he snapped. "Must you be laughing when I've all but
broken my neck?"

"You are right. We ought to be weeping because you didn't break it.
Come, man, get up," and he held out a hand to the prostrate rogue.

Scaramouche took the hand, clutched it, heaved himself from the ground,
then with a scream dropped back again.

"My foot!" he complained.

Binet rolled through the group of players, scattering them to right and
left. Apprehension had been quick to seize him. Fate had played him such
tricks before.

"What ails your foot?" quoth he, sourly.

"It's broken, I think," Scaramouche complained.

"Broken? Bah! Get up, man." He caught him under the armpits and hauled
him up.

Scaramouche came howling to one foot; the other doubled under him when
he attempted to set it down, and he must have collapsed again but that
Binet supported him. He filled the place with his plaint, whilst Binet
swore amazingly and variedly.

"Must you bellow like a calf, you fool? Be quiet. A chair here, some
one."

A chair was thrust forward. He crushed Scaramouche down into it.

"Let us look at this foot of yours."

Heedless of Scaramouche's howls of pain, he swept away shoe and
stocking.

"What ails it?" he asked, staring. "Nothing that I can see." He seized
it, heel in one hand, instep in the other, and gyrated it. Scaramouche
screamed in agony, until Climene caught Binet's arm and made him stop.

"My God, have you no feelings?" she reproved her father. "The lad has
hurt his foot. Must you torture him? Will that cure it?"

"Hurt his foot!" said Binet. "I can see nothing the matter with his
foot--nothing to justify all this uproar. He has bruised it, maybe..."

"A man with a bruised foot doesn't scream like that," said Madame over
Climene's shoulder. "Perhaps he has dislocated it."

"That is what I fear," whimpered Scaramouche.

Binet heaved himself up in disgust.

"Take him to bed," he bade them, "and fetch a doctor to see him."

It was done, and the doctor came. Having seen the patient, he reported
that nothing very serious had happened, but that in falling he had
evidently sprained his foot a little. A few days' rest and all would be
well.

"A few days!" cried Binet. "God of God! Do you mean that he can't walk?"

"It would be unwise, indeed impossible for more than a few steps."

M. Binet paid the doctor's fee, and sat down to think. He filled himself
a glass of Burgundy, tossed it off without a word, and sat thereafter