Rafael Sabatini

Once he was Andr -Louis Moreau, a lawyer raised by nobility, unconcerned with the growing discontent among France's lower class-until his friend was mercilessly struck down by a member of the aristocracy. Now he is Scaramouche. Speaking out against the unjust French government, he takes refuge with a nomadic band of actors and assumes the role of the clown Scaramouche-a comic figure with a very serious message... Set during the French Revolution, this novel of swashbuckling romance is also a thought-provoking commentary on class, inequality, and the individual's role in society-a story that has become Rafael Sabatini's enduring legacy.

He whom they called the Tavern Knight laughed an evil laugh-such a laugh as might fall from the lips of Satan in a sardonic moment. He sat within the halo of yellow light shed by two tallow candles, whose sconces were two empty bottles, and contemptuously he eyed the youth in black, standing with white face and quivering lip in a corner of the mean chamber. Then he laughed again, and in a hoarse voice, sorely suggestive of the bottle, he broke into song. He lay back in his chair, his long, spare legs outstretched, his spurs jingling to the lilt of his ditty whose burden ran: On the lip so red of the wench that's sped His passionate kiss burns, still-O For 'tis April time, and of love and wine Youth's way is to take its fill-O Down, down, derry-do So his cup he drains and he shakes his reins, And rides his rake-helly way-O She was sweet to woo and most comely, too, But that was all yesterday-O Down, down, derry-do The lad started forward with something akin to a shiver." Have done," he cried, in a voice of loathing, "or, if croak you must, choose a ditty less foul "

It was spring at Bellecour-the spring of 1789, a short three months before the fall of the Bastille came to give the nobles pause, and make them realise that these new philosophies, which so long they have derided, were by no means the idle vapours they had deemed them. By the brook, plashing its glittering course through the park of Bellecour, wandered La Boulaye, his long, lean, figure clad with a sombreness that was out of harmony in that sunlit, vernal landscape. But the sad-hued coat belied that morning a heart that sang within his breast as joyously as any linnet of the woods through which he strayed. That he was garbed in black was but the outward indication of his clerkly office, for he was secretary to the most noble the Marquis de Fresnoy de Bellecour, and so clothed in the livery of the ink by which he lived. His face was pale and lean and thoughtful, but within his great, intelligent eyes there shone a light of new-born happiness. Under his arm he carried a volume of the new philosophies which Rousseau had lately given to the world, and which was contributing so vastly to the mighty change that was impending. But within his soul there dwelt in that hour no such musty subject as the metaphysical dreams of old Rousseau. His mood inclined little to the "Discourses upon the Origin of Inequality" which his elbow hugged to his side.