Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution

by Rafael Sabatini

  CHAPTER XI. THE FRACAS AT THE THEATRE FEYDAU

  Leaving his host to act as his plenipotentiary with Mademoiselle deKercadiou, and to explain to her that it was his profound contritionthat compelled him to depart without taking formal leave of her, theMarquis rolled away from Sautron in a cloud of gloom. Twenty-four hourswith La Binet had been more than enough for a man of his fastidiousand discerning taste. He looked back upon the episode with nausea--theinevitable psychological reaction--marvelling at himself that untilyesterday he should have found her so desirable, and cursing himselfthat for the sake of that ephemeral and worthless gratification heshould seriously have imperilled his chances of winning Mademoiselle deKercadiou to wife. There is, after all, nothing very extraordinary inhis frame of mind, so that I need not elaborate it further. It resultedfrom the conflict between the beast and the angel that go to make up thecomposition of every man.

  The Chevalier de Chabrillane--who in reality occupied towards the Marquisa position akin to that of gentleman-in-waiting--sat opposite to him inthe enormous travelling berline. A small folding table had been erectedbetween them, and the Chevalier suggested piquet. But M. le Marquis wasin no humour for cards. His thoughts absorbed him. As they were rattlingover the cobbles of Nantes' streets, he remembered a promise to La Binetto witness her performance that night in "The Faithless Lover." And nowhe was running away from her. The thought was repugnant to him on twoscores. He was breaking his pledged word, and he was acting like acoward. And there was more than that. He had led the mercenary littlestrumpet--it was thus he thought of her at present, and with somejustice--to expect favours from him in addition to the lavish awardswhich already he had made her. The baggage had almost sought to drive abargain with him as to her future. He was to take her to Paris, put herinto her own furniture--as the expression ran, and still runs--and underthe shadow of his powerful protection see that the doors of the greattheatres of the capital should be opened to her talents. He had not--hewas thankful to reflect--exactly committed himself. But neither hadhe definitely refused her. It became necessary now to come to anunderstanding, since he was compelled to choose between his trivialpassion for her--a passion quenched already--and his deep, almostspiritual devotion to Mademoiselle de Kercadiou.

  His honour, he considered, demanded of him that he should at oncedeliver himself from a false position. La Binet would make a scene, ofcourse; but he knew the proper specific to apply to hysteria of thatnature. Money, after all, has its uses.

  He pulled the cord. The carriage rolled to a standstill; a footmanappeared at the door.

  "To the Theatre Feydau," said he.

  The footman vanished and the berline rolled on. M. de Chabrillanelaughed cynically.

  "I'll trouble you not to be amused," snapped the Marquis. "Youdon't understand." Thereafter he explained himself. It was a rarecondescension in him. But, then, he could not bear to be misunderstoodin 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 iteasier."

  Nothing could better have revealed M. le Marquis' state of mind than hisanswer.

  "Letters are liable both to miscarriage and to misconstruction. Tworisks I will not run. If she did not answer, I should never know whichhad been incurred. And I shall have no peace of mind until I know that Ihave set a term to this affair. The berline can wait while we are atthe theatre. We will go on afterwards. We will travel all night ifnecessary."

  "Peste!" said M. de Chabrillane with a grimace. But that was all.

  The great travelling carriage drew up at the lighted portals of theFeydau, and M. le Marquis stepped out. He entered the theatre withChabrillane, all unconsciously to deliver himself into the hands ofAndre-Louis.

  Andre-Louis was in a state of exasperation produced by Climene's longabsence from Nantes in the company of M. le Marquis, and fed by theunspeakable complacency with which M. Binet regarded that event of quiteunmistakable import.

  However much he might affect the frame of mind of the stoics, andseek to judge with a complete detachment, in the heart and soul of himAndre-Louis was tormented and revolted. It was not Climene he blamed.He had been mistaken in her. She was just a poor weak vessel drivenhelplessly by the first breath, however foul, that promised heradvancement. She suffered from the plague of greed; and he congratulatedhimself upon having discovered it before making her his wife. He feltfor her now nothing but a deal of pity and some contempt. The pity wasbegotten of the love she had lately inspired in him. It might be likenedto the dregs of love, all that remained after the potent wine of it hadbeen drained off. His anger he reserved for her father and her seducer.

