内容简介
"He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the worldwas mad." Thanks to that famous opening sentence the swaggeringhero of Scaramouche bounds onto the book's centerstage with consid-erable panache. And for hardly a moment thereafter does/Uldr&LouisMoreau lose his charismatic cool, displaying at ahnost every turn inthe tumultuous conrse of his picaresque adventures the verve, the wit,the intellectual and physical adroitness, and the instant mastery of cir-cumstance that are his birthright. Given the time and place, it isindeed an invaluable patrimony, for though when we meet him AndreLouis is a yonng lawyer in a quiet French counuT town, France atlarge is on the brink of revolution, the nation's masses rising up against the entrenched tyrannies of the privileged. Quickly the era's whirlwind sweeps our hero away on a protean progress: transforming himself as occasion dictates, Andre-Louis becomes for example, "Onnles Omnibus," incendiarv orator of the people's cause; later, he's plain "Andre Louis," master of a fencing academy and death-dealing artist of the sword; and in between he's "Scarainouche" himself, actor with--and brilliant scenarist for--a troupe of traveling players. With-all these colorful set-pieces playing against a backdrop of high historical drama, it's no wonder so many of Rafael Sabatini's readers through the years have judged this the best of his novels.