“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.
VI
Climène
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 André-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 Rédon. The notion terrified Binet at first, but coming to think of it, and his ambition being fanned by André-Louis, he ended by allowing himself to succumb to the temptation.
It seemed to André-Louis in those days that he had found his real métier, 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 Comédie Française. 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 Chénier, Èglantine, 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 the fact that they drank Volnay.
“I will concede it, my dear Scaramouche, so that I may hear the sequel.”
“I am disposed to exercise this power if the inducement is sufficient. You will realize that for fifteen livres a month a man does not sell such exceptional gifts as mine.”
“There is an alternative,” said M. Binet, darkly.
“There is no alternative. Don’t be a fool, Binet.”
Binet sat up as if he had been prodded. Members of his company did not take this tone of direct rebuke with him.
“Anyway, I make you a present of it,” Scaramouche pursued, airily. “Exercise it if you please. Step outside and inform the police that they can lay hands upon one André-Louis Moreau. But that will be the end of your fine dreams of going to Rédon, and for the first time in your life playing in a real theatre. Without me, you can’t do it, and you know it; and I am not going to Rédon or anywhere else, in fact I am not even going to Fougeray, until we have an equitable arrangement.”
“But what heat!” complained Binet, “and all for what? Why must you assume that I have the soul of a usurer? When our little arrangement was made, I had no idea how could I?—that you would prove as valuable to me as you are? You had but to remind me, my dear Scaramouche. I am a just man. As from today you shall have thirty livres a month. See, I double it at once. I am a generous man.”
“But you are not ambitious. Now listen to me a moment.”
And he proceeded to unfold a scheme that filled Binet with a paralyzing terror.
“After Rédon, Nantes,” he said. “Nantes and the Théâtre Feydau.”
M. Binet choked in the act of drinking. The Théâtre Feydau was a sort of provincial Comédie Française. The great Fleury had played there to an audience as critical as any in France. The very thought of Rédon, cherished as it had come to be by M. Binet, gave him at moments a cramp in the stomach, so dangerously ambitious did it seem to him. And Rédon was a puppet-show by comparison with Nantes. Yet this raw lad whom he had picked up by chance three weeks ago, and who in that time had blossomed from a country attorney into author and actor, could talk of Nantes and the Théâtre Feydau without changing colour.
“But why not Paris and the Comédie Française?” wondered M. Binet, with sarcasm, when at last he had got
