"
"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."
M. Binet choked in the act of drinking. The Theatre Feydau was a
sort of provincial Comedie Francaise. The great Fleury had played
there to an audience as critical as any in France. The very thought
of Redon, cherished as it had come to be by M. Binet, gave him at
moments a cramp in the stomach, so dangerously ambitious did it
seem to him. And Redon was a puppet-show by comparison with Nantes.
Yet this raw lad whom he had picked up by chance three weeks ago,
and who in that time had blossomed from a country attorney into
author and actor, could talk of Nantes and the Theatre Feydau
without changing colour.
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