Complete and unabridged, with 60 full-page plates by Nicolas Lancret, Jean-Baptiste Pater and Jean-Antoine Watteau. A country lawyer watches his friend killed in a rigged duel by a nobleman who cannot be touched, and takes to the stage as Scaramouche to say from behind a mask what he cannot say in court. Sabatini opens with the line about being born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad — and then walks his man from theater to fencing school to the Assembly. Sixty plates of painting, from Watteau to Loutherbourg, gather the era's soldiers, street traders and harlequins around the tale of a man who trades the courtroom for the stage.