Rafael Sabatini - The Greatest Works of Rafael Sabatini

The marvel was that the old chaise, which in its halcyon days may have served to carry some dignitary of the Church, did not founder instead of merely groaning under that excessive and ribald load.

Next came the house on wheels, led by the long, lean Rhodomont, who had daubed his face red, and increased the terror of it by a pair of formidable mostachios. He was in long thigh-boots and leather jerkin, trailing an enormous sword from a crimson baldrick. He wore a broad felt hat with a draggled feather, and as he advanced he raised his great voice and roared out defiance, and threats of blood-curdling butchery to be performed upon all and sundry. On the roof of this vehicle sat Leandre alone. He was in blue satin, with ruffles, small sword, powdered hair, patches and spy-glass, and red-heeled shoes: the complete courtier, looking very handsome. The women of Guichen ogled him coquettishly. He took the ogling as a proper tribute to his personal endowments, and returned it with interest. Like Climene, he looked out of place amid the bandits who composed the remainder of the company.

Bringing up the rear came Andre–Louis leading the two donkeys that dragged the property-cart. He had insisted upon assuming a false nose, representing as for embellishment that which he intended for disguise. For the rest, he had retained his own garments. No one paid any attention to him as he trudged along beside his donkeys, an insignificant rear guard, which he was well content to be.

They made the tour of the town, in which the activity was already above the normal in preparation for next week’s fair. At intervals they halted, the cacophony would cease abruptly, and Polichinelle would announce in a stentorian voice that at five o’clock that evening in the old market, M. Binet’s famous company of improvisers would perform a new comedy in four acts entitled, “The Heartless Father.”

Thus at last they came to the old market, which was the groundfloor of the town hall, and open to the four winds by two archways on each side of its length, and one archway on each side of its breadth. These archways, with two exceptions, had been boarded up. Through those two, which gave admission to what presently would be the theatre, the ragamuffins of the town, and the niggards who were reluctant to spend the necessary sous to obtain proper admission, might catch furtive glimpses of the performance.

That afternoon was the most strenuous of Andre–Louis’ life, unaccustomed as he was to any sort of manual labour. It was spent in erecting and preparing the stage at one end of the market-hall; and he began to realize how hard-earned were to be his monthly fifteen livres. At first there were four of them to the task — or really three, for Pantaloon did no more than bawl directions. Stripped of their finery, Rhodomont and Leandre assisted Andre–Louis in that carpentering. Meanwhile the other four were at dinner with the ladies. When a half-hour or so later they came to carry on the work, Andre–Louis and his companions went to dine in their turn, leaving Polichinelle to direct the operations as well as assist in them.

They crossed the square to the cheap little inn where they had taken up their quarters. In the narrow passage Andre–Louis came face to face with Climene, her fine feathers cast, and restored by now to her normal appearance.

“And how do you like it?” she asked him, pertly.

He looked her in the eyes. “It has its compensations,” quoth he, in that curious cold tone of his that left one wondering whether he meant or not what he seemed to mean.

She knit her brows. “You . . . you feel the need of compensations already?”

“Faith, I felt it from the beginning,” said he. “It was the perception of them allured me.”

They were quite alone, the others having gone on into the room set apart for them, where food was spread. Andre–Louis, who was as unlearned in Woman as he was learned in Man, was not to know, upon feeling himself suddenly extraordinarily aware of her femininity, that it was she who in some subtle, imperceptible manner so rendered him.

“What,” she asked him, with demurest innocence, “are these compensations?”

He caught himself upon the brink of the abyss.

“Fifteen livres a month,” said he, abruptly.

A moment she stared at him bewildered. He was very disconcerting. Then she recovered.

“Oh, and bed and board,” said she. “Don’t be leaving that from the reckoning, as you seem to be doing; for your dinner will be going cold. Aren’t you coming?”

“Haven’t you dined?” he cried, and she wondered had she caught a note of eagerness.

“No,” she answered, over her shoulder. “I waited.”

“What for?” quoth his innocence, hopefully.

“I had to change, of course, zany,” she answered, rudely. Having dragged him, as she imagined, to the chopping-block, she could not refrain from chopping. But then he was of those who must be chopping back.

“And you left your manners upstairs with your grand-lady clothes, mademoiselle. I understand.”

A scarlet flame suffused her face. “You are very insolent,” she said, lamely.

“I’ve often been told so. But I don’t believe it.” He thrust open the door for her, and bowing with an air which imposed upon her, although it was merely copied from Fleury of the Comedie Francaise, so often visited in the Louis le Grand days, he waved her in. “After you, ma demoiselle.” For greater emphasis he deliberately broke the word into its two component parts.

“I thank you, monsieur,” she answered, frostily, as near sneering as was possible to so charming a person, and went in, nor addressed him again throughout the meal. Instead, she devoted herself with an unusual and devastating assiduity to the suspiring Leandre, that poor devil who could not successfully play the lover with her on the stage because of his longing to play it in reality.

Andre–Louis ate his herrings and black bread with a good appetite nevertheless. It was poor fare, but then poor fare was the common lot of poor people in that winter of starvation, and since he had cast in his fortunes with a company whose affairs were not flourishing, he must accept the evils of the situation philosophically.

“Have you a name?” Binet asked him once in the course of that repast and during a pause in the conversation.

“It happens that I have,” said he. “I think it is Parvissimus.”

“Parvissimus?” quoth Binet. “Is that a family name?”

“In such a company, where only the leader enjoys the privilege of a family name, the like would be unbecoming its least member. So I take the name that best becomes in me. And I think it is Parvissimus — the very least.”

Binet was amused. It was droll; it showed a ready fancy. Oh, to be sure, they must get to work together on those scenarios.

“I shall prefer it to carpentering,” said Andre–Louis. Nevertheless he had to go back to it that afternoon, and to labour strenuously until four o’clock, when at last the autocratic Binet announced himself satisfied with the preparations, and proceeded, again with the help of Andre–Louis, to prepare the lights, which were supplied partly by tallow candles and partly by lamps burning fish-oil.

At five o’clock that evening the three knocks were sounded, and the curtain rose on “The Heartless Father.”

Among the duties inherited by Andre–Louis from the departed Felicien whom he replaced, was that of doorkeeper. This duty he discharged dressed in a Polichinelle costume, and wearing a pasteboard nose. It was an arrangement mutually agreeable to M. Binet and himself. M. Binet — who had taken the further precaution of retaining Andre–Louis’ own garments — was thereby protected against the risk of his latest recruit absconding with the takings. Andre–Louis, without illusions on the score of Pantaloon’s real object, agreed to it willingly enough, since it protected him from the chance of recognition by any acquaintance who might possibly be in Guichen.