At parting Le Chapelier again exhorted him to give thought to what he proposed.  “Send me word if you change your mind.  I am lodged at the Cerf, and I shall be here until the day after to-morrow.  If you have ambition, this is your moment.”

“I have no ambition, I suppose,” said Andre-Louis, and went his way.

That night at the theatre he had a mischievous impulse to test what Le Chapelier had told him of the state of public feeling in the city.  They were playing “The Terrible Captain,” in the last act of which the empty cowardice of the bullying braggart Rhodomont is revealed by Scaramouche.

After the laughter which the exposure of the roaring captain invariably produced, it remained for Scaramouche contemptuously to dismiss him in a phrase that varied nightly, according to the inspiration of the moment.  This time he chose to give his phrase a political complexion: 

“Thus, O thrasonical coward, is your emptiness exposed.  Because of your long length and the great sword you carry and the angle at which you cock your hat, people have gone in fear of you, have believed in you, have imagined you to be as terrible and as formidable as you insolently make yourself appear.  But at the first touch of true spirit you crumple up, you tremble, you whine pitifully, and the great sword remains in your scabbard.  You remind me of the Privileged Orders when confronted by the Third Estate.”

It was audacious of him, and he was prepared for anything — a laugh, applause, indignation, or all together.  But he was not prepared for what came.  And it came so suddenly and spontaneously from the groundlings and the body of those in the amphitheatre that he was almost scared by it — as a boy may be scared who has held a match to a sun-scorched hayrick.  It was a hurricane of furious applause.  Men leapt to their feet, sprang up on to the benches, waving their hats in the air, deafening him with the terrific uproar of their acclamations.  And it rolled on and on, nor ceased until the curtain fell.

Scaramouche stood meditatively smiling with tight lips.  At the last moment he had caught a glimpse of M. de La Tour d’Azyr’s face thrust farther forward than usual from the shadows of his box, and it was a face set in anger, with eyes on fire.

“Mon Dieu!” laughed Rhodomont, recovering from the real scare that had succeeded his histrionic terror, “but you have a great trick of tickling them in the right place, Scaramouche.”

Scaramouche looked up at him and smiled.  “It can be useful upon occasion,” said he, and went off to his dressing-room to change.

But a reprimand awaited him.  He was delayed at the theatre by matters concerned with the scenery of the new piece they were to mount upon the morrow.  By the time he was rid of the business the rest of the company had long since left.  He called a chair and had himself carried back to the inn in solitary state.  It was one of many minor luxuries his comparatively affluent present circumstances permitted.