"And what do you think of it?" he asked Andre-Louis, as they were walking back to the inn after the performance.
"Possibly it could have been worse; probably it could not," said he.
In sheer amazement M. Binet checked in his stride, and turned to look at his companion.
"Huh!" said he. "Dieu de Dien! But you are frank."
"An unpopular form of service among fools, I know."
"Well, I am not a fool," said Binet.
"That is why I am frank. I pay you the compliment of assuming intelligence in you, M. Binet."
"Oh, you do?" quoth M. Binet. "And who the devil are you to assume anything? Your assumptions are presumptuous, sir." And with that he lapsed into silence and the gloomy business of mentally casting up his accounts.
But at table over supper a half-hour later he revived the topic.
"Our latest recruit, this excellent M. Parvissimus," he announced, "has the impudence to tell me that possibly our comedy could have been worse, but that probably it could not." And he blew out his great round cheeks to invite a laugh at the expense of that foolish critic.
"That's bad," said the swarthy and sardonic Polichinelle. He was grave as Rhadamanthus pronouncing judgment. "That's bad. But what is infinitely worse is that the audience had the impudence to be of the same mind."
"An ignorant pack of clods," sneered Leandre, with a toss of his handsome head.
"You are wrong," quoth Harlequin. "You were born for love, my dear, not criticism."
Leandre--a dull dog, as you will have conceived--looked contemptuously down upon the little man. "And you, what were you born for?" he wondered.
"Nobody knows," was the candid admission. "Nor yet why. It is the case of many of us, my dear, believe me."
"But why"--M. Binet took him up, and thus spoilt the beginnings of a very pretty quarrel--"why do you say that Leandre is wrong?"
"To be general, because he is always wrong. To be particular, because I judge the audience of Guichen to be too sophisticated for 'The Heartless Father.'"
"You would put it more happily," interposed Andre-Louis--who was the cause of this discussion--"if you said that 'The Heartless Father' is too unsophisticated for the audience of Guichen."
"Why, what's the difference?" asked Leandre.
"I didn't imply a difference. I merely suggested that it is a happier way to express the fact."