o funny.
He contrived to make it clearly appear that his terror was of some one
off the stage. He took cover behind a painted shrub, and thence, the
laughter at last beginning to subside, he addressed himself to Climene
and Leandre.

"Forgive me, beautiful lady, if the abrupt manner of my entrance
startled you. The truth is that I have never been the same since that
last affair of mine with Almaviva. My heart is not what it used to be.
Down there at the end of the lane I came face to face with an elderly
gentleman carrying a heavy cudgel, and the horrible thought entered my
mind that it might be your father, and that our little stratagem to get
you safely married might already have been betrayed to him. I think it
was the cudgel put such notion in my head. Not that I am afraid. I am
not really afraid of anything. But I could not help reflecting that, if
it should really have been your father, and he had broken my head with
his cudgel, your hopes would have perished with me. For without me, what
should you have done, my poor children?"

A ripple of laughter from the audience had been steadily enheartening
him, and helping him to recover his natural impudence. It was clear they
found him comical. They were to find him far more comical than ever he
had intended, and this was largely due to a fortuitous circumstance upon
which he had insufficiently reckoned. The fear of recognition by some
one from Gavrillac or Rennes had been strong upon him. His face was
sufficiently made up to baffle recognition; but there remained his
voice. To dissemble this he had availed himself of the fact that Figaro
was a Spaniard. He had known a Spaniard at Louis le Grand who spoke
a fluent but most extraordinary French, with a grotesque excess of
sibilant sounds. It was an accent that he had often imitated, as youths
will imitate characteristics that excite their mirth. Opportunely he had
bethought him of that Spanish student, and it was upon his speech
that to-night he modelled his own. The audience of Guichen found it as
laughable on his lips as he and his fellows had found it formerly on the
lips of that derided Spaniard.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Binet--listening to that glib impromptu of
which the scenario gave no indication--had recovered from his fears.

"Dieu de Dieu!" he whispered, grinning. "Did he do it, then, on
purpose?"

It seemed to him impossible that a man who had been so terror-stricken
as he had fancied Andre-Louis,