Then, scarcely has Polichinelle departed by the door than Scaramouche bounds in through the window.  It was an effective entrance, usually performed with a broad comic effect that set the people in a roar.  Not so on this occasion.  Meditating in bed that morning, Scaramouche had decided to present himself in a totally different aspect.  He would cut out all the broad play, all the usual clowning which had delighted their past rude audiences, and he would obtain his effects by subtlety instead.  He would present a slyly humorous rogue, restrained, and of a certain dignity, wearing a countenance of complete solemnity, speaking his lines drily, as if unconscious of the humour with which he intended to invest them.  Thus, though it might take the audience longer to understand and discover him, they would like him all the better in the end.

True to that resolve, he now played his part as the friend and hired ally of the lovesick Leandre, on whose behalf he came for news of Climene, seizing the opportunity to further his own amour with Columbine and his designs upon the money-bags of Pantaloon.  Also he had taken certain liberties with the traditional costume of Scaramouche; he had caused the black doublet and breeches to be slashed with red, and the doublet to be cut more to a peak, a la Henri III.  The conventional black velvet cap he had replaced by a conical hat with a turned-up brim, and a tuft of feathers on the left, and he had discarded the guitar.

M. Binet listened desperately for the roar of laughter that usually greeted the entrance of Scaramouche, and his dismay increased when it did not come.  And then he became conscious of something alarmingly unusual in Scaramouche’s manner.  The sibilant foreign accent was there, but none of the broad boisterousness their audiences had loved.

He wrung his hands in despair.  “It is all over!” he said.  “The fellow has ruined us!  It serves me right for being a fool, and allowing him to take control of everything!”

But he was profoundly mistaken.  He began to have an inkling of this when presently himself he took the stage, and found the public attentive, remarked a grin of quiet appreciation on every upturned face.  It was not, however, until the thunders of applause greeted the fall of the curtain on the first act that he felt quite sure they would be allowed to escape with their lives.

Had the part of Pantaloon in “Les Fourberies” been other than that of a blundering, timid old idiot, Binet would have ruined it by his apprehensions.  As it was, those very apprehensions, magnifying as they did the hesitancy and bewilderment that were the essence of his part, contributed to the success.  And a success it proved that more than justified all the heralding of which Scaramouche had been guilty.

For Scaramouche himself this success was not confined to the public.  At the end of the play a great reception awaited him from his companions assembled in the green-room of the theatre.  His talent, resource, and energy had raised them in a few weeks from a pack of vagrant mountebanks to a self-respecting company of first-rate players.  They acknowledged it generously in a speech entrusted to Polichinelle, adding the tribute to his genius that, as they had conquered Nantes, so would they conquer the world under his guidance.