Scaramouche: A Romance of the French Revolution by Rafael Sabatini (good summer reads TXT) 📕

“But you don’t mean that you are leaving us?” cried Polichinelle in alarm, whilst Rhodomont’s sudden stare asked the same question.

Scaramouche’s shrug was eloquent. Polichinelle ran on gloomily: “Of course it was to have been foreseen. But why should you be the one to go? It is you who have made us; and it is you who are the real head and brains of the troupe; it is you who have raised it into a real theatrical company. If any one must go, let it be Binet—Binet and his infernal daughter. Or if you go, name of a name! we all go with you!”

“Aye,” added Rhodomont, “we’ve had enough of that fat scoundrel.”

“I had thought of it, of course,” said Andre-Louis. “It was not vanity, for once; it was trust in your friendship. After to-night we may consider it again, if I survive.”

“If you survive?” both cried.

Polichinelle got up. “Now, what madness have you in mind?” he asked.

“For one thing I think I am indulging Leandre; for another I am pursuing an old quarrel.”

The three knocks sounded as he spoke.

“There, I must go. Keep that paper, Polichinelle. After all, it may not be necessary.”

He was gone. Rhodomont stared at Polichinelle. Polichinelle stared at Rhodomont.

“What the devil is he thinking of?” quoth the latter.

“That is most readily ascertained by going to see,” replied Polichinelle. He completed changing in haste, and despite what Scaramouche had said; and then followed with Rhodomont.

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?”

“Nothing,” said Leandre.

There was a gasp from the audience, audible in the wings, and then swiftly followed Scaramouche’s next question:

“True. Alas! But what should it be?”

“Everything,” said Leandre.

The audience roared its acclamations, the more violent because of the unexpectedness of that reply.

“True again,” said Scaramouche. “And what is more, that is what it will be; that is what it already is. Do you doubt it?”

“I hope it,” said the schooled Leandre.

“You may believe it,” said Scaramouche, and again the acclamations rolled into thunder.

Polichinelle and Rhodomont exchanged glances: indeed, the former winked, not without mirth.

“Sacred name!” growled a voice behind them. “Is the scoundrel at his political tricks again?”

They turned to confront M. Binet. Moving with that noiseless tread of his, he had come up unheard behind them, and there he stood now in his scarlet suit of Pantaloon under a trailing bedgown, his little eyes glaring from either side of his false nose. But their attention was held by the voice of Scaramouche. He had stepped to the front of the stage.

“He doubts it,” he was telling the audience. “But then this M. Leandre is himself akin to those who worship the worm-eaten idol of Privilege, and so he is a little afraid to believe a truth that is becoming apparent to all the world. Shall I convince him? Shall I tell him how a company of noblemen backed by their servants under arms—six hundred men in all—sought to dictate to the Third Estate of Rennes a few short weeks ago? Must I remind him of the martial front shown on that occasion by the Third Estate, and how they swept the streets clean of that rabble of nobles—cette canaille noble...”

Applause interrupted him. The phrase had struck home and caught. Those who had writhed under that infamous designation from their betters leapt at this turning of it against the nobles themselves.

“But let me tell you of their leader—le pins noble de cette canaille, ou bien le plus canaille de ces nobles! You know him—that one. He fears many things, but the voice of truth he fears most. With such as him the eloquent truth eloquently spoken is a thing instantly to be silenced. So he marshalled his peers and their valetailles, and led them out to slaughter these miserable bourgeois who dared to raise a voice. But these same miserable bourgeois did not choose to be slaughtered in the streets of Rennes. It occurred to them that since the nobles decreed that blood should flow, it might as well be the blood of the nobles. They marshalled themselves too—this noble rabble against the rabble of nobles—and they marshalled themselves so well that they drove M. de La Tour d’Azyr and his warlike following from the field with broken heads and shattered delusions. They sought shelter at the hands of the Cordeliers; and the shavelings gave them sanctuary in their convent—those who survived, among whom was their proud leader, M. de La Tour d’Azyr. You have heard of this valiant Marquis, this great lord of life and death?”

The pit was in an uproar a moment. It quieted again as Scaramouche continued:

“Oh, it was a fine spectacle to see this mighty hunter scuttling to cover like a hare, going to earth in the Cordelier Convent. Rennes has not seen him since. Rennes would like to see him again. But if he is valorous, he is also discreet. And where do you think he has taken refuge, this great nobleman who wanted to see the streets of Rennes washed in the blood of its citizens, this man who would have butchered old and young of the contemptible canaille to silence the voice of reason and of liberty that presumes to ring through France to-day? Where do you think he hides himself? Why, here in Nantes.”

Again there was uproar.

“What do you say? Impossible? Why, my friends, at this moment he is here in this theatre—skulking up there in that box. He is too shy to show himself—oh, a very modest gentleman. But there he is behind the curtains. Will you not show yourself to your friends, M. de La Tour d’Azyr, Monsieur le Marquis who considers eloquence so very dangerous a gift? See, they would like a word with you; they do not believe me when I tell them that you are here.”

Now, whatever he may have been, and whatever the views held on the subject by Andre-Louis, M. de La Tour d’Azyr was certainly not a coward. To say that he was hiding in Nantes was not true. He came and went there openly and unabashed. It happened, however, that the Nantais were ignorant until this moment of his presence among them. But then he would have disdained to have informed them of it just as he would have disdained to have concealed it from them.

Challenged thus, however, and despite the ominous manner in which the bourgeois element in the audience had responded to Scaramouche’s appeal