sometimes an ignorant, self-sufficient doctor. But it is rarely that I find it necessary to call myself other than Pantaloon. For the rest, I am the only one who has a name—a real name. It is Binet, monsieur.
"And now for the ladies... First in order of seniority we have Madame there." He waved one of his great hands towards a buxom, smiling blonde of five-and-forty, who was seated on the lowest of the steps of the travelling house. "She is our Duègne, or Mother, or Nurse, as the case requires. She is known quite simply and royally as Madame. If she ever had a name in the world, she has long since forgotten it, which is perhaps as well. Then we have this pert jade with the tip-tilted nose and the wide mouth, who is of course our soubrette Columbine, and lastly, my daughter Climène, an amoureuse of talents not to be matched outside the Comédie Française, of which she has the bad taste to aspire to become a member."
The lovely Climène—and lovely indeed she was—tossed her nut-brown curls and laughed as she looked across at André-Louis. Her eyes, he had perceived by now, were not blue, but hazel.
"Do not believe him, monsieur. Here I am queen, and I prefer to be queen here rather than a slave in Paris."
"Mademoiselle," said André-Louis, quite solemnly, "will be queen wherever she condescends to reign."
Her only answer was a timid—timid and yet alluring—glance from under fluttering lids. Meanwhile her father was bawling at the comely young man who played lovers—
"You hear, Léandre! That is the sort of speech you should practise."
Léandre raised languid eyebrows. "That?" quoth he, and shrugged. "The merest commonplace."
André-Louis laughed approval. "M. Léandre is of a readier wit than you concede. There is subtlety in pronouncing it a commonplace to call Mlle. Climène a queen."
Some laughed, M. Binet amongst them, with good-humoured mockery.