  The thoughts that were stirring in him on that Monday morning, when itwas discovered that Climene had not yet returned from her excursionof the previous day in the coach of M. le Marquis, were already wickedenough without the spurring they received from the distraught Leandre.

  Hitherto the attitude of each of these men towards the other had beenone of mutual contempt. The phenomenon has frequently been observed inlike cases. Now, what appeared to be a common misfortune brought theminto a sort of alliance. So, at least, it seemed to Leandre when he wentin quest of Andre-Louis, who with apparent unconcern was smoking a pipeupon the quay immediately facing the inn.

  "Name of a pig!" said Leandre. "How can you take your ease and smoke atsuch a time?"

  Scaramouche surveyed the sky. "I do not find it too cold," said he. "Thesun 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 handsomelydressed 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 burstout afresh. "Are you quite heartless? Are you always Scaramouche?"

  "What do you expect me to do?" asked Andre-Louis, evincing surprise inhis 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 strugglewhen I took her from you?"

  "She was not mine to be taken from me. I but aspired, and you won therace. But even had it been otherwise where is the comparison? That was athing in honour; this--this is hell."

  His emotion moved Andre-Louis. He took Leandre's arm. "You're a goodfellow, 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. MyGod! if she had been my affianced wife and this had happened, I shouldhave killed the man--killed him! Do you hear me? But you... Oh, you, youcome out here and smoke, and take the air, and talk of her as anotherman'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 wouldstrike 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-Louisarrested 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 hersay 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. Ilove 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'tsuspect your attack of the disease to be quite so violent. Well, Godknows 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 thisthirst. I should like to add to it the dirty fluid that flows in theveins of the unspeakable Binet."

  For a second his emotion had been out of hand, and he revealed toLeandre in the mordant tone of those last words something of the firesthat burned under his icy exterior. The young man caught him by thehand.

  "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 limbfrom limb? I might afford you the spectacle."

  "What?" Leandre stared, wondering was this another of Scaramouche'scynicisms.

  "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 instructyou."

  When they came back the company was already at dinner. Mademoiselle hadnot yet returned. Sullenness presided at the table. Columbine and Madamewore anxious expressions. The fact was that relations between Binet andhis troupe were daily growing more strained.

  Andre-Louis and Leandre went each to his accustomed place. Binet'slittle eyes followed them with a malicious gleam, his thick lips poutedinto a crooked smile.

  "You two are grown very friendly of a sudden," he mocked.

  "You are a man of discernment, Binet," said Scaramouche, the coldloathing of his voice itself an insult. "Perhaps you discern thereason?"

  "It is readily discerned."

  "Regale the company with it!" he begged; and waited. "What? Youhesitate? 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 likeyou. We all know the place held in the public esteem by complacenthusbands. But, in God's name, what place is there at all for complacentfathers?"

  Binet heaved himself up, a great towering mass of manhood. Violently heshook off the restraining hand of Pierrot who sat on his left.

  "A thousand devils!" he roared; "if you take that tone with me, I'llbreak every bone in your filthy body."

  "If you were to lay a finger on me, Binet, you would give me the onlyprovocation I still need to kill you." Andre-Louis was as calm as ever,and therefore the more menacing. Alarm stirred the company. He protrudedfrom 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 havesuggested, and I'll kill you with no more compunction than I should killa slug, which after all is the thing you most resemble--a slug, Binet; afat, slimy body; foulness without soul and without intelligence. When Icome to think of it I can't suffer to sit at table with you. It turns mystomach."

  He pushed away his platter and got up. "I'll go and eat at the ordinarybelow 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'thave fallen out more uniformly. Binet, in fact, was persuaded of aconspiracy. For in the wake of Columbine went Leandre, in the wake ofLeandre, Polichinelle and then all the rest together, until Binet foundhimself sitting alone at the head of an empty table in an empty room--abadly shaken man whose rage could afford him no support against thedread by which he was suddenly invaded.

