"Rafael Sabatini. Scaramouche" - читать интересную книгу автора

XVI. SUNRISE

SCARAMOUCHE

* BOOK I: THE ROBE *

CHAPTER I. THE REPUBLICAN


He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
And that was all his patrimony. His very paternity was obscure, although the
village of Gavrillac had long since dispelled the cloud of mystery that hung
about it. Those simple Brittany folk were not so simple as to be deceived by
a pretended relationship which did not even possess the virtue of
originality. When a nobleman, for no apparent reason, announces himself the
godfather of an infant fetched no man knew whence, and thereafter cares for
the lad's rearing and education, the most unsophisticated of country folk
perfectly understand the situation. And so the good people of Gavrillac
permitted themselves no illusions on the score of the real relationship
between Andre-Louis Moreau - as the lad had been named
- and Quintin de Kercadiou, Lord of Gavrillac, who dwelt in the big
grey house that dominated from its eminence the village clustering below.
Andre-Louis had learnt his letters at the village school, lodged the
while with old Rabouillet, the attorney, who in the capacity of fiscal
intendant, looked after the affairs of M. de Kercadiou. Thereafter, at the
age of fifteen, he had been packed off to Paris, to the Lycee of Louis Le
Grand, to study the law which he was now returned to practise in conjunction
with Rabouillet. All this at the charges of his godfather, M. de Kercadiou,
who by placing him once more under the tutelage of Rabouillet would seem
thereby quite clearly to be making provision for his future.
Andre-Louis, on his side, had made the most of his opportunities. You
behold him at the age of four-and-twenty stuffed with learning enough to
produce an intellectual indigestion in an ordinary mind. Out of his zestful
study of Man, from Thucydides to the Encyclopaedists, from Seneca to
Rousseau, he had confirmed into an unassailable conviction his earliest
conscious impressions of the general insanity of his own species. Nor can I
discover that anything in his eventful life ever afterwards caused him to
waver in that opinion.
In body he was a slight wisp of a fellow, scarcely above middle height,
with a lean, astute countenance, prominent of nose and cheek-bones, and with
lank, black hair that reached almost to his shoulders. His mouth was long,
thin-lipped, and humorous. He was only just redeemed from ugliness by the
splendour of a pair of ever-questing, luminous eyes, so dark as to be almost
black. Of the whimsical quality of his mind and his rare gift of graceful
expression, his writings - unfortunately but too scanty - and particularly
his Confessions, afford us very ample evidence. Of his gift of oratory he
was hardly conscious yet, although he had already achieved a certain fame
for it in the Literary Chamber of Rennes - one of those clubs by now
ubiquitous in the land, in which the intellectual youth of France
foregathered to study and discuss the new philosophies that were permeating