“Fifteen louis at least—perhaps sixteen!” said M. Binet. “Oh, the heartless blackguard! To swindle me who have been as a father to him—and to swindle me in such a moment.”
From the ranks of the silent, awe-stricken company, each member of which was wondering by how much of the loss his own meagre pay would be mulcted, there came a splutter of laughter.
M. Binet glared with blood-injected eyes.
“Who laughs?” he roared. “What heartless wretch has the audacity to laugh at my misfortune?”
Andre-Louis, still in the sable glories of Scaramouche, stood forward. He was laughing still.
“It is you, is it? You may laugh on another note, my friend, if I choose a way to recoup myself that I know of.”
“Dullard!” Scaramouche scorned him. “Rabbit-brained elephant! What if Cordemais has gone with fifteen louis? Hasn’t he left you something worth twenty times as much?”
M. Binet gaped uncomprehending.
“You are between two wines, I think. You’ve been drinking,” he concluded.
“So I have—at the fountain of Thalia. Oh, don’t you see? Don’t you see the treasure that Cordemais has left behind him?”