  He sat down to think things out, and he was still at that melancholyoccupation 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 excessivelyself-conscious now that the ordeal of facing all the company awaitedher.

  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 wereblood-injected. He scowled, blew out his thick lips and made harshnoises in his throat. Yet he took stock of her, so graceful and comelyand looking so completely the lady of fashion in her long fur-trimmedtravelling coat of bottle green, her muff and her broad hat adorned bya sparkling Rhinestone buckle above her adorably coiffed brown hair. Noneed to fear the future whilst he owned such a daughter, let Scaramoucheplay 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 wasbeginning to ask myself if we should perform this evening. It wouldn'tgreatly 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 andscorning my advice, nothing can surprise me."

  She crossed the room to the table, and leaning against it, looked downupon him almost disdainfully.

  "I have nothing to regret," she said.

  "So every fool says at first. Nor would you admit it if you had. Youare 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 havedone better to have been guided by your old father. So long as yourMarquis languished for you, there was nothing you could not have donewith the fool. So long as you let him have no more than your fingertipsto 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, andyou'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 thedregs of life, and so I should have thought have you. You held a handon 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 asa sailor whistles for wind. And, by Heaven, we'll need to whistlepresently if the weather in the troupe continues as it's set in. Thatscoundrel Scaramouche has been at his ape's tricks with them. They'vesuddenly turned moral. They won't sit at table with me any more." Hewas spluttering between anger and sardonic mirth. "It was your friendScaramouche set them the example of that. He threatened my lifeactually. Threatened my life! Called me... Oh, but what does thatmatter? What matters is that the next thing to happen to us will be thatthe Binet Troupe will discover it can manage without M. Binet and hisdaughter. This scoundrelly bastard I've befriended has little by littlerobbed me of everything. It's in his power to-day to rob me of mytroupe, and the knave's ungrateful enough and vile enough to make use ofhis 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. "Ishall be going to Paris soon. There are better theatres there than theFeydau. There's Mlle. Montansier's theatre in the Palais Royal; there'sthe Ambigu Comique; there's the Comedie Francaise; there's even apossibility I may have a theatre of my own."

  His eyes grew big for once. He stretched out a fat hand, and placed iton 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 littlesmile on her perfect lips.

  "He did not refuse me when I asked it," she answered, with convictionthat all was as she desired it.

  "Bah!" He withdrew his hand, and heaved himself up. There was disguston 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 anythingthat you asked, and what is more he would have provided an
ythingthat you asked--anything that lay within his means, and they areinexhaustible. You have changed a certainty into a possibility, andI hate possibilities--God of God! I have lived on possibilities, andinfernally near starved on them."

  Had she known of the interview taking place at that moment at theChateau de Sautron she would have laughed less confidently at herfather's gloomy forebodings. But she was destined never to know, whichindeed was the cruellest punishment of all. She was to attribute all theevil that of a sudden overwhelmed her, the shattering of all the futurehopes she had founded upon the Marquis and the sudden disintegrationof the Binet Troupe, to the wicked interference of that villainScaramouche.

  She had this much justification that possibly, without the warningfrom M. de Sautron, the Marquis would have found in the events ofthat evening at the Theatre Feydau a sufficient reason for ending anentanglement that was fraught with too much unpleasant excitement,whilst the breaking-up of the Binet Troupe was most certainly the resultof Andre-Louis' work. But it was not a result that he intended or evenforesaw.

  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 gobeyond 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 thegrease-paints. "Cast your eye over that. It's a sort of last will andtestament in favour of the troupe. I was a lawyer once; the documentis in order. I relinquish to all of you the share produced by mypartnership in the company."

  "But you don't mean that you are leaving us?" cried Polichinelle inalarm, whilst Rhodomont's sudden stare asked the same question.

