Scaramouche

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony. His very paternity was obscure, although the village of Gavrillac had long since dispelled the cloud of mystery that hung about it. Those simple Brittany folk were not so simple as to be deceived by a pretended relationship which did not even possess the virtue of originality. When a nobleman, for no apparent reason, announces himself the godfather of an infant fetched no man knew whence, and thereafter cares for the lad’s rearing and education, the most unsophisticated of country folk perfectly understand the situation. And so the good people of Gavrillac permitted themselves no illusions on the score of the real relationship between André-Louis Moreau⁠—as the lad had been named⁠—and Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac, who dwelt in the big grey house that dominated from its eminence the village clustering below.

And then M. de Chabrillane spoke.

“You go a long way round,” he criticized his cousin, on a note of impatience.

“But I am getting there,” he was answered. “I desired to make quite certain first.”

“Faith, you should have no doubt by now.”

“I have none.” The Marquis rose, and turned again to M. de Vilmorin, who had understood nothing of that brief exchange. “M. l’abbé,” said he once more, “you have a very dangerous gift of eloquence. I can conceive of men being swayed by it. Had you been born a gentleman, you would not so easily have acquired these false views that you express.”

M. de Vilmorin stared blankly, uncomprehending.

“Had I been born a gentleman, do you say?” quoth he, in a slow, bewildered voice. “But I was born a gentleman. My race is as old, my blood as good as yours, monsieur.”

From M. le Marquis there was a slight play of eyebrows, a vague, indulgent smile. His dark, liquid eyes looked squarely into the face of M. de Vilmorin.

“You have been deceived in that, I fear.”

“Deceived?”

“Your sentiments betray the indiscretion of which madame your mother must have been guilty.”

The brutally affronting words were sped beyond recall, and the lips that had uttered them, coldly, as if they had been the merest commonplace, remained calm and faintly sneering.

A dead silence followed. André-Louis’ wits were numbed. He stood aghast, all thought suspended in him, what time M. de Vilmorin’s eyes continued fixed upon M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s, as if searching there for a meaning that eluded him. Quite suddenly he understood the vile affront. The blood leapt to his face, fire blazed in his gentle eyes. A convulsive quiver shook him.

There was an interruption. A voice in the crowd, some twenty paces, perhaps, was raised to shout:

“Yet another of them!”

Immediately after the voice came a pistol-shot, and a bullet flattened itself against the bronze figure just behind André-Louis.

Instantly there was turmoil in the crowd, most intense about the spot whence the shot had been fired. The assailant was one of a considerable group of the opposition, a group that found itself at once beset on every side, and hard put to it to defend him.

From the foot of the plinth rang the voice of the students making chorus to Le Chapelier, who was bidding André-Louis to seek shelter.

“Come down! Come down at once! They’ll murder you as they murdered La Rivière.”

“Let them!” He flung wide his arms in a gesture supremely theatrical, and laughed. “I stand here at their mercy. Let them, if they will, add mine to the blood that will presently rise up to choke them. Let them assassinate me. It is a trade they understand. But until they do so, they shall not prevent me from speaking to you, from telling you what is to be looked for in them.” And again he laughed, not merely in exaltation as they supposed who watched him from below, but also in amusement. And his amusement had two sources. One was to discover how glibly he uttered the phrases proper to whip up the emotions of a crowd: the other was in the remembrance of how the

“What the devil are you doing up there?”

“Precisely the same thing that you are doing down there,” was the answer. “I am trespassing.”

“Eh?” said Pantaloon, and looked at his companions, some of the assurance beaten out of his big red face. Although the thing was one that they did habitually, to hear it called by its proper name was disconcerting.

“Whose land is this?” he asked, with diminishing assurance.

André-Louis answered, whilst drawing on his stockings. “I believe it to be the property of the Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr.”

“That’s a high-sounding name. Is the gentleman severe?”

“The gentleman,” said André-Louis, “is the devil; or rather, I should prefer to say upon reflection, that the devil is a gentleman by comparison.”

“And yet,” interposed the villainous-looking fellow who played Scaramouche, “by your own confessing you don’t hesitate, yourself, to trespass upon his property.”

“Ah, but then, you see, I am a lawyer. And lawyers are notoriously unable to observe the law, just as actors are notoriously unable to act. Moreover, sir, Nature imposes her limits upon us, and Nature conquers respect for law as she conquers all else. Nature conquered me last night when I had got as far as this. And so I slept here without regard for the very high and puissant Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr. At the same time, M. Scaramouche, you’ll observe that I did not flaunt my trespass quite as openly as you and your companions.”

André-Louis was assailed with nausea in that dread moment. He attempted to take a lightning mental review of the first act of this scenario of which he was himself the author-in-chief; but found his mind a complete blank. With the perspiration starting from his skin, he stepped back to the wall, where above a dim lantern was pasted a sheet bearing the brief outline of the piece. He was still studying it, when his arm was clutched, and he was pulled violently towards the wings. He had a glimpse of Pantaloon’s grotesque face, its eyes blazing, and he caught a raucous growl:

“Climène has spoken your cue three times already.”

Before he realized it, he had been bundled on to the stage, and stood there foolishly, blinking in the glare of the footlights, with their tin reflectors. So utterly foolish and bewildered did he look that volley upon volley of laughter welcomed him from the audience, which this evening packed the hall from end to end. Trembling a little, his bewilderment at first increasing, he stood there to receive that rolling tribute to his absurdity. Climène was eyeing him with expectant mockery, savouring in advance his humiliation; Leandre regarded him in consternation, whilst behind the scenes, M. Binet was dancing in fury.

“Name of a name,” he groaned to the rather scared members of the company assembled there, “what will happen when they discover that he isn’t acting?”