hall stay to breakfast with us."

"I confess to a hope that you would ask me," said Andre-Louis.

CHAPTER II. THE SERVICE OF THESPIS

They were, thought Andre-Louis, as he sat down to breakfast with them
behind the itinerant house, in the bright sunshine that tempered the
cold breath of that November morning, an odd and yet an attractive crew.
An air of gaiety pervaded them. They affected to have no cares, and made
merry over the trials and tribulations of their nomadic life. They
were curiously, yet amiably, artificial; histrionic in their manner
of discharging the most commonplace of functions; exaggerated in their
gestures; stilted and affected in their speech. They seemed, indeed, to
belong to a world apart, a world of unreality which became real only
on the planks of their stage, in the glare of their footlights.
Good-fellowship bound them one to another; and Andre-Louis reflected
cynically that this harmony amongst them might be the cause of their
apparent unreality. In the real world, greedy striving and the emulation
of acquisitiveness preclude such amity as was present here.

They numbered exactly eleven, three women and eight men; and they
addressed each other by their stage names: names which denoted their
several types, and never--or only very slightly--varied, no matter what
might be the play that they performed.

"We are," Pantaloon informed him, "one of those few remaining staunch
bands of real players, who uphold the traditions of the old Italian
Commedia dell' Arte. Not for us to vex our memories and stultify our
wit with the stilted phrases that are the fruit of a wretched author's
lucubrations. Each of us is in detail his own author in a measure as he
develops the part assigned to him. We are improvisers--improvisers of the
old and noble Italian school."

"I had guessed as much," said Andre-Louis, "when I discovered you
rehearsing your improvisations."

Pantaloon frowned.

"I have observed, young sir, that your humour inclines to the pungent,
not to say the acrid. It is very well. It is I suppose, the humour that
should go with such a countenance. But it may lead you astray, as
in this instance. That rehearsal--a most unusual thing with us--was
necessitated by the histrionic rawness of our Leandre. We are seeking
to inculcate into him by training an art with which Nature neglected to
endow him against his present needs. Should he continue to fail in doing
justice to our schooling... B