第 二十 章 · THE FRACAS AT THE THEATRE FEYDAU

. 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