You may see for yourself one of these playbills in the Carnavalet Museum.  It details the players by their stage names only, with the exception of M. Binet and his daughter, and leaving out of account that he who plays Trivelin in one piece appears as Tabarin in another, it makes the company appear to be at least half as numerous again as it really was.  It announces that they will open with “Les Fourberies de Scaramouche,” to be followed by five other plays of which it gives the titles, and by others not named, which shall also be added should the patronage to be received in the distinguished and enlightened city of Nantes encourage the Binet Troupe to prolong its sojourn at the Theatre Feydau.  It lays great stress upon the fact that this is a company of improvisers in the old Italian manner, the like of which has not been seen in France for half a century, and it exhorts the public of Nantes not to miss this opportunity of witnessing these distinguished mimes who are reviving for them the glories of the Comedie de l’Art.  Their visit to Nantes — the announcement proceeds — is preliminary to their visit to Paris, where they intend to throw down the glove to the actors of the Comedie Francaise, and to show the world how superior is the art of the improviser to that of the actor who depends upon an author for what he shall say, and who consequently says always the same thing every time that he plays in the same piece.

It is an audacious bill, and its audacity had scared M. Binet out of the little sense left him by the Burgundy which in these days he could afford to abuse.  He had offered the most vehement opposition.  Part of this Andre-Louis had swept aside; part he had disregarded.

“I admit that it is audacious,” said Scaramouche.  “But at your time of life you should have learnt that in this world nothing succeeds like audacity.”

“I forbid it; I absolutely forbid it,” M. Binet insisted.

“I knew you would.  Just as I know that you’ll be very grateful to me presently for not obeying you.”

“You are inviting a catastrophe.”

“I am inviting fortune.  The worst catastrophe that can overtake you is to be back in the market-halls of the country villages from which I rescued you.  I’ll have you in Paris yet in spite of yourself.  Leave this to me.”

And he went out to attend to the printing.  Nor did his preparations end there.  He wrote a piquant article on the glories of the Comedie de l’Art, and its resurrection by the improvising troupe of the great mime Florimond Binet.  Binet’s name was not Florimond; it was just Pierre.  But Andre-Louis had a great sense of the theatre.  That article was an amplification of the stimulating matter contained in the playbills; and he persuaded Basque, who had relations in Nantes, to use all the influence he could command, and all the bribery they could afford, to get that article printed in the “Courrier Nantais” a couple of days before the arrival of the Binet Troupe.