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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."
Should he continue to fail in doing justice to our schooling... But we will not disturb our present harmony with the unpleasant anticipation of misfortunes which we still hope to avert. We love our Leandre, for all his faults. Let me make you acquainted with our company." And he proceeded to introduction in detail. He pointed out the long and amiable Rhodomont, whom Andre-Louis already knew.
"Not until then shall I count myself beyond his reach. And yet if we marry without his consent, we but make trouble for ourselves, and of gaining his consent I almost despair." Evidently, thought Andre-Louis, her father was a man of sense, who saw through the shabby finery of M. Leandre, and was not to be dazzled by cheap paste buckles.
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.
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."
"Ah, mon Dieu, Leandre, let us separate at once. If it should be my father..." And upon this a man's voice broke in, calm and reassuring: "No, no, Climene; you are mistaken. There is no one coming. We are quite safe. Why do you start at shadows?" "Ah, Leandre, if he should find us here together! I tremble at the very thought." More was not needed to reassure Andre-Louis.
He took cover behind a painted shrub, and thence, the laughter at last beginning to subside, he addressed himself to Climene and Leandre. "Forgive me, beautiful lady, if the abrupt manner of my entrance startled you. The truth is that I have never been the same since that last affair of mine with Almaviva. My heart is not what it used to be.
"Say what you will, my friend, this is ruin the end of all our hopes. Your wits will never extricate us from this. Never!" Through the gap strode now an enormous man with an inflamed moon face and a great nose, decently dressed after the fashion of a solid bourgeois. There was no mistaking his anger, but the expression that it found was an amazement to Andre-Louis. "Leandre, you're an imbecile!
It was only Leandre, observing her closely, with hungry, scowling stare, who detected something as of fear in the hazel eyes momentarily seen between the fluttering of her lids. Andre-Louis, however, still went on eating stolidly, without so much as a look in her direction.
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.
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