“You are indulging that acrid humour of yours again, my friend,” Binet interrupted him. “Excepting for that,” he added, slowly, meditatively, his little eyes screwed up, “we might discuss this proposal that you seem to be making.”
“Alas! we can except nothing. If you take me, you take me as I am. What else is possible? As for this humour—such as it is—which you decry, you might turn it to profitable account.”
“How so?”
“In several ways. I might, for instance, teach Leandre to make love.”
Pantaloon burst into laughter. “You do not lack confidence in your powers. Modesty does not afflict you.”
“Therefore I evince the first quality necessary in an actor.”
“Can you act?”
“Upon occasion, I think,” said Andre-Louis, his thoughts upon his performance at Rennes and Nantes, and wondering when in all his histrionic career Pantaloon’s improvisations had so rent the heart of mobs.
M. Binet was musing. “Do you know much of the theatre?” quoth he.
“Everything,” said Andre-Louis.