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, Climene, 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 Climene’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 Comedie Francaise
for Climene, 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 Lesdiguieres.
“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
Redon. Compose yourself to do fitting honour
to it. Excitations of the bile invariably impair
the fine sensitiveness of the palate.”
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.
Andre-Louis had borrowed from the business methods
of the Comedie Francaise. Carrying matters with
a high hand entirely in his own fashion, he had ordered
at Redon the printing of playbills, and four days before
the company’s descent upon Nantes, these bills
were pasted outside the Theatre 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.
