Scaramouche

"Scaramouche" is the name of a standard character in the Italian commedia dell'arte. He is a sly and conniving fellow, forever fomenting trouble with his quick wit and glib tongue, eternally escaping the storm that follows. He is elusive, confounding alike those who seek to punish him for his misdeeds and those who would penetrate his pose to fathom his true character.

Scaramouche is the story of Andre-Louis Moreau, who "was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad." It is the story of his quest for justice in the France of Louis XVI, a turbulent era which culminated in revolution. His dearest friend murdered by an aristocrat for arguing revolutionary politics too eloquently, Andre-Louis vows to prevent anyone's profiting from such a murder. He takes up his dead friend's cause, helping to set the revolution in motion and making himself a fugitive from the "justice" of the privileged class. Seeking anonymity, he joins an itinerant commedia dell'arte troupe and becomes their Scaramouche and their leader, transforming them in a matter of months from a starving band of wastrells to the talk of the French theatre. From his new-found pulpit, the stage, he again denounces the aristocracy, again foments trouble, again escapes unscathed. He then becomes a fencing master—but this is only a prelude to his political career, the career which will at last bring him face to face with the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr, the aristocrat who is at once the murderer of his friend and his rival for the woman he loves, in a climax as dramatic as it is totally unexpected.

In the course of four years, Andre-Louis has gone from the law to the stage to the fencing academy to the national assembly, from the world of theory to the world of playing at life to the world of practice, from a humble village in Brittany to the capital of France. He has played Scaramouche both on stage and off, stirring controversy to prove his point that the truth will out, that force cannot stop ideas, all the while concealing his true character from everyone—including himself.

Scaramouche is a novel by the Italian-born English writer Rafael Sabatini (1875- 1950), a master of the three elements which Ayn Rand has called the most important in fiction: plot, plot and plot. He is equally a master of character, having created in Andre-Louis Moreau one of literature's few real heroes, a man of reason, purpose and self-esteem, a man whose distinguishing trait of character through the myriad situations in which he finds himself is: efficacy.

Scaramouche is a stunning performance. It holds up to its readers a universe in which the joyous and exciting are the normal and in which even the villains are the best of their kind. It must be read to be believed.

Reviewed by JEFF RIGGENBACH / Fiction (392 pages) / BFL Price $5.95