecuted, it could only end in the

unjust punishment of a wretched gamekeeper, who did no more than carry

out his orders, but who none the less would now be made a scapegoat,

if scapegoat were necessary. I am not concerned to hang Benet on the

gallows earned by M. de La Tour d’Azyr.”

M. de Lesdiguieres smote the table violently. “My God!” he cried out, to

add more quietly, on a note of menace, “You are singularly insolent, my

man.”

“That is not my intention, sir, I assure you. I am a lawyer, pleading a

case--the case of M. de Vilmorin. It is for his assassination that I have

come to beg the King’s justice.”

“But you yourself have said that it was a duel!” cried the Lieutenant,

between anger and bewilderment.

“I have said that it was made to appear a duel. There is a distinction,

as I shall show, if you will condescend to hear me out.”

“Take your own time, sir!” said the ironical M. de Lesdiguieres, whose

tenure of office had never yet held anything that remotely resembled

this experience.

Andre-Louis took him literally. “I thank you, sir,” he answered,

solemnly, and submitted his argument. “It can be shown that M. de

Vilmorin never practised fencing in all his life, and it is notorious

that M. de La Tour d’Azyr is an exceptional swordsman. Is it a duel,

monsieur, where one of the combatants alone is armed? For it amounts to

that on a comparison of their measures of respective skill.”

“There has scarcely been a duel fought on which the same trumpery

argument might not be advanced.”

“But not always with equal justice. And in one case, at least, it was

advanced successfully.”

“Successfully? When was that?”

“Ten years ago, in Dauphiny. I refer to the case of M. de Gesvres,

a gentleman of that province, who forced a duel upon M. de la Roche

Jeannine, and killed him. M. de Jeannine was a member of a powerful

family, which exerted itself to obtain justice. It put forward just

such arguments as now obtain against M. de La Tour d’Azyr. As you will

remember, the judges held that the provocation had proceeded of intent

from M. de Gesvres; they found him guilty of premeditated murder, and he

was hanged.”

M. de Lesdiguieres exploded yet again. “Death of my life!” he cried.

“Have you the effrontery to suggest that M. de La Tour d’Azyr should be

hanged? Have you?”

“But why not, monsieur, if it is the law, and there is precedent for it,

as I have shown you, and if it can be established that what I state is

the truth--as established it can be without difficulty?”

“Do you ask me, why not? Have you temerity to ask me that?”

“I have, monsieur. Can you answer me? If you cannot, monsieur, I shall

understand that whilst it is possible for a powerful family like that

of La Roche Jeannine to set the law in motion, the law must remain inert

for the obscure and uninfluential, however brutally wronged by a great

nobleman.”

M. de Lesdiguieres perceived that in argument he would accomplish

nothing against this impassive, resolute young man. The menace of him

grew more fierce.

“I should advise you to take yourself off at once, and to be thankful

for the opportunity to depart unscathed.”

“I am, then, to understand, monsieur, that there will be no inquiry into

this case? That nothing that I can say will move you?”

“You are to understand that if you are still there in two minutes it

will be very much the worse for you.” And M. de Lesdiguieres tinkled the

silver hand-bell upon his table.

“I have informed you, monsieur, that a duel--so-called--has been fought,

and a man killed. It seems that I must remind you, the administrator of

the King’s justice, that duels are against the law, and that it is

your duty to hold an inquiry. I come as the legal representative of the

bereaved mother of M. de Vilmorin to demand of you the inquiry that is

due.”

The door behind Andre-Louis opened softly. M. de Lesdiguieres, pale with

anger, contained himself with difficulty.

“You seek to compel us, do you, you impudent rascal?” he growled. “You

think the King’s justice is to be driven headlong by the voice of any

impudent roturier? I marvel at my own patience with you. But I give you

a last warning, master lawyer; keep a closer guard over that insolent

tongue of yours, or you will have cause very bitterly to regret its

glibness.” He waved a jewelled, contemptuous hand, and spoke to the

usher standing behind Andre. “To the door!” he said, shortly.

Andre-Louis hesitated a second. Then with a shrug he turned. This was

the windmill, indeed, and he a poor knight of rueful countenance. To

attack it at closer quarters would mean being dashed to pieces. Yet on

the threshold he turned again.

“M. de Lesdiguieres,” said he, “may I recite to you an interesting fact

in natural history? The tiger is a great lord in the jungle, and was

for centuries the terror of lesser beasts, including the wolf. The wolf,

himself a hunter, wearied of being hunted. He took to associating

with other wolves, and then the wolves, driven to form packs for

self-protection, discovered the power of the pack, and took to hunting

the tiger, with disastrous results to him. You should study Buffon, M.

de Lesdiguieres.”

“I have studied a buffoon this morning, I think,” was the punning sneer

with which M. de Lesdiguieres replied. But that he conceived himself

witty, it is probable he would not have condescended to reply at all. “I

don’t understand you,” he added.

“But you will, M. de Lesdiguieres. You will,” said Andre-Louis, and so

departed.

CHAPTER VII. THE WIND

He had broken his futile lance with the windmill--the image suggested by

M. de Kercadiou persisted in his mind--and it was, he perceived, by sheer

good fortune that he had escaped without hurt. There remained the wind

itself--the whirlwind. And the events in Rennes, reflex of the graver

events in Nantes, had set that wind blowing in his favour.

He set out briskly to retrace his steps towards the Place Royale, where

the gathering of the populace was greatest, where, as he judged, lay the

heart and brain of this commotion that was exciting the city.

But the commotion that he had left there was as nothing to the commotion

which he found on his return. Then there had been a comparative hush

to listen to the voice of a speaker who denounced the First and Second

Estates from the pedestal of the statue of Louis XV. Now the air was

vibrant with the voice of the multitude itself, raised in anger. Here

and there men were fighting with canes and fists; everywhere a

fierce excitement raged, and the gendarmes sent thither by the King’s

Lieutenant to restore and maintain order were so much helpless flotsam

in that tempestuous human ocean.

There were cries of “To the Palais! To the Palais! Down with the

assassins! Down with the nobles! To the Palais!”

An artisan who stood shoulder to shoulder with him in the press

enlightened Andre-Louis on the score of the increased excitement.

“They’ve shot him dead. His body is lying there where it fell at the

foot of the statue. And there was another student killed not an hour ago

over there by the cathedral works. Pardi! If they can’t prevail in one

way they’ll prevail in another.” The man was fiercely emphatic. “They’ll

stop at nothing. If they can’t overawe us, by God, they’ll assassinate

us. They are determined to conduct these States of Brittany in their own

way. No interests but their own shall be considered.”

Andre-Louis left him still talking, and clove himself a way through that

human press.

At the statue’s base he came upon a little cluster of students about the

body of the murdered lad, all stricken with fear and helplessness.

“You here, Moreau!” said a voice.

He looked round to find himself confronted by a slight, swarthy man

of little more than thirty, firm of mouth and impertinent of nose,

who considered him with disapproval. It was Le Chapelier, a lawyer

of Rennes, a prominent member of the Literary Chamber of that city, a

forceful man, fertile in revolutionary ideas and of an exceptional gift

of eloquence.

“Ah, it is you, Chapelier! Why don’t you speak to them? Why don’t you

tell them what to do? Up with you, man!” And he pointed to the plinth.

Le Chapelier’s dark, restless eyes searched the other’s impassive face

for some trace of the irony he suspected. They were as wide asunder

as the poles, these two, in their political views; and mistrusted as

Andre-Louis was by all his colleagues of the Literary Chamber of Rennes,

he was by none mistrusted so thoroughly as by this vigorous republican.

Indeed, had Le Chapelier been able to prevail against the influence of

the seminarist Vilmorin, Andre-Louis would long since have found himself

excluded from that assembly of the intellectual youth of Rennes, which

he exasperated by his eternal mockery of their ideals.

So now Le Chapelier suspected mockery in that invitation, suspected it

even when he failed to find traces of it on Andre-Louis’ face, for he

had learnt by experience that it was a face not often to be trusted for

an indication of the real thoughts that moved behind it.

“Your notions and mine on that score can hardly coincide,” said he.

“Can there be two opinions?” quoth Andre-Louis.

“There are usually two opinions whenever you and I are together,

Moreau--more than ever now that you are the appointed delegate of a

nobleman. You see what your friends have done. No doubt you approve

their methods.” He was coldly hostile.

Andre-Louis looked at him without surprise. So invariably opposed to

each other in academic debates, how should Le Chapelier suspect his

present intentions?

“If you won’t tell them what is to be done, I will,” said he.

“Nom de Dieu! If you want to invite a bullet from the other side, I

shall not hinder you. It may help to square the account.”

Scarcely were the words out than he repented them; for as if in answer

to that challenge Andre-Louis sprang up on to the plinth. Alarmed now,

for he could only suppose it to be Andre-Louis’ intention to speak

on behalf of Privilege, of which he was a publicly appointed

representative, Le Chapelier clutched him by the leg to pull him down

again.

“Ah, that, no!” he was shouting. “Come down, you fool. Do you think we

will let you ruin everything by your clowning? Come down!”

Andre-Louis, maintaining his position by clutching one of the legs of

the bronze horse, flung his voice like a bugle-note over the heads of

that seething mob.

“Citizens of Rennes, the motherland is in danger!”

The effect was electric. A stir ran, like a ripple over water, across

that froth of upturned human faces, and completest silence followed.

In that great silence they looked at this slim young man, hatless,

long wisps of his black hair fluttering in the breeze, his neckcloth in

disorder, his face white, his eyes on fire.

Andre-Louis felt a sudden surge of exaltation as he realized by instinct

that at one grip he had seized that crowd, and that he held it fast in

the spell of his cry and his audacity.

Even Le Chapelier, though still clinging to his ankle, had ceased to

tug. The reformer, though unshaken in his assumption of Andre-Louis’

intentions, was for a moment bewildered by the first note of his appeal.

And then, slowly, impressively, in a voice that travelled clear to the

ends of the square, the young lawyer of Gavrillac began to speak.

“Shuddering in horror of the vile deed here perpetrated, my voice

demands to be heard by you. You have seen murder done under your

eyes--the murder of one who nobly, without any thought of self, gave

voice to the wrongs by which we are all oppressed. Fearing that voice,

shunning the truth as foul things shun the light, our oppressors sent

their agents to silence him in death.”

Le Chapelier released at last his hold of Andre-Louis’ ankle, staring

up at him the while in sheer amazement. It seemed that the fellow was in

earnest; serious for once; and for once on the right side. What had come

to him?

“Of assassins what shall you look for but assassination? I have a

tale to tell which will show that this is no new thing that you have

witnessed here to-day; it will reveal to you the forces with which you

have to deal. Yesterday...”

There was an interruption. A voice in the crowd, some twenty paces,

perhaps, was raised to shout:

“Yet another of them!”

Immediately after the voice came a pistol-shot, and a bullet flattened

itself against the bronze figure just behind Andre-Louis.

Instantly there was turmoil in the crowd, most intense about the spot

whence the shot had been fired. The assailant was one of a considerable

group of the opposition, a group that found itself at once beset on

every side, and hard put to it to defend him.

From the foot of the plinth rang the voice of the students making chorus

to Le Chapelier, who was bidding Andre-Louis to seek shelter.

“Come down! Come down at once! They’ll murder you as they murdered La

Riviere.”

“Let them!” He flung wide his arms in a gesture supremely theatrical,

and laughed. “I stand here at their mercy. Let them, if they will, add

mine to the blood that will presently rise up to choke them. Let them

assassinate me. It is a trade they understand. But until they do so,

they shall not prevent me from speaking to you, from telling you what

is to be looked for in them.” And again he laughed, not merely in

exaltation as they supposed who watched him from below, but also in

amusement. And his amusement had two sources. One was to discover how

glibly he uttered the phrases proper to whip up the emotions of a crowd:

the other was in the remembrance of how the crafty Cardinal de Retz, for

the purpose of inflaming popular sympathy on his behalf, had been in the

habit of hiring fellows to fire upon his carriage. He was in just such

case as that arch-politician. True, he had not hired the fellow to fire

that pistol-shot; but he was none the less obliged to him, and ready to

derive the fullest, advantage from the act.

The group that sought to protect that man was battling on, seeking to

hew a way out of that angry, heaving press.

“Let them go!” Andre-Louis called down... “What matters one assassin more

or less? Let them go, and listen to me, my countrymen!”

And presently, when some measure of order was restored, he began his

tale. In simple language now, yet with a vehemence and directness

that drove home every point, he tore their hearts with the story of

yesterday’s happenings at Gavrillac. He drew tears from them with

the pathos of his picture of the bereaved widow Mabey and her three

starving, destitute children--“orphaned to avenge the death of a

pheasant”--and the bereaved mother of that M. de Vilmorin, a student of

Rennes, known here to many of them, who had met his death in a noble

endeavour to champion the cause of an esurient member of their afflicted

order.

“The Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr said of him that he had too dangerous a

gift of eloquence. It was to silence his brave voice that he killed

him. But he has failed of his object. For I, poor Philippe de Vilmorin’s

friend, have assumed the mantle of his apostleship, and I speak to you

with his voice to-day.”

It was a statement that helped Le Chapelier at last to understand, at

least in part, this bewildering change in Andre-Louis, which rendered

him faithless to the side that employed him.

“I am not here,” continued Andre-Louis, “merely to demand at your hands

vengeance upon Philippe de Vilmorin’s murderers. I am here to tell you

the things he would to-day have told you had he lived.”

So far at least he was frank. But he did not add that they were things

he did not himself believe, things that he accounted the cant by which

an ambitious bourgeoisie--speaking through the mouths of the lawyers, who

were its articulate part--sought to overthrow to its own advantage the

present state of things. He left his audience in the natural belief that

the views he expressed were the views he held.

And now in a terrible voice, with an eloquence that amazed himself,

he denounced the inertia of the royal justice where the great are the

offenders. It was with bitter sarcasm that he spoke of their King’s

Lieutenant, M. de Lesdiguieres.

“Do you wonder,” he asked them, “that M. de Lesdiguieres should

administer the law so that it shall ever be favourable to our great

nobles? Would it be just, would it be reasonable that he should

otherwise administer it?” He paused dramatically to let his sarcasm sink

in. It had the effect of reawakening Le Chapelier’s doubts, and checking

his dawning conviction in Andre-Louis’ sincerity. Whither was he going

now?

He was not left long in doubt. Proceeding, Andre-Louis spoke as he

conceived that Philippe de Vilmorin would have spoken. He had so often

argued with him, so often attended the discussions of the Literary

Chamber, that he had all the rant of the reformers--that was yet true in

substance--at his fingers’ ends.

“Consider, after all, the composition of this France of ours. A million

of its inhabitants are members of the privileged classes. They compose

France. They are France. For surely you cannot suppose the remainder

to be anything that matters. It cannot be pretended that twenty-four

million souls are of any account, that they can be representative of

this great nation, or that they can exist for any purpose but that of

servitude to the million elect.”

Bitter laughter shook them now, as he desired it should. “Seeing their

privileges in danger of invasion by these twenty-four millions--mostly

canailles; possibly created by God, it is true, but clearly so created

to be the slaves of Privilege--does it surprise you that the dispensing

of royal justice should be placed in the stout hands of these

Lesdiguieres, men without brains to think or hearts to be touched?

Consider what it is that must be defended against the assault of us

others--canaille. Consider a few of these feudal rights that are in

danger of being swept away should the Privileged yield even to the

commands of their sovereign; and admit the Third Estate to an equal vote

with themselves.

“What would become of the right of terrage on the land, of parciere on

the fruit-trees, of carpot on the vines? What of the corvees by which

they command forced labour, of the ban de vendage, which gives them the

first vintage, the banvin which enables them to control to their own

advantage the sale of wine? What of their right of grinding the last

liard of taxation out of the people to maintain their own opulent

estate; the cens, the lods-et-ventes, which absorb a fifth of the value

of the land, the blairee, which must be paid before herds can feed on

communal lands, the pulverage to indemnify them for the dust raised on

their roads by the herds that go to market, the sextelage on everything

offered for sale in the public markets, the etalonnage, and all the

rest? What of their rights over men and animals for field labour, of

ferries over rivers, and of bridges over streams, of sinking wells, of

warren, of dovecot, and of fire, which last yields them a tax on

every peasant hearth? What of their exclusive rights of fishing and of

hunting, the violation of which is ranked as almost a capital offence?

“And what of other rights, unspeakable, abominable, over the lives and

bodies of their people, rights which, if rarely exercised, have never

been rescinded. To this day if a noble returning from the hunt were to

slay two of his serfs to bathe and refresh his feet in their blood, he

could still claim in his sufficient defence that it was his absolute

feudal right to do so.

“Rough-shod, these million Privileged ride over the souls and bodies

of twenty-four million contemptible canaille existing but for their own

pleasure. Woe betide him who so much as raises his voice in protest

in the name of humanity against an excess of these already excessive

abuses. I have told you of one remorselessly slain in cold blood for

doing no more than that. Your own eyes have witnessed the assassination

of another here upon this plinth, of yet another over there by the

cathedral works, and the attempt upon my own life.

“Between them and the justice due to them in such cases stand these

Lesdiguieres, these King’s Lieutenants; not instruments of justice, but

walls erected for the shelter of Privilege and Abuse whenever it exceeds

its grotesquely excessive rights.

“Do you wonder that they will not yield an inch; that they will resist

the election of a Third Estate with the voting power to sweep all these

privileges away, to compel the Privileged to submit themselves to a just

equality in the eyes of the law with the meanest of the canaille they

trample underfoot, to provide that the moneys necessary to save this

state from the bankruptcy into which they have all but plunged it shall

be raised by taxation to be borne by themselves in the same proportion

as by others?

“Sooner than yield to so much they prefer to resist even the royal

command.”

A phrase occurred to him used yesterday by Vilmorin, a phrase to which

he had refused to attach importance when uttered then. He used it now.

“In doing this they are striking at the very foundations of the throne.

These fools do not perceive that if that throne falls over, it is they

who stand nearest to it who will be crushed.”

A terrific roar acclaimed that statement. Tense and quivering with the

excitement that was flowing through him, and from him out into that

great audience, he stood a moment smiling ironically. Then he waved

them into silence, and saw by their ready obedience how completely he

possessed them. For in the voice with which he spoke each now recognized

the voice of himself, giving at last expression to the thoughts that for

months and years had been inarticulately stirring in each simple mind.

Presently he resumed, speaking more quietly, that ironic smile about the

corner of his mouth growing more marked:

“In taking my leave of M. de Lesdiguieres I gave him warning out of a

page of natural history. I told him that when the wolves, roaming singly

through the jungle, were weary of being hunted by the tiger, they banded

themselves into packs, and went a-hunting the tiger in their turn. M. de

Lesdiguieres contemptuously answered that he did not understand me. But

your wits are better than his. You understand me, I think? Don’t you?”

Again a great roar, mingled now with some approving laughter, was his

answer. He had wrought them up to a pitch of dangerous passion, and they

were ripe for any violence to which he urged them. If he had failed with

the windmill, at least he was now master of the wind.

“To the Palais!” they shouted, waving their hands, brandishing canes,

and--here and there--even a sword. “To the Palais! Down with M. de

Lesdiguieres! Death to the King’s Lieutenant!”

He was master of the wind, indeed. His dangerous gift of oratory--a

gift nowhere more powerful than in France, since nowhere else are men’s

emotions so quick to respond to the appeal of eloquence--had given him

this mastery. At his bidding now the gale would sweep away the

windmill against which he had flung himself in vain. But that, as he

straightforwardly revealed it, was no part of his intent.

“Ah, wait!” he bade them. “Is this miserable instrument of a corrupt

system worth the attention of your noble indignation?”

He hoped his words would be reported to M. de Lesdiguieres. He thought

it would be good for the soul of M. de Lesdiguieres to hear the

undiluted truth about himself for once.

“It is the system itself you must attack and overthrow; not a mere

instrument--a miserable painted lath such as this. And precipitancy will

spoil everything. Above all, my children, no violence!”

My children! Could his godfather have heard him!

“You have seen often already the result of premature violence elsewhere

in Brittany, and you have heard of it elsewhere in France. Violence on

your part will call for violence on theirs. They will welcome the chance

to assert their mastery by a firmer grip than heretofore. The military

will be sent for. You will be faced by the bayonets of mercenaries. Do

not provoke that, I implore you. Do not put it into their power, do not

afford them the pretext they would welcome to crush you down into the

mud of your own blood.”

Out of the silence into which they had fallen anew broke now the cry of

“What else, then? What else?”

“I will tell you,” he answered them. “The wealth and strength of

Brittany lies in Nantes--a bourgeois city, one of the most prosperous in

this realm, rendered so by the energy of the bourgeoisie and the toil of

the people. It was in Nantes that this movement had its beginning, and

as a result of it the King issued his order dissolving the States as now

constituted--an order which those who base their power on Privilege and

Abuse do not hesitate to thwart. Let Nantes be informed of the precise

situation, and let nothing be done here until Nantes shall have given us

the lead. She has the power--which we in Rennes have not--to make her will

prevail, as we have seen already. Let her exert that power once more,

and until she does so do you keep the peace in Rennes. Thus shall you

triumph. Thus shall the outrages that are being perpetrated under your

eyes be fully and finally avenged.”

As abruptly as he had leapt upon the plinth did he now leap down from

it. He had finished. He had said all--perhaps more than all--that could

have been said by the dead friend with whose voice he spoke. But it was

not their will that he should thus extinguish himself. The thunder of

their acclamations rose deafeningly upon the air. He had played upon

their emotions--each in turn--as a skilful harpist plays upon the strings

of his instrument. And they were vibrant with the passions he had

aroused, and the high note of hope on which he had brought his symphony

to a close.

A dozen students caught him as he leapt down, and swung him to their

shoulders, where again he came within view of all the acclaiming crowd.

The delicate Le Chapelier pressed alongside of him with flushed face and

shining eyes.

“My lad,” he said to him, “you have kindled a fire to-day that will

sweep the face of France in a blaze of liberty.” And then to the

students he issued a sharp command. “To the Literary Chamber--at once. We

must concert measures upon the instant, a delegate must be dispatched

to Nantes forthwith, to convey to our friends there the message of the

people of Rennes.”

The crowd fell back, opening a lane through which the students bore

the hero of the hour. Waving his hands to them, he called upon them to

disperse to their homes, and await there in patience what must follow

very soon.

“You have endured for centuries with a fortitude that is a pattern to

the world,” he flattered them. “Endure a little longer yet. The end, my

friends, is well in sight at last.”

They carried him out of the square and up the Rue Royale to an old

house, one of the few old houses surviving in that city that had risen

from its ashes, where in an upper chamber lighted by diamond-shaped

panes of yellow glass the Literary Chamber usually held its meetings.

Thither in his wake the members of that chamber came hurrying, summoned

by the messages that Le Chapelier had issued during their progress.

Behind closed doors a flushed and excited group of some fifty men, the

majority of whom were young, ardent, and afire with the illusion of

liberty, hailed Andre-Louis as the strayed sheep who had returned to the

fold, and smothered him in congratulations and thanks.

Then they settled down to deliberate upon immediate measures, whilst the

doors below were kept by a guard of honour that had improvised itself

from the masses. And very necessary was this. For no sooner had the

Chamber assembled than the house was assailed by the gendarmerie of M.

de Lesdiguieres, dispatched in haste to arrest the firebrand who was

inciting the people of Rennes to sedition. The force consisted of fifty

men. Five hundred would have been too few. The mob broke their carbines,

broke some of their heads, and would indeed have torn them into pieces

had they not beaten a timely and well-advised retreat before a form of

horseplay to which they were not at all accustomed.

And whilst that was taking place in the street below, in the room

abovestairs the eloquent Le Chapelier was addressing his colleagues

of the Literary Chamber. Here, with no bullets to fear, and no one

to report his words to the authorities, Le Chapelier could permit his

oratory a full, unintimidated flow. And that considerable oratory was as

direct and brutal as the man himself was delicate and elegant.

He praised the vigour and the greatness of the speech they had heard

from their colleague Moreau. Above all he praised its wisdom. Moreau’s

words had come as a surprise to them. Hitherto they had never known

him as other than a bitter critic of their projects of reform and

regeneration; and quite lately they had heard, not without misgivings,

of his appointment as delegate for a nobleman in the States of Brittany.

But they held the explanation of his conversion. The murder of their

dear colleague Vilmorin had produced this change. In that brutal deed

Moreau had beheld at last in true proportions the workings of that evil

spirit which they were vowed to exorcise from France. And to-day he had

proven himself the stoutest apostle among them of the new faith. He had

pointed out to them the only sane and useful course. The illustration he

had borrowed from natural history was most apt. Above all, let them pack

like the wolves, and to ensure this uniformity of action in the people

of all Brittany, let a delegate at once be sent to Nantes, which had

already proved itself the real seat of Brittany’s power. It but remained

to appoint that delegate, and Le Chapelier invited them to elect him.

Andre-Louis, on a bench near the window, a prey now to some measure of

reaction, listened in bewilderment to that flood of eloquence.

As the applause died down, he heard a voice exclaiming:

“I propose to you that we appoint our leader here, Le Chapelier, to be

that delegate.”

Le Chapelier reared his elegantly dressed head, which had been bowed

in thought, and it was seen that his countenance was pale. Nervously he

fingered a gold spy-glass.

“My friends,” he said, slowly, “I am deeply sensible of the honour

that you do me. But in accepting it I should be usurping an honour

that rightly belongs elsewhere. Who could represent us better, who more

deserving to be our representative, to speak to our friends of Nantes

with the voice of Rennes, than the champion who once already to-day has

so incomparably given utterance to the voice of this great city? Confer

this honour of being your spokesman where it belongs--upon Andre-Louis

Moreau.”

