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SCARAMOUCHE

                                                         March  6, 2022

Going through Sabatini's "Scaramouche" (1921)
for the first time in a long time--

The main character strikes me as an attempt at
doing an interesting character that Sabatini
struggles to bring off quite convincingly--

The famous first line:

  "He was born with the gift of laughter,
  and the sense that the world was mad."

This doesn't really work as a sketch of
*this* character, who in fact we                  But then, I'm also not
continually see taking events seriously           looking for, say, the Errol
in much the way one expects of the hero           Flynn Robin Hood, greeting
of a romantic historical novel. He's not          challenges with that inane
the sardonic nihilist you might expect            hearty laughter.
from the opening.

Near the close of the novel, Sabatini seems
to remember his opening line, and our hero
starts responding to heavy melodramatic
scenes with sudden bursts of laughter...
   
There is *one* major aspect of the character that's        
compatible with the first line: a talent for persuasive  
oratory even when his actual beliefs differ.              
                                                       
  The main character is originally a thorough skeptic       
  about a political revolution.  He argues this is not      
  going to end well for The People, they're just going      
  to be trading one set of bosses (the heriditary           
  aristocracy) for another-- the new money bourgeois.       
                                                            
  When he finds he's denied justice because                
  royal privilege puts some above the law, he       Sabatini has him in fact
  resorts to hypocritical sophistry: he makes       become a *famous* anonymous
  speeches denouncing the ruling classes, and       orator, the "Omnes Omnibus"
  inciting revolution-- though he stops short of    of myth and lore (and
  demanding that the crowd storm the battlements.   perhaps "history") of the
                                                    French Revolution.

   
The irony of him switching sides is not lost on him,
and throughout the novel he goes underground,
continuing to change his public character and
occupations several times-- most memorably, acting
on stage as Scaramouche, a scheming clown character      
commonly used in popular theater. Scaramouche            (The roots of      
literally translates to "little skirmisher".             Dr. Smith syndrome?)
                                                         
                                                         DR_SMITH

                    

At one point, he becomes a member of the new government:
he decides he was wrong, and the revolution actually        I like this sketch
seems to have succeeded in establishing a constitutional    of history: you end
government-- but then the Royals refuse to go along with    up in a situation
this and engage in international conspiracies to            where all sides can
undermine the new government, which eventually leads to     blame the other.
the rise of the Jacobins and The Terror.


At the close of the novel, there's a climax of birth
mysteries revealed, in which a royalist engages in an
all too believable orgy of self-justification for
having behaved like a piece of shit.

His central point is: "someone's gotta be boss,
so why not us?"

    The Marquis de La Tour d’Azyr:

    "M. de Vilmorin was a revolutionary, a man of new ideas
    that should overthrow society and rebuild it more akin to
    the desires of such as himself. I belonged to the order
    that quite as justifiably desired society to remain as it
    was. Not only was it better so for me and mine, but I
    also contend, and you have yet to prove me wrong, that it
    is better so for all the world; that, indeed, no other
    conceivable society is possible. Every human society must
    of necessity be composed of several strata. ....
    You lacked the vision that would have shown you that God
    did not create men equals."


   Our hero's belated response near the novels close:

   "I thought you were a republican," said she.

    "Why, so I am. I am talking like one. I desire a society
    which selects its rulers from the best elements of every
    class and denies the right of any class or corporation to
    usurp the government to itself-- whether it be the nobles,
    the clergy, the bourgeoisie, or the proletariat. For
    government by any one class is fatal to the welfare of the
    whole. Two years ago our ideal seemed to have been
    realized. The monopoly of power had been taken from the class
    that had held it too long and too unjustly by the hollow
    right of heredity. It had been distributed as evenly as might
    be throughout the State, and if men had only paused there,
    all would have been well. But our impetus carried us too far,
    the privileged orders goaded us on by their very opposition,
    and the result is the horror of which yesterday you saw no
    more than the beginnings. ..."


                                         (You have to love prescient
                                         viewpoints in historical novels...)


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