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- Author: Rafael Sabatini
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“But he couldn’t walk without his crutch,” M. Binet insisted.
Nevertheless, since clearly he was not anywhere about the market-hall, to the inn they all trooped, and deafened the landlady with their inquiries.
“Oh, yes, M. Cordemais came in some time ago.”
“Where is he now?”
“He went away again at once. He just came for his bag.”
“For his bag!” Binet was on the point of an apoplexy. “How long ago was that?”
She glanced at the timepiece on the overmantel. “It would be about half an hour ago. It was a few minutes before the Rennes diligence passed through.”
“The Rennes diligence!” M. Binet was almost inarticulate. “Could he... could he walk?” he asked, on a note of terrible anxiety.
“Walk? He ran like a hare when he left the inn. I thought, myself, that his agility was suspicious, seeing how lame he had been since he fell downstairs yesterday. Is anything wrong?”
M. Binet had collapsed into a chair. He took his head in his hands, and groaned.
“The scoundrel was shamming all the time!” exclaimed Climene. “His fall downstairs was a trick. He was playing for this. He has swindled us.”
“Fifteen louis at least—perhaps sixteen!” said M. Binet. “Oh, the heartless blackguard! To swindle me who have been as a father to him—and to swindle me in such a moment.”
From the ranks of the silent, awe-stricken company, each member of which was wondering by how much of the loss his own meagre pay would be mulcted, there came a splutter of laughter.
M. Binet glared with blood-injected eyes.
“Who laughs?” he roared. “What heartless wretch has the audacity to laugh at my misfortune?”
Andre-Louis, still in the sable glories of Scaramouche, stood forward. He was laughing still.
“It is you, is it? You may laugh on another note, my friend, if I choose a way to recoup myself that I know of.”
“Dullard!” Scaramouche scorned him. “Rabbit-brained elephant! What if Cordemais has gone with fifteen louis? Hasn’t he left you something worth twenty times as much?”
M. Binet gaped uncomprehending.
“You are between two wines, I think. You’ve been drinking,” he concluded.
“So I have—at the fountain of Thalia. Oh, don’t you see? Don’t you see the treasure that Cordemais has left behind him?”
“What has he left?”
“A unique idea for the groundwork of a scenario. It unfolds itself all before me. I’ll borrow part of the title from Moliere. We’ll call it ‘Les Fourberies de Scaramouche,’ and if we don’t leave the audiences of Maure and Pipriac with sides aching from laughter I’ll play the dullard Pantaloon in future.”
Polichinelle smacked fist into palm. “Superb!” he said, fiercely. “To cull fortune from misfortune, to turn loss into profit, that is to have genius.”
Scaramouche made a leg. “Polichinelle, you are a fellow after my own heart. I love a man who can discern my merit. If Pantaloon had half your wit, we should have Burgundy to-night in spite of the flight of Cordemais.”
“Burgundy?” roared M. Binet, and before he could get farther Harlequin had clapped his hands together.
“That is the spirit, M. Binet. You heard him, landlady. He called for Burgundy.”
“I called for nothing of the kind.”
“But you heard him, dear madame. We all heard him.”
The others made chorus, whilst Scaramouche smiled at him, and patted his shoulder.
“Up, man, a little courage. Did you not say that fortune awaits us? And have we not now the wherewithal to constrain fortune? Burgundy, then, to... to toast ‘Les Fourberies de Scaramouche.’”
And M. Binet, who was not blind to the force of the idea, yielded, took courage, and got drunk with the rest.
CHAPTER VI. CLIMENE
Diligent search among the many scenarios of the improvisers which have survived their day, has failed to bring to light the scenario of “Les Fourberies de Scaramouche,” upon which we are told the fortunes of the Binet troupe came to be soundly established. They played it for the first time at Maure in the following week, with Andre-Louis—who was known by now as Scaramouche to all the company, and to the public alike—in the title-role. If he had acquitted himself well as Figaro-Scaramouche, he excelled himself in the new piece, the scenario of which would appear to be very much the better of the two.
After Maure came Pipriac, where four performances were given, two of each of the scenarios that now formed the backbone of the Binet repertoire. In both Scaramouche, who was beginning to find himself, materially improved his performances. So smoothly now did the two pieces run that Scaramouche actually suggested to Binet that after Fougeray, which they were to visit in the following week, they should tempt fortune in a real theatre in the important town of Redon. The notion terrified Binet at first, but coming to think of it, and his ambition being fanned by Andre-Louis, he ended by allowing himself to succumb to the temptation.
It seemed to Andre-Louis in those days that he had found his real metier, and not only was he beginning to like it, but actually to look forward to a career as actor-author that might indeed lead him in the end to that Mecca of all comedians, the Comedie Francaise. And there were other possibilities. From the writing of skeleton scenarios for improvisers, he might presently pass to writing plays of dialogue, plays in the proper sense of the word, after the manner of Chenier, Eglantine, and Beaumarchais.
The fact that he dreamed such dreams shows us how very kindly he had taken to the profession into which Chance and M. Binet between them had conspired to thrust him. That he had real talent both as author and as actor I do not doubt, and I am persuaded that had things fallen out differently he would have won for himself a lasting place among French dramatists, and thus fully have realized that dream of his.
Now, dream though it was, he did not neglect the practical side of it.
“You realize,” he told M. Binet, “that I have it in my power to make your fortune for you.”
He and Binet were sitting alone together in the parlour of the inn at Pipriac, drinking a very excellent bottle of Volnay. It was on the night after the fourth and last performance there of “Les Feurberies.” The business in Pipriac had been as excellent as in Maure and Guichen. You will have gathered this from
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