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"Why not? He is able enough!" "Overwhelmed again," interjected Polichinelle. "Play Scaramouche with that figure?" Binet heaved himself up to point a denunciatory finger at Polichinelle's sturdy, thick-set shortness. "For lack of a better," said Andre-Louis. "Overwhelmed more than ever." Polichinelle's bow was superb this time. "Faith, I think I'll take the air to cool me after so much blushing."
He had just seen an impious piece of buffoonery played. "I should very much like to know," said he to the Prince of Conde, who stood up for Moliere, an old fellow-student of his brother's, the Prince of Conti's, "why people who are so greatly scandalized at Moliere's comedy say nothing about Scaramouche?"
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.
"Overwhelmed," said he, ever sardonic. "But he has a part of his own," objected Binet. "A small part, which Pasquariel could play." "And who will play Pasquariel?" "Nobody. We delete it. The play need not suffer." "He thinks of everything," sneered Polichinelle. "What a man!" But Binet was far from agreement. "Are you suggesting that Polichinelle should play Scaramouche?" he asked, incredulously.
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?"
Scaramouche, a little exalted at the moment by his success, however trivial he might consider it to-morrow, took then a full revenge upon Climene for the malicious satisfaction with which she had regarded his momentary blank terror. "I do not wonder that you ask," said he. "Faith, I should have warned you that I intended to do my best from the start to put the audience in a good humour with me.
Not quite to such an extent was he the incarnation of Scaramouche. But sufficiently was he so ever to mask his true feelings by an arresting gesture, his true thoughts by an effective phrase. He was the actor always, a man ever calculating the effect he would produce, ever avoiding self-revelation, ever concerned to overlay his real character by an assumed and quite fictitious one.
It would give me a legitimate place in the Assembly. If your Tour d'Azyrs choose to seek me out then, why, their blood be upon their own heads. I shall certainly do nothing to discourage them." He smiled curiously. "I am just a rascal who tries to be honest Scaramouche always, in fact; a creature of sophistries. Do you think that Ancenis would have me for its representative?"
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.
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.
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