Rising in response to the storm of applause that greeted the proposal,

Andre-Louis bowed and forthwith yielded. “Be it so,” he said, simply.

“It is perhaps fitting that I should carry out what I have begun, though

I too am of the opinion that Le Chapelier would have been a worthier

representative. I will set out to-night.”

“You will set out at once, my lad,” Le Chapelier informed him, and now

revealed what an uncharitable mind might account the true source of his

generosity. “It is not safe after what has happened for you to linger an

hour in Rennes. And you must go secretly. Let none of you allow it to

be known that he has gone. I would not have you come to harm over this,

Andre-Louis. But you must see the risks you run, and if you are to be

spared to help in this work of salvation of our afflicted motherland,

you must use caution, move secretly, veil your identity even. Or else

M. de Lesdiguieres will have you laid by the heels, and it will be

good-night for you.”

CHAPTER VIII. OMNES OMNIBUS

Andre-Louis rode forth from Rennes committed to a deeper adventure than

he had dreamed of when he left the sleepy village of Gavrillac. Lying

the night at a roadside inn, and setting out again early in the morning,

he reached Nantes soon after noon of the following day.

Through that long and lonely ride through the dull plains of Brittany,

now at their dreariest in their winter garb, he had ample leisure in

which to review his actions and his position. From one who had taken

hitherto a purely academic and by no means friendly interest in the new

philosophies of social life, exercising his wits upon these new ideas

merely as a fencer exercises his eye and wrist with the foils, without

ever suffering himself to be deluded into supposing the issue a real

one, he found himself suddenly converted into a revolutionary firebrand,

committed to revolutionary action of the most desperate kind. The

representative and delegate of a nobleman in the States of Brittany, he

found himself simultaneously and incongruously the representative and

delegate of the whole Third Estate of Rennes.

It is difficult to determine to what extent, in the heat of passion and

swept along by the torrent of his own oratory, he might yesterday have

succeeded in deceiving himself. But it is at least certain that, looking

back in cold blood now, he had no single delusion on the score of what

he had done. Cynically he had presented to his audience one side only of

the great question that he propounded.

But since the established order of things in France was such as to make

a rampart for M. de La Tour d’Azyr, affording him complete immunity for

this and any other crimes that it pleased him to commit, why, then the

established order must take the consequences of its wrong-doing. Therein

he perceived his clear justification.

And so it was without misgivings that he came on his errand of sedition

into that beautiful city of Nantes, rendered by its spacious streets and

splendid port the rival in prosperity of Bordeaux and Marseilles.

He found an inn on the Quai La Fosse, where he put up his horse, and

where he dined in the embrasure of a window that looked out over the

tree-bordered quay and the broad bosom of the Loire, on which argosies

of all nations rode at anchor. The sun had again broken through the

clouds, and shed its pale wintry light over the yellow waters and the

tall-masted shipping.

Along the quays there was a stir of life as great as that to be seen

on the quays of Paris. Foreign sailors in outlandish garments and of

harsh-sounding, outlandish speech, stalwart fishwives with baskets of

herrings on their heads, voluminous of petticoat above bare legs and

bare feet, calling their wares shrilly and almost inarticulately,

watermen in woollen caps and loose trousers rolled to the knees,

peasants in goatskin coats, their wooden shoes clattering on the

round kidney-stones, shipwrights and labourers from the dockyards,

bellows-menders, rat-catchers, water-carriers, ink-sellers, and other

itinerant pedlars. And, sprinkled through this proletariat mass that

came and went in constant movement, Andre-Louis beheld tradesmen in

sober garments, merchants in long, fur-lined coats; occasionally

a merchant-prince rolling along in his two-horse cabriolet to the

whip-crackings and shouts of “Gare!” from his coachman; occasionally a

dainty lady carried past in her sedan-chair, with perhaps a mincing abbe

from the episcopal court tripping along in attendance; occasionally an

officer in scarlet riding disdainfully; and once the great carriage of

a nobleman, with escutcheoned panels and a pair of white-stockinged,

powdered footmen in gorgeous liveries hanging on behind. And there were

Capuchins in brown and Benedictines in black, and secular priests in

plenty--for God was well served in the sixteen parishes of Nantes--and

by way of contrast there were lean-jawed, out-at-elbow adventurers, and

gendarmes in blue coats and gaitered legs, sauntering guardians of the

peace.

Representatives of every class that went to make up the seventy thousand

inhabitants of that wealthy, industrious city were to be seen in

the human stream that ebbed and flowed beneath the window from which

Andre-Louis observed it.

Of the waiter who ministered to his humble wants with soup and bouilli,

and a measure of vin gris, Andre-Louis enquired into the state of public

feeling in the city. The waiter, a staunch supporter of the privileged

orders, admitted regretfully that an uneasiness prevailed. Much would

depend upon what happened at Rennes. If it was true that the King had

dissolved the States of Brittany, then all should be well, and the

malcontents would have no pretext for further disturbances. There had

been trouble and to spare in Nantes already. They wanted no repetition

of it. All manner of rumours were abroad, and since early morning there

had been crowds besieging the portals of the Chamber of Commerce for

definite news. But definite news was yet to come. It was not even known

for a fact that His Majesty actually had dissolved the States.

It was striking two, the busiest hour of the day upon the Bourse, when

Andre-Louis reached the Place du Commerce. The square, dominated by the

imposing classical building of the Exchange, was so crowded that he

was compelled almost to fight his way through to the steps of the

magnificent Ionic porch. A word would have sufficed to have opened a way

for him at once. But guile moved him to keep silent. He would come upon

that waiting multitude as a thunderclap, precisely as yesterday he

had come upon the mob at Rennes. He would lose nothing of the surprise

effect of his entrance.

The precincts of that house of commerce were jealously kept by a line

of ushers armed with staves, a guard as hurriedly assembled by the

merchants as it was evidently necessary. One of these now effectively

barred the young lawyer’s passage as he attempted to mount the steps.

Andre-Louis announced himself in a whisper.

The stave was instantly raised from the horizontal, and he passed and

went up the steps in the wake of the usher. At the top, on the threshold

of the chamber, he paused, and stayed his guide.

“I will wait here,” he announced. “Bring the president to me.”

“Your name, monsieur?”

Almost had Andre-Louis answered him when he remembered Le Chapelier’s

warning of the danger with which his mission was fraught, and Le

Chapelier’s parting admonition to conceal his identity.

“My name is unknown to him; it matters nothing; I am the mouthpiece of a

people, no more. Go.”

The usher went, and in the shadow of that lofty, pillared portico

Andre-Louis waited, his eyes straying out ever and anon to survey that

spread of upturned faces immediately below him.

Soon the president came, others following, crowding out into the

portico, jostling one another in their eagerness to hear the news.

“You are a messenger from Rennes?”

“I am the delegate sent by the Literary Chamber of that city to inform

you here in Nantes of what is taking place.”

“Your name?”

Andre-Louis paused. “The less we mention names perhaps the better.”

The president’s eyes grew big with gravity. He was a corpulent, florid

man, purse-proud, and self-sufficient.

He hesitated a moment. Then--“Come into the Chamber,” said he.

“By your leave, monsieur, I will deliver my message from here--from these

steps.”

“From here?” The great merchant frowned.

“My message is for the people of Nantes, and from here I can speak

at once to the greatest number of Nantais of all ranks, and it is my

desire--and the desire of those whom I represent--that as great a number

as possible should hear my message at first hand.”

“Tell me, sir, is it true that the King has dissolved the States?”

Andre-Louis looked at him. He smiled apologetically, and waved a hand

towards the crowd, which by now was straining for a glimpse of this slim

young man who had brought forth the president and more than half the

numbers of the Chamber, guessing already, with that curious instinct of

crowds, that he was the awaited bearer of tidings.

“Summon the gentlemen of your Chamber, monsieur,” said he, “and you

shall hear all.”

“So be it.”

A word, and forth they came to crowd upon the steps, but leaving clear

the topmost step and a half-moon space in the middle.

To the spot so indicated, Andre-Louis now advanced very deliberately.

He took his stand there, dominating the entire assembly. He removed

his hat, and launched the opening bombshell of that address which

is historic, marking as it does one of the great stages of France’s

progress towards revolution.

“People of this great city of Nantes, I have come to summon you to

arms!”

In the amazed and rather scared silence that followed he surveyed them

for a moment before resuming.

“I am a delegate of the people of Rennes, charged to announce to you

what is taking place, and to invite you in this dreadful hour of our

country’s peril to rise and march to her defence.”

“Name! Your name!” a voice shouted, and instantly the cry was taken up

by others, until the multitude rang with the question.

He could not answer that excited mob as he had answered the president.

It was necessary to compromise, and he did so, happily. “My name,” said

he, “is Omnes Omnibus--all for all. Let that suffice you now. I am a

herald, a mouthpiece, a voice; no more. I come to announce to you that

since the privileged orders, assembled for the States of Brittany in

Rennes, resisted your will--our will--despite the King’s plain hint to

them, His Majesty has dissolved the States.”

There was a burst of delirious applause. Men laughed and shouted, and

cries of “Vive le Roi!” rolled forth like thunder. Andre-Louis waited,

and gradually the preternatural gravity of his countenance came to be

observed, and to beget the suspicion that there might be more to follow.

Gradually silence was restored, and at last Andre Louis was able to

proceed.

“You rejoice too soon. Unfortunately, the nobles, in their insolent

arrogance, have elected to ignore the royal dissolution, and in despite

of it persist in sitting and in conducting matters as seems good to

them.”

A silence of utter dismay greeted that disconcerting epilogue to

the announcement that had been so rapturously received. Andre-Louis

continued after a moment’s pause:

“So that these men who were already rebels against the people, rebels,

against justice and equity, rebels against humanity itself, are now

also rebels against their King. Sooner than yield an inch of the

unconscionable privileges by which too long already they have

flourished, to the misery of a whole nation, they will make a mock

of royal authority, hold up the King himself to contempt. They are

determined to prove that there is no real sovereignty in France but the

sovereignty of their own parasitic faineantise.”

There was a faint splutter of applause, but the majority of the audience

remained silent, waiting.

“This is no new thing. Always has it been the same. No minister in

the last ten years, who, seeing the needs and perils of the State,

counselled the measures that we now demand as the only means of

arresting our motherland in its ever-quickening progress to the abyss,

but found himself as a consequence cast out of office by the influence

which Privilege brought to bear against him. Twice already has M. Necker

been called to the ministry, to be twice dismissed when his insistent

counsels of reform threatened the privileges of clergy and nobility. For

the third time now has he been called to office, and at last it seems

we are to have States General in spite of Privilege. But what the

privileged orders can no longer prevent, they are determined to

stultify. Since it is now a settled thing that these States General are

to meet, at least the nobles and the clergy will see to it--unless we

take measures to prevent them--by packing the Third Estate with their

own creatures, and denying it all effective representation, that they

convert the States General into an instrument of their own will for the

perpetuation of the abuses by which they live. To achieve this end they

will stop at nothing. They have flouted the authority of the King, and

they are silencing by assassination those who raise their voices to

condemn them. Yesterday in Rennes two young men who addressed the people

as I am addressing you were done to death in the streets by assassins at

the instigation of the nobility. Their blood cries out for vengeance.”

Beginning in a sullen mutter, the indignation that moved his hearers

swelled up to express itself in a roar of anger.

“Citizens of Nantes, the motherland is in peril. Let us march to her

defence. Let us proclaim it to the world that we recognize that the

measures to liberate the Third Estate from the slavery in which for

centuries it has groaned find only obstacles in those orders whose

phrenetic egotism sees in the tears and suffering of the unfortunate

an odious tribute which they would pass on to their generations still

unborn. Realizing from the barbarity of the means employed by our

enemies to perpetuate our oppression that we have everything to fear

from the aristocracy they would set up as a constitutional principle for

the governing of France, let us declare ourselves at once enfranchised

from it.

“The establishment of liberty and equality should be the aim of every

citizen member of the Third Estate; and to this end we should stand

indivisibly united, especially the young and vigorous, especially those

who have had the good fortune to be born late enough to be able to

gather for themselves the precious fruits of the philosophy of this

eighteenth century.”

Acclamations broke out unstintedly now. He had caught them in the snare

of his oratory. And he pressed his advantage instantly.

“Let us all swear,” he cried in a great voice, “to raise up in the name

of humanity and of liberty a rampart against our enemies, to oppose to

their bloodthirsty covetousness the calm perseverance of men whose cause

is just. And let us protest here and in advance against any tyrannical

decrees that should declare us seditious when we have none but pure and

just intentions. Let us make oath upon the honour of our motherland that

should any of us be seized by an unjust tribunal, intending against us

one of those acts termed of political expediency--which are, in effect,

but acts of despotism--let us swear, I say, to give a full expression

to the strength that is in us and do that in self-defence which nature,

courage, and despair dictate to us.”

Loud and long rolled the applause that greeted his conclusion, and he

observed with satisfaction and even some inward grim amusement that the

wealthy merchants who had been congregated upon the steps, and who now

came crowding about him to shake him by the hand and to acclaim him,

were not merely participants in, but the actual leaders of, this

delirium of enthusiasm.

It confirmed him, had he needed confirmation, in his conviction that

just as the philosophies upon which this new movement was based had

their source in thinkers extracted from the bourgeoisie, so the need

to adopt those philosophies to the practical purposes of life was most

acutely felt at present by those bourgeois who found themselves debarred

by Privilege from the expansion their wealth permitted them. If it might

be said of Andre-Louis that he had that day lighted the torch of the

Revolution in Nantes, it might with even greater truth be said that the

torch itself was supplied by the opulent bourgeoisie.

I need not dwell at any length upon the sequel. It is a matter of

history how that oath which Omnes Omnibus administered to the citizens

of Nantes formed the backbone of the formal protest which they drew up

and signed in their thousands. Nor were the results of that powerful

protest--which, after all, might already be said to harmonize with the

expressed will of the sovereign himself--long delayed. Who shall say how

far it may have strengthened the hand of Necker, when on the 27th of

that same month of November he compelled the Council to adopt the most

significant and comprehensive of all those measures to which clergy and

nobility had refused their consent? On that date was published the royal

decree ordaining that the deputies to be elected to the States General

should number at least one thousand, and that the deputies of the

Third Estate should be fully representative by numbering as many as the

deputies of clergy and nobility together.

CHAPTER IX. THE AFTERMATH

Dusk of the following day was falling when the homing Andre-Louis

approached Gavrillac. Realizing fully what a hue and cry there would

presently be for the apostle of revolution who had summoned the people

of Nantes to arms, he desired as far as possible to conceal the fact

that he had been in that maritime city. Therefore he made a wide detour,

crossing the river at Bruz, and recrossing it a little above Chavagne,

so as to approach Gavrillac from the north, and create the impression

that he was returning from Rennes, whither he was known to have gone two

days ago.

Within a mile or so of the village he caught in the fading light his

first glimpse of a figure on horseback pacing slowly towards him. But

it was not until they had come within a few yards of each other, and he

observed that this cloaked figure was leaning forward to peer at him,

that he took much notice of it. And then he found himself challenged

almost at once by a woman’s voice.

“It is you, Andre--at last!”

He drew rein, mildly surprised, to be assailed by another question,

impatiently, anxiously asked.

“Where have you been?”

“Where have I been, Cousin Aline? Oh... seeing the world.”

“I have been patrolling this road since noon to-day waiting for

you.” She spoke breathlessly, in haste to explain. “A troop of the

marechaussee from Rennes descended upon Gavrillac this morning in quest

of you. They turned the chateau and the village inside out, and at

last discovered that you were due to return with a horse hired from the

Breton arme. So they have taken up their quarters at the inn to wait

for you. I have been here all the afternoon on the lookout to warn you

against walking into that trap.”

“My dear Aline! That I should have been the cause of so much concern and

trouble!”

“Never mind that. It is not important.”

“On the contrary; it is the most important part of what you tell me. It

is the rest that is unimportant.”

“Do you realize that they have come to arrest you?” she asked him, with

increasing impatience. “You are wanted for sedition, and upon a warrant

from M. de Lesdiguieres.”

“Sedition?” quoth he, and his thoughts flew to that business at Nantes.

It was impossible they could have had news of it in Rennes and acted

upon it in so short a time.

“Yes, sedition. The sedition of that wicked speech of yours at Rennes on

Wednesday.”

“Oh, that!” said he. “Pooh!” His note of relief might have told her,

had she been more attentive, that he had to fear the consequences of a

greater wickedness committed since. “Why, that was nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I almost suspect that the real intentions of these gentlemen of the

marechaussee have been misunderstood. Most probably they have come to

thank me on M. de Lesdiguieres’ behalf. I restrained the people when

they would have burnt the Palais and himself inside it.”

“After you had first incited them to do it. I suppose you were afraid of

your work. You drew back at the last moment. But you said things of

M. de Lesdiguieres, if you are correctly reported, which he will never

forgive.”

“I see,” said Andre-Louis, and he fell into thought.

But Mlle. de Kercadiou had already done what thinking was necessary, and

her alert young mind had settled all that was to be done.

“You must not go into Gavrillac,” she told him, “and you must get down

from your horse, and let me take it. I will stable it at the chateau

to-night. And sometime to-morrow afternoon, by when you should be well

away, I will return it to the Breton arme.”

“Oh, but that is impossible.”

“Impossible? Why?”

“For several reasons. One of them is that you haven’t considered what

will happen to you if you do such a thing.”

“To me? Do you suppose I am afraid of that pack of oafs sent by M.

Lesdiguieres? I have committed no sedition.”

“But it is almost as bad to give aid to one who is wanted for the crime.

That is the law.”

“What do I care for the law? Do you imagine that the law will presume to

touch me?”

“Of course there is that. You are sheltered by one of the abuses I

complained of at Rennes. I was forgetting.”

“Complain of it as much as you please, but meanwhile profit by it. Come,

Andre, do as I tell you. Get down from your horse.” And then, as he

still hesitated, she stretched out and caught him by the arm. Her voice

was vibrant with earnestness. “Andre, you don’t realize how serious is

your position. If these people take you, it is almost certain that you

will be hanged. Don’t you realize it? You must not go to Gavrillac.

You must go away at once, and lie completely lost for a time until this

blows over. Indeed, until my uncle can bring influence to bear to obtain

your pardon, you must keep in hiding.”

“That will be a long time, then,” said Andre-Louis. “M. de Kercadiou has

never cultivated friends at court.”

“There is M. de La Tour d’Azyr,” she reminded him, to his astonishment.

“That man!” he cried, and then he laughed. “But it was chiefly against

him that I aroused the resentment of the people of Rennes. I should have

known that all my speech was not reported to you.”

“It was, and that part of it among the rest.”

“Ah! And yet you are concerned to save me, the man who seeks the life of

your future husband at the hands either of the law or of the people? Or

is it, perhaps, that since you have seen his true nature revealed in the

murder of poor Philippe, you have changed your views on the subject of

becoming Marquise de La Tour d’Azyr?”

“You often show yourself without any faculty of deductive reasoning.”

“Perhaps. But hardly to the extent of imagining that M. de La Tour

d’Azyr will ever lift a finger to do as you suggest.”

“In which, as usual, you are wrong. He will certainly do so if I ask

him.”

“If you ask him?” Sheer horror rang in his voice.

“Why, yes. You see, I have not yet said that I will be Marquise de

La Tour d’Azyr. I am still considering. It is a position that has

its advantages. One of them is that it ensures a suitor’s complete

obedience.”

“So, so. I see the crooked logic of your mind. You might go so far as

to say to him: ‘Refuse me this, and I shall refuse to be your marquise.’

You would go so far as that?”

“At need, I might.”

“And do you not see the converse implication? Do you not see that

your hands would then be tied, that you would be wanting in honour if

afterwards you refused him? And do you think that I would consent to

anything that could so tie your hands? Do you think I want to see you

damned, Aline?”

Her hand fell away from his arm.

“Oh, you are mad!” she exclaimed, quite out of patience.

“Possibly. But I like my madness. There is a thrill in it unknown to

such sanity as yours. By your leave, Aline, I think I will ride on to

Gavrillac.”

“Andre, you must not! It is death to you!” In her alarm she backed her

horse, and pulled it across the road to bar his way.

It was almost completely night by now; but from behind the wrack of

clouds overhead a crescent moon sailed out to alleviate the darkness.

“Come, now,” she enjoined him. “Be reasonable. Do as I bid you. See,

there is a carriage coming up behind you. Do not let us be found here

together thus.”

He made up his mind quickly. He was not the man to be actuated by false

heroics about dying, and he had no fancy whatever for the gallows of M.

de Lesdiguieres’ providing. The immediate task that he had set himself

might be accomplished. He had made heard--and ringingly--the voice that

M. de La Tour d’Azyr imagined he had silenced. But he was very far from

having done with life.

“Aline, on one condition only.”

“And that?”

“That you swear to me you will never seek the aid of M. de La Tour

d’Azyr on my behalf.”

“Since you insist, and as time presses, I consent. And now ride on with

me as far as the lane. There is that carriage coming up.”

The lane to which she referred was one that branched off the road some

three hundred yards nearer the village and led straight up the hill

to the chateau itself. In silence they rode together towards it, and

together they turned into that thickly hedged and narrow bypath. At a

depth of fifty yards she halted him.

“Now!” she bade him.

Obediently he swung down from his horse, and surrendered the reins to

her.

“Aline,” he said, “I haven’t words in which to thank you.”

“It isn’t necessary,” said she.

“But I shall hope to repay you some day.”

“Nor is that necessary. Could I do less than I am doing? I do not want

to hear of you hanged, Andre; nor does my uncle, though he is very angry

with you.”

“I suppose he is.”

“And you can hardly be surprised. You were his delegate, his

representative. He depended upon you, and you have turned your coat. He

is rightly indignant, calls you a traitor, and swears that he will never

speak to you again. But he doesn’t want you hanged, Andre.”

“Then we are agreed on that at least, for I don’t want it myself.”

“I’ll make your peace with him. And now--good-bye, Andre. Send me a word

when you are safe.”

She held out a hand that looked ghostly in the faint light. He took it

and bore it to his lips.

“God bless you, Aline.”

She was gone, and he stood listening to the receding clopper-clop of

hooves until it grew faint in the distance. Then slowly, with shoulders

hunched and head sunk on his breast, he retraced his steps to the

main road, cogitating whither he should go. Quite suddenly he checked,

remembering with dismay that he was almost entirely without money. In

Brittany itself he knew of no dependable hiding-place, and as long as

he was in Brittany his peril must remain imminent. Yet to leave the

province, and to leave it as quickly as prudence dictated, horses would

be necessary. And how was he to procure horses, having no money beyond a

single louis d’or and a few pieces of silver?

There was also the fact that he was very weary. He had had little sleep

since Tuesday night, and not very much then; and much of the time had

been spent in the saddle, a wearing thing to one so little accustomed

to long rides. Worn as he was, it was unthinkable that he should go far

to-night. He might get as far as Chavagne, perhaps. But there he must

sup and sleep; and what, then, of to-morrow?

Had he but thought of it before, perhaps Aline might have been able to

assist him with the loan of a few louis. His first impulse now was to

follow her to the chateau. But prudence dismissed the notion. Before he

could reach her, he must be seen by servants, and word of his presence

would go forth.

There was no choice for him; he must tramp as far as Chavagne, find a

bed there, and leave to-morrow until it dawned. On the resolve he set

his face in the direction whence he had come. But again he paused.

Chavagne lay on the road to Rennes. To go that way was to plunge further

into danger. He would strike south again. At the foot of some meadows on

this side of the village there was a ferry that would put him across the

river. Thus he would avoid the village; and by placing the river between

himself and the immediate danger, he would obtain an added sense of

security.

A lane, turning out of the highroad, a quarter of a mile this side of

Gavrillac, led down to that ferry. By this lane some twenty minutes

later came Andre-Louis with dragging feet. He avoided the little cottage

of the ferryman, whose window was alight, and in the dark crept down to

the boat, intending if possible to put himself across. He felt for the

chain by which the boat was moored, and ran his fingers along this to

the point where it was fastened. Here to his dismay he found a padlock.

He stood up in the gloom and laughed silently. Of course he might have

known it. The ferry was the property of M. de La Tour d’Azyr, and not

likely to be left unfastened so that poor devils might cheat him of

seigneurial dues.

There being no possible alternative, he walked back to the cottage, and

rapped on the door. When it opened, he stood well back, and aside, out

of the shaft of light that issued thence.

“Ferry!” he rapped out, laconically.

The ferryman, a burly scoundrel well known to him, turned aside to pick

up a lantern, and came forth as he was bidden. As he stepped from the

little porch, he levelled the lantern so that its light fell on the face

of this traveller.

“My God!” he ejaculated.

“You realize, I see, that I am pressed,” said Andre-Louis, his eyes on

the fellow’s startled countenance.

“And well you may be with the gallows waiting for you at Rennes,”

growled the ferryman. “Since you’ve been so foolish as to come back to

Gavrillac, you had better go again as quickly as you can. I will say

nothing of having seen you.”

“I thank you, Fresnel. Your advice accords with my intention. That is

why I need the boat.”

“Ah, that, no,” said Fresnel, with determination. “I’ll hold my peace,

but it’s as much as my skin is worth to help you.

“You need not have seen my face. Forget that you have seen it.”

“I’ll do that, monsieur. But that is all I will do. I cannot put you

across the river.”

“Then give me the key of the boat, and I will put myself across.”

“That is the same thing. I cannot. I’ll hold my tongue, but I will not--I

dare not--help you.”

Andre-Louis looked a moment into that sullen, resolute face, and

understood. This man, living under the shadow of La Tour d’Azyr, dared

exercise no will that might be in conflict with the will of his dread

lord.

