che pursued, airily.
"Exercise it if you please. Step outside and inform the police that they
can lay hands upon one Andre-Louis Moreau. But that will be the end of
your fine dreams of going to Redon, and for the first time in your life
playing in a real theatre. Without me, you can't do it, and you know
it; and I am not going to Redon or anywhere else, in fact I am not even
going to Fougeray, until we have an equitable arrangement."

"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.

"But why not Paris and the Comedie Francaise?" wondered M. Binet, with
sarcasm, when at last he had got his breath.

"That may come later," says impudence.

"Eh? You've been drinking, my friend."

But Andre-Louis detailed the plan that had been forming in his mind.
Fougeray should be a training-ground for Redon, and Redon should be a
training-ground for Nantes. They would stay in Redon as long as Redon
would pay adequately to come and see them, working hard to perfect
themselves the while. They would add three or four new players of talent
to the company; he would write three or four fresh scenarios, and these
should be tested and perfected until the troupe was in possession of at
least half a dozen plays upon which they could depend; they would lay
out a portion of their profits on better dr