“I will concede it, my dear Scaramouche, so that I may hear the sequel.”
“I am disposed to exercise this power if the inducement is sufficient. You will realize that for fifteen livres a month a man does not sell such exceptional gifts as mine.
“There is an alternative,” said M. Binet, darkly.
“There is no alternative. Don’t be a fool, Binet.”
Binet sat up as if he had been prodded. Members of his company did not take this tone of direct rebuke with him.
“Anyway, I make you a present of it,” Scaramouche pursued, airily. “Exercise it if you please. Step outside and inform the police that they can lay hands upon one Andre-Louis Moreau. But that will be the end of your fine dreams of going to Redon, and for the first time in your life playing in a real theatre. Without me, you can’t do it, and you know it; and I am not going to Redon or anywhere else, in fact I am not even going to Fougeray, until we have an equitable arrangement.”
“But what heat!” complained Binet, “and all for what? Why must you assume that I have the soul of a usurer? When our little arrangement was made, I had no idea—how could I?—that you would prove as valuable to me as you are? You had but to remind me, my dear Scaramouche. I am a just man. As from to-day you shall have thirty livres a month. See, I double it at once. I am a generous man.”
“But you are not ambitious. Now listen to me, a moment.”
And he proceeded to unfold a scheme that filled Binet with a paralyzing terror.
“After Redon, Nantes,” he said. “Nantes and the Theatre Feydau.”