  Scaramouche's shrug was eloquent. Polichinelle ran on gloomily: "Ofcourse it was to have been foreseen. But why should you be the one togo? It is you who have made us; and it is you who are the real headand brains of the troupe; it is you who have raised it into a realtheatrical company. If any one must go, let it be Binet--Binet and hisinfernal 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 mayconsider 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 pursuingan old quarrel."

  The three knocks sounded as he spoke.

  "There, I must go. Keep that paper, Polichinelle. After all, it may notbe necessary."

  He was gone. Rhodomont stared at Polichinelle. Polichinelle stared atRhodomont.

  "What the devil is he thinking of?" quoth the latter.

  "That is most readily ascertained by going to see," repliedPolichinelle. He completed changing in haste, and despite whatScaramouche had said; and then followed with Rhodomont.

  As they approached the wings a roar of applause met them coming fromthe audience. It was applause and something else; applause on an unusualnote. As it faded away they heard the voice of Scaramouche ringing clearas a bell:

  "And so you see, my dear M. Leandre, that when you speak of the ThirdEstate, it is necessary to be more explicit. What precisely is the ThirdEstate?"

  "Nothing," said Leandre.

  There was a gasp from the audience, audible in the wings, and thenswiftly 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 theunexpectedness of that reply.

  "True again," said Scaramouche. "And what is more, that is what it willbe; 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 acclamationsrolled 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 hispolitical tricks again?"

  They turned to confront M. Binet. Moving with that noiseless tread ofhis, he had come up unheard behind them, and there he stood now in hisscarlet suit of Pantaloon under a trailing bedgown, his little eyesglaring from either side of his false nose. But their attention was heldby 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. Leandreis 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 becomingapparent to all the world. Shall I convince him? Shall I tell him how acompany of noblemen backed by their servants under arms--six hundred menin all--sought to dictate to the Third Estate of Rennes a few short weeksago? Must I remind him of the martial front shown on that occasion bythe Third Estate, and how they swept the streets clean of that rabble ofnobles--cette canaille noble..."

  Applause interrupted him. The phrase had struck home and caught. Thosewho had writhed under that infamous designation from their betters leaptat 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 fearsmany things, but the voice of truth he fears most. With such as him theeloquent truth eloquently spoken is a thing instantly to be silenced.So he marshalled his peers and their valetailles, and led them out toslaughter these miserable bourgeois who dared to raise a voice. Butthese same miserable bourgeois did not choose to be slaughtered in thestreets of Rennes. It occurred to them that since the nobles decreedthat blood should flow, it might as well be the blood of the nobles.They marshalled themselves too--this noble rabble against the rabble ofnobles--and they marshalled themselves so well that they drove M. de LaTour d'Azyr and his warlike following from the field with brokenheads and shattered delusions. They sought shelter at the hands ofthe Cordeliers; and the shavelings gave them sanctuary in theirconvent--those who survived, among whom was their proud leader, M. de LaTour d'Azyr. You have heard of this valiant Marquis, this great lord oflife and death?"

  The pit was in an uproar a moment. It quieted again as Scaramouchecontinued:

  "Oh, it was a fine spectacle to see this mighty hunter scuttling tocover like a hare, going to earth in the Cordelier Convent. Rennes hasnot seen him since. Rennes would like to see him again. But if he isvalorous, he is also discreet. And where do you think he has takenrefuge, this great nobleman who wanted to see the streets of Renneswashed in the blood of its citizens, this man who would have butcheredold and young of the contemptible canaille to silence the voice ofreason and of liberty that presumes to ring through France to-day? Wheredo 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 herein this theatre--skulking up there in that box. He is too shy toshow himself--oh, a very modest gentleman. But there he is behind thecurtains. Will you not show yourself to your friends, M. de La Tourd'Azyr, Monsieur le Marquis who considers eloquence so very dangerous agift? See, they would like a word with you; they do not believe me whenI tell them that you are here."

  Now, whatever he may have been, and whatever the views held on thesubject 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 wentthere openly and unabashed. It happened, however, that the Nantais wereignorant until this moment of his presence among them. But then hewould have disdained to have informed them of it just as he would havedisdained to have concealed it from them.