“Fresnel,” he said, quietly, “if, as you say, the gallows claim me, the

thing that has brought me to this extremity arises out of the shooting

of Mabey. Had not Mabey been murdered there would have been no need

for me to have raised my voice as I have done. Mabey was your friend, I

think. Will you for his sake lend me the little help I need to save my

neck?”

The man kept his glance averted, and the cloud of sullenness deepened on

his face.

“I would if I dared, but I dare not.” Then, quite suddenly he became

angry. It was as if in anger he sought support. “Don’t you understand

that I dare not? Would you have a poor man risk his life for you? What

have you or yours ever done for me that you should ask that? You do not

cross to-night in my ferry. Understand that, monsieur, and go at once--go

before I remember that it may be dangerous even to have talked to you

and not give information. Go!”

He turned on his heel to reenter his cottage, and a wave of hopelessness

swept over Andre-Louis.

But in a second it was gone. The man must be compelled, and he had the

means. He bethought him of a pistol pressed upon him by Le Chapelier at

the moment of his leaving Rennes, a gift which at the time he had almost

disdained. True, it was not loaded, and he had no ammunition. But how

was Fresnel to know that?

He acted quickly. As with his right hand he pulled it from his pocket,

with his left he caught the ferryman by the shoulder, and swung him

round.

“What do you want now?” Fresnel demanded angrily. “Haven’t I told you

that I...”

He broke off short. The muzzle of the pistol was within a foot of his

eyes.

“I want the key of the boat. That is all, Fresnel. And you can either

give it me at once, or I’ll take it after I have burnt your brains. I

should regret to kill you, but I shall not hesitate. It is your life

against mine, Fresnel; and you’ll not find it strange that if one of us

must die I prefer that it shall be you.”

Fresnel dipped a hand into his pocket, and fetched thence a key. He held

it out to Andre-Louis in fingers that shook--more in anger than in fear.

“I yield to violence,” he said, showing his teeth like a snarling dog.

“But don’t imagine that it will greatly profit you.”

Andre-Louis took the key. His pistol remained levelled.

“You threaten me, I think,” he said. “It is not difficult to read your

threat. The moment I am gone, you will run to inform against me. You

will set the marechaussee on my heels to overtake me.”

“No, no!” cried the other. He perceived his peril. He read his doom in

the cold, sinister note on which Andre-Louis addressed him, and grew

afraid. “I swear to you, monsieur, that I have no such intention.”

“I think I had better make quite sure of you.”

“O my God! Have mercy, monsieur!” The knave was in a palsy of terror. “I

mean you no harm--I swear to Heaven I mean you no harm. I will not say a

word. I will not...”

“I would rather depend upon your silence than your assurances.

Still, you shall have your chance. I am a fool, perhaps, but I have a

reluctance to shed blood. Go into the house, Fresnel. Go, man. I follow

you.”

In the shabby main room of that dwelling, Andre-Louis halted him again.

“Get me a length of rope,” he commanded, and was readily obeyed.

Five minutes later Fresnel was securely bound to a chair, and

effectively silenced by a very uncomfortable gag improvised out of a

block of wood and a muffler.

On the threshold the departing Andre-Louis turned.

“Good-night, Fresnel,” he said. Fierce eyes glared mute hatred at him.

“It is unlikely that your ferry will be required again to-night. But

some one is sure to come to your relief quite early in the morning.

Until then bear your discomfort with what fortitude you can,

remembering that you have brought it entirely upon yourself by your

uncharitableness. If you spend the night considering that, the lesson

should not be lost upon you. By morning you may even have grown so

charitable as not to know who it was that tied you up. Good-night.”

He stepped out and closed the door.

To unlock the ferry, and pull himself across the swift-running waters,

on which the faint moonlight was making a silver ripple, were matters

that engaged not more than six or seven minutes. He drove the nose of

the boat through the decaying sedges that fringed the southern bank

of the stream, sprang ashore, and made the little craft secure. Then,

missing the footpath in the dark, he struck out across a sodden meadow

in quest of the road.

BOOK II: THE BUSKIN

CHAPTER I. THE TRESPASSERS

Coming presently upon the Redon road, Andre-Louis, obeying instinct

rather than reason, turned his face to the south, and plodded wearily

and mechanically forward. He had no clear idea of whither he was going,

or of whither he should go. All that imported at the moment was to put

as great a distance as possible between Gavrillac and himself.

He had a vague, half-formed notion of returning to Nantes; and there, by

employing the newly found weapon of his oratory, excite the people into

sheltering him as the first victim of the persecution he had foreseen,

and against which he had sworn them to take up arms. But the idea was

one which he entertained merely as an indefinite possibility upon which

he felt no real impulse to act.

Meanwhile he chuckled at the thought of Fresnel as he had last seen him,

with his muffled face and glaring eyeballs. “For one who was anything

but a man of action,” he writes, “I felt that I had acquitted myself

none so badly.” It is a phrase that recurs at intervals in his sketchy

“Confessions.” Constantly is he reminding you that he is a man of mental

and not physical activities, and apologizing when dire necessity

drives him into acts of violence. I suspect this insistence upon

his philosophic detachment--for which I confess he had justification

enough--to betray his besetting vanity.

With increasing fatigue came depression and self-criticism. He had

stupidly overshot his mark in insultingly denouncing M. de Lesdiguieres.

“It is much better,” he says somewhere, “to be wicked than to be stupid.

Most of this world’s misery is the fruit not as priests tell us of

wickedness, but of stupidity.” And we know that of all stupidities he

considered anger the most deplorable. Yet he had permitted himself to

be angry with a creature like M. de Lesdiguieres--a lackey, a fribble,

a nothing, despite his potentialities for evil. He could perfectly have

discharged his self-imposed mission without arousing the vindictive

resentment of the King’s Lieutenant.

He beheld himself vaguely launched upon life with the riding-suit in

which he stood, a single louis d’or and a few pieces of silver for all

capital, and a knowledge of law which had been inadequate to preserve

him from the consequences of infringing it.

He had, in addition--but these things that were to be the real salvation

of him he did not reckon--his gift of laughter, sadly repressed of late,

and the philosophic outlook and mercurial temperament which are the

stock-in-trade of your adventurer in all ages.

Meanwhile he tramped mechanically on through the night, until he felt

that he could tramp no more. He had skirted the little township of

Guichen, and now within a half-mile of Guignen, and with Gavrillac a

good seven miles behind him, his legs refused to carry him any farther.

He was midway across the vast common to the north of Guignen when

he came to a halt. He had left the road, and taken heedlessly to

the footpath that struck across the waste of indifferent pasture

interspersed with clumps of gorse. A stone’s throw away on his right the

common was bordered by a thorn hedge. Beyond this loomed a tall building

which he knew to be an open barn, standing on the edge of a long stretch

of meadowland. That dark, silent shadow it may have been that had

brought him to a standstill, suggesting shelter to his subconsciousness.

A moment he hesitated; then he struck across towards a spot where a gap

in the hedge was closed by a five-barred gate. He pushed the gate open,

went through the gap, and stood now before the barn. It was as big as

a house, yet consisted of no more than a roof carried upon half a dozen

tall, brick pillars. But densely packed under that roof was a great

stack of hay that promised a warm couch on so cold a night. Stout

timbers had been built into the brick pillars, with projecting ends to

serve as ladders by which the labourer might climb to pack or withdraw

hay. With what little strength remained him, Andre-Louis climbed by one

of these and landed safely at the top, where he was forced to kneel, for

lack of room to stand upright. Arrived there, he removed his coat and

neckcloth, his sodden boots and stockings. Next he cleared a trough for

his body, and lying down in it, covered himself to the neck with the hay

he had removed. Within five minutes he was lost to all worldly cares and

soundly asleep.

When next he awakened, the sun was already high in the heavens, from

which he concluded that the morning was well advanced; and this before

he realized quite where he was or how he came there. Then to his

awakening senses came a drone of voices close at hand, to which at first

he paid little heed. He was deliciously refreshed, luxuriously drowsy

and luxuriously warm.

But as consciousness and memory grew more full, he raised his head clear

of the hay that he might free both ears to listen, his pulses faintly

quickened by the nascent fear that those voices might bode him no good.

Then he caught the reassuring accents of a woman, musical and silvery,

though laden with alarm.

“Ah, mon Dieu, Leandre, let us separate at once. If it should be my

father...”

And upon this a man’s voice broke in, calm and reassuring:

“No, no, Climene; you are mistaken. There is no one coming. We are quite

safe. Why do you start at shadows?”

“Ah, Leandre, if he should find us here together! I tremble at the very

thought.”

More was not needed to reassure Andre-Louis. He had overheard enough to

know that this was but the case of a pair of lovers who, with less to

fear of life, were yet--after the manner of their kind--more timid of

heart than he. Curiosity drew him from his warm trough to the edge of

the hay. Lying prone, he advanced his head and peered down.

In the space of cropped meadow between the barn and the hedge stood a

man and a woman, both young. The man was a well-set-up, comely fellow,

with a fine head of chestnut hair tied in a queue by a broad bow of

black satin. He was dressed with certain tawdry attempts at ostentatious

embellishments, which did not prepossess one at first glance in his

favour. His coat of a fashionable cut was of faded plum-coloured velvet

edged with silver lace, whose glory had long since departed. He affected

ruffles, but for want of starch they hung like weeping willows over

hands that were fine and delicate. His breeches were of plain black

cloth, and his black stockings were of cotton--matters entirely out of

harmony with his magnificent coat. His shoes, stout and serviceable,

were decked with buckles of cheap, lack-lustre paste. But for his

engaging and ingenuous countenance, Andre-Louis must have set him down

as a knight of that order which lives dishonestly by its wits. As it

was, he suspended judgment whilst pushing investigation further by a

study of the girl. At the outset, be it confessed that it was a study

that attracted him prodigiously. And this notwithstanding the fact that,

bookish and studious as were his ways, and in despite of his years, it

was far from his habit to waste consideration on femininity.

The child--she was no more than that, perhaps twenty at the

most--possessed, in addition to the allurements of face and shape that

went very near perfection, a sparkling vivacity and a grace of movement

the like of which Andre-Louis did not remember ever before to have

beheld assembled in one person. And her voice too--that musical, silvery

voice that had awakened him--possessed in its exquisite modulations an

allurement of its own that must have been irresistible, he thought, in

the ugliest of her sex. She wore a hooded mantle of green cloth, and the

hood being thrown back, her dainty head was all revealed to him. There

were glints of gold struck by the morning sun from her light nut-brown

hair that hung in a cluster of curls about her oval face. Her complexion

was of a delicacy that he could compare only with a rose petal. He could

not at that distance discern the colour of her eyes, but he guessed them

blue, as he admired the sparkle of them under the fine, dark line of

eyebrows.

He could not have told you why, but he was conscious that it aggrieved

him to find her so intimate with this pretty young fellow, who was

partly clad, as it appeared, in the cast-offs of a nobleman. He could

not guess her station, but the speech that reached him was cultured in

tone and word. He strained to listen.

“I shall know no peace, Leandre, until we are safely wedded,” she was

saying. “Not until then shall I count myself beyond his reach. And yet

if we marry without his consent, we but make trouble for ourselves, and

of gaining his consent I almost despair.”

Evidently, thought Andre-Louis, her father was a man of sense, who saw

through the shabby finery of M. Leandre, and was not to be dazzled by

cheap paste buckles.

“My dear Climene,” the young man was answering her, standing squarely

before her, and holding both her hands, “you are wrong to despond. If I

do not reveal to you all the stratagem that I have prepared to win the

consent of your unnatural parent, it is because I am loath to rob you of

the pleasure of the surprise that is in store. But place your faith in

me, and in that ingenious friend of whom I have spoken, and who should

be here at any moment.”

The stilted ass! Had he learnt that speech by heart in advance, or was

he by nature a pedantic idiot who expressed himself in this set and

formal manner? How came so sweet a blossom to waste her perfumes on such

a prig? And what a ridiculous name the creature owned!

Thus Andre-Louis to himself from his observatory. Meanwhile, she was

speaking.

“That is what my heart desires, Leandre, but I am beset by fears lest

your stratagem should be too late. I am to marry this horrible Marquis

of Sbrufadelli this very day. He arrives by noon. He comes to sign the

contract--to make me the Marchioness of Sbrufadelli. Oh!” It was a cry of

pain from that tender young heart. “The very name burns my lips. If it

were mine I could never utter it--never! The man is so detestable. Save

me, Leandre. Save me! You are my only hope.”

Andre-Louis was conscious of a pang of disappointment. She failed to

soar to the heights he had expected of her. She was evidently infected

by the stilted manner of her ridiculous lover. There was an atrocious

lack of sincerity about her words. They touched his mind, but left his

heart unmoved. Perhaps this was because of his antipathy to M. Leandre

and to the issue involved.

So her father was marrying her to a marquis! That implied birth on

her side. And yet she was content to pair off with this dull young

adventurer in the tarnished lace! It was, he supposed, the sort of thing

to be expected of a sex that all philosophy had taught him to regard as

the maddest part of a mad species.

“It shall never be!” M. Leandre was storming passionately. “Never! I

swear it!” And he shook his puny fist at the blue vault of heaven--Ajax

defying Jupiter. “Ah, but here comes our subtle friend...” (Andre-Louis

did not catch the name, M. Leandre having at that moment turned to face

the gap in the hedge.) “He will bring us news, I know.”

Andre-Louis looked also in the direction of the gap. Through it emerged

a lean, slight man in a rusty cloak and a three-cornered hat worn well

down over his nose so as to shade his face. And when presently he

doffed this hat and made a sweeping bow to the young lovers, Andre-Louis

confessed to himself that had he been cursed with such a hangdog

countenance he would have worn his hat in precisely such a manner, so

as to conceal as much of it as possible. If M. Leandre appeared to

be wearing, in part at least, the cast-offs of nobleman, the newcomer

appeared to be wearing the cast-offs of M. Leandre. Yet despite his vile

clothes and viler face, with its three days’ growth of beard, the

fellow carried himself with a certain air; he positively strutted as he

advanced, and he made a leg in a manner that was courtly and practised.

“Monsieur,” said he, with the air of a conspirator, “the time for action

has arrived, and so has the Marquis... That is why.”

The young lovers sprang apart in consternation; Climene with clasped

hands, parted lips, and a bosom that raced distractingly under its white

fichu-menteur; M. Leandre agape, the very picture of foolishness and

dismay.

Meanwhile the newcomer rattled on. “I was at the inn an hour ago when

he descended there, and I studied him attentively whilst he was at

breakfast. Having done so, not a single doubt remains me of our success.

As for what he looks like, I could entertain you at length upon the

fashion in which nature has designed his gross fatuity. But that is no

matter. We are concerned with what he is, with the wit of him. And I

tell you confidently that I find him so dull and stupid that you may be

confident he will tumble headlong into each and all of the traps I have

so cunningly prepared for him.”

“Tell me, tell me! Speak!” Climene implored him, holding out her hands

in a supplication no man of sensibility could have resisted. And then

on the instant she caught her breath on a faint scream. “My father!” she

exclaimed, turning distractedly from one to the other of those two. “He

is coming! We are lost!”

“You must fly, Climene!” said M. Leandre.

“Too late!” she sobbed. “Too late! He is here.”

“Calm, mademoiselle, calm!” the subtle friend was urging her. “Keep calm

and trust to me. I promise you that all shall be well.”

“Oh!” cried M. Leandre, limply. “Say what you will, my friend, this is

ruin--the end of all our hopes. Your wits will never extricate us from

this. Never!”

Through the gap strode now an enormous man with an inflamed moon

face and a great nose, decently dressed after the fashion of a solid

bourgeois. There was no mistaking his anger, but the expression that it

found was an amazement to Andre-Louis.

“Leandre, you’re an imbecile! Too much phlegm, too much phlegm! Your

words wouldn’t convince a ploughboy! Have you considered what they mean

at all? Thus,” he cried, and casting his round hat from him in a broad

gesture, he took his stand at M. Leandre’s side, and repeated the very

words that Leandre had lately uttered, what time the three observed him

coolly and attentively.

“Oh, say what you will, my friend, this is ruin--the end of all our

hopes. Your wits will never extricate us from this. Never!”

A frenzy of despair vibrated in his accents. He swung again to face M.

Leandre. “Thus,” he bade him contemptuously. “Let the passion of your

hopelessness express itself in your voice. Consider that you are not

asking Scaramouche here whether he has put a patch in your breeches. You

are a despairing lover expressing...”

He checked abruptly, startled. Andre-Louis, suddenly realizing what was

afoot, and how duped he had been, had loosed his laughter. The sound

of it pealing and booming uncannily under the great roof that so

immediately confined him was startling to those below.

The fat man was the first to recover, and he announced it after his own

fashion in one of the ready sarcasms in which he habitually dealt.

“Hark!” he cried, “the very gods laugh at you, Leandre.” Then he

addressed the roof of the barn and its invisible tenant. “Hi! You

there!”

Andre-Louis revealed himself by a further protrusion of his tousled

head.

“Good-morning,” said he, pleasantly. Rising now on his knees, his

horizon was suddenly extended to include the broad common beyond the

hedge. He beheld there an enormous and very battered travelling chaise,

a cart piled up with timbers partly visible under the sheet of oiled

canvas that covered them, and a sort of house on wheels equipped with

a tin chimney, from which the smoke was slowly curling. Three heavy

Flemish horses and a couple of donkeys--all of them hobbled--were

contentedly cropping the grass in the neighbourhood of these vehicles.

These, had he perceived them sooner, must have given him the clue to the

queer scene that had been played under his eyes. Beyond the hedge other

figures were moving. Three at that moment came crowding into the

gap--a saucy-faced girl with a tip-tilted nose, whom he supposed to be

Columbine, the soubrette; a lean, active youngster, who must be the

lackey Harlequin; and another rather loutish youth who might be a zany

or an apothecary.

All this he took in at a comprehensive glance that consumed no more

time than it had taken him to say good-morning. To that good-morning

Pantaloon replied in a bellow:

“What the devil are you doing up there?”

“Precisely the same thing that you are doing down there,” was the

answer. “I am trespassing.”

“Eh?” said Pantaloon, and looked at his companions, some of the

assurance beaten out of his big red face. Although the thing was one

that they did habitually, to hear it called by its proper name was

disconcerting.

“Whose land is this?” he asked, with diminishing assurance.

Andre-Louis answered, whilst drawing on his stockings. “I believe it to

be the property of the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr.”

“That’s a high-sounding name. Is the gentleman severe?”

“The gentleman,” said Andre-Louis, “is the devil; or rather, I should

prefer to say upon reflection, that the devil is a gentleman by

comparison.”

“And yet,” interposed the villainous-looking fellow who played

Scaramouche, “by your own confessing you don’t hesitate, yourself, to

trespass upon his property.”

“Ah, but then, you see, I am a lawyer. And lawyers are notoriously

unable to observe the law, just as actors are notoriously unable to act.

Moreover, sir, Nature imposes her limits upon us, and Nature conquers

respect for law as she conquers all else. Nature conquered me last night

when I had got as far as this. And so I slept here without regard for

the very high and puissant Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr. At the same time,

M. Scaramouche, you’ll observe that I did not flaunt my trespass quite

as openly as you and your companions.”

Having donned his boots, Andre-Louis came nimbly to the ground in his

shirt-sleeves, his riding-coat over his arm. As he stood there to don

it, the little cunning eyes of the heavy father conned him in detail.

Observing that his clothes, if plain, were of a good fashion, that his

shirt was of fine cambric, and that he expressed himself like a man

of culture, such as he claimed to be, M. Pantaloon was disposed to be

civil.

“I am very grateful to you for the warning, sir...” he was beginning.

“Act upon it, my friend. The gardes-champetres of M. d’Azyr have orders

to fire on trespassers. Imitate me, and decamp.”

They followed him upon the instant through that gap in the hedge to the

encampment on the common. There Andre-Louis took his leave of them.

But as he was turning away he perceived a young man of the company

performing his morning toilet at a bucket placed upon one of the wooden

steps at the tail of the house on wheels. A moment he hesitated, then he

turned frankly to M. Pantaloon, who was still at his elbow.

“If it were not unconscionable to encroach so far upon your hospitality,

monsieur,” said he, “I would beg leave to imitate that very excellent

young gentleman before I leave you.”

“But, my dear sir!” Good-nature oozed out of every pore of the fat

body of the master player. “It is nothing at all. But, by all means.

Rhodomont will provide what you require. He is the dandy of the company

in real life, though a fire-eater on the stage. Hi, Rhodomont!”

The young ablutionist straightened his long body from the right angle in

which it had been bent over the bucket, and looked out through a foam

of soapsuds. Pantaloon issued an order, and Rhodomont, who was indeed as

gentle and amiable off the stage as he was formidable and terrible upon

it, made the stranger free of the bucket in the friendliest manner.

So Andre-Louis once more removed his neckcloth and his coat, and rolled

up the sleeves of his fine shirt, whilst Rhodomont procured him soap,

a towel, and presently a broken comb, and even a greasy hair-ribbon,

in case the gentleman should have lost his own. This last Andre-Louis

declined, but the comb he gratefully accepted, and having presently

washed himself clean, stood, with the towel flung over his left

shoulder, restoring order to his dishevelled locks before a broken piece

of mirror affixed to the door of the travelling house.

He was standing thus, the gentle Rhodomont babbled aimlessly at his

side, when his ears caught the sound of hooves. He looked over his

shoulder carelessly, and then stood frozen, with uplifted comb and

loosened mouth. Away across the common, on the road that bordered it, he

beheld a party of seven horsemen in the blue coats with red facings of

the marechaussee.

Not for a moment did he doubt what was the quarry of this prowling

gendarmerie. It was as if the chill shadow of the gallows had fallen

suddenly upon him.

And then the troop halted, abreast with them, and the sergeant leading

it sent his bawling voice across the common.

“Hi, there! Hi!” His tone rang with menace.

Every member of the company--and there were some twelve in all--stood at

gaze. Pantaloon advanced a step or two, stalking, his head thrown back,

his manner that of a King’s Lieutenant.

“Now, what the devil’s this?” quoth he, but whether of Fate or Heaven or

the sergeant, was not clear.

There was a brief colloquy among the horsemen, then they came trotting

across the common straight towards the players’ encampment.

Andre-Louis had remained standing at the tail of the travelling

house. He was still passing the comb through his straggling hair,

but mechanically and unconsciously. His mind was all intent upon the

advancing troop, his wits alert and gathered together for a leap in

whatever direction should be indicated.

Still in the distance, but evidently impatient, the sergeant bawled a

question.

“Who gave you leave to encamp here?”

It was a question that reassured Andre-Louis not at all. He was not

deceived by it into supposing or even hoping that the business of these

men was merely to round up vagrants and trespassers. That was no part of

their real duty; it was something done in passing--done, perhaps, in the

hope of levying a tax of their own. It was very long odds that they

were from Rennes, and that their real business was the hunting down of

a young lawyer charged with sedition. Meanwhile Pantaloon was shouting

back.

“Who gave us leave, do you say? What leave? This is communal land, free

to all.”

The sergeant laughed unpleasantly, and came on, his troop following.

“There is,” said a voice at Pantaloon’s elbow, “no such thing as

communal land in the proper sense in all M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s vast

domain. This is a terre censive, and his bailiffs collect his dues from

all who send their beasts to graze here.”

Pantaloon turned to behold at his side Andre-Louis in his shirt-sleeves,

and without a neckcloth, the towel still trailing over his left

shoulder, a comb in his hand, his hair half dressed.

“God of God!” swore Pantaloon. “But it is an ogre, this Marquis de La

Tour d’Azyr!”

“I have told you already what I think of him,” said Andre-Louis. “As for

these fellows you had better let me deal with them. I have experience

of their kind.” And without waiting for Pantaloon’s consent, Andre-Louis

stepped forward to meet the advancing men of the marechaussee. He had

realized that here boldness alone could save him.

When a moment later the sergeant pulled up his horse alongside of this

half-dressed young man, Andre-Louis combed his hair what time he looked

up with a half smile, intended to be friendly, ingenuous, and disarming.

In spite of it the sergeant hailed him gruffly: “Are you the leader of

this troop of vagabonds?”

“Yes... that is to say, my father, there, is really the leader.” And he

jerked a thumb in the direction of M. Pantaloon, who stood at gaze out

of earshot in the background. “What is your pleasure, captain?”

“My pleasure is to tell you that you are very likely to be gaoled for

this, all the pack of you.” His voice was loud and bullying. It carried

across the common to the ears of every member of the company, and

brought them all to stricken attention where they stood. The lot of

strolling players was hard enough without the addition of gaolings.

“But how so, my captain? This is communal land free to all.”

“It is nothing of the kind.”

“Where are the fences?” quoth Andre-Louis, waving the hand that held the

comb, as if to indicate the openness of the place.

“Fences!” snorted the sergeant. “What have fences to do with the matter?

This is terre censive. There is no grazing here save by payment of dues

to the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr.”

“But we are not grazing,” quoth the innocent Andre-Louis.

“To the devil with you, zany! You are not grazing! But your beasts are

grazing!”

“They eat so little,” Andre-Louis apologized, and again essayed his

ingratiating smile.

The sergeant grew more terrible than ever. “That is not the point. The

point is that you are committing what amounts to a theft, and there’s

the gaol for thieves.”

“Technically, I suppose you are right,” sighed Andre-Louis, and fell to

combing his hair again, still looking up into the sergeant’s face. “But

we have sinned in ignorance. We are grateful to you for the warning.”

He passed the comb into his left hand, and with his right fumbled in

his breeches’ pocket, whence there came a faint jingle of coins. “We are

desolated to have brought you out of your way. Perhaps for their trouble

your men would honour us by stopping at the next inn to drink the health

of... of this M. de La Tour d’ Azyr, or any other health that they think

proper.”

