Rafael Sabatini

Scaramouche the King-Maker Rafael Sabatini

It was suspected of him by many that he had no heart. Repeatedly he allows this suspicion to be perceived in the course of those Confessions of his upon which I drew so freely for the story of the first part of his odd life. In the beginning of that story, we see him turning his back, at the dictates of affection, upon an assured career in the service of Privilege. At the end of it, we see him forsaking the cause of the people in which he had prospered and, again at the dictates of affection, abandoning the great position won. Of the man who, twice within the first twenty-eight years of his life, deliberately, in the service of others, destroys his chances of success, it is foolish to say that he has no heart. But it was the whim of André-Louis Moreau to foster that illusion. His imagination had early been touched by the teaching of Epictetus, and deliberately he sought to assume the characteristics of a Stoic: one who would never permit his reason to be clouded by sentiment, or his head to be governed by his heart. He was, of course, by temperament an actor. It was as Scaramouche, and as author, player, and organiser of the Binet Troupe, that he had found his true vocation. Persisting in it, his genius might have won him a renown greater than the combined renowns of Beaumarchais and Talma. Desisting from it, however, he had carried his histrionic temperament into such walks of life as he thereafter trod, taking the world for his stage.