audiences were made up of people from the surrounding country, and from neighbouring villages as far out as Allaire, Saint-Perrieux and Saint-Nicholas.  To keep the business from slackening, Andre-Louis prepared a new scenario every week.  He wrote three in addition to those two with which he had already supplied the company; these were “The Marriage of Pantaloon,” “The Shy Lover,” and “The Terrible Captain.”  Of these the last was the greatest success.  It was based upon the “Miles Gloriosus” of Plautus, with great opportunities for Rhodomont, and a good part for Scaramouche as the roaring captain’s sly lieutenant.  Its success was largely due to the fact that Andre-Louis amplified the scenario to the extent of indicating very fully in places the lines which the dialogue should follow, whilst here and there he had gone so far as to supply some of the actual dialogue to be spoken, without, however, making it obligatory upon the actors to keep to the letter of it.

And meanwhile as the business prospered, he became busy with tailors, improving the wardrobe of the company, which was sorely in need of improvement.  He ran to earth a couple of needy artists, lured them into the company to play small parts — apothecaries and notaries — and set them to beguile their leisure in painting new scenery, so as to be ready for what he called the conquest of Nantes, which was to come in the new year.  Never in his life had he worked so hard; never in his life had he worked at all by comparison with his activities now.  His fund of energy and enthusiasm was inexhaustible, like that of his good humour.  He came and went, acted, wrote, conceived, directed, planned, and executed, what time M. Binet took his ease at last in comparative affluence, drank Burgundy every night, ate white bread and other delicacies, and began to congratulate himself upon his astuteness in having made this industrious, tireless fellow his partner.  Having discovered how idle had been his fears of performing at Redon, he now began to dismiss the terrors with which the notion of Nantes had haunted him.

And his happiness was reflected throughout the ranks of his company, with the single exception always of Climene.  She had ceased to sneer at Scaramouche, having realized at last that her sneers left him untouched and recoiled upon herself.  Thus her almost indefinable resentment of him was increased by being stifled, until, at all costs, an outlet for it must be found.

One day she threw herself in his way as he was leaving the theatre after the performance.  The others had already gone, and she had returned upon pretence of having forgotten something.

“Will you tell me what I have done to you?” she asked him, point-blank.

“Done to me, mademoiselle?” He did not understand.

She made a gesture of impatience.  “Why do you hate me?”

“Hate you, mademoiselle?  I do not hate anybody.  It is the most stupid of all the emotions.  I have never hated — not even my enemies.”