THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL

Contents:


I. PARIS: SEPTEMBER, 1792
II. DOVER: "THE FISHERMAN'S REST"
III. THE REFUGEES
IV. THE LEAGUE OF THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL
V. MARGUERITE
VI. AN EXQUISITE OF '92
VII. THE SECRET ORCHARD
VIII. THE ACCREDITED AGENT
IX. THE OUTRAGE
X. IN THE OPERA BOX
XI. LORD GRENVILLE'S BALL
XII. THE SCRAP OF PAPER
XIII. EITHER
XIV. ONE O'CLOCK PRECISELY!
XV. DOUBT
XVI. RICHMOND
XVII. FAREWELL
XVIII. THE MYSTERIOUS DEVICE
XIX. THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL
XX. THE FRIEND
XXI. SUSPENSE
XXII. CALAIS
XXIII. HOPE
XXIV. THE DEATH
XXV. THE EAGLE AND THE FOX
XXVI. THE JEW
XXVII. ON THE TRACK
XXVIII. THE PERE BLANCHARD'S HUT
XXIX. TRAPPED
XXX. THE SCHOONER
XXXI. THE ESCAPE




THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL




CHAPTER I PARIS: SEPTEMBER, 1792



A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in
name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures,
animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate. The
hour, some little time before sunset, and the place, the West Barricade,
at the very spot where, a decade later, a proud tyrant raised an undying
monument to the nation's glory and his own vanity.

During the greater part of the day the guillotine had been kept busy at
its ghastly work: all that France had boasted of in the past centuries,
of ancient names, and blue blood, had paid toll to her desire for
liberty and for fraternity. The carnage had only ceased at this late
hour of the day because there were other more interesting sights for
the people to witness, a little while before the final closing of the
barricades for the night.

And so the crowd rushed away from the Place de la Greve and made for the
various barricades in order to watch this interesting and amusing sight.

It was to be seen every day, for those aristos were such fools! They
were traitors to the people of course, all of them, men, women, and
children, who happened to be descendants of the great men who since the
Crusades had made the glory of France: