vastly different role before an audience of Nantes. Yet was it so different, he wondered? Had he not then been a sort of Scaramouche—an intriguer, glib and specious, deceiving folk, cynically misleading them with opinions that were not really his own? Was it at all surprising that he should have made so rapid and signal a success as a mime? Was not this really all that he had ever been, the thing for which Nature had designed him?
On the following night they played "The Shy Lover" to a full house, the fame of their début having gone abroad, and the success of Monday was confirmed. On Wednesday they gave "Figaro-Scaramouche," and on Thursday morning the "Courrier Nantais" came out with an article of more than a column of praise of these brilliant improvisers, for whom it claimed that they utterly put to shame the mere reciters of memorized parts.
André-Louis, reading the sheet at breakfast, and having no delusions on the score of the falseness of that statement, laughed inwardly. The novelty of the thing, and the pretentiousness in which he had swaddled it, had deceived them finely. He turned to greet Binet and Climène, who entered at that moment. He waved the sheet above his head.
"It is settled," he announced, "we stay in Nantes until Easter."
"Do we?" said Binet, sourly. "You settle everything, my friend."
"Read for yourself." And he handed him the paper.
Moodily M. Binet read. He set the sheet down in silence, and turned his attention to his breakfast.
"Was I justified or not?" quoth André-Louis, who found M. Binet's behaviour a thought intriguing.
"In what?"
"In coming to Nantes?"
"If I had not thought so, we should not have come," said Binet, and he began to eat.
André-Louis dropped the subject, wondering.
After breakfast he and Climène sallied forth to take the
