Her only answer was a timid — timid and yet alluring — glance from under fluttering lids.  Meanwhile her father was bawling at the comely young man who played lovers — “You hear, Leandre!  That is the sort of speech you should practise.”

Leandre raised languid eyebrows.  “That?” quoth he, and shrugged.  “The merest commonplace.”

Andre-Louis laughed approval.  “M.  Leandre is of a readier wit than you concede.  There is subtlety in pronouncing it a commonplace to call Mlle. Climene a queen.”

Some laughed, M. Binet amongst them, with good-humoured mockery.

“You think he has the wit to mean it thus?  Bah!  His subtleties are all unconscious.”

The conversation becoming general, Andre-Louis soon learnt what yet there was to learn of this strolling band.  They were on their way to Guichen, where they hoped to prosper at the fair that was to open on Monday next.  They would make their triumphal entry into the town at noon, and setting up their stage in the old market, they would give their first performance that same Saturday night, in a new canevas — or scenario — of M. Binet’s own, which should set the rustics gaping.  And then M. Binet fetched a sigh, and addressed himself to the elderly, swarthy, beetle-browed Polichinelle, who sat on his left.

“But we shall miss Felicien,” said he.  “Indeed, I do not know what we shall do without him.”

“Oh, we shall contrive,” said Polichinelle, with his mouth full.

“So you always say, whatever happens, knowing that in any case the contriving will not fall upon yourself.”

“He should not be difficult to replace,” said Harlequin.

“True, if we were in a civilized land.  But where among the rustics of Brittany are we to find a fellow of even his poor parts?” M. Binet turned to Andre-Louis.  “He was our property-man, our machinist, our stage-carpenter, our man of affairs, and occasionally he acted.”

“The part of Figaro, I presume,” said Andre-Louis, which elicited a laugh.

“So you are acquainted with Beaumarchais!” Binet eyed the young man with fresh interest.

“He is tolerably well known, I think.”

“In Paris, to be sure.  But I had not dreamt his fame had reached the wilds of Brittany.”

“But then I was some years in Paris — at the Lycee of Louis le Grand.  It was there I made acquaintance with his work.”

“A dangerous man,” said Polichinelle, sententiously.

“Indeed, and you are right,” Pantaloon agreed.  “Clever — I do not deny him that, although myself I find little use for authors.  But of a sinister cleverness responsible for the dissemination of many of these subversive new ideas.  I think such writers should be suppressed.”

“M. de La Tour d’Azyr would probably agree with you — the gentleman who by the simple exertion of his will turns this communal land into his own property.”  And Andre-Louis drained his cup, which had been filled with the poor vin gris that was the players’ drink.