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 CHAPTER VII

THE CONQUEST OF NANTES

Binet Troupe opened in Nantes—as you may discover in surviving copies of the "Courrier Nantais"—on the Feast of the Purification with "Les Fourberies de Scaramouche." But they did not come to Nantes as hitherto they had gone to little country villages and townships, unheralded and depending entirely upon the parade of their entrance to attract attention to themselves. André-Louis had borrowed from the business methods of the Comédie Française. Carrying matters with a high hand entirely in his own fashion, he had ordered at Rédon the printing of playbills, and four days before the company's descent upon Nantes, these bills were pasted outside the Théâtre Feydau and elsewhere about the town, and had attracted—being still sufficiently unusual announcements at the time—considerable attention. He had entrusted the matter to one of the company's latest recruits, an intelligent young man named Basque, sending him on ahead of the company for the purpose.

You may see for yourself one of these playbills in the Carnavalet Museum. It details the players by their stage names only, with the exception of M. Binet and his daughter, and leaving out of account that he who plays Trivelin in one piece appears as Tabarin in another, it makes the company appear to be at least half as numerous again as it really was. It announces that they will open with "Les Fourberies de Scaramouche," to be followed by five other plays of which it gives the titles, and by others not named, which shall also be added should the patronage to be received in the distinguished and enlightened city of Nantes encourage the Binet Troupe to prolong its sojourn at the Théâtre Feydau. It lays great stress upon the fact that this