Some of the clouds lifted from the sergeant’s brow. But not yet all.

“Well, well,” said he, gruffly. “But you must decamp, you understand.”

He leaned from the saddle to bring his recipient hand to a convenient

distance. Andre-Louis placed in it a three-livre piece.

“In half an hour,” said Andre-Louis.

“Why in half an hour? Why not at once?”

“Oh, but time to break our fast.”

They looked at each other. The sergeant next considered the broad piece

of silver in his palm. Then at last his features relaxed from their

sternness.

“After all,” said he, “it is none of our business to play the tipstaves

for M. de La Tour d’Azyr. We are of the marechaussee from Rennes.”

Andre-Louis’ eyelids played him false by flickering. “But if you linger,

look out for the gardes-champetres of the Marquis. You’ll find them not

at all accommodating. Well, well--a good appetite to you, monsieur,” said

he, in valediction.

“A pleasant ride, my captain,” answered Andre-Louis.

The sergeant wheeled his horse about, his troop wheeled with him. They

were starting off, when he reined up again.

“You, monsieur!” he called over his shoulder. In a bound Andre-Louis was

beside his stirrup. “We are in quest of a scoundrel named Andre-Louis

Moreau, from Gavrillac, a fugitive from justice wanted for the gallows

on a matter of sedition. You’ve seen nothing, I suppose, of a man whose

movements seemed to you suspicious?”

“Indeed, we have,” said Andre-Louis, very boldly, his face eager with

consciousness of the ability to oblige.

“You have?” cried the sergeant, in a ringing voice. “Where? When?”

“Yesterday evening in the neighbourhood of Guignen...”

“Yes, yes,” the sergeant felt himself hot upon the trail.

“There was a fellow who seemed very fearful of being recognized ... a

man of fifty or thereabouts...”

“Fifty!” cried the sergeant, and his face fell. “Bah! This man of ours

is no older than yourself, a thin wisp of a fellow of about your own

height and of black hair, just like your own, by the description. Keep a

lookout on your travels, master player. The King’s Lieutenant in Rennes

has sent us word this morning that he will pay ten louis to any one

giving information that will lead to this scoundrel’s arrest. So there’s

ten louis to be earned by keeping your eyes open, and sending word to

the nearest justices. It would be a fine windfall for you, that.”

“A fine windfall, indeed, captain,” answered Andre-Louis, laughing.

But the sergeant had touched his horse with the spur, and was already

trotting off in the wake of his men. Andre-Louis continued to laugh,

quite silently, as he sometimes did when the humour of a jest was

peculiarly keen.

Then he turned slowly about, and came back towards Pantaloon and the

rest of the company, who were now all grouped together, at gaze.

Pantaloon advanced to meet him with both hands out-held. For a moment

Andre-Louis thought he was about to be embraced.

“We hail you our saviour!” the big man declaimed. “Already the shadow

of the gaol was creeping over us, chilling us to the very marrow. For

though we be poor, yet are we all honest folk and not one of us has ever

suffered the indignity of prison. Nor is there one of us would survive

it. But for you, my friend, it might have happened. What magic did you

work?”

“The magic that is to be worked in France with a King’s portrait. The

French are a very loyal nation, as you will have observed. They love

their King--and his portrait even better than himself, especially when it

is wrought in gold. But even in silver it is respected. The sergeant

was so overcome by the sight of that noble visage--on a three-livre

piece--that his anger vanished, and he has gone his ways leaving us to

depart in peace.”

“Ah, true! He said we must decamp. About it, my lads! Come, come...”

“But not until after breakfast,” said Andre-Louis. “A half-hour for

breakfast was conceded us by that loyal fellow, so deeply was he

touched. True, he spoke of possible gardes-champetres. But he knows as

well as I do that they are not seriously to be feared, and that if

they came, again the King’s portrait--wrought in copper this time--would

produce the same melting effect upon them. So, my dear M. Pantaloon,

break your fast at your ease. I can smell your cooking from here,

and from the smell I argue that there is no need to wish you a good

appetite.”

“My friend, my saviour!” Pantaloon flung a great arm about the young

man’s shoulders. “You shall stay to breakfast with us.”

“I confess to a hope that you would ask me,” said Andre-Louis.

CHAPTER II. THE SERVICE OF THESPIS

They were, thought Andre-Louis, as he sat down to breakfast with them

behind the itinerant house, in the bright sunshine that tempered the

cold breath of that November morning, an odd and yet an attractive crew.

An air of gaiety pervaded them. They affected to have no cares, and made

merry over the trials and tribulations of their nomadic life. They

were curiously, yet amiably, artificial; histrionic in their manner

of discharging the most commonplace of functions; exaggerated in their

gestures; stilted and affected in their speech. They seemed, indeed, to

belong to a world apart, a world of unreality which became real only

on the planks of their stage, in the glare of their footlights.

Good-fellowship bound them one to another; and Andre-Louis reflected

cynically that this harmony amongst them might be the cause of their

apparent unreality. In the real world, greedy striving and the emulation

of acquisitiveness preclude such amity as was present here.

They numbered exactly eleven, three women and eight men; and they

addressed each other by their stage names: names which denoted their

several types, and never--or only very slightly--varied, no matter what

might be the play that they performed.

“We are,” Pantaloon informed him, “one of those few remaining staunch

bands of real players, who uphold the traditions of the old Italian

Commedia dell’ Arte. Not for us to vex our memories and stultify our

wit with the stilted phrases that are the fruit of a wretched author’s

lucubrations. Each of us is in detail his own author in a measure as he

develops the part assigned to him. We are improvisers--improvisers of the

old and noble Italian school.”

“I had guessed as much,” said Andre-Louis, “when I discovered you

rehearsing your improvisations.”

Pantaloon frowned.

“I have observed, young sir, that your humour inclines to the pungent,

not to say the acrid. It is very well. It is I suppose, the humour that

should go with such a countenance. But it may lead you astray, as

in this instance. That rehearsal--a most unusual thing with us--was

necessitated by the histrionic rawness of our Leandre. We are seeking

to inculcate into him by training an art with which Nature neglected to

endow him against his present needs. Should he continue to fail in doing

justice to our schooling... But we will not disturb our present harmony

with the unpleasant anticipation of misfortunes which we still hope

to avert. We love our Leandre, for all his faults. Let me make you

acquainted with our company.”

And he proceeded to introduction in detail. He pointed out the long and

amiable Rhodomont, whom Andre-Louis already knew.

“His length of limb and hooked nose were his superficial qualifications

to play roaring captains,” Pantaloon explained. “His lungs have

justified our choice. You should hear him roar. At first we called him

Spavento or Epouvapte. But that was unworthy of so great an artist. Not

since the superb Mondor amazed the world has so thrasonical a bully been

seen upon the stage. So we conferred upon him the name of Rhodomont

that Mondor made famous; and I give you my word, as an actor and a

gentleman--for I am a gentleman, monsieur, or was--that he has justified

us.”

His little eyes beamed in his great swollen face as he turned their gaze

upon the object of his encomium. The terrible Rhodomont, confused by so

much praise, blushed like a schoolgirl as he met the solemn scrutiny of

Andre-Louis.

“Then here we have Scaramouche, whom also you already know. Sometimes he

is Scapin and sometimes Coviello, but in the main Scaramouche, to which

let me tell you he is best suited--sometimes too well suited, I think.

For he is Scaramouche not only on the stage, but also in the world. He

has a gift of sly intrigue, an art of setting folk by the ears, combined

with an impudent aggressiveness upon occasion when he considers himself

safe from reprisals. He is Scaramouche, the little skirmisher, to the

very life. I could say more. But I am by disposition charitable and

loving to all mankind.”

“As the priest said when he kissed the serving-wench,” snarled

Scaramouche, and went on eating.

“His humour, like your own, you will observe, is acrid,” said Pantaloon.

He passed on. “Then that rascal with the lumpy nose and the grinning

bucolic countenance is, of course, Pierrot. Could he be aught else?”

“I could play lovers a deal better,” said the rustic cherub.

“That is the delusion proper to Pierrot,” said Pantaloon,

contemptuously. “This heavy, beetle-browed ruffian, who has grown old in

sin, and whose appetite increases with his years, is Polichinelle. Each

one, as you perceive, is designed by Nature for the part he plays. This

nimble, freckled jackanapes is Harlequin; not your spangled Harlequin

into which modern degeneracy has debased that first-born of Momus,

but the genuine original zany of the Commedia, ragged and patched, an

impudent, cowardly, blackguardly clown.”

“Each one of us, as you perceive,” said Harlequin, mimicking the leader

of the troupe, “is designed by Nature for the part he plays.”

“Physically, my friend, physically only, else we should not have so much

trouble in teaching this beautiful Leandre to become a lover. Then

we have Pasquariel here, who is sometimes an apothecary, sometimes a

notary, sometimes a lackey--an amiable, accommodating fellow. He is also

an excellent cook, being a child of Italy, that land of gluttons. And

finally, you have myself, who as the father of the company very properly

play as Pantaloon the roles of father. Sometimes, it is true, I am a

deluded husband, and sometimes an ignorant, self-sufficient doctor.

But it is rarely that I find it necessary to call myself other than

Pantaloon. For the rest, I am the only one who has a name--a real name.

It is Binet, monsieur.

“And now for the ladies... First in order of seniority we have Madame

there.” He waved one of his great hands towards a buxom, smiling blonde

of five-and-forty, who was seated on the lowest of the steps of the

travelling house. “She is our Duegne, or Mother, or Nurse, as the case

requires. She is known quite simply and royally as Madame. If she ever

had a name in the world, she has long since forgotten it, which is

perhaps as well. Then we have this pert jade with the tip-tilted nose

and the wide mouth, who is of course our soubrette Columbine, and

lastly, my daughter Climene, an amoureuse of talents not to be matched

outside the Comedie Francaise, of which she has the bad taste to aspire

to become a member.”

The lovely Climene--and lovely indeed she was--tossed her nut-brown

curls and laughed as she looked across at Andre-Louis. Her eyes, he had

perceived by now, were not blue, but hazel.

“Do not believe him, monsieur. Here I am queen, and I prefer to be queen

here rather than a slave in Paris.”

“Mademoiselle,” said Andre-Louis, quite solemnly, “will be queen

wherever she condescends to reign.”

Her only answer was a timid--timid and yet alluring--glance from under

fluttering lids. Meanwhile her father was bawling at the comely young

man who played lovers--“You hear, Leandre! That is the sort of speech you

should practise.”

Leandre raised languid eyebrows. “That?” quoth he, and shrugged. “The

merest commonplace.”

Andre-Louis laughed approval. “M. Leandre is of a readier wit than you

concede. There is subtlety in pronouncing it a commonplace to call Mlle.

Climene a queen.”

Some laughed, M. Binet amongst them, with good-humoured mockery.

“You think he has the wit to mean it thus? Bah! His subtleties are all

unconscious.”

The conversation becoming general, Andre-Louis soon learnt what yet

there was to learn of this strolling band. They were on their way to

Guichen, where they hoped to prosper at the fair that was to open on

Monday next. They would make their triumphal entry into the town at

noon, and setting up their stage in the old market, they would give

their first performance that same Saturday night, in a new canevas--or

scenario--of M. Binet’s own, which should set the rustics gaping. And

then M. Binet fetched a sigh, and addressed himself to the elderly,

swarthy, beetle-browed Polichinelle, who sat on his left.

“But we shall miss Felicien,” said he. “Indeed, I do not know what we

shall do without him.”

“Oh, we shall contrive,” said Polichinelle, with his mouth full.

“So you always say, whatever happens, knowing that in any case the

contriving will not fall upon yourself.”

“He should not be difficult to replace,” said Harlequin.

“True, if we were in a civilized land. But where among the rustics

of Brittany are we to find a fellow of even his poor parts?” M. Binet

turned to Andre-Louis. “He was our property-man, our machinist, our

stage-carpenter, our man of affairs, and occasionally he acted.”

“The part of Figaro, I presume,” said Andre-Louis, which elicited a

laugh.

“So you are acquainted with Beaumarchais!” Binet eyed the young man with

fresh interest.

“He is tolerably well known, I think.”

“In Paris, to be sure. But I had not dreamt his fame had reached the

wilds of Brittany.”

“But then I was some years in Paris--at the Lycee of Louis le Grand. It

was there I made acquaintance with his work.”

“A dangerous man,” said Polichinelle, sententiously.

“Indeed, and you are right,” Pantaloon agreed. “Clever--I do not deny him

that, although myself I find little use for authors. But of a sinister

cleverness responsible for the dissemination of many of these subversive

new ideas. I think such writers should be suppressed.”

“M. de La Tour d’Azyr would probably agree with you--the gentleman who

by the simple exertion of his will turns this communal land into his own

property.” And Andre-Louis drained his cup, which had been filled with

the poor vin gris that was the players’ drink.

It was a remark that might have precipitated an argument had it not also

reminded M. Binet of the terms on which they were encamped there, and

of the fact that the half-hour was more than past. In a moment he was on

his feet, leaping up with an agility surprising in so corpulent a man,

issuing his commands like a marshal on a field of battle.

“Come, come, my lads! Are we to sit guzzling here all day? Time flees,

and there’s a deal to be done if we are to make our entry into Guichen

at noon. Go, get you dressed. We strike camp in twenty minutes. Bestir,

ladies! To your chaise, and see that you contrive to look your best.

Soon the eyes of Guichen will be upon you, and the condition of your

interior to-morrow will depend upon the impression made by your exterior

to-day. Away! Away!”

The implicit obedience this autocrat commanded set them in a whirl.

Baskets and boxes were dragged forth to receive the platters and remains

of their meagre feast. In an instant the ground was cleared, and the

three ladies had taken their departure to the chaise, which was set

apart for their use. The men were already climbing into the house on

wheels, when Binet turned to Andre-Louis.

“We part here, sir,” said he, dramatically, “the richer by your

acquaintance; your debtors and your friends.” He put forth his podgy

hand.

Slowly Andre-Louis took it in his own. He had been thinking swiftly in

the last few moments. And remembering the safety he had found from his

pursuers in the bosom of this company, it occurred to him that nowhere

could he be better hidden for the present, until the quest for him

should have died down.

“Sir,” he said, “the indebtedness is on my side. It is not every day

one has the felicity to sit down with so illustrious and engaging a

company.”

Binet’s little eyes peered suspiciously at the young man, in quest of

irony. He found nothing but candour and simple good faith.

“I part from you reluctantly,” Andre-Louis continued. “The more

reluctantly since I do not perceive the absolute necessity for parting.”

“How?” quoth Binet, frowning, and slowly withdrawing the hand which the

other had already retained rather longer than was necessary.

“Thus,” Andre-Louis explained himself. “You may set me down as a sort

of knight of rueful countenance in quest of adventure, with no fixed

purpose in life at present. You will not marvel that what I have seen of

yourself and your distinguished troupe should inspire me to desire your

better acquaintance. On your side you tell me that you are in need of

some one to replace your Figaro--your Felicien, I think you called him.

Whilst it may be presumptuous of me to hope that I could discharge an

office so varied and so onerous...”

“You are indulging that acrid humour of yours again, my friend,” Binet

interrupted him. “Excepting for that,” he added, slowly, meditatively,

his little eyes screwed up, “we might discuss this proposal that you

seem to be making.”

“Alas! we can except nothing. If you take me, you take me as I am. What

else is possible? As for this humour--such as it is--which you decry, you

might turn it to profitable account.”

“How so?”

“In several ways. I might, for instance, teach Leandre to make love.”

Pantaloon burst into laughter. “You do not lack confidence in your

powers. Modesty does not afflict you.”

“Therefore I evince the first quality necessary in an actor.”

“Can you act?”

“Upon occasion, I think,” said Andre-Louis, his thoughts upon his

performance at Rennes and Nantes, and wondering when in all his

histrionic career Pantaloon’s improvisations had so rent the heart of

mobs.

M. Binet was musing. “Do you know much of the theatre?” quoth he.

“Everything,” said Andre-Louis.

“I said that modesty will prove no obstacle in your career.”

“But consider. I know the work of Beaumarchais, Eglantine, Mercier,

Chenier, and many others of our contemporaries. Then I have read, of

course, Moliere, Racine, Corneille, besides many other lesser French

writers. Of foreign authors, I am intimate with the works of Gozzi,

Goldoni, Guarini, Bibbiena, Machiavelli, Secchi, Tasso, Ariosto,

and Fedini. Whilst of those of antiquity I know most of the work of

Euripides, Aristophanes, Terence, Plautus...”

“Enough!” roared Pantaloon.

“I am not nearly through with my list,” said Andre-Louis.

“You may keep the rest for another day. In Heaven’s name, what can have

induced you to read so many dramatic authors?”

“In my humble way I am a student of man, 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 MUSE

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

doing 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 Dieu! 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 PARVISSIMUS

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 couldn’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. CLIMENE

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, having 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 NANTES

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 signal a success

as a mime? Was not this really all that he had ever been, the thing for

which Nature had designed him?

On the following night they played “The Shy Lover” to a full house, the

fame of their debut having gone abroad, and the success of Monday was

confirmed. On Wednesday they gave “Figaro-Scaramouche,” and on Thursday

morning the “Courrier Nantais” came out with an article of more than

a column of praise of these brilliant improvisers, for whom it claimed

that they utterly put to shame the mere reciters of memorized parts.

Andre-Louis, reading the sheet at breakfast, and having no delusions

on the score of the falseness of that statement, laughed inwardly. The

novelty of the thing, and the pretentiousness in which he had swaddled

it, had deceived them finely. He turned to greet Binet and Climene, who

entered at that moment. He waved the sheet above his head.

“It is settled,” he announced, “we stay in Nantes until Easter.”

“Do we?” said Binet, sourly. “You settle everything, my friend.”

“Read for yourself.” And he handed him the paper.

Moodily M. Binet read. He set the sheet down in silence, and turned his

attention to his breakfast.

“Was I justified or not?” quoth Andre-Louis, who found M. Binet’s

behaviour a thought intriguing.

“In what?”

“In coming to Nantes?”

“If I had not thought so, we should not have come,” said Binet, and he

began to eat.

Andre-Louis dropped the subject, wondering.

After breakfast he and Climene sallied forth to take the air upon the

quays. It was a day of brilliant sunshine and less cold than it had

lately been. Columbine tactlessly joined them as they were setting out,

though in this respect matters were improved a little when Harlequin

came running after them, and attached himself to Columbine.

Andre-Louis, stepping out ahead with Climene, spoke of the thing that

was uppermost in his mind at the moment.

“Your father is behaving very oddly towards me,” said he. “It is almost

as if he had suddenly become hostile.”

“You imagine it,” said she. “My father is very grateful to you, as we

all are.”

“He is anything but grateful. He is infuriated against me; and I think I

know the reason. Don’t you? Can’t you guess?”

“I can’t, indeed.”

“If you were my daughter, Climene, which God be thanked you are not, I

should feel aggrieved against the man who carried you away from me. Poor

old Pantaloon! He called me a corsair when I told him that I intend to

marry you.”

“He was right. You are a bold robber, Scaramouche.”

“It is in the character,” said he. “Your father believes in having

his mimes play upon the stage the parts that suit their natural

temperaments.”

“Yes, you take everything you want, don’t you?” She looked up at him,

half adoringly, half shyly.

“If it is possible,” said he. “I took his consent to our marriage by

main force from him. I never waited for him to give it. When, in fact,

he refused it, I just snatched it from him, and I’ll defy him now to win

it back from me. I think that is what he most resents.”

She laughed, and launched upon an animated answer. But he did not hear

a word of it. Through the bustle of traffic on the quay a cabriolet, the

upper half of which was almost entirely made of glass, had approached

them. It was drawn by two magnificent bay horses and driven by a

superbly livened coachman.

In the cabriolet alone sat a slight young girl wrapped in a lynx-fur

pelisse, her face of a delicate loveliness. She was leaning forward, her

lips parted, her eyes devouring Scaramouche until they drew his gaze.

When that happened, the shock of it brought him abruptly to a dumfounded

halt.

Climene, checking in the middle of a sentence, arrested by his own

sudden stopping, plucked at his sleeve.

“What is it, Scaramouche?”

But he made no attempt to answer her, and at that moment the coachman,

to whom the little lady had already signalled, brought the carriage to a

standstill beside them. Seen in the gorgeous setting of that coach with

its escutcheoned panels, its portly coachman and its white-stockinged

footman--who swung instantly to earth as the vehicle stopped--its dainty

occupant seemed to Climene a princess out of a fairy-tale. And this

princess leaned forward, with eyes aglow and cheeks aflush, stretching

out a choicely gloved hand to Scaramouche.

“Andre-Louis!” she called him.

And Scaramouche took the hand of that exalted being, just as he might

have taken the hand of Climene herself, and with eyes that reflected the

gladness of her own, in a voice that echoed the joyous surprise of hers,

he addressed her familiarly by name, just as she had addressed him.

“Aline!”

CHAPTER VIII. THE DREAM

“The door,” Aline commanded her footman, and “Mount here beside me,” she

commanded Andre-Louis, in the same breath.

“A moment, Aline.”

He turned to his companion, who was all amazement, and to Harlequin

and Columbine, who had that moment come up to share it. “You permit

me, Climene?” said he, breathlessly. But it was more a statement than

a question. “Fortunately you are not alone. Harlequin will take care of

you. Au revoir, at dinner.”

With that he sprang into the cabriolet without waiting for a reply. The

footman closed the door, the coachman cracked his whip, and the regal

equipage rolled away along the quay, leaving the three comedians staring

after it, open-mouthed... Then Harlequin laughed.

“A prince in disguise, our Scaramouche!” said he.

Columbine clapped her hands and flashed her strong teeth. “But what a

romance for you, Climene! How wonderful!”

The frown melted from Climene’s brow. Resentment changed to

bewilderment.

“But who is she?”

“His sister, of course,” said Harlequin, quite definitely.

“His sister? How do you know?”

“I know what he will tell you on his return.”

“But why?”

“Because you wouldn’t believe him if he said she was his mother.”

Following the carriage with their glance, they wandered on in the

direction it had taken. And in the carriage Aline was considering

Andre-Louis with grave eyes, lips slightly compressed, and a tiny frown

between her finely drawn eyebrows.

“You have taken to queer company, Andre,” was the first thing she said

to him. “Or else I am mistaken in thinking that your companion was Mlle.

Binet of the Theatre Feydau.”

“You are not mistaken. But I had not imagined Mlle. Binet so famous

already.”

“Oh, as to that...” mademoiselle shrugged, her tone quietly scornful.

And she explained. “It is simply that I was at the play last night. I

thought I recognized her.”

“You were at the Feydau last night? And I never saw you!”

“Were you there, too?”

“Was I there!” he cried. Then he checked, and abruptly changed his tone.

“Oh, yes, I was there,” he said, as commonplace as he could, beset by a

sudden reluctance to avow that he had so willingly descended to depths

that she must account unworthy, and grateful that his disguise of face

and voice should have proved impenetrable even to one who knew him so

very well.

“I understand,” said she, and compressed her lips a little more tightly.

“But what do you understand?”

“The rare attractions of Mlle. Binet. Naturally you would be at the

theatre. Your tone conveyed it very clearly. Do you know that you

disappoint me, Andre? It is stupid of me, perhaps; it betrays, I

suppose, my imperfect knowledge of your sex. I am aware that most young

men of fashion find an irresistible attraction for creatures who parade

themselves upon the stage. But I did not expect you to ape the ways of

a man of fashion. I was foolish enough to imagine you to be different;

rather above such trivial pursuits. I conceived you something of an

idealist.”

“Sheer flattery.”

“So I perceive. But you misled me. You talked so much morality of a

kind, you made philosophy so readily, that I came to be deceived. In

fact, your hypocrisy was so consummate that I never suspected it. With

your gift of acting I wonder that you haven’t joined Mlle. Binet’s

troupe.”

“I have,” said he.

It had really become necessary to tell her, making choice of the lesser

of the two evils with which she confronted him.

He saw first incredulity, then consternation, and lastly disgust

overspread her face.

“Of course,” said she, after a long pause, “that would have the

advantage of bringing you closer to your charmer.”

“That was only one of the inducements. There was another. Finding myself

forced to choose between the stage and the gallows, I had the incredible

weakness to prefer the former. It was utterly unworthy of a man of my

lofty ideals, but--what would you? Like other ideologists, I find it

easier to preach than to practise. Shall I stop the carriage and remove

the contamination of my disgusting person? Or shall I tell you how it

happened?”

“Tell me how it happened first. Then we will decide.”

He told her how he met the Binet Troupe, and how the men of the

marechaussee forced upon him the discovery that in its bosom he could

lie safely lost until the hue and cry had died down. The explanation

dissolved her iciness.

“My poor Andre, why didn’t you tell me this at first?”

“For one thing, you didn’t give me time; for another, I feared to shock

you with the spectacle of my degradation.”

She took him seriously. “But where was the need of it? And why did you

not send us word as I required you of your whereabouts?”

“I was thinking of it only yesterday. I have hesitated for several

reasons.”

“You thought it would offend us to know what you were doing?”

“I think that I preferred to surprise you by the magnitude of my

ultimate achievements.”

“Oh, you are to become a great actor?” She was frankly scornful.

“That is not impossible. But I am more concerned to become a great

author. There is no reason why you should sniff. The calling is an

honourable one. All the world is proud to know such men as Beaumarchais

and Chenier.”

“And you hope to equal them?”

“I hope to surpass them, whilst acknowledging that it was they who

taught me how to walk. What did you think of the play last night?”

“It was amusing and well conceived.”

“Let me present you to the author.”

“You? But the company is one of the improvisers.”

