Rafael Sabatini - The Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini

“To the devil with you, zany! You are not grazing! But your beasts are grazing!”

“They eat so little,” Andre–Louis apologized, and again essayed his ingratiating smile.

The sergeant grew more terrible than ever. “That is not the point. The point is that you are committing what amounts to a theft, and there’s the gaol for thieves.”

“Technically, I suppose you are right,” sighed Andre–Louis, and fell to combing his hair again, still looking up into the sergeant’s face. “But we have sinned in ignorance. We are grateful to you for the warning.” He passed the comb into his left hand, and with his right fumbled in his breeches’ pocket, whence there came a faint jingle of coins. “We are desolated to have brought you out of your way. Perhaps for their trouble your men would honour us by stopping at the next inn to drink the health of . . . of this M. de La Tour d’ Azyr, or any other health that they think proper.”

Some of the clouds lifted from the sergeant’s brow. But not yet all.

“Well, well,” said he, gruffly. “But you must decamp, you understand.” He leaned from the saddle to bring his recipient hand to a convenient distance. Andre–Louis placed in it a three-livre piece.

“In half an hour,” said Andre–Louis.

“Why in half an hour? Why not at once?”

“Oh, but time to break our fast.”

They looked at each other. The sergeant next considered the broad piece of silver in his palm. Then at last his features relaxed from their sternness.

“After all,” said he, “it is none of our business to play the tipstaves for M. de La Tour d’Azyr. We are of the marechaussee from Rennes.” Andre–Louis’ eyelids played him false by flickering. “But if you linger, look out for the gardes-champetres of the Marquis. You’ll find them not at all accommodating. Well, well — a good appetite to you, monsieur,” said he, in valediction.

“A pleasant ride, my captain,” answered Andre–Louis.

The sergeant wheeled his horse about, his troop wheeled with him. They were starting off, when he reined up again.

“You, monsieur!” he called over his shoulder. In a bound Andre–Louis was beside his stirrup. “We are in quest of a scoundrel named Andre–Louis Moreau, from Gavrillac, a fugitive from justice wanted for the gallows on a matter of sedition. You’ve seen nothing, I suppose, of a man whose movements seemed to you suspicious?”

“Indeed, we have,” said Andre–Louis, very boldly, his face eager with consciousness of the ability to oblige.

“You have?” cried the sergeant, in a ringing voice. “Where? When?”

“Yesterday evening in the neighbourhood of Guignen . . . ”

“Yes, yes,” the sergeant felt himself hot upon the trail.

“There was a fellow who seemed very fearful of being recognized . . . a man of fifty or thereabouts . . . ”

“Fifty!” cried the sergeant, and his face fell. “Bah! This man of ours is no older than yourself, a thin wisp of a fellow of about your own height and of black hair, just like your own, by the description. Keep a lookout on your travels, master player. The King’s Lieutenant in Rennes has sent us word this morning that he will pay ten louis to any one giving information that will lead to this scoundrel’s arrest. So there’s ten louis to be earned by keeping your eyes open, and sending word to the nearest justices. It would be a fine windfall for you, that.”

“A fine windfall, indeed, captain,” answered Andre–Louis, laughing.

But the sergeant had touched his horse with the spur, and was already trotting off in the wake of his men. Andre–Louis continued to laugh, quite silently, as he sometimes did when the humour of a jest was peculiarly keen.

Then he turned slowly about, and came back towards Pantaloon and the rest of the company, who were now all grouped together, at gaze.

Pantaloon advanced to meet him with both hands out-held. For a moment Andre–Louis thought he was about to be embraced.

“We hail you our saviour!” the big man declaimed. “Already the shadow of the gaol was creeping over us, chilling us to the very marrow. For though we be poor, yet are we all honest folk and not one of us has ever suffered the indignity of prison. Nor is there one of us would survive it. But for you, my friend, it might have happened. What magic did you work?”

“The magic that is to be worked in France with a King’s portrait. The French are a very loyal nation, as you will have observed. They love their King — and his portrait even better than himself, especially when it is wrought in gold. But even in silver it is respected. The sergeant was so overcome by the sight of that noble visage — on a three-livre piece — that his anger vanished, and he has gone his ways leaving us to depart in peace.”

“Ah, true! He said we must decamp. About it, my lads! Come, come . . . ”

“But not until after breakfast,” said Andre–Louis. “A half-hour for breakfast was conceded us by that loyal fellow, so deeply was he touched. True, he spoke of possible gardes-champetres. But he knows as well as I do that they are not seriously to be feared, and that if they came, again the King’s portrait — wrought in copper this time — would produce the same melting effect upon them. So, my dear M. Pantaloon, break your fast at your ease. I can smell your cooking from here, and from the smell I argue that there is no need to wish you a good appetite.”

“My friend, my saviour!” Pantaloon flung a great arm about the young man’s shoulders. “You shall stay to breakfast with us.”

“I confess to a hope that you would ask me,” said Andre–Louis.

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They were, thought Andre–Louis, as he sat down to breakfast with them behind the itinerant house, in the bright sunshine that tempered the cold breath of that November morning, an odd and yet an attractive crew. An air of gaiety pervaded them. They affected to have no cares, and made merry over the trials and tribulations of their nomadic life. They were curiously, yet amiably, artificial; histrionic in their manner of discharging the most commonplace of functions; exaggerated in their gestures; stilted and affected in their speech. They seemed, indeed, to belong to a world apart, a world of unreality which became real only on the planks of their stage, in the glare of their footlights. Good-fellowship bound them one to another; and Andre–Louis reflected cynically that this harmony amongst them might be the cause of their apparent unreality. In the real world, greedy striving and the emulation of acquisitiveness preclude such amity as was present here.

They numbered exactly eleven, three women and eight men; and they addressed each other by their stage names: names which denoted their several types, and never — or only very slightly — varied, no matter what might be the play that they performed.

“We are,” Pantaloon informed him, “one of those few remaining staunch bands of real players, who uphold the traditions of the old Italian Commedia dell’ Arte. Not for us to vex our memories and stultify our wit with the stilted phrases that are the fruit of a wretched author’s lucubrations. Each of us is in detail his own author in a measure as he develops the part assigned to him. We are improvisers — improvisers of the old and noble Italian school.”

“I had guessed as much,” said Andre–Louis, “when I discovered you rehearsing your improvisations.”

Pantaloon frowned.

“I have observed, young sir, that your humour inclines to the pungent, not to say the acrid. It is very well. It is I suppose, the humour that should go with such a countenance. But it may lead you astray, as in this instance. That rehearsal — a most unusual thing with us — was necessitated by the histrionic rawness of our Leandre. We are seeking to inculcate into him by training an art with which Nature neglected to endow him against his present needs. Should he continue to fail in doing justice to our schooling . . . But we will not disturb our present harmony with the unpleasant anticipation of misfortunes which we still hope to avert. We love our Leandre, for all his faults. Let me make you acquainted with our company.”