“That is why I am frank.  I pay you the compliment of assuming intelligence in you, M. Binet.”

“Oh, you do?” quoth M. Binet.  “And who the devil are you to assume anything?  Your assumptions are presumptuous, sir.”  And with that he lapsed into silence and the gloomy business of mentally casting up his accounts.

But at table over supper a half-hour later he revived the topic.

“Our latest recruit, this excellent M. Parvissimus,” he announced, “has the impudence to tell me that possibly our comedy could have been worse, but that probably it could not.”  And he blew out his great round cheeks to invite a laugh at the expense of that foolish critic.

“That’s bad,” said the swarthy and sardonic Polichinelle.  He was grave as Rhadamanthus pronouncing judgment.  “That’s bad.  But what is infinitely worse is that the audience had the impudence to be of the same mind.”

“An ignorant pack of clods,” sneered Leandre, with a toss of his handsome head.

“You are wrong,” quoth Harlequin.  “You were born for love, my dear, not criticism.”

Leandre — a dull dog, as you will have conceived — looked contemptuously down upon the little man.  “And you, what were you born for?” he wondered.

“Nobody knows,” was the candid admission.  “Nor yet why.  It is the case of many of us, my dear, believe me.”

“But why” — M. Binet took him up, and thus spoilt the beginnings of a very pretty quarrel — “why do you say that Leandre is wrong?”

“To be general, because he is always wrong.  To be particular, because I judge the audience of Guichen to be too sophisticated for ‘The Heartless Father.’”

“You would put it more happily,” interposed Andre-Louis — who was the cause of this discussion — “if you said that ’The Heartless Father’ is too unsophisticated for the audience of Guichen.”

“Why, what’s the difference?” asked Leandre.

“I didn’t imply a difference.  I merely suggested that it is a happier way to express the fact.”

“The gentleman is being subtle,” sneered Binet.

“Why happier?” Harlequin demanded.

“Because it is easier to bring ‘The Heartless Father’ to the sophistication of the Guichen audience, than the Guichen audience to the unsophistication of ‘The Heartless Father.’”

“Let me think it out,” groaned Polichinelle, and he took his head in his hands.

But from the tail of the table Andre-Louis was challenged by Climene who sat there between Columbine and Madame.

“You would alter the comedy, would you, M. Parvissimus?” she cried.

He turned to parry her malice.

“I would suggest that it be altered,” he corrected, inclining his head.

“And how would you alter it, monsieur?”

“I?  Oh, for the better.”

“But of course!” She was sleekest sarcasm.  “And how would you do it?”

“Aye, tell us that,” roared M. Binet, and added:  “Silence, I pray you, gentlemen and ladies.  Silence for M. Parvissimus.”