“Even improvisers require an author to write their scenarios. That is

all I write at present. Soon I shall be writing plays in the modern

manner.”

“You deceive yourself, my poor Andre. The piece last night would

have been nothing without the players. You are fortunate in your

Scaramouche.”

“In confidence--I present you to him.”

“You--Scaramouche? You?” She turned to regard him fully. He smiled his

close-lipped smile that made wrinkles like gashes in his cheeks. He

nodded. “And I didn’t recognize you!”

“I thank you for the tribute. You imagined, of course, that I was a

scene-shifter. And now that you know all about me, what of Gavrillac?

What of my godfather?”

He was well, she told him, and still profoundly indignant with

Andre-Louis for his defection, whilst secretly concerned on his behalf.

“I shall write to him to-day that I have seen you.”

“Do so. Tell him that I am well and prospering. But say no more. Do not

tell him what I am doing. He has his prejudices too. Besides, it might

not be prudent. And now the question I have been burning to ask ever

since I entered your carriage. Why are you in Nantes, Aline?”

“I am on a visit to my aunt, Mme. de Sautron. It was with her that I

came to the play yesterday. We have been dull at the chateau; but

it will be different now. Madame my aunt is receiving several guests

to-day. M. de La Tour d’Azyr is to be one of them.”

Andre-Louis frowned and sighed. “Did you ever hear, Aline, how poor

Philippe de Vilmorin came by his end?”

“Yes; I was told, first by my uncle; then by M. de La Tour d’Azyr,

himself.”

“Did not that help you to decide this marriage question?”

“How could it? You forget that I am but a woman. You don’t expect me to

judge between men in matters such as these?”

“Why not? You are well able to do so. The more since you have heard two

sides. For my godfather would tell you the truth. If you cannot judge,

it is that you do not wish to judge.” His tone became harsh. “Wilfully

you close your eyes to justice that might check the course of your

unhealthy, unnatural ambition.”

“Excellent!” she exclaimed, and considered him with amusement and

something else. “Do you know that you are almost droll? You rise

unblushing from the dregs of life in which I find you, and shake off the

arm of that theatre girl, to come and preach to me.”

“If these were the dregs of life I might still speak from them to

counsel you out of my respect and devotion, Aline.” He was very, stiff

and stern. “But they are not the dregs of life. Honour and virtue are

possible to a theatre girl; they are impossible to a lady who sells

herself to gratify ambition; who for position, riches, and a great title

barters herself in marriage.”

She looked at him breathlessly. Anger turned her pale. She reached for

the cord.

“I think I had better let you alight so that you may go back to practise

virtue and honour with your theatre wench.”

“You shall not speak so of her, Aline.”

“Faith, now we are to have heat on her behalf. You think I am too

delicate? You think I should speak of her as a...”

“If you must speak of her at all,” he interrupted, hotly, “you’ll speak

of her as my wife.”

Amazement smothered her anger. Her pallor deepened. “My God!” she said,

and looked at him in horror. And in horror she asked him presently: “You

are married--married to that--?”

“Not yet. But I shall be, soon. And let me tell you that this girl whom

you visit with your ignorant contempt is as good and pure as you are,

Aline. She has wit and talent which have placed her where she is and

shall carry her a deal farther. And she has the womanliness to be guided

by natural instincts in the selection of her mate.”

She was trembling with passion. She tugged the cord.

“You will descend this instant!” she told him fiercely. “That you should

dare to make a comparison between me and that...”

“And my wife-to-be,” he interrupted, before she could speak the infamous

word. He opened the door for himself without waiting for the footman,

and leapt down. “My compliments,” said he, furiously, “to the assassin

you are to marry.” He slammed the door. “Drive on,” he bade the

coachman.

The carriage rolled away up the Faubourg Gigan, leaving him standing

where he had alighted, quivering with rage. Gradually, as he walked back

to the inn, his anger cooled. Gradually, as he cooled, he perceived her

point of view, and in the end forgave her. It was not her fault that she

thought as she thought. Her rearing had been such as to make her look

upon every actress as a trull, just as it had qualified her calmly

to consider the monstrous marriage of convenience into which she was

invited.

He got back to the inn to find the company at table. Silence fell when

he entered, so suddenly that of necessity it must be supposed he was

himself the subject of the conversation. Harlequin and Columbine had

spread the tale of this prince in disguise caught up into the chariot

of a princess and carried off by her; and it was a tale that had lost

nothing in the telling.

Climene had been silent and thoughtful, pondering what Columbine had

called this romance of hers. Clearly her Scaramouche must be vastly

other than he had hitherto appeared, or else that great lady and he

would never have used such familiarity with each other. Imagining him

no better than he was, Climene had made him her own. And now she was to

receive the reward of disinterested affection.

Even old Binet’s secret hostility towards Andre-Louis melted before

this astounding revelation. He had pinched his daughter’s ear quite

playfully. “Ah, ah, trust you to have penetrated his disguise, my

child!”

She shrank resentfully from that implication.

“But I did not. I took him for what he seemed.”

Her father winked at her very solemnly and laughed. “To be sure, you

did. But like your father, who was once a gentleman, and knows the ways

of gentlemen, you detected in him a subtle something different from

those with whom misfortune has compelled you hitherto to herd. You knew

as well as I did that he never caught that trick of haughtiness, that

grand air of command, in a lawyer’s musty office, and that his speech

had hardly the ring or his thoughts the complexion of the bourgeois that

he pretended to be. And it was shrewd of you to have made him yours. Do

you know that I shall be very proud of you yet, Climene?”

She moved away without answering. Her father’s oiliness offended her.

Scaramouche was clearly a great gentleman, an eccentric if you please,

but a man born. And she was to be his lady. Her father must learn to

treat her differently.

She looked shyly--with a new shyness--at her lover when he came into the

room where they were dining. She observed for the first time that proud

carriage of the head, with the chin thrust forward, that was a trick of

his, and she noticed with what a grace he moved--the grace of one who in

youth has had his dancing-masters and fencing-masters.

It almost hurt her when he flung himself into a chair and exchanged

a quip with Harlequin in the usual manner as with an equal, and it

offended her still more that Harlequin, knowing what he now knew, should

use him with the same unbecoming familiarity.

CHAPTER IX. THE AWAKENING

“Do you know,” said Climene, “that I am waiting for the explanation

which I think you owe me?”

They were alone together, lingering still at the table to which

Andre-Louis had come belatedly, and Andre-Louis was loading himself a

pipe. Of late--since joining the Binet Troupe--he had acquired the habit

of smoking. The others had gone, some to take the air and others, like

Binet and Madame, because they felt that it were discreet to leave

those two to the explanations that must pass. It was a feeling that

Andre-Louis did not share. He kindled a light and leisurely applied it

to his pipe. A frown came to settle on his brow.

“Explanation?” he questioned presently, and looked at her. “But on what

score?”

“On the score of the deception you have practised on us--on me.”

“I have practised none,” he assured her.

“You mean that you have simply kept your own counsel, and that in

silence there is no deception. But it is deceitful to withhold facts

concerning yourself and your true station from your future wife. You

should not have pretended to be a simple country lawyer, which, of

course, any one could see that you are not. It may have been very

romantic, but... Enfin, will you explain?”

“I see,” he said, and pulled at his pipe. “But you are wrong, Climene.

I have practised no deception. If there are things about me that I have

not told you, it is that I did not account them of much importance.

But I have never deceived you by pretending to be other than I am. I am

neither more nor less than I have represented myself.”

This persistence began to annoy her, and the annoyance showed on her

winsome face, coloured her voice.

“Ha! And that fine lady of the nobility with whom you are so intimate,

who carried you off in her cabriolet with so little ceremony towards

myself? What is she to you?”

“A sort of sister,” said he.

“A sort of sister!” She was indignant. “Harlequin foretold that you

would say so; but he was amusing himself. It was not very funny. It

is less funny still from you. She has a name, I suppose, this sort of

sister?”

“Certainly she has a name. She is Mlle. Aline de Kercadiou, the niece of

Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac.”

“Oho! That’s a sufficiently fine name for your sort of sister. What sort

of sister, my friend?”

For the first time in their relationship he observed and deplored the

taint of vulgarity, of shrewishness, in her manner.

“It would have been more accurate in me to have said a sort of reputed

left-handed cousin.”

“A reputed left-handed cousin! And what sort of relationship may that

be? Faith, you dazzle me with your lucidity.”

“It requires to be explained.”

“That is what I have been telling you. But you seem very reluctant with

your explanations.”

“Oh, no. It is only that they are so unimportant. But be you the judge.

Her uncle, M. de Kercadiou, is my godfather, and she and I have been

playmates from infancy as a consequence. It is popularly believed in

Gavrillac that M. de Kercadiou is my father. He has certainly cared for

my rearing from my tenderest years, and it is entirely owing to him

that I was educated at Louis le Grand. I owe to him everything that I

have--or, rather, everything that I had; for of my own free will I have

cut myself adrift, and to-day I possess nothing save what I can earn for

myself in the theatre or elsewhere.”

She sat stunned and pale under that cruel blow to her swelling pride.

Had he told her this but yesterday, it would have made no impression

upon her, it would have mattered not at all; the event of to-day coming

as a sequel would but have enhanced him in her eyes. But coming now,

after her imagination had woven for him so magnificent a background,

after the rashly assumed discovery of his splendid identity had made

her the envied of all the company, after having been in her own eyes and

theirs enshrined by marriage with him as a great lady, this disclosure

crushed and humiliated her. Her prince in disguise was merely the

outcast bastard of a country gentleman! She would be the laughing-stock

of every member of her father’s troupe, of all those who had so lately

envied her this romantic good fortune.

“You should have told me this before,” she said, in a dull voice that

she strove to render steady.

“Perhaps I should. But does it really matter?”

“Matter?” She suppressed her fury to ask another question. “You say

that this M. de Kercadiou is popularly believed to be your father. What

precisely do you mean?”

“Just that. It is a belief that I do not share. It is a matter of

instinct, perhaps, with me. Moreover, once I asked M. de Kercadiou

point-blank, and I received from him a denial. It is not, perhaps,

a denial to which one would attach too much importance in all the

circumstances. Yet I have never known M. de Kercadiou for other than

a man of strictest honour, and I should hesitate to disbelieve

him--particularly when his statement leaps with my own instincts. He

assured me that he did not know who my father was.”

“And your mother, was she equally ignorant?” She was sneering, but he

did not remark it. Her back was to the light.

“He would not disclose her name to me. He confessed her to be a dear

friend of his.”

She startled him by laughing, and her laugh was not pleasant.

“A very dear friend, you may be sure, you simpleton. What name do you

bear?”

He restrained his own rising indignation to answer her question calmly:

“Moreau. It was given me, so I am told, from the Brittany village in

which I was born. But I have no claim to it. In fact I have no name,

unless it be Scaramouche, to which I have earned a title. So that you

see, my dear,” he ended with a smile, “I have practised no deception

whatever.”

“No, no. I see that now.” She laughed without mirth, then drew a deep

breath and rose. “I am very tired,” she said.

He was on his feet in an instant, all solicitude. But she waved him

wearily back.

“I think I will rest until it is time to go to the theatre.” She moved

towards the door, dragging her feet a little. He sprang to open it, and

she passed out without looking at him.

Her so brief romantic dream was ended. The glorious world of fancy which

in the last hour she had built with such elaborate detail, over which it

should be her exalted destiny to rule, lay shattered about her feet, its

debris so many stumbling-blocks that prevented her from winning back to

her erstwhile content in Scaramouche as he really was.

Andre-Louis sat in the window embrasure, smoking and looking idly out

across the river. He was intrigued and meditative. He had shocked her.

The fact was clear; not so the reason. That he should confess himself

nameless should not particularly injure him in the eyes of a girl

reared amid the surroundings that had been Climene’s. And yet that his

confession had so injured him was fully apparent.

There, still at his brooding, the returning Columbine discovered him a

half-hour later.

“All alone, my prince!” was her laughing greeting, which suddenly threw

light upon his mental darkness. Climene had been disappointed of hopes

that the wild imagination of these players had suddenly erected upon the

incident of his meeting with Aline. Poor child! He smiled whimsically at

Columbine.

“I am likely to be so for some little time,” said he, “until it becomes

a commonplace that I am not, after all, a prince.

“Not a prince? Oh, but a duke, then--at least a marquis.”

“Not even a chevalier, unless it be of the order of fortune. I am just

Scaramouche. My castles are all in Spain.”

Disappointment clouded the lively, good-natured face.

“And I had imagined you...”

“I know,” he interrupted. “That is the mischief.” He might have gauged

the extent of that mischief by Climene’s conduct that evening towards

the gentlemen of fashion who clustered now in the green-room between the

acts to pay their homage to the incomparable amoureuse. Hitherto she had

received them with a circumspection compelling respect. To-night she was

recklessly gay, impudent, almost wanton.

He spoke of it gently to her as they walked home together, counselling

more prudence in the future.

“We are not married yet,” she told him, tartly. “Wait until then before

you criticize my conduct.”

“I trust that there will be no occasion then,” said he.

“You trust? Ah, yes. You are very trusting.”

“Climene, I have offended you. I am sorry.”

“It is nothing,” said she. “You are what you are.” Still was he not

concerned. He perceived the source of her ill-humour; understood, whilst

deploring it; and, because he understood, forgave. He perceived also

that her ill-humour was shared by her father, and by this he was frankly

amused. Towards M. Binet a tolerant contempt was the only feeling that

complete acquaintance could beget. As for the rest of the company, they

were disposed to be very kindly towards Scaramouche. It was almost as

if in reality he had fallen from the high estate to which their own

imaginations had raised him; or possibly it was because they saw the

effect which that fall from his temporary and fictitious elevation had

produced upon Climene.

Leandre alone made himself an exception. His habitual melancholy

seemed to be dispelled at last, and his eyes gleamed now with malicious

satisfaction when they rested upon Scaramouche, whom occasionally he

continued to address with sly mockery as “mon prince.”

On the morrow Andre-Louis saw but little of Climene. This was not

in itself extraordinary, for he was very hard at work again, with

preparations now for “Figaro-Scaramouche” which was to be played on

Saturday. Also, in addition to his manifold theatrical occupations, he

now devoted an hour every morning to the study of fencing in an academy

of arms. This was done not only to repair an omission in his education,

but also, and chiefly, to give him added grace and poise upon the stage.

He found his mind that morning distracted by thoughts of both Climene

and Aline. And oddly enough it was Aline who provided the deeper

perturbation. Climene’s attitude he regarded as a passing phase which

need not seriously engage him. But the thought of Aline’s conduct

towards him kept rankling, and still more deeply rankled the thought of

her possible betrothal to M. de La Tour d’Azyr.

This it was that brought forcibly to his mind the self-imposed but by

now half-forgotten mission that he had made his own. He had boasted that

he would make the voice which M. de La Tour d’Azyr had sought to silence

ring through the length and breadth of the land. And what had he done of

all this that he had boasted? He had incited the mob of Rennes and the

mob of Nantes in such terms as poor Philippe might have employed, and

then because of a hue and cry he had fled like a cur and taken shelter

in the first kennel that offered, there to lie quiet and devote himself

to other things--self-seeking things. What a fine contrast between the

promise and the fulfilment!

Thus Andre-Louis to himself in his self-contempt. And whilst he trifled

away his time and played Scaramouche, and centred all his hopes in

presently becoming the rival of such men as Chenier and Mercier, M. de

La Tour d’Azyr went his proud ways unchallenged and wrought his will.

It was idle to tell himself that the seed he had sown was bearing fruit.

That the demands he had voiced in Nantes for the Third Estate had

been granted by M. Necker, thanks largely to the commotion which his

anonymous speech had made. That was not his concern or his mission. It

was no part of his concern to set about the regeneration of mankind, or

even the regeneration of the social structure of France. His concern

was to see that M. de La Tour d’Azyr paid to the uttermost liard for the

brutal wrong he had done Philippe de Vilmorin. And it did not increase

his self-respect to find that the danger in which Aline stood of

being married to the Marquis was the real spur to his rancour and to

remembrance of his vow. He was--too unjustly, perhaps--disposed to dismiss

as mere sophistries his own arguments that there was nothing he could

do; that, in fact, he had but to show his head to find himself going to

Rennes under arrest and making his final exit from the world’s stage by

way of the gallows.

It is impossible to read that part of his “Confessions” without feeling

a certain pity for him. You realize what must have been his state of

mind. You realize what a prey he was to emotions so conflicting, and

if you have the imagination that will enable you to put yourself in his

place, you will also realize how impossible was any decision save the

one to which he says he came, that he would move, at the first moment

that he perceived in what direction it would serve his real aims to

move.

It happened that the first person he saw when he took the stage on

that Thursday evening was Aline; the second was the Marquis de La Tour

d’Azyr. They occupied a box on the right of, and immediately above, the

stage. There were others with them--notably a thin, elderly, resplendent

lady whom Andre-Louis supposed to be Madame la Comtesse de Sautron. But

at the time he had no eyes for any but those two, who of late had

so haunted his thoughts. The sight of either of them would have been

sufficiently disconcerting. The sight of both together very nearly made

him forget the purpose for which he had come upon the stage. Then he

pulled himself together, and played. He played, he says, with an unusual

nerve, and never in all that brief but eventful career of his was he

more applauded.

That was the evening’s first shock. The next came after the second act.

Entering the green-room he found it more thronged than usual, and at the

far end with Climene, over whom he was bending from his fine height, his

eyes intent upon her face, what time his smiling lips moved in talk, M.

de La Tour d’Azyr. He had her entirely to himself, a privilege none of

the men of fashion who were in the habit of visiting the coulisse

had yet enjoyed. Those lesser gentlemen had all withdrawn before the

Marquis, as jackals withdraw before the lion.

Andre-Louis stared a moment, stricken. Then recovering from his surprise

he became critical in his study of the Marquis. He considered the

beauty and grace and splendour of him, his courtly air, his complete

and unshakable self-possession. But more than all he considered the

expression of the dark eyes that were devouring Climene’s lovely face,

and his own lips tightened.

M. de La Tour d’Azyr never heeded him or his stare; nor, had he done

so, would he have known who it was that looked at him from behind the

make-up of Scaramouche; nor, again, had he known, would he have been in

the least troubled or concerned.

Andre-Louis sat down apart, his mind in turmoil. Presently he found a

mincing young gentleman addressing him, and made shift to answer as

was expected. Climene having been thus sequestered, and Columbine being

already thickly besieged by gallants, the lesser visitors had to content

themselves with Madame and the male members of the troupe. M. Binet,

indeed, was the centre of a gay cluster that shook with laughter at his

sallies. He seemed of a sudden to have emerged from the gloom of the

last two days into high good-humour, and Scaramouche observed how

persistently his eyes kept flickering upon his daughter and her splendid

courtier.

That night there, were high words between Andre-Louis and Climene, the

high words proceeding from Climene. When Andre-Louis again, and more

insistently, enjoined prudence upon his betrothed, and begged her to

beware how far she encouraged the advances of such a man as M. de La

Tour d’Azyr, she became roundly abusive. She shocked and stunned him

by her virulently shrewish tone, and her still more unexpected force of

invective.

He sought to reason with her, and finally she came to certain terms with

him.

“If you have become betrothed to me simply to stand as an obstacle in my

path, the sooner we make an end the better.”

“You do not love me then, Climene?”

“Love has nothing to do with it. I’ll not tolerate your insensate

jealousy. A girl in the theatre must make it her business to accept

homage from all.”

“Agreed; and there is no harm, provided she gives nothing in exchange.”

White-faced, with flaming eyes she turned on him at that.

“Now, what exactly do you mean?”

“My meaning is clear. A girl in your position may receive all the homage

that is offered, provided she receives it with a dignified aloofness

implying clearly that she has no favours to bestow in return beyond the

favour of her smile. If she is wise she will see to it that the homage

is always offered collectively by her admirers, and that no single one

amongst them shall ever have the privilege of approaching her alone. If

she is wise she will give no encouragement, nourish no hopes that it may

afterwards be beyond her power to deny realization.”

“How? You dare?”

“I know my world. And I know M. de La Tour d’Azyr,” he answered her. “He

is a man without charity, without humanity almost; a man who takes what

he wants wherever he finds it and whether it is given willingly or

not; a man who reckons nothing of the misery he scatters on his

self-indulgent way; a man whose only law is force. Ponder it, Climene,

and ask yourself if I do you less than honour in warning you.”

He went out on that, feeling a degradation in continuing the subject.

The days that followed were unhappy days for him, and for at least

one other. That other was Leandre, who was cast into the profoundest

dejection by M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s assiduous attendance upon Climene.

The Marquis was to be seen at every performance; a box was perpetually

reserved for him, and invariably he came either alone or else with his

cousin M. de Chabrillane.

On Tuesday of the following week, Andre-Louis went out alone early in

the morning. He was out of temper, fretted by an overwhelming sense of

humiliation, and he hoped to clear his mind by walking. In turning

the corner of the Place du Bouffay he ran into a slightly built,

sallow-complexioned gentleman very neatly dressed in black, wearing a

tie-wig under a round hat. The man fell back at sight of him, levelling

a spy-glass, then hailed him in a voice that rang with amazement.

“Moreau! Where the devil have you been hiding yourself these months?”

It was Le Chapelier, the lawyer, the leader of the Literary Chamber of

Rennes.

“Behind the skirts of Thespis,” said Scaramouche.

“I don’t understand.”

“I didn’t intend that you should. What of yourself, Isaac? And what of

the world which seems to have been standing still of late?”

“Standing still!” Le Chapelier laughed. “But where have you been, then?

Standing still!” He pointed across the square to a café under the shadow

of the gloomy prison. “Let us go and drink a bavaroise. You are of

all men the man we want, the man we have been seeking everywhere,

and--behold!--you drop from the skies into my path.”

They crossed the square and entered the café.

“So you think the world has been standing still! Dieu de Dieu! I suppose

you haven’t heard of the royal order for the convocation of the States

General, or the terms of them--that we are to have what we demanded, what

you demanded for us here in Nantes! You haven’t heard that the order has

gone forth for the primary elections--the elections of the electors. You

haven’t heard of the fresh uproar in Rennes, last month. The order was

that the three estates should sit together at the States General of

the bailliages, but in the bailliage of Rennes the nobles must ever be

recalcitrant. They took up arms actually--six hundred of them with their

valetaille, headed by your old friend M. de La Tour d’Azyr, and they

were for slashing us--the members of the Third Estate--into ribbons so as

to put an end to our insolence.” He laughed delicately. “But, by God, we

showed them that we, too, could take up arms. It was what you yourself

advocated here in Nantes, last November. We fought them a pitched

battle in the streets, under the leadership of your namesake Moreau, the

provost, and we so peppered them that they were glad to take shelter in

the Cordelier Convent. That is the end of their resistance to the royal

authority and the people’s will.”

He ran on at great speed detailing the events that had taken place, and

finally came to the matter which had, he announced, been causing him to

hunt for Andre-Louis until he had all but despaired of finding him.

Nantes was sending fifty delegates to the assembly of Rennes which was

to select the deputies to the Third Estate and edit their cahier of

grievances. Rennes itself was being as fully represented, whilst such

villages as Gavrillac were sending two delegates for every two hundred

hearths or less. Each of these three had clamoured that Andre-Louis

Moreau should be one of its delegates. Gavrillac wanted him because he

belonged to the village, and it was known there what sacrifices he had

made in the popular cause; Rennes wanted him because it had heard

his spirited address on the day of the shooting of the students; and

Nantes--to whom his identity was unknown--asked for him as the speaker who

had addressed them under the name of Omnes Omnibus and who had framed

for them the memorial that was believed so largely to have influenced M.

Necker in formulating the terms of the convocation.

Since he could not be found, the delegations had been made up without

him. But now it happened that one or two vacancies had occurred in

the Nantes representation; and it was the business of filling these

vacancies that had brought Le Chapelier to Nantes.

Andre-Louis firmly shook his head in answer to Le Chapelier’s proposal.

“You refuse?” the other cried. “Are you mad? Refuse, when you are

demanded from so many sides? Do you realize that it is more than

probable you will be elected one of the deputies, that you will be sent

to the States General at Versailles to represent us in this work of

saving France?”

But Andre-Louis, we know, was not concerned to save France. At the

moment he was concerned to save two women, both of whom he loved, though

in vastly different ways, from a man he had vowed to ruin. He stood firm

in his refusal until Le Chapelier dejectedly abandoned the attempt to

persuade him.

“It is odd,” said Andre-Louis, “that I should have been so deeply

immersed in trifles as never to have perceived that Nantes is being

politically active.”

“Active! My friend, it is a seething cauldron of political emotions. It

is kept quiet on the surface only by the persuasion that all goes well.

At a hint to the contrary it would boil over.”

“Would it so?” said Scaramouche, thoughtfully. “The knowledge may be

useful.” And then he changed the subject. “You know that La Tour d’Azyr

is here?”

“In Nantes? He has courage if he shows himself. They are not a docile

people, these Nantais, and they know his record and the part he played

in the rising at Rennes. I marvel they haven’t stoned him. But they

will, sooner or later. It only needs that some one should suggest it.”

“That is very likely,” said Andre-Louis, and smiled. “He doesn’t show

himself much; not in the streets, at least. So that he has not the

courage you suppose; nor any kind of courage, as I told him once. He has

only insolence.”

At parting Le Chapelier again exhorted him to give thought to what he

proposed. “Send me word if you change your mind. I am lodged at the

Cerf, and I shall be here until the day after to-morrow. If you have

ambition, this is your moment.”

“I have no ambition, I suppose,” said Andre-Louis, and went his way.

That night at the theatre he had a mischievous impulse to test what Le

Chapelier had told him of the state of public feeling in the city. They

were playing “The Terrible Captain,” in the last act of which the empty

cowardice of the bullying braggart Rhodomont is revealed by Scaramouche.

