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144 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 Rédon, Nantes," he said. "Nantes and the Théâtre Feydau."

M. Binet choked in the act of drinking. The Théâtre Feydau was a sort of provincial Comédie Française. The great Fleury had played there to an audience as critical as any in France. The very thought of Rédon, 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 Rédon 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 Théâtre Feydau without changing colour.

"But why not Paris and the Comédie Française?" 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 André-Louis detailed the plan that had been forming in his mind. Fougeray should be a training-ground for Rédon, and Rédon should be a training-ground for Nantes. They would stay in Rédon as long as Rédon would pay adequately to come and see them, working hard to perfect themselves the while. They would add three or four new