  Challenged thus, however, and despite the ominous manner in which thebourgeois element in the audience had responded to Scaramo
uche's appealto its passions, despite the attempts made by Chabrillane to restrainhim, the Marquis swept aside the curtain at the side of the box, andsuddenly showed himself, pale but self-contained and scornful as hesurveyed first the daring Scaramouche and then those others who at sightof him had given tongue to their hostility.

  Hoots and yells assailed him, fists were shaken at him, canes werebrandished menacingly.

  "Assassin! Scoundrel! Coward! Traitor!"

  But he braved the storm, smiling upon them his ineffable contempt. Hewas 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 freelyexchanged; there were scuffling groups, and here and there swords werebeing drawn, but fortunately the press was too dense to permit of theirbeing used effectively. Those who had women with them and the timid bynature were making haste to leave a house that looked like becoming acockpit, where chairs were being smashed to provide weapons, and partsof chandeliers were already being used as missiles.

  One of these hurled by the hand of a gentleman in one of the boxesnarrowly missed Scaramouche where he stood, looking down in a sort ofgrim triumph upon the havoc which his words had wrought. Knowing ofwhat inflammable material the audience was composed, he had deliberatelyflung down amongst them the lighted torch of discord, to produce thisconflagration.

  He saw men falling quickly into groups representative of one side or theother of this great quarrel that already was beginning to agitate thewhole 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 whomakes war upon the people!"

  There was a rush for one of the doors of the pit that opened upon thestaircase 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'sbox, which had become the main object of the attack of the bourgeoisie,had also become the rallying ground for such gentlemen as were presentin 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 cameto join him. And now in the pit one group of infuriated gentlemen, inattempting to reach the stage across the empty orchestra, so that theymight deal with the audacious comedian who was responsible for thisexplosion, found themselves opposed and held back by another groupcomposed 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 whichexceeded by far anything that his unimaginative brain could haveconjectured, gurgled an inarticulate agreement. But it looked as ifalready they were too late, for in that moment they were assailed frombehind.

  M. Binet had succeeded at last in breaking past Polichinelle andRhodomont, who in view of his murderous rage had been endeavouring torestrain him. Half a dozen gentlemen, habitues of the green-room, hadcome round to the stage to disembowel the knave who had created thisriot, and it was they who had flung aside those two comedians who hungupon Binet. After him they came now, their swords out; but after themagain came Polichinelle, Rhodomont, Harlequin, Pierrot, Pasquariel,and Basque the artist, armed with such implements as they could hastilysnatch up, and intent upon saving the man with whom they sympathized inspite 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 aname, you shall pay!"

  Andre-Louis turned to face him. "You confuse cause with effect," saidhe. But he got no farther... Binet's cane, viciously driven, descendedand broke upon his shoulder. Had he not moved swiftly aside as the blowfell 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 thecracking of Binet's breaking cane came the crack of the pistol withwhich Andre-Louis replied.

  "You had your warning, you filthy pander!" he cried. And on the word heshot him through the body.

  Binet went down screaming, whilst the fierce Polichinelle, fiercer thanever 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 leaveyour skin here! Away with you!"

  Andre-Louis thought it good advice, and took it. The gentlemen who hadfollowed Binet in that punitive rush upon the stage, partly held incheck by the improvised weapons of the players, partly intimidated bythe second pistol that Scaramouche presented, let him go. He gainedthe wings, and here found himself faced by a couple of sergeants of thewatch, part of the police that was already invading the theatre with aview to restoring order. The sight of them reminded him unpleasantlyof how he must stand towards the law for this night's work, and moreparticularly for that bullet lodged somewhere in Binet's obese body. Heflourished his pistol.

  "Make way, or I'll burn your brains!" he threatened them, andintimidated, themselves without firearms, they fell back and let himpass. He slipped by the door of the green-room, where the ladies of thecompany had shut themselves in until the storm should be over, and sogained the street behind the theatre. It was deserted. Down this he wentat a run, intent on reaching the inn for clothes and money, since it wasimpossible that he should take the road in the garb of Scaramouche.

  BOOK III: THE SWORD