After the laughter which the exposure of the roaring captain invariably

produced, it remained for Scaramouche contemptuously to dismiss him in a

phrase that varied nightly, according to the inspiration of the moment.

This time he chose to give his phrase a political complexion:

“Thus, O thrasonical coward, is your emptiness exposed. Because of your

long length and the great sword you carry and the angle at which you

cock your hat, people have gone in fear of you, have believed in you,

have imagined you to be as terrible and as formidable as you insolently

make yourself appear. But at the first touch of true spirit you crumple

up, you tremble, you whine pitifully, and the great sword remains in

your scabbard. You remind me of the Privileged Orders when confronted by

the Third Estate.”

It was audacious of him, and he was prepared for anything--a laugh,

applause, indignation, or all together. But he was not prepared for what

came. And it came so suddenly and spontaneously from the groundlings and

the body of those in the amphitheatre that he was almost scared by it--as

a boy may be scared who has held a match to a sun-scorched hayrick. It

was a hurricane of furious applause. Men leapt to their feet, sprang up

on to the benches, waving their hats in the air, deafening him with

the terrific uproar of their acclamations. And it rolled on and on, nor

ceased until the curtain fell.

Scaramouche stood meditatively smiling with tight lips. At the last

moment he had caught a glimpse of M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s face thrust

farther forward than usual from the shadows of his box, and it was a

face set in anger, with eyes on fire.

“Mon Dieu!” laughed Rhodomont, recovering from the real scare that had

succeeded his histrionic terror, “but you have a great trick of tickling

them in the right place, Scaramouche.”

Scaramouche looked up at him and smiled. “It can be useful upon

occasion,” said he, and went off to his dressing-room to change.

But a reprimand awaited him. He was delayed at the theatre by matters

concerned with the scenery of the new piece they were to mount upon the

morrow. By the time he was rid of the business the rest of the company

had long since left. He called a chair and had himself carried back

to the inn in solitary state. It was one of many minor luxuries his

comparatively affluent present circumstances permitted.

Coming into that upstairs room that was common to all the troupe, he

found M. Binet talking loudly and vehemently. He had caught sounds of

his voice whilst yet upon the stairs. As he entered Binet broke off

short, and wheeled to face him.

“You are here at last!” It was so odd a greeting that Andre-Louis did

no more than look his mild surprise. “I await your explanations of the

disgraceful scene you provoked to-night.”

“Disgraceful? Is it disgraceful that the public should applaud me?”

“The public? The rabble, you mean. Do you want to deprive us of the

patronage of all gentlefolk by vulgar appeals to the low passions of the

mob?”

Andre-Louis stepped past M. Binet and forward to the table. He shrugged

contemptuously. The man offended him, after all.

“You exaggerate grossly--as usual.”

“I do not exaggerate. And I am the master in my own theatre. This is the

Binet Troupe, and it shall be conducted in the Binet way.”

“Who are the gentlefolk the loss of whose patronage to the Feydau will

be so poignantly felt?” asked Andre-Louis.

“You imply that there are none? See how wrong you are. After the play

to-night M. le Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr came to me, and spoke to me

in the severest terms about your scandalous outburst. I was forced to

apologize, and...”

“The more fool you,” said Andre-Louis. “A man who respected himself

would have shown that gentleman the door.” M. Binet’s face began to

empurple. “You call yourself the head of the Binet Troupe, you boast

that you will be master in your own theatre, and you stand like a

lackey to take the orders of the first insolent fellow who comes to your

green-room to tell you that he does not like a line spoken by one of

your company! I say again that had you really respected yourself you

would have turned him out.”

There was a murmur of approval from several members of the company, who,

having heard the arrogant tone assumed by the Marquis, were filled with

resentment against the slur cast upon them all.

“And I say further,” Andre-Louis went on, “that a man who respects

himself, on quite other grounds, would have been only too glad to have

seized this pretext to show M. de La Tour d’Azyr the door.”

“What do you mean by that?” There was a rumble of thunder in the

question.

Andre-Louis’ eyes swept round the company assembled at the supper-table.

“Where is Climene?” he asked, sharply.

Leandre leapt up to answer him, white in the face, tense and quivering

with excitement.

“She left the theatre in the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr’s carriage

immediately after the performance. We heard him offer to drive her to

this inn.”

Andre-Louis glanced at the timepiece on the overmantel. He seemed

unnaturally calm.

“That would be an hour ago--rather more. And she has not yet arrived?”

His eyes sought M. Binet’s. M. Binet’s eyes eluded his glance. Again it

was Leandre who answered him.

“Not yet.”

“Ah!” Andre-Louis sat down, and poured himself wine. There was an

oppressive silence in the room. Leandre watched him expectantly,

Columbine commiseratingly. Even M. Binet appeared to be waiting for a

cue from Scaramouche. But Scaramouche disappointed him. “Have you left

me anything to eat?” he asked.

Platters were pushed towards him. He helped himself calmly to food,

and ate in silence, apparently with a good appetite. M. Binet sat

down, poured himself wine, and drank. Presently he attempted to

make conversation with one and another. He was answered curtly, in

monosyllables. M. Binet did not appear to be in favour with his troupe

that night.

At long length came a rumble of wheels below and a rattle of halting

hooves. Then voices, the high, trilling laugh of Climene floating

upwards. Andre-Louis went on eating unconcernedly.

“What an actor!” said Harlequin under his breath to Polichinelle, and

Polichinelle nodded gloomily.

She came in, a leading lady taking the stage, head high, chin thrust

forward, eyes dancing with laughter; she expressed triumph and

arrogance. Her cheeks were flushed, and there was some disorder in

the mass of nut-brown hair that crowned her head. In her left hand she

carried an enormous bouquet of white camellias. On its middle finger a

diamond of great price drew almost at once by its effulgence the eyes of

all.

Her father sprang to meet her with an unusual display of paternal

tenderness. “At last, my child!”

He conducted her to the table. She sank into a chair, a little wearily,

a little nervelessly, but the smile did not leave her face, not even

when she glanced across at Scaramouche. It was only Leandre, observing

her closely, with hungry, scowling stare, who detected something as of

fear in the hazel eyes momentarily seen between the fluttering of her

lids.

Andre-Louis, however, still went on eating stolidly, without so much as

a look in her direction. Gradually the company came to realize that

just as surely as a scene was brooding, just so surely would there be no

scene as long as they remained. It was Polichinelle, at last, who

gave the signal by rising and withdrawing, and within two minutes none

remained in the room but M. Binet, his daughter, and Andre-Louis. And

then, at last, Andre-Louis set down knife and fork, washed his throat

with a draught of Burgundy, and sat back in his chair to consider

Climene.

“I trust,” said he, “that you had a pleasant ride, mademoiselle.”

“Most pleasant, monsieur.” Impudently she strove to emulate his

coolness, but did not completely succeed.

“And not unprofitable, if I may judge that jewel at this distance.

It should be worth at least a couple of hundred louis, and that is a

formidable sum even to so wealthy a nobleman as M. de La Tour d’Azyr.

Would it be impertinent in one who has had some notion of becoming your

husband, to ask you, mademoiselle, what you have given him in return?”

M. Binet uttered a gross laugh, a queer mixture of cynicism and

contempt.

“I have given nothing,” said Climene, indignantly.

“Ah! Then the jewel is in the nature of a payment in advance.”

“My God, man, you’re not decent!” M. Binet protested.

“Decent?” Andre-Louis’ smouldering eyes turned to discharge upon M.

Binet such a fulmination of contempt that the old scoundrel shifted

uncomfortably in his chair. “Did you mention decency, Binet? Almost

you make me lose my temper, which is a thing that I detest above all

others!” Slowly his glance returned to Climene, who sat with elbows on

the table, her chin cupped in her palms, regarding him with something

between scorn and defiance. “Mademoiselle,” he said, slowly, “I desire

you purely in your own interests to consider whither you are going.”

“I am well able to consider it for myself, and to decide without advice

from you, monsieur.”

“And now you’ve got your answer,” chuckled Binet. “I hope you like it.”

Andre-Louis had paled a little; there was incredulity in his great

sombre eyes as they continued steadily to regard her. Of M. Binet he

took no notice.

“Surely, mademoiselle, you cannot mean that willingly, with open

eyes and a full understanding of what you do, you would exchange an

honourable wifehood for... for the thing that such men as M. de La Tour

d’Azyr may have in store for you?”

M. Binet made a wide gesture, and swung to his daughter. “You hear him,

the mealy-mouthed prude! Perhaps you’ll believe at last that marriage

with him would be the ruin of you. He would always be there the

inconvenient husband--to mar your every chance, my girl.”

She tossed her lovely head in agreement with her father. “I begin to

find him tiresome with his silly jealousies,” she confessed. “As a

husband I am afraid he would be impossible.”

Andre-Louis felt a constriction of the heart. But--always the actor--he

showed nothing of it. He laughed a little, not very pleasantly, and

rose.

“I bow to your choice, mademoiselle. I pray that you may not regret it.”

“Regret it?” cried M. Binet. He was laughing, relieved to see his

daughter at last rid of this suitor of whom he had never approved, if we

except those few hours when he really believed him to be an eccentric

of distinction. “And what shall she regret? That she accepted the

protection of a nobleman so powerful and wealthy that as a mere trinket

he gives her a jewel worth as much as an actress earns in a year at the

Comedie Francaise?” He got up, and advanced towards Andre-Louis. His

mood became conciliatory. “Come, come, my friend, no rancour now. What

the devil! You wouldn’t stand in the girl’s way? You can’t really blame

her for making this choice? Have you thought what it means to her? Have

you thought that under the protection of such a gentleman there are no

heights which she may not reach? Don’t you see the wonderful luck of

it? Surely, if you’re fond of her, particularly being of a jealous

temperament, you wouldn’t wish it otherwise?”

Andre-Louis looked at him in silence for a long moment. Then he laughed

again. “Oh, you are fantastic,” he said. “You are not real.” He turned

on his heel and strode to the door.

The action, and more the contempt of his look, laugh, and words stung M.

Binet to passion, drove out the conciliatoriness of his mood.

“Fantastic, are we?” he cried, turning to follow the departing

Scaramouche with his little eyes that now were inexpressibly evil.

“Fantastic that we should prefer the powerful protection of this great

nobleman to marriage with a beggarly, nameless bastard. Oh, we are

fantastic!”

Andre-Louis turned, his hand upon the door-handle. “No,” he said, “I was

mistaken. You are not fantastic. You are just vile--both of you.” And he

went out.

CHAPTER X. CONTRITION

Mlle. de Kercadiou walked with her aunt in the bright morning sunshine

of a Sunday in March on the broad terrace of the Chateau de Sautron.

For one of her natural sweetness of disposition she had been oddly

irritable of late, manifesting signs of a cynical worldliness, which

convinced Mme. de Sautron more than ever that her brother Quintin

had scandalously conducted the child’s education. She appeared to be

instructed in all the things of which a girl is better ignorant, and

ignorant of all the things that a girl should know. That at least was

the point of view of Mme. de Sautron.

“Tell me, madame,” quoth Aline, “are all men beasts?” Unlike her

brother, Madame la Comtesse was tall and majestically built. In the days

before her marriage with M. de Sautron, ill-natured folk described her

as the only man in the family. She looked down now from her noble height

upon her little niece with startled eyes.

“Really, Aline, you have a trick of asking the most disconcerting and

improper questions.”

“Perhaps it is because I find life disconcerting and improper.”

“Life? A young girl should not discuss life.”

“Why not, since I am alive? You do not suggest that it is an impropriety

to be alive?”

“It is an impropriety for a young unmarried girl to seek to know too

much about life. As for your absurd question about men, when I remind

you that man is the noblest work of God, perhaps you will consider

yourself answered.”

Mme. de Sautron did not invite a pursuance of the subject. But Mlle. de

Kercadiou’s outrageous rearing had made her headstrong.

“That being so,” said she, “will you tell me why they find such an

overwhelming attraction in the immodest of our sex?”

Madame stood still and raised shocked hands. Then she looked down her

handsome, high-bridged nose.

“Sometimes--often, in fact, my dear Aline--you pass all understanding.

I shall write to Quintin that the sooner you are married the better it

will be for all.”

“Uncle Quintin has left that matter to my own deciding,” Aline reminded

her.

“That,” said madame with complete conviction, “is the last and most

outrageous of his errors. Who ever heard of a girl being left to decide

the matter of her own marriage? It is... indelicate almost to expose her

to thoughts of such things.” Mme. de Sautron shuddered. “Quintin is a

boor. His conduct is unheard of. That M. de La Tour d’Azyr should parade

himself before you so that you may make up your mind whether he is the

proper man for you!” Again she shuddered. “It is of a grossness, of...

of a prurience almost... Mon Dieu! When I married your uncle, all this

was arranged between our parents. I first saw him when he came to sign

the contract. I should have died of shame had it been otherwise. And

that is how these affairs should be conducted.”

“You are no doubt right, madame. But since that is not how my own case

is being conducted, you will forgive me if I deal with it apart from

others. M. de La Tour d’Azyr desires to marry me. He has been permitted

to pay his court. I should be glad to have him informed that he may

cease to do so.”

Mme. de Sautron stood still, petrified by amazement. Her long face

turned white; she seemed to breathe with difficulty.

“But... but... what are you saying?” she gasped.

Quietly Aline repeated her statement.

“But this is outrageous! You cannot be permitted to play fast-and-loose

with a gentleman of M. le Marquis’ quality! Why, it is little more than

a week since you permitted him to be informed that you would become his

wife!”

“I did so in a moment of... rashness. Since then M. le Marquis’ own

conduct has convinced me of my error.”

“But--mon Dieu!” cried the Countess. “Are you blind to the great honour

that is being paid you? M. le Marquis will make you the first lady in

Brittany. Yet, little fool that you are, and greater fool that Quintin

is, you trifle with this extraordinary good fortune! Let me warn you.”

She raised an admonitory forefinger. “If you continue in this stupid

humour M. de La Tour d’Azyr may definitely withdraw his offer and depart

in justified mortification.”

“That, madame, as I am endeavouring to convey to you, is what I most

desire.”

“Oh, you are mad.”

“It may be, madame, that I am sane in preferring to be guided by my

instincts. It may be even that I am justified in resenting that the man

who aspires to become my husband should at the same time be paying such

assiduous homage to a wretched theatre girl at the Feydau.”

“Aline!”

“Is it not true? Or perhaps you do not find it strange that M. de La

Tour d’Azyr should so conduct himself at such a time?”

“Aline, you are so extraordinary a mixture. At moments you shock me by

the indecency of your expressions; at others you amaze me by the excess

of your prudery. You have been brought up like a little bourgeoise, I

think. Yes, that is it--a little bourgeoise. Quintin was always something

of a shopkeeper at heart.”

“I was asking your opinion on the conduct of M. de La Tour d’Azyr,

madame. Not on my own.”

“But it is an indelicacy in you to observe such things. You should be

ignorant of them, and I can’t think who is so... so unfeeling as to

inform you. But since you are informed, at least you should be modestly

blind to things that take place outside the... orbit of a properly

conducted demoiselle.”

“Will they still be outside my orbit when I am married?”

“If you are wise. You should remain without knowledge of them. It... it

deflowers your innocence. I would not for the world that M. de La Tour

d’Azyr should know you so extraordinarily instructed. Had you been

properly reared in a convent this would never have happened to you.”

“But you do not answer me, madame!” cried Aline in despair. “It is not

my chastity that is in question; but that of M. de La Tour d’Azyr.”

“Chastity!” Madame’s lips trembled with horror. Horror overspread her

face. “Wherever did you learn that dreadful, that so improper word?”

And then Mme. de Sautron did violence to her feelings. She realized that

here great calm and prudence were required. “My child, since you know so

much that you ought not to know, there can be no harm in my adding that

a gentleman must have these little distractions.”

“But why, madame? Why is it so?”

“Ah, mon Dieu, you are asking me riddles of nature. It is so because it

is so. Because men are like that.”

“Because men are beasts, you mean--which is what I began by asking you.”

“You are incorrigibly stupid, Aline.”

“You mean that I do not see things as you do, madame. I am not

over-expectant as you appear to think; yet surely I have the right to

expect that whilst M. de La Tour d’Azyr is wooing me, he shall not be

wooing at the same time a drab of the theatre. I feel that in this there

is a subtle association of myself with that unspeakable creature which

soils and insults me. The Marquis is a dullard whose wooing takes the

form at best of stilted compliments, stupid and unoriginal. They gain

nothing when they fall from lips still warm from the contamination of

that woman’s kisses.”

So utterly scandalized was madame that for a moment she remained

speechless. Then--

“Mon Dieu!” she exclaimed. “I should never have suspected you of so

indelicate an imagination.”

“I cannot help it, madame. Each time his lips touch my fingers I find

myself thinking of the last object that they touched. I at once retire

to wash my hands. Next time, madame, unless you are good enough to

convey my message to him, I shall call for water and wash them in his

presence.”

“But what am I to tell him? How... in what words can I convey such a

message?” Madame was aghast.

“Be frank with him, madame. It is easiest in the end. Tell him that

however impure may have been his life in the past, however impure he

intend that it shall be in the future, he must at least study purity

whilst approaching with a view to marriage a virgin who is herself pure

and without stain.”

Madame recoiled, and put her hands to her ears, horror stamped on her

handsome face. Her massive bosom heaved.

“Oh, how can you?” she panted. “How can you make use of such terrible

expressions? Wherever have you learnt them?”

“In church,” said Aline.

“Ah, but in church many things are said that... that one would not dream

of saying in the world. My dear child, how could I possibly say such a

thing to M. le Marquis? How could I possibly?”

“Shall I say it?”

“Aline!”

“Well, there it is,” said Aline. “Something must be done to shelter me

from insult. I am utterly disgusted with M. le Marquis--a disgusting man.

And however fine a thing it may be to become Marquise de La Tour d’Azyr,

why, frankly, I’d sooner marry a cobbler who practised decency.”

Such was her vehemence and obvious determination that Mme. de Sautron

fetched herself out of her despair to attempt persuasion. Aline was her

niece, and such a marriage in the family would be to the credit of the

whole of it. At all costs nothing must frustrate it.

“Listen, my dear,” she said. “Let us reason. M. le Marquis is away and

will not be back until to-morrow.”

“True. And I know where he has gone--or at least whom he has gone with.

Mon Dieu, and the drab has a father and a lout of a fellow who intends

to make her his wife, and neither of them chooses to do anything. I

suppose they agree with you, madame, that a great gentleman must have

his little distractions.” Her contempt was as scorching as a thing of

fire. “However, madame, you were about to say?”

“That on the day after to-morrow you are returning to Gavrillac. M. de

La Tour d’Azyr will most likely follow at his leisure.”

“You mean when this dirty candle is burnt out?”

“Call it what you will.” Madame, you see, despaired by now of

controlling the impropriety of her niece’s expressions. “At Gavrillac

there will be no Mlle. Binet. This thing will be in the past. It is

unfortunate that he should have met her at such a moment. The chit is

very attractive, after all. You cannot deny that. And you must make

allowances.”

“M. le Marquis formally proposed to me a week ago. Partly to satisfy the

wishes of the family, and partly...” She broke off, hesitating a moment,

to resume on a note of dull pain, “Partly because it does not seem

greatly to matter whom I marry, I gave him my consent. That consent,

for the reasons I have given you, madame, I desire now definitely to

withdraw.”

Madame fell into agitation of the wildest. “Aline, I should never

forgive you! Your uncle Quintin would be in despair. You do not know

what you are saying, what a wonderful thing you are refusing. Have you

no sense of your position, of the station into which you were born?”

“If I had not, madame, I should have made an end long since. If I have

tolerated this suit for a single moment, it is because I realize the

importance of a suitable marriage in the worldly sense. But I ask of

marriage something more; and Uncle Quintin has placed the decision in my

hands.”

“God forgive him!” said madame. And then she hurried on: “Leave this

to me now, Aline. Be guided by me--oh, be guided by me!” Her tone was

beseeching. “I will take counsel with your uncle Charles. But do not

definitely decide until this unfortunate affair has blown over. Charles

will know how to arrange it. M. le Marquis shall do penance, child,

since your tyranny demands it; but not in sackcloth and ashes. You’ll

not ask so much?”

Aline shrugged. “I ask nothing at all,” she said, which was neither

assent nor dissent.

So Mme. de Sautron interviewed her husband, a slight, middle-aged man,

very aristocratic in appearance and gifted with a certain shrewd sense.

She took with him precisely the tone that Aline had taken with herself

and which in Aline she had found so disconcertingly indelicate. She even

borrowed several of Aline’s phrases.

The result was that on the Monday afternoon when at last M. de La Tour

d’Azyr’s returning berline drove up to the chateau, he was met by M. le

Comte de Sautron who desired a word with him even before he changed.

“Gervais, you’re a fool,” was the excellent opening made by M. le Comte.

“Charles, you give me no news,” answered M. le Marquis. “Of what

particular folly do you take the trouble to complain?”

He flung himself wearily upon a sofa, and his long graceful body

sprawling there he looked up at his friend with a tired smile on that

nobly handsome pale face that seemed to defy the onslaught of age.

“Of your last. This Binet girl.”

“That! Pooh! An incident; hardly a folly.”

“A folly--at such a time,” Sautron insisted. The Marquis looked a

question. The Count answered it. “Aline,” said he, pregnantly. “She

knows. How she knows I can’t tell you, but she knows, and she is deeply

offended.”

The smile perished on the Marquis’ face. He gathered himself up.

“Offended?” said he, and his voice was anxious.

“But yes. You know what she is. You know the ideals she has formed. It

wounds her that at such a time--whilst you are here for the purpose of

wooing her--you should at the same time be pursuing this affair with that

chit of a Binet girl.”

“How do you know?” asked La Tour d’Azyr.

“She has confided in her aunt. And the poor child seems to have some

reason. She says she will not tolerate that you should come to kiss her

hand with lips that are still contaminated from... Oh, you understand.

You appreciate the impression of such a thing upon a pure, sensitive

girl such as Aline. She said--I had better tell you--that the next

time you kiss her hand, she will call for water and wash it in your

presence.”

The Marquis’ face flamed scarlet. He rose. Knowing his violent,

intolerant spirit, M. de Sautron was prepared for an outburst. But no

outburst came. The Marquis turned away from him, and paced slowly to

the window, his head bowed, his hands behind his back. Halted there he

spoke, without turning, his voice was at once scornful and wistful.

“You are right, Charles, I am a fool--a wicked fool! I have just enough

sense left to perceive it. It is the way I have lived, I suppose. I have

never known the need to deny myself anything I wanted.” Then suddenly he

swung round, and the outburst came. “But, my God, I want Aline as I

have never wanted anything yet! I think I should kill myself in rage if

through my folly I should have lost her.” He struck his brow with his

hand. “I am a beast!” he said. “I should have known that if that sweet

saint got word of these petty devilries of mine she would despise me;

and I tell you, Charles, I’d go through fire to regain her respect.”

“I hope it is to be regained on easier terms,” said Charles; and then

to ease the situation which began to irk him by its solemnity, he made

a feeble joke. “It is merely asked of you that you refrain from going

through certain fires that are not accounted by mademoiselle of too

purifying a nature.”

“As to that Binet girl, it is finished--finished,” said the Marquis.

“I congratulate you. When did you make that decision?”

“This moment. I would to God I had made it twenty-four hours ago. As it

is--” he shrugged--“why, twenty-four hours of her have been enough for

me as they would have been for any man--a mercenary, self-seeking little

baggage with the soul of a trull. Bah!” He shuddered in disgust of

himself and her.

“Ah! That makes it easier for you,” said M. de Sautron, cynically.

“Don’t say it, Charles. It is not so. Had you been less of a fool, you

would have warned me sooner.”

“I may prove to have warned you soon enough if you’ll profit by the

warning.”

“There is no penance I will not do. I will prostrate myself at her feet.

I will abase myself before her. I will make confession in the proper

spirit of contrition, and Heaven helping me, I’ll keep to my purpose of

amendment for her sweet sake.” He was tragically in earnest.

To M. de Sautron, who had never seen him other than self-contained,

supercilious, and mocking, this was an amazing revelation. He shrank

from it almost; it gave him the feeling of prying, of peeping through a

keyhole. He slapped his friend’s shoulder.

“My dear Gervais, here is a magnificently romantic mood. Enough said.

Keep to it, and I promise you that all will presently be well. I will be

your ambassador, and you shall have no cause to complain.”

“But may I not go to her myself?”

“If you are wise you will at once efface yourself. Write to her if you

will--make your act of contrition by letter. I will explain why you have

gone without seeing her. I will tell her that you did so upon my advice,

and I will do it tactfully. I am a good diplomat, Gervais. Trust me.”

M. le Marquis raised his head, and showed a face that pain was searing.

He held out his hand. “Very well, Charles. Serve me in this, and count

me your friend in all things.”

CHAPTER XI. THE FRACAS AT THE THEATRE FEYDAU

Leaving his host to act as his plenipotentiary with Mademoiselle de

Kercadiou, and to explain to her that it was his profound contrition

that compelled him to depart without taking formal leave of her, the

Marquis rolled away from Sautron in a cloud of gloom. Twenty-four hours

with La Binet had been more than enough for a man of his fastidious

and discerning taste. He looked back upon the episode with nausea--the

inevitable psychological reaction--marvelling at himself that until

yesterday he should have found her so desirable, and cursing himself

that for the sake of that ephemeral and worthless gratification he

should seriously have imperilled his chances of winning Mademoiselle de

Kercadiou to wife. There is, after all, nothing very extraordinary in

his frame of mind, so that I need not elaborate it further. It resulted

from the conflict between the beast and the angel that go to make up the

composition of every man.

The Chevalier de Chabrillane--who in reality occupied towards the Marquis

a position akin to that of gentleman-in-waiting--sat opposite to him in

the enormous travelling berline. A small folding table had been erected

between them, and the Chevalier suggested piquet. But M. le Marquis was

in no humour for cards. His thoughts absorbed him. As they were rattling

over the cobbles of Nantes’ streets, he remembered a promise to La Binet

to witness her performance that night in “The Faithless Lover.” And now

he was running away from her. The thought was repugnant to him on two

scores. He was breaking his pledged word, and he was acting like a

coward. And there was more than that. He had led the mercenary little

strumpet--it was thus he thought of her at present, and with some

justice--to expect favours from him in addition to the lavish awards

which already he had made her. The baggage had almost sought to drive a

bargain with him as to her future. He was to take her to Paris, put her

into her own furniture--as the expression ran, and still runs--and under

the shadow of his powerful protection see that the doors of the great

theatres of the capital should be opened to her talents. He had not--he

was thankful to reflect--exactly committed himself. But neither had

he definitely refused her. It became necessary now to come to an

understanding, since he was compelled to choose between his trivial

passion for her--a passion quenched already--and his deep, almost

spiritual devotion to Mademoiselle de Kercadiou.

His honour, he considered, demanded of him that he should at once

deliver himself from a false position. La Binet would make a scene, of

course; but he knew the proper specific to apply to hysteria of that

nature. Money, after all, has its uses.

He pulled the cord. The carriage rolled to a standstill; a footman

appeared at the door.

“To the Theatre Feydau,” said he.

The footman vanished and the berline rolled on. M. de Chabrillane

laughed cynically.

“I’ll trouble you not to be amused,” snapped the Marquis. “You

don’t understand.” Thereafter he explained himself. It was a rare

condescension in him. But, then, he could not bear to be misunderstood

in such a matter. Chabrillane grew serious in reflection of the Marquis’

extreme seriousness.

“Why not write?” he suggested. “Myself, I confess that I should find it

easier.”

Nothing could better have revealed M. le Marquis’ state of mind than his

answer.

“Letters are liable both to miscarriage and to misconstruction. Two

risks I will not run. If she did not answer, I should never know which

had been incurred. And I shall have no peace of mind until I know that I

have set a term to this affair. The berline can wait while we are at

the theatre. We will go on afterwards. We will travel all night if

necessary.”

“Peste!” said M. de Chabrillane with a grimace. But that was all.

The great travelling carriage drew up at the lighted portals of the

Feydau, and M. le Marquis stepped out. He entered the theatre with

Chabrillane, all unconsciously to deliver himself into the hands of

Andre-Louis.

Andre-Louis was in a state of exasperation produced by Climene’s long

absence from Nantes in the company of M. le Marquis, and fed by the

unspeakable complacency with which M. Binet regarded that event of quite

unmistakable import.

However much he might affect the frame of mind of the stoics, and

seek to judge with a complete detachment, in the heart and soul of him

Andre-Louis was tormented and revolted. It was not Climene he blamed.

He had been mistaken in her. She was just a poor weak vessel driven

helplessly by the first breath, however foul, that promised her

advancement. She suffered from the plague of greed; and he congratulated

himself upon having discovered it before making her his wife. He felt

for her now nothing but a deal of pity and some contempt. The pity was

begotten of the love she had lately inspired in him. It might be likened

to the dregs of love, all that remained after the potent wine of it had

been drained off. His anger he reserved for her father and her seducer.

The thoughts that were stirring in him on that Monday morning, when it

was discovered that Climene had not yet returned from her excursion

of the previous day in the coach of M. le Marquis, were already wicked

enough without the spurring they received from the distraught Leandre.

Hitherto the attitude of each of these men towards the other had been

one of mutual contempt. The phenomenon has frequently been observed in

like cases. Now, what appeared to be a common misfortune brought them

into a sort of alliance. So, at least, it seemed to Leandre when he went

in quest of Andre-Louis, who with apparent unconcern was smoking a pipe

upon the quay immediately facing the inn.

“Name of a pig!” said Leandre. “How can you take your ease and smoke at

such a time?”

Scaramouche surveyed the sky. “I do not find it too cold,” said he. “The

sun is shining. I am very well here.”

“Do I talk of the weather?” Leandre was very excited.

“Of what, then?”

“Of Climene, of course.”

“Oh! The lady has ceased to interest me,” he lied.

Leandre stood squarely in front of him, a handsome figure handsomely

dressed in these days, his hair well powdered, his stockings of silk.

His face was pale, his large eyes looked larger than usual.

“Ceased to interest you? Are you not to marry her?”

Andre-Louis expelled a cloud of smoke. “You cannot wish to be offensive.

Yet you almost suggest that I live on other men’s leavings.”

“My God!” said Leandre, overcome, and he stared awhile. Then he burst

out afresh. “Are you quite heartless? Are you always Scaramouche?”

“What do you expect me to do?” asked Andre-Louis, evincing surprise in

his own turn, but faintly.

“I do not expect you to let her go without a struggle.”

“But she has gone already.” Andre-Louis pulled at his pipe a moment,

what time Leandre clenched and unclenched his hands in impotent rage.

“And to what purpose struggle against the inevitable? Did you struggle

when I took her from you?”

“She was not mine to be taken from me. I but aspired, and you won the

race. But even had it been otherwise where is the comparison? That was a

thing in honour; this--this is hell.”

His emotion moved Andre-Louis. He took Leandre’s arm. “You’re a good

fellow, Leandre. I am glad I intervened to save you from your fate.”

“Oh, you don’t love her!” cried the other, passionately. “You never did.

You don’t know what it means to love, or you’d not talk like this. My

God! if she had been my affianced wife and this had happened, I should

have killed the man--killed him! Do you hear me? But you... Oh, you, you

come out here and smoke, and take the air, and talk of her as another

man’s leavings. I wonder I didn’t strike you for the word.”

He tore his arm from the other’s grip, and looked almost as if he would

strike him now.

“You should have done it,” said Andre-Louis. “It’s in your part.”

With an imprecation Leandre turned on his heel to go. Andre-Louis

arrested his departure.

“A moment, my friend. Test me by yourself. Would you marry her now?”

“Would I?” The young man’s eyes blazed with passion. “Would I? Let her

say that she will marry me, and I am her slave.”

“Slave is the right word--a slave in hell.”

“It would never be hell to me where she was, whatever she had done. I

love her, man, I am not like you. I love her, do you hear me?”

“I have known it for some time,” said Andre-Louis. “Though I didn’t

suspect your attack of the disease to be quite so violent. Well, God

knows I loved her, too, quite enough to share your thirst for killing.

For myself, the blue blood of La Tour d’Azyr would hardly quench this

thirst. I should like to add to it the dirty fluid that flows in the

veins of the unspeakable Binet.”

For a second his emotion had been out of hand, and he revealed to

Leandre in the mordant tone of those last words something of the fires

that burned under his icy exterior. The young man caught him by the

hand.

“I knew you were acting,” said he. “You feel--you feel as I do.”

“Behold us, fellows in viciousness. I have betrayed myself, it seems.

Well, and what now? Do you want to see this pretty Marquis torn limb

from limb? I might afford you the spectacle.”

“What?” Leandre stared, wondering was this another of Scaramouche’s

cynicisms.

“It isn’t really difficult provided I have aid. I require only a little.

Will you lend it me?”

“Anything you ask,” Leandre exploded. “My life if you require it.”

Andre-Louis took his arm again. “Let us walk,” he said. “I will instruct

you.”

When they came back the company was already at dinner. Mademoiselle had

not yet returned. Sullenness presided at the table. Columbine and Madame

wore anxious expressions. The fact was that relations between Binet and

his troupe were daily growing more strained.

Andre-Louis and Leandre went each to his accustomed place. Binet’s

little eyes followed them with a malicious gleam, his thick lips pouted

into a crooked smile.

“You two are grown very friendly of a sudden,” he mocked.

“You are a man of discernment, Binet,” said Scaramouche, the cold

loathing of his voice itself an insult. “Perhaps you discern the

reason?”

“It is readily discerned.”

“Regale the company with it!” he begged; and waited. “What? You

hesitate? Is it possible that there are limits to your shamelessness?”

Binet reared his great head. “Do you want to quarrel with me,

Scaramouche?” Thunder was rumbling in his deep voice.

“Quarrel? You want to laugh. A man doesn’t quarrel with creatures like

you. We all know the place held in the public esteem by complacent

husbands. But, in God’s name, what place is there at all for complacent

fathers?”

Binet heaved himself up, a great towering mass of manhood. Violently he

shook off the restraining hand of Pierrot who sat on his left.

“A thousand devils!” he roared; “if you take that tone with me, I’ll

break every bone in your filthy body.”

“If you were to lay a finger on me, Binet, you would give me the only

provocation I still need to kill you.” Andre-Louis was as calm as ever,

and therefore the more menacing. Alarm stirred the company. He protruded

from his pocket the butt of a pistol--newly purchased. “I go armed,

Binet. It is only fair to give you warning. Provoke me as you have

suggested, and I’ll kill you with no more compunction than I should kill

a slug, which after all is the thing you most resemble--a slug, Binet; a

fat, slimy body; foulness without soul and without intelligence. When I

come to think of it I can’t suffer to sit at table with you. It turns my

stomach.”

He pushed away his platter and got up. “I’ll go and eat at the ordinary

below stairs.”

Thereupon up jumped Columbine.

“And I’ll come with you, Scaramouche!” cried she.

It acted like a signal. Had the thing been concerted it couldn’t

have fallen out more uniformly. Binet, in fact, was persuaded of a

conspiracy. For in the wake of Columbine went Leandre, in the wake of

Leandre, Polichinelle and then all the rest together, until Binet found

himself sitting alone at the head of an empty table in an empty room--a

badly shaken man whose rage could afford him no support against the

dread by which he was suddenly invaded.

He sat down to think things out, and he was still at that melancholy

occupation when perhaps a half-hour later his daughter entered the room,

returned at last from her excursion.

She looked pale, even a little scared--in reality excessively

self-conscious now that the ordeal of facing all the company awaited

her.

Seeing no one but her father in the room, she checked on the threshold.

“Where is everybody?” she asked, in a voice rendered natural by effort.

M. Binet reared his great head and turned upon her eyes that were

blood-injected. He scowled, blew out his thick lips and made harsh

noises in his throat. Yet he took stock of her, so graceful and comely

and looking so completely the lady of fashion in her long fur-trimmed

travelling coat of bottle green, her muff and her broad hat adorned by

a sparkling Rhinestone buckle above her adorably coiffed brown hair. No

need to fear the future whilst he owned such a daughter, let Scaramouche

play what tricks he would.

He expressed, however, none of these comforting reflections.

“So you’re back at last, little fool,” he growled in greeting. “I was

beginning to ask myself if we should perform this evening. It wouldn’t

greatly have surprised me if you had not returned in time. Indeed,

since you have chosen to play the fine hand you held in your own way and

scorning my advice, nothing can surprise me.”

She crossed the room to the table, and leaning against it, looked down

upon him almost disdainfully.

“I have nothing to regret,” she said.

“So every fool says at first. Nor would you admit it if you had. You

are like that. You go your own way in spite of advice from older heads.

Death of my life, girl, what do you know of men?”

“I am not complaining,” she reminded him.

“No, but you may be presently, when you discover that you would have

done better to have been guided by your old father. So long as your

Marquis languished for you, there was nothing you could not have done

with the fool. So long as you let him have no more than your fingertips

to kiss... ah, name of a name! that was the time to build your future.

If you live to be a thousand you’ll never have such a chance again, and

you’ve squandered it, for what?”

Mademoiselle sat down.--“You’re sordid,” she said, with disgust.

“Sordid, am I?” His thick lips curled again. “I have had enough of the

dregs of life, and so I should have thought have you. You held a hand

on which to have won a fortune if you had played it as I bade you. Well,

you’ve played it, and where’s the fortune? We can whistle for that as

a sailor whistles for wind. And, by Heaven, we’ll need to whistle

presently if the weather in the troupe continues as it’s set in. That

scoundrel Scaramouche has been at his ape’s tricks with them. They’ve

suddenly turned moral. They won’t sit at table with me any more.” He

was spluttering between anger and sardonic mirth. “It was your friend

Scaramouche set them the example of that. He threatened my life

actually. Threatened my life! Called me... Oh, but what does that

matter? What matters is that the next thing to happen to us will be that

the Binet Troupe will discover it can manage without M. Binet and his

daughter. This scoundrelly bastard I’ve befriended has little by little

robbed me of everything. It’s in his power to-day to rob me of my

troupe, and the knave’s ungrateful enough and vile enough to make use of

his power.

“Let him,” said mademoiselle contemptuously.

“Let him?” He was aghast. “And what’s to become of us?”

“In no case will the Binet Troupe interest me much longer,” said she. “I

shall be going to Paris soon. There are better theatres there than the

Feydau. There’s Mlle. Montansier’s theatre in the Palais Royal; there’s

the Ambigu Comique; there’s the Comedie Francaise; there’s even a

possibility I may have a theatre of my own.”

His eyes grew big for once. He stretched out a fat hand, and placed it

on one of hers. She noticed that it trembled.

“Has he promised that? Has he promised?”

She looked at him with her head on one side, eyes sly and a queer little

smile on her perfect lips.

“He did not refuse me when I asked it,” she answered, with conviction

that all was as she desired it.

“Bah!” He withdrew his hand, and heaved himself up. There was disgust

on his face. “He did not refuse!” he mocked her; and then with passion:

“Had you acted as I advised you, he would have consented to anything

that you asked, and what is more he would have provided anything

that you asked--anything that lay within his means, and they are

inexhaustible. You have changed a certainty into a possibility, and

I hate possibilities--God of God! I have lived on possibilities, and

infernally near starved on them.”

Had she known of the interview taking place at that moment at the

Chateau de Sautron she would have laughed less confidently at her

father’s gloomy forebodings. But she was destined never to know, which

indeed was the cruellest punishment of all. She was to attribute all the

evil that of a sudden overwhelmed her, the shattering of all the future

hopes she had founded upon the Marquis and the sudden disintegration

of the Binet Troupe, to the wicked interference of that villain

Scaramouche.

She had this much justification that possibly, without the warning

from M. de Sautron, the Marquis would have found in the events of

that evening at the Theatre Feydau a sufficient reason for ending an

entanglement that was fraught with too much unpleasant excitement,

whilst the breaking-up of the Binet Troupe was most certainly the result

of Andre-Louis’ work. But it was not a result that he intended or even

foresaw.

So much was this the case that in the interval after the second act,

he sought the dressing-room shared by Polichinelle and Rhodomont.

Polichinelle was in the act of changing.

“I shouldn’t trouble to change,” he said. “The piece isn’t likely to go

beyond my opening scene of the next act with Leandre.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll see.” He put a paper on Polichinelle’s table amid the

grease-paints. “Cast your eye over that. It’s a sort of last will and

testament in favour of the troupe. I was a lawyer once; the document

is in order. I relinquish to all of you the share produced by my

partnership in the company.”

“But you don’t mean that you are leaving us?” cried Polichinelle in

alarm, whilst Rhodomont’s sudden stare asked the same question.

Scaramouche’s shrug was eloquent. Polichinelle ran on gloomily: “Of

course it was to have been foreseen. But why should you be the one to

go? It is you who have made us; and it is you who are the real head

and brains of the troupe; it is you who have raised it into a real

theatrical company. If any one must go, let it be Binet--Binet and his

infernal daughter. Or if you go, name of a name! we all go with you!”

“Aye,” added Rhodomont, “we’ve had enough of that fat scoundrel.”

“I had thought of it, of course,” said Andre-Louis. “It was not vanity,

for once; it was trust in your friendship. After to-night we may

consider it again, if I survive.”

“If you survive?” both cried.

Polichinelle got up. “Now, what madness have you in mind?” he asked.

“For one thing I think I am indulging Leandre; for another I am pursuing

an old quarrel.”

The three knocks sounded as he spoke.

“There, I must go. Keep that paper, Polichinelle. After all, it may not

be necessary.”

He was gone. Rhodomont stared at Polichinelle. Polichinelle stared at

Rhodomont.

“What the devil is he thinking of?” quoth the latter.

“That is most readily ascertained by going to see,” replied

Polichinelle. He completed changing in haste, and despite what

Scaramouche had said; and then followed with Rhodomont.

As they approached the wings a roar of applause met them coming from

the audience. It was applause and something else; applause on an unusual

note. As it faded away they heard the voice of Scaramouche ringing clear

as a bell:

“And so you see, my dear M. Leandre, that when you speak of the Third

Estate, it is necessary to be more explicit. What precisely is the Third

Estate?”

“Nothing,” said Leandre.

There was a gasp from the audience, audible in the wings, and then

swiftly followed Scaramouche’s next question:

“True. Alas! But what should it be?”

“Everything,” said Leandre.

The audience roared its acclamations, the more violent because of the

unexpectedness of that reply.

“True again,” said Scaramouche. “And what is more, that is what it will

be; that is what it already is. Do you doubt it?”

“I hope it,” said the schooled Leandre.

“You may believe it,” said Scaramouche, and again the acclamations

rolled into thunder.

Polichinelle and Rhodomont exchanged glances: indeed, the former winked,

not without mirth.

“Sacred name!” growled a voice behind them. “Is the scoundrel at his

political tricks again?”

They turned to confront M. Binet. Moving with that noiseless tread of

his, he had come up unheard behind them, and there he stood now in his

scarlet suit of Pantaloon under a trailing bedgown, his little eyes

glaring from either side of his false nose. But their attention was held

by the voice of Scaramouche. He had stepped to the front of the stage.

“He doubts it,” he was telling the audience. “But then this M. Leandre

is himself akin to those who worship the worm-eaten idol of Privilege,

and so he is a little afraid to believe a truth that is becoming

apparent to all the world. Shall I convince him? Shall I tell him how a

company of noblemen backed by their servants under arms--six hundred men

in all--sought to dictate to the Third Estate of Rennes a few short weeks

ago? Must I remind him of the martial front shown on that occasion by

the Third Estate, and how they swept the streets clean of that rabble of

nobles--cette canaille noble...”

Applause interrupted him. The phrase had struck home and caught. Those

who had writhed under that infamous designation from their betters leapt

at this turning of it against the nobles themselves.

“But let me tell you of their leader--le pins noble de cette canaille,

ou bien le plus canaille de ces nobles! You know him--that one. He fears

many things, but the voice of truth he fears most. With such as him the

eloquent truth eloquently spoken is a thing instantly to be silenced.

So he marshalled his peers and their valetailles, and led them out to

slaughter these miserable bourgeois who dared to raise a voice. But

these same miserable bourgeois did not choose to be slaughtered in the

streets of Rennes. It occurred to them that since the nobles decreed

that blood should flow, it might as well be the blood of the nobles.

They marshalled themselves too--this noble rabble against the rabble of

nobles--and they marshalled themselves so well that they drove M. de La

Tour d’Azyr and his warlike following from the field with broken

heads and shattered delusions. They sought shelter at the hands of

the Cordeliers; and the shavelings gave them sanctuary in their

convent--those who survived, among whom was their proud leader, M. de La

Tour d’Azyr. You have heard of this valiant Marquis, this great lord of

life and death?”

The pit was in an uproar a moment. It quieted again as Scaramouche

continued:

“Oh, it was a fine spectacle to see this mighty hunter scuttling to

cover like a hare, going to earth in the Cordelier Convent. Rennes has

not seen him since. Rennes would like to see him again. But if he is

valorous, he is also discreet. And where do you think he has taken

refuge, this great nobleman who wanted to see the streets of Rennes

washed in the blood of its citizens, this man who would have butchered

old and young of the contemptible canaille to silence the voice of

reason and of liberty that presumes to ring through France to-day? Where

do you think he hides himself? Why, here in Nantes.”

Again there was uproar.

“What do you say? Impossible? Why, my friends, at this moment he is here

in this theatre--skulking up there in that box. He is too shy to

show himself--oh, a very modest gentleman. But there he is behind the

curtains. Will you not show yourself to your friends, M. de La Tour

d’Azyr, Monsieur le Marquis who considers eloquence so very dangerous a

gift? See, they would like a word with you; they do not believe me when

I tell them that you are here.”

Now, whatever he may have been, and whatever the views held on the

subject by Andre-Louis, M. de La Tour d’Azyr was certainly not a coward.

To say that he was hiding in Nantes was not true. He came and went

there openly and unabashed. It happened, however, that the Nantais were

ignorant until this moment of his presence among them. But then he

would have disdained to have informed them of it just as he would have

disdained to have concealed it from them.

Challenged thus, however, and despite the ominous manner in which the

bourgeois element in the audience had responded to Scaramouche’s appeal

to its passions, despite the attempts made by Chabrillane to restrain

him, the Marquis swept aside the curtain at the side of the box, and

suddenly showed himself, pale but self-contained and scornful as he

surveyed first the daring Scaramouche and then those others who at sight

of him had given tongue to their hostility.

Hoots and yells assailed him, fists were shaken at him, canes were

brandished menacingly.

“Assassin! Scoundrel! Coward! Traitor!”

But he braved the storm, smiling upon them his ineffable contempt. He

was waiting for the noise to cease; waiting to address them in his turn.

But he waited in vain, as he very soon perceived.

The contempt he did not trouble to dissemble served but to goad them on.

In the pit pandemonium was already raging. Blows were being freely

exchanged; there were scuffling groups, and here and there swords were

being drawn, but fortunately the press was too dense to permit of their

being used effectively. Those who had women with them and the timid by

nature were making haste to leave a house that looked like becoming a

cockpit, where chairs were being smashed to provide weapons, and parts

of chandeliers were already being used as missiles.

One of these hurled by the hand of a gentleman in one of the boxes

narrowly missed Scaramouche where he stood, looking down in a sort of

grim triumph upon the havoc which his words had wrought. Knowing of

what inflammable material the audience was composed, he had deliberately

flung down amongst them the lighted torch of discord, to produce this

conflagration.

He saw men falling quickly into groups representative of one side or the

other of this great quarrel that already was beginning to agitate the

whole of France. Their rallying cries were ringing through the theatre.

“Down with the canaille!” from some.

“Down with the privileged!” from others.

And then above the general din one cry rang out sharply and insistently:

“To the box! Death to the butcher of Rennes! Death to La Tour d’Azyr who

makes war upon the people!”

There was a rush for one of the doors of the pit that opened upon the

staircase leading to the boxes.

And now, whilst battle and confusion spread with the speed of fire,

overflowing from the theatre into the street itself, La Tour d’Azyr’s

box, which had become the main object of the attack of the bourgeoisie,

had also become the rallying ground for such gentlemen as were present

in the theatre and for those who, without being men of birth themselves,

were nevertheless attached to the party of the nobles.

La Tour d’Azyr had quitted the front of the box to meet those who came

to join him. And now in the pit one group of infuriated gentlemen, in

attempting to reach the stage across the empty orchestra, so that they

might deal with the audacious comedian who was responsible for this

explosion, found themselves opposed and held back by another group

composed of men to whose feelings Andre-Louis had given expression.

Perceiving this, and remembering the chandelier, he turned to Leandre,

who had remained beside him.

“I think it is time to be going,” said he.

Leandre, looking ghastly under his paint, appalled by the storm which

exceeded by far anything that his unimaginative brain could have

conjectured, gurgled an inarticulate agreement. But it looked as if

already they were too late, for in that moment they were assailed from

behind.

M. Binet had succeeded at last in breaking past Polichinelle and

Rhodomont, who in view of his murderous rage had been endeavouring to

restrain him. Half a dozen gentlemen, habitues of the green-room, had

come round to the stage to disembowel the knave who had created this

riot, and it was they who had flung aside those two comedians who hung

upon Binet. After him they came now, their swords out; but after them

again came Polichinelle, Rhodomont, Harlequin, Pierrot, Pasquariel,

and Basque the artist, armed with such implements as they could hastily

snatch up, and intent upon saving the man with whom they sympathized in

spite of all, and in whom now all their hopes were centred.

Well ahead rolled Binet, moving faster than any had ever seen him move,

and swinging the long cane from which Pantaloon is inseparable.

“Infamous scoundrel!” he roared. “You have ruined me! But, name of a

name, you shall pay!”

Andre-Louis turned to face him. “You confuse cause with effect,” said

he. But he got no farther... Binet’s cane, viciously driven, descended

and broke upon his shoulder. Had he not moved swiftly aside as the blow

fell it must have taken him across the head, and possibly stunned him.

As he moved, he dropped his hand to his pocket, and swift upon the

cracking of Binet’s breaking cane came the crack of the pistol with

which Andre-Louis replied.

“You had your warning, you filthy pander!” he cried. And on the word he

shot him through the body.

Binet went down screaming, whilst the fierce Polichinelle, fiercer than

ever in that moment of fierce reality, spoke quickly into Andre-Louis’

ear:

“Fool! So much was not necessary! Away with you now, or you’ll leave

your skin here! Away with you!”

Andre-Louis thought it good advice, and took it. The gentlemen who had

followed Binet in that punitive rush upon the stage, partly held in

check by the improvised weapons of the players, partly intimidated by

the second pistol that Scaramouche presented, let him go. He gained

the wings, and here found himself faced by a couple of sergeants of the

watch, part of the police that was already invading the theatre with a

view to restoring order. The sight of them reminded him unpleasantly

of how he must stand towards the law for this night’s work, and more

particularly for that bullet lodged somewhere in Binet’s obese body. He

flourished his pistol.

“Make way, or I’ll burn your brains!” he threatened them, and

intimidated, themselves without firearms, they fell back and let him

pass. He slipped by the door of the green-room, where the ladies of the

company had shut themselves in until the storm should be over, and so

gained the street behind the theatre. It was deserted. Down this he went

at a run, intent on reaching the inn for clothes and money, since it was

impossible that he should take the road in the garb of Scaramouche.

BOOK III: THE SWORD

CHAPTER I. TRANSITION

“You may agree,” wrote Andre-Louis from Paris to Le Chapelier, in a

letter which survives, “that it is to be regretted I should definitely

have discarded the livery of Scaramouche, since clearly there could be

no livery fitter for my wear. It seems to be my part always to stir up

strife and then to slip away before I am caught in the crash of the

warring elements I have aroused. It is a humiliating reflection. I seek

consolation in the reminder of Epictetus (do you ever read Epictetus?)

that we are but actors in a play of such a part as it may please the

Director to assign us. It does not, however, console me to have been

cast for a part so contemptible, to find myself excelling ever in the

art of running away. But if I am not brave, at least I am prudent; so

that where I lack one virtue I may lay claim to possessing another

almost to excess. On a previous occasion they wanted to hang me for

sedition. Should I have stayed to be hanged? This time they may want to

hang me for several things, including murder; for I do not know whether

that scoundrel Binet be alive or dead from the dose of lead I pumped

into his fat paunch. Nor can I say that I very greatly care. If I have a

hope at all in the matter it is that he is dead--and damned. But I am

really indifferent. My own concerns are troubling me enough. I have all

but spent the little money that I contrived to conceal about me before I

fled from Nantes on that dreadful night; and both of the only two

professions of which I can claim to know anything--the law and the

stage--are closed to me, since I cannot find employment in either without

revealing myself as a fellow who is urgently wanted by the hangman. As

things are it is very possible that I may die of hunger, especially

considering the present price of victuals in this ravenous city. Again I

have recourse to Epictetus for comfort. ‘It is better,’ he says, ‘to die

of hunger having lived without grief and fear, than to live with a

troubled spirit amid abundance.’ I seem likely to perish in the estate

that he accounts so enviable. That it does not seem exactly enviable to

me merely proves that as a Stoic I am not a success.”

There is also another letter of his written at about the same time

to the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr--a letter since published by M. Emile

Quersac in his “Undercurrents of the Revolution in Brittany,” unearthed

by him from the archives of Rennes, to which it had been consigned by

M. de Lesdiguieres, who had received it for justiciary purposes from the

Marquis.

“The Paris newspapers,” he writes in this, “which have reported in

considerable detail the fracas at the Theatre Feydau and disclosed the

true identity of the Scaramouche who provoked it, inform me also that

you have escaped the fate I had intended for you when I raised that

storm of public opinion and public indignation. I would not have you

take satisfaction in the thought that I regret your escape. I do not. I

rejoice in it. To deal justice by death has this disadvantage that the

victim has no knowledge that justice has overtaken him. Had you died,

had you been torn limb from limb that night, I should now repine in the

thought of your eternal and untroubled slumber. Not in euthanasia, but

in torment of mind should the guilty atone. You see, I am not sure that

hell hereafter is a certainty, whilst I am quite sure that it can be a

certainty in this life; and I desire you to continue to live yet awhile

that you may taste something of its bitterness.

“You murdered Philippe de Vilmorin because you feared what you described

as his very dangerous gift of eloquence, I took an oath that day that

your evil deed should be fruitless; that I would render it so; that the

voice you had done murder to stifle should in spite of that ring like

a trumpet through the land. That was my conception of revenge. Do you

realize how I have been fulfilling it, how I shall continue to fulfil

it as occasion offers? In the speech with which I fired the people of

Rennes on the very morrow of that deed, did you not hear the voice of

Philippe de Vilmorin uttering the ideas that were his with a fire and a

passion greater than he could have commanded because Nemesis lent me

her inflaming aid? In the voice of Omnes Omnibus at Nantes my voice

again--demanding the petition that sounded the knell of your hopes of

coercing the Third Estate, did you not hear again the voice of Philippe

de Vilmorin? Did you not reflect that it was the mind of the man you had

murdered, resurrected in me his surviving friend, which made necessary

your futile attempt under arms last January, wherein your order, finally

beaten, was driven to seek sanctuary in the Cordelier Convent? And

that night when from the stage of the Feydau you were denounced to the

people, did you not hear yet again, in the voice of Scaramouche, the

voice of Philippe de Vilmorin, using that dangerous gift of eloquence

which you so foolishly imagined you could silence with a sword-thrust?

It is becoming a persecution--is it not?--this voice from the grave that

insists upon making itself heard, that will not rest until you have been

cast into the pit. You will be regretting by now that you did not kill

me too, as I invited you on that occasion. I can picture to myself

the bitterness of this regret, and I contemplate it with satisfaction.

Regret of neglected opportunity is the worst hell that a living soul can

inhabit, particularly such a soul as yours. It is because of this that

I am glad to know that you survived the riot at the Feydau, although at

the time it was no part of my intention that you should. Because of this

I am content that you should live to enrage and suffer in the shadow of

your evil deed, knowing at last--since you had not hitherto the wit to

discern it for yourself--that the voice of Philippe de Vilmorin will

follow you to denounce you ever more loudly, ever more insistently,

until having lived in dread you shall go down in blood under the just

rage which your victim’s dangerous gift of eloquence is kindling against

you.”

I find it odd that he should have omitted from this letter all mention

of Mlle. Binet, and I am disposed to account it at least a partial

insincerity that he should have assigned entirely to his self-imposed

mission, and not at all to his lacerated feelings in the matter of

Climene, the action which he had taken at the Feydau.

Those two letters, both written in April of that year 1789, had for only

immediate effect to increase the activity with which Andre-Louis Moreau

was being sought.

Le Chapelier would have found him so as to lend him assistance, to

urge upon him once again that he should take up a political career. The

electors of Nantes would have found him--at least, they would have

found Omnes Omnibus, of whose identity with himself they were still in

ignorance--on each of the several occasions when a vacancy occurred in

their body. And the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr and M. de Lesdiguieres

would have found him that they might send him to the gallows.

With a purpose no less vindictive was he being sought by M. Binet, now

unhappily recovered from his wound to face completest ruin. His troupe

had deserted him during his illness, and reconstituted under the

direction of Polichinelle it was now striving with tolerable success to

continue upon the lines which Andre-Louis had laid down. M. le Marquis,

prevented by the riot from expressing in person to Mlle. Binet his

purpose of making an end of their relations, had been constrained to

write to her to that effect from Azyr a few days later. He tempered the

blow by enclosing in discharge of all liabilities a bill on the Caisse

d’Escompte for a hundred louis. Nevertheless it almost crushed the

unfortunate and it enabled her father when he recovered to enrage her

by pointing out that she owed this turn of events to the premature

surrender she had made in defiance of his sound worldly advice. Father

and daughter alike were left to assign the Marquis’ desertion, naturally

enough, to the riot at the Feydau. They laid that with the rest to the

account of Scaramouche, and were forced in bitterness to admit that the

scoundrel had taken a superlative revenge. Climene may even have come

to consider that it would have paid her better to have run a straight

course with Scaramouche and by marrying him to have trusted to his

undoubted talents to place her on the summit to which her ambition

urged her, and to which it was now futile for her to aspire. If so, that

reflection must have been her sufficient punishment. For, as Andre-Louis

so truly says, there is no worse hell than that provided by the regrets

for wasted opportunities.

Meanwhile the fiercely sought Andre-Louis Moreau had gone to earth

completely for the present. And the brisk police of Paris, urged on by

the King’s Lieutenant from Rennes, hunted for him in vain. Yet he might

have been found in a house in the Rue du Hasard within a stone’s throw

of the Palais Royal, whither purest chance had conducted him.

That which in his letter to Le Chapelier he represents as a contingency

of the near future was, in fact, the case in which already he found

himself. He was destitute. His money was exhausted, including that

procured by the sale of such articles of adornment as were not of

absolute necessity.

So desperate was his case that strolling one gusty April morning down

the Rue du Hasard with his nose in the wind looking for what might be

picked up, he stopped to read a notice outside the door of a house on

the left side of the street as you approach the Rue de Richelieu. There

was no reason why he should have gone down the Rue du Hasard. Perhaps

its name attracted him, as appropriate to his case.

The notice written in a big round hand announced that a young man of

good address with some knowledge of swordsmanship was required by M.

Bertrand des Amis on the second floor. Above this notice was a black

oblong board, and on this a shield, which in vulgar terms may be

described as red charged with two swords crossed and four fleurs de lys,

one in each angle of the saltire. Under the shield, in letters of gold,

ran the legend:

BERTRAND DES AMIS

Maitre en fait d’Armes des Academies du Roi

Andre-Louis stood considering. He could claim, he thought, to possess

the qualifications demanded. He was certainly young and he believed of

tolerable address, whilst the fencing-lessons he had received in Nantes

had given him at least an elementary knowledge of swordsmanship. The

notice looked as if it had been pinned there some days ago, suggesting

that applicants for the post were not very numerous. In that case

perhaps M. Bertrand des Amis would not be too exigent. And anyway,

Andre-Louis had not eaten for four-and-twenty hours, and whilst the

employment here offered--the precise nature of which he was yet to

ascertain--did not appear to be such as Andre-Louis would deliberately

have chosen, he was in no case now to be fastidious.

Then, too, he liked the name of Bertrand des Amis. It felicitously

combined suggestions of chivalry and friendliness. Also the man’s

profession being of a kind that is flavoured with romance it was

possible that M. Bertrand des Amis would not ask too many questions.

In the end he climbed to the second floor. On the landing he paused

outside a door, on which was written “Academy of M. Bertrand des

Amis.” He pushed this open, and found himself in a sparsely furnished,

untenanted antechamber. From a room beyond, the door of which was

closed, came the stamping of feet, the click and slither of steel upon

steel, and dominating these sounds a vibrant sonorous voice speaking a

language that was certainly French; but such French as is never heard

outside a fencing-school.

“Coulez! Mais, coulez donc!.... So! Now the flanconnade--en carte.... And

here is the riposte.... Let us begin again. Come! The ward of tierce....

Make the coupe, and then the quinte par dessus les armes.... O, mais

allongez! Allongez! Allez au fond!” the voice cried in expostulation.

“Come, that was better.” The blades ceased.

“Remember: the hand in pronation, the elbow not too far out. That will

do for to-day. On Wednesday we shall see you tirer au mur. It is more

deliberate. Speed will follow when the mechanism of the movements is

more assured.”

Another voice murmured in answer. The steps moved aside. The lesson was

at an end. Andre-Louis tapped on the door.

It was opened by a tall, slender, gracefully proportioned man of perhaps

forty. Black silk breeches and stockings ending in light shoes clothed

him from the waist down. Above he was encased to the chin in a closely

fitting plastron of leather. His face was aquiline and swarthy, his eyes

full and dark, his mouth firm and his clubbed hair was of a lustrous

black with here and there a thread of silver showing.

In the crook of his left arm he carried a fencing-mask, a thing of

leather with a wire grating to protect the eyes. His keen glance played

over Andre-Louis from head to foot.

“Monsieur?” he inquired, politely.

It was clear that he mistook Andre-Louis’ quality, which is not

surprising, for despite his sadly reduced fortunes, his exterior was

irreproachable, and M. des Amis was not to guess that he carried upon

his back the whole of his possessions.

“You have a notice below, monsieur,” he said, and from the swift

lighting of the fencing-master’s eyes he saw that he had been correct

in his assumption that applicants for the position had not been jostling

one another on his threshold. And then that flash of satisfaction was

followed by a look of surprise.

“You are come in regard to that?”

Andre-Louis shrugged and half smiled. “One must live,” said he.

“But come in. Sit down there. I shall be at your.... I shall be free to

attend to you in a moment.”

Andre-Louis took a seat on the bench ranged against one of the

whitewashed walls. The room was long and low, its floor entirely bare.

Plain wooden forms such as that which he occupied were placed here and

there against the wall. These last were plastered with fencing trophies,

masks, crossed foils, stuffed plastrons, and a variety of swords,

daggers, and targets, belonging to a variety of ages and countries.

There was also a portrait of an obese, big-nosed gentleman in an

elaborately curled wig, wearing the blue ribbon of the Saint Esprit,

in whom Andre-Louis recognized the King. And there was a framed

parchment--M. des Amis’ certificate from the King’s Academy. A bookcase

occupied one corner, and near this, facing the last of the four windows

that abundantly lighted the long room, there was a small writing-table

and an armchair. A plump and beautifully dressed young gentleman stood

by this table in the act of resuming coat and wig. M. des Amis sauntered

over to him--moving, thought Andre-Louis, with extraordinary grace and

elasticity--and stood in talk with him whilst also assisting him to

complete his toilet.

At last the young gentleman took his departure, mopping himself with

a fine kerchief that left a trail of perfume on the air. M. des Amis

closed the door, and turned to the applicant, who rose at once.

“Where have you studied?” quoth the fencing-master abruptly.

“Studied?” Andre-Louis was taken aback by the question. “Oh, at Louis Le

Grand.”

M. des Amis frowned, looking up sharply as if to see whether his

applicant was taking the liberty of amusing himself.

“In Heaven’s name! I am not asking you where you did your humanities,

but in what academy you studied fencing.”

“Oh--fencing!” It had hardly ever occurred to Andre-Louis that the sword

ranked seriously as a study. “I never studied it very much. I had some

lessons in... in the country once.”

The master’s eyebrows went up. “But then?” he cried. “Why trouble to

come up two flights of stairs?” He was impatient.

“The notice does not demand a high degree of proficiency. If I am not

proficient enough, yet knowing the rudiments I can easily improve. I

learn most things readily,” Andre-Louis commended himself. “For the

rest: I possess the other qualifications. I am young, as you observe:

and I leave you to judge whether I am wrong in assuming that my address

is good. I am by profession a man of the robe, though I realize that the

motto here is cedat toga armis.”

M. des Amis smiled approvingly. Undoubtedly the young man had a good

address, and a certain readiness of wit, it would appear. He ran a

critical eye over his physical points. “What is your name?” he asked.

Andre-Louis hesitated a moment. “Andre-Louis,” he said.

The dark, keen eyes conned him more searchingly.

“Well? Andre-Louis what?”

“Just Andre-Louis. Louis is my surname.”

“Oh! An odd surname. You come from Brittany by your accent. Why did you

leave it?”

“To save my skin,” he answered, without reflecting. And then made haste

to cover the blunder. “I have an enemy,” he explained.

M. des Amis frowned, stroking his square chin. “You ran away?”

“You may say so.

“A coward, eh?”

“I don’t think so.” And then he lied romantically. Surely a man who

lived by the sword should have a weakness for the romantic. “You see, my

enemy is a swordsman of great strength--the best blade in the province,

if not the best blade in France. That is his repute. I thought I would

come to Paris to learn something of the art, and then go back and kill

him. That, to be frank, is why your notice attracted me. You see, I have

not the means to take lessons otherwise. I thought to find work here in

the law. But I have failed. There are too many lawyers in Paris as it

is, and whilst waiting I have consumed the little money that I had, so

that... so that, enfin, your notice seemed to me something to which a

special providence had directed me.”

M. des Amis gripped him by the shoulders, and looked into his face.

“Is this true, my friend?” he asked.

“Not a word of it,” said Andre-Louis, wrecking his chances on an

irresistible impulse to say the unexpected. But he didn’t wreck them.

M. des Amis burst into laughter; and having laughed his fill, confessed

himself charmed by his applicant’s fundamental honesty.

“Take off your coat,” he said, “and let us see what you can do. Nature,

at least, designed you for a swordsman. You are light, active, and

supple, with a good length of arm, and you seem intelligent. I may make

something of you, teach you enough for my purpose, which is that you

should give the elements of the art to new pupils before I take them in

hand to finish them. Let us try. Take that mask and foil, and come over

here.”

He led him to the end of the room, where the bare floor was scored with

lines of chalk to guide the beginner in the management of his feet.

At the end of a ten minutes’ bout, M. des Amis offered him the

situation, and explained it. In addition to imparting the rudiments

of the art to beginners, he was to brush out the fencing-room every

morning, keep the foils furbished, assist the gentlemen who came for

lessons to dress and undress, and make himself generally useful. His

wages for the present were to be forty livres a month, and he might

sleep in an alcove behind the fencing-room if he had no other lodging.

The position, you see, had its humiliations. But, if Andre-Louis would

hope to dine, he must begin by eating his pride as an hors d’oeuvre.

“And so,” he said, controlling a grimace, “the robe yields not only to

the sword, but to the broom as well. Be it so. I stay.”

It is characteristic of him that, having made that choice, he should

have thrown himself into the work with enthusiasm. It was ever his way

to do whatever he did with all the resources of his mind and energies

of his body. When he was not instructing very young gentlemen in

the elements of the art, showing them the elaborate and intricate

salute--which with a few days’ hard practice he had mastered to

perfection--and the eight guards, he was himself hard at work on those

same guards, exercising eye, wrist, and knees.

Perceiving his enthusiasm, and seeing the obvious possibilities it

opened out of turning him into a really effective assistant, M. des Amis

presently took him more seriously in hand.

“Your application and zeal, my friend, are deserving of more than forty

livres a month,” the master informed him at the end of a week. “For

the present, however, I will make up what else I consider due to you by

imparting to you secrets of this noble art. Your future depends upon

how you profit by your exceptional good fortune in receiving instruction

from me.”

Thereafter every morning before the opening of the academy, the master

would fence for half an hour with his new assistant. Under this really

excellent tuition Andre-Louis improved at a rate that both astounded

and flattered M. des Amis. He would have been less flattered and more

astounded had he known that at least half the secret of Andre-Louis’

amazing progress lay in the fact that he was devouring the contents of

the master’s library, which was made up of a dozen or so treatises on

fencing by such great masters as La Bessiere, Danet, and the syndic

of the King’s Academy, Augustin Rousseau. To M. des Amis, whose

swordsmanship was all based on practice and not at all on theory, who

was indeed no theorist or student in any sense, that little library

was merely a suitable adjunct to a fencing-academy, a proper piece of

decorative furniture. The books themselves meant nothing to him in any

other sense. He had not the type of mind that could have read them with

profit nor could he understand that another should do so. Andre-Louis,

on the contrary, a man with the habit of study, with the acquired

faculty of learning from books, read those works with enormous profit,

kept their precepts in mind, critically set off those of one master

against those of another, and made for himself a choice which he

proceeded to put into practice.

At the end of a month it suddenly dawned upon M. des Amis that his

assistant had developed into a fencer of very considerable force, a man

in a bout with whom it became necessary to exert himself if he were to

escape defeat.

“I said from the first,” he told him one day, “that Nature designed you

for a swordsman. See how justified I was, and see also how well I have

known how to mould the material with which Nature has equipped you.”

“To the master be the glory,” said Andre-Louis.

His relations with M. des Amis had meanwhile become of the friendliest,

and he was now beginning to receive from him other pupils than mere

beginners. In fact Andre-Louis was becoming an assistant in a much

fuller sense of the word. M. des Amis, a chivalrous, open-handed fellow,

far from taking advantage of what he had guessed to be the young man’s

difficulties, rewarded his zeal by increasing his wages to four louis a

month.

From the earnest and thoughtful study of the theories of others, it

followed now--as not uncommonly happens--that Andre-Louis came to develop

theories of his own. He lay one June morning on his little truckle bed

in the alcove behind the academy, considering a passage that he had read

last night in Danet on double and triple feints. It had seemed to him

when reading it that Danet had stopped short on the threshold of a great

discovery in the art of fencing. Essentially a theorist, Andre-Louis

perceived the theory suggested, which Danet himself in suggesting it

had not perceived. He lay now on his back, surveying the cracks in the

ceiling and considering this matter further with the lucidity that early

morning often brings to an acute intelligence. You are to remember that

for close upon two months now the sword had been Andre-Louis’ daily

exercise and almost hourly thought. Protracted concentration upon

the subject was giving him an extraordinary penetration of vision.

Swordsmanship as he learnt and taught and saw it daily practised

consisted of a series of attacks and parries, a series of disengages

from one line into another. But always a limited series. A half-dozen

disengages on either side was, strictly speaking, usually as far as any

engagement went. Then one recommenced. But even so, these disengages

were fortuitous. What if from first to last they should be calculated?

That was part of the thought--one of the two legs on which his theory was

to stand; the other was: what would happen if one so elaborated Danet’s

ideas on the triple feint as to merge them into a series of actual

calculated disengages to culminate at the fourth or fifth or even sixth

disengage? That is to say, if one were to make a series of attacks

inviting ripostes again to be countered, each of which was not intended

to go home, but simply to play the opponent’s blade into a line that

must open him ultimately, and as predetermined, for an irresistible

lunge. Each counter of the opponent’s would have to be preconsidered in

this widening of his guard, a widening so gradual that he should himself

be unconscious of it, and throughout intent upon getting home his own

point on one of those counters.

Andre-Louis had been in his time a chess-player of some force, and at

chess he had excelled by virtue of his capacity for thinking ahead. That

virtue applied to fencing should all but revolutionize the art. It

was so applied already, of course, but only in an elementary and very

limited fashion, in mere feints, single, double, or triple. But even the

triple feint should be a clumsy device compared with this method upon

which he theorized.

He considered further, and the conviction grew that he held the key of a

discovery. He was impatient to put his theory to the test.

That morning he was given a pupil of some force, against whom usually

he was hard put to it to defend himself. Coming on guard, he made up his

mind to hit him on the fourth disengage, predetermining the four passes

that should lead up to it. They engaged in tierce, and Andre-Louis

led the attack by a beat and a straightening of the arm. Came the

demi-contre he expected, which he promptly countered by a thrust in

quinte; this being countered again, he reentered still lower, and being

again correctly parried, as he had calculated, he lunged swirling his

point into carte, and got home full upon his opponent’s breast. The ease

of it surprised him.

They began again. This time he resolved to go in on the fifth disengage,

and in on that he went with the same ease. Then, complicating the matter

further, he decided to try the sixth, and worked out in his mind the

combination of the five preliminary engages. Yet again he succeeded as

easily as before.

The young gentleman opposed to him laughed with just a tinge of

mortification in his voice.

“I am all to pieces this morning,” he said.

“You are not of your usual force,” Andre-Louis politely agreed. And then

greatly daring, always to test that theory of his to the uttermost: “So

much so,” he added, “that I could almost be sure of hitting you as and

when I declare.”

The capable pupil looked at him with a half-sneer. “Ah, that, no,” said

he.

“Let us try. On the fourth disengage I shall touch you. Allons! En

garde!”

And as he promised, so it happened.

The young gentleman who, hitherto, had held no great opinion of

Andre-Louis’ swordsmanship, accounting him well enough for purposes of

practice when the master was otherwise engaged, opened wide his eyes. In

a burst of mingled generosity and intoxication, Andre-Louis was almost

for disclosing his method--a method which a little later was to become a

commonplace of the fencing-rooms. Betimes he checked himself. To reveal

his secret would be to destroy the prestige that must accrue to him from

exercising it.

At noon, the academy being empty, M. des Amis called Andre-Louis to one

of the occasional lessons which he still received. And for the first

time in all his experience with Andre-Louis, M. des Amis received

from him a full hit in the course of the first bout. He laughed, well

pleased, like the generous fellow he was.

“Aha! You are improving very fast, my friend.” He still laughed, though

not so well pleased, when he was hit in the second bout. After that he

settled down to fight in earnest with the result that Andre-Louis

was hit three times in succession. The speed and accuracy of the

fencing-master when fully exerting himself disconcerted Andre-Louis’

theory, which for want of being exercised in practice still demanded too

much consideration.

But that his theory was sound he accounted fully established, and with

that, for the moment, he was content. It remained only to perfect by

practice the application of it. To this he now devoted himself with

the passionate enthusiasm of the discoverer. He confined himself to a

half-dozen combinations, which he practised assiduously until each had

become almost automatic. And he proved their infallibility upon the best

among M. des Amis’ pupils.

Finally, a week or so after that last bout of his with des Amis, the

master called him once more to practice.

Hit again in the first bout, the master set himself to exert all his

skill against his assistant. But to-day it availed him nothing before

Andre-Louis’ impetuous attacks.

After the third hit, M. des Amis stepped back and pulled off his mask.

“What’s this?” he asked. He was pale, and his dark brows were contracted

in a frown. Not in years had he been so wounded in his self-love. “Have

you been taught a secret botte?”

He had always boasted that he knew too much about the sword to believe

any nonsense about secret bottes; but this performance of Andre-Louis’

had shaken his convictions on that score.

“No,” said Andre-Louis. “I have been working hard; and it happens that I

fence with my brains.”

“So I perceive. Well, well, I think I have taught you enough, my friend.

I have no intention of having an assistant who is superior to myself.”

“Little danger of that,” said Andre-Louis, smiling pleasantly. “You have

been fencing hard all morning, and you are tired, whilst I, having

done little, am entirely fresh. That is the only secret of my momentary

success.”

His tact and the fundamental good-nature of M. des Amis prevented the

matter from going farther along the road it was almost threatening

to take. And thereafter, when they fenced together, Andre-Louis, who

continued daily to perfect his theory into an almost infallible system,

saw to it that M. des Amis always scored against him at least two hits

for every one of his own. So much he would grant to discretion, but no

more. He desired that M. des Amis should be conscious of his strength,

without, however, discovering so much of its real extent as would have

excited in him an unnecessary degree of jealousy.

And so well did he contrive that whilst he became ever of greater

assistance to the master--for his style and general fencing, too, had

materially improved--he was also a source of pride to him as the most

brilliant of all the pupils that had ever passed through his academy.

Never did Andre-Louis disillusion him by revealing the fact that his

skill was due far more to M. des Amis’ library and his own mother wit

than to any lessons received.