Scaramouche

Scaramouche is a historical novel by Rafael Sabatini, originally published in 1921. A romantic adventure, Scaramouche tells the story of a young lawyer during the French Revolution. In the course of his adventures, he becomes an actor portraying Scaramouche (a roguish buffoon character in the commedia dell'arte). He also becomes a revolutionary, politician, and fencing-master, confounding his enemies with his powerful orations and swordsmanship. He is forced by circumstances to change sides several times. The book also depicts his transformation from cynic to idealist. The three-part novel opens with the line: "He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad." This line is Sabatini's epitaph, inscribed on his gravestone in Adelboden, Switzerland. It is also inscribed on an archway in the entrance of the Humanities Quadrangle at Yale University. Plot The Robe Andre-Louis Moreau, educated as a lawyer, lives in the village of Gavrillac in Brittany with his godfather, Quentin de Kercadiou, the Lord of Gavrillac, who refuses to disclose Moreau's parentage. Moreau has grown up alongside Aline, de Kercadiou's niece, and their relationship is that of cousins. Because he loves her as a cousin, he warns her against marrying the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr; however, she is ambitious and wishes to marry high, so she ignores him. A peasant, Mabey, is shot for poaching by the gamekeeper of the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr, on the Marquis's instructions. The idealistic Philippe de Vilmorin, a seminarian and Moreau's closest friend, denounces the act as murder. While pleading with the Marquis for justice, de Vilmorin is provoked into duelling with the Marquis and is killed for his "gift of eloquence", which the Marquis fears will set the common people against the clergy and nobility.