“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, on 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?”