Chương Chương 16 · 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 16. 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!”