he Guichen audience, than the Guichen audience to the
unsophistication of 'The Heartless Father.'"

"Let me think it out," groaned Polichinelle, and he took his head in his
hands.

But from the tail of the table Andre-Louis was challenged by Climene who
sat there between Columbine and Madame.

"You would alter the comedy, would you, M. Parvissimus?" she cried.

He turned to parry her malice.

"I would suggest that it be altered," he corrected, inclining his head.

"And how would you alter it, monsieur?"

"I? Oh, for the better."

"But of course!" She was sleekest sarcasm. "And how would you do it?"

"Aye, tell us that," roared M. Binet, and added: "Silence, I pray you,
gentlemen and ladies. Silence for M. Parvissimus."

Andre-Louis looked from father to daughter, and smiled. "Pardi!" said
he. "I am between bludgeon and dagger. If I escape with my life, I shall
be fortunate. Why, then, since you pin me to the very wall, I'll tell
you what I should do. I should go back to the original and help myself
more freely from it."

"The original?" questioned M. Binet--the author.

"It is called, I believe, 'Monsieur de Pourceaugnac,' and was written by
Moliere."

Somebody tittered, but that somebody was not M. Binet. He had been
touched on the raw, and the look in his little eyes betrayed the fact
that his bonhomme exterior covered anything but a bonhomme.

"You charge me with plagiarism," he said at last; "with filching the
ideas of Moliere."

"There is always, of course," said Andre-Louis, unruffled, "the
alternative possibility of two great minds working upon parallel lines."

M. Binet studied the young man attentively a moment. He found him bland
and inscrutable, and decided to pin him down.

"Then you do not imply that I have been stealing from Moliere?"

"I advise you to do so, monsieur," was the disconcerting reply.

M. Binet was shocked.

"You advise me to do so! You advise me, me, Antoine Binet, to turn thief
at my age!"

"He is outrageous," said mademoiselle, indignantly.

"Outrageous is the word. I thank you for it, my dear. I take you on
trust, sir. You sit at my table, you have the honour to be included in
my company, and to my face you have the audacity to advise me to
become a thief--the worst kind of thief that is conceivable, a thief of
spiritual things, a thief of ideas! It is insufferable, intolerable! I
have been, I fear, deeply mistaken in you, monsieur; just as you appear
to have b