Is anything wrong?"
M. Binet had collapsed into a chair. He took his head in his hands,
and groaned.
"The scoundrel was shamming all the time!" exclaimed Climene. "His
fall downstairs was a trick. He was playing for this. He has
swindled us."
"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.
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