But that night, after they had supped, it chanced that when Climène 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 Climène now rose to withdraw for the night, Scaramouche rose with her to light her candle. Holding it in her left hand, she offered him her right, a long, tapering, white hand at the end of a softly rounded arm that was bare to the elbow.
“Good night, Scaramouche,” she said, but so softly, so tenderly, that he caught his breath, and stood conning her, his dark eyes aglow.
Thus a moment, then he took the tips of her fingers in his grasp, and bowing over the hand, pressed his lips upon it. Then he looked at her again. The intense femininity of her lured him on, invited him, surrendered to him. Her face was pale, there was a glitter in her eyes, a curious smile upon her parted lips, and under its fichu-menteur her bosom rose and fell to complete the betrayal of her.
By the hand he continued to hold, he drew her towards him. She came unresisting. He took the candle from her, and set it down on the sideboard by which she stood. The next moment her slight, lithe body was in his arms, and he was kissing her, murmuring her name as if it were a prayer.
“Am I cruel now?” she asked him, panting. He kissed her again for only answer. “You made me cruel because you would not see,” she told him next in a whisper.
And then the door opened, and M. Binet came in to have his paternal eyes regaled by this highly indecorous behaviour of his daughter.
He stood at gaze, whilst they quite leisurely, and in a self-possession too complete to be natural, detached each from the other.
“And what may be the meaning of this?” demanded M. Binet, bewildered and profoundly shocked.
“Does it require explaining?” asked Scaramouche. “Doesn’t it speak for itself—eloquently? It means that Climène and I have taken it into our heads to be married.”
“And doesn’t it matter what I may take into my head?”
“Of course. But you could have neither the bad taste nor the bad heart to offer any obstacle.”
“You take that for granted? Aye, that is your way, to be sure—to take things for granted. But my daughter is not to be taken for granted. I have very definite views for my daughter. You have done an unworthy thing, Scaramouche. You have betrayed my trust in you. I am very angry with you.”
He rolled forward with his ponderous yet curiously noiseless gait. Scaramouche turned to her, smiling, and handed her the candle.
“If you will leave us, Climène, I will ask your hand of your father in proper form.”
She vanished, a little fluttered, lovelier than ever in her mixture of confusion and timidity. Scaramouche closed the door and faced the enraged M. Binet, who had flung himself into an armchair at the head of the short table, faced him with the avowed purpose of asking for Climène’s hand in proper form. And this was how he did it:
“Father-in-law,” said he, “I congratulate you. This will certainly mean the Comédie Française for Climène, and that before long, and you shall shine in the glory she will reflect. As the father of Madame Scaramouche you may yet be famous.”
Binet, his face slowly empurpling, glared at him in speechless stupefaction. His rage was the more utter from his humiliating conviction that whatever he might say or do, this irresistible fellow would bend him to his will. At last speech came to him.
“You’re a damned corsair,” he cried, thickly, banging his ham-like fist upon the table. “A corsair! First you sail in and plunder me of half my legitimate gains; and now you want to carry off my daughter. 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 Lesdiguières.
“Binet,” said he, “forget for once that you are Pantaloon, and behave as a nice, amiable father-in-law should behave when he has secured a son-in-law of exceptionable merits. We are going to have a bottle of Burgundy at my expense, and it shall be the best bottle of Burgundy to be found in Rédon. Compose yourself to do fitting honour to it. Excitations of the bile invariably impair the fine sensitiveness of the palate.”
VII
The Conquest of Nantes
The Binet Troupe opened in Nantes—as you may discover in surviving copies of the Courrier Nantais—on the Feast of the Purification with Les Fourberies de Scaramouche. But they did not come to Nantes as hitherto they had gone to little country villages and townships, unheralded and depending entirely upon the parade of their entrance to attract attention to themselves. André-Louis had borrowed from the business methods of the Comédie Française. Carrying matters with a high hand entirely in his own fashion, he had ordered at Rédon the printing of playbills, and four days before the company’s descent upon Nantes, these bills were pasted outside the Théâtre Feydau and elsewhere about the town, and had attracted—being still sufficiently unusual announcements at the time—considerable attention. He had entrusted the matter to one of the company’s latest recruits, an intelligent young man named Basque, sending him on ahead of the company for the purpose.
You may see for yourself one of these playbills in the Carnavalet Museum. It details the players by their stage names only, with the exception of M. Binet and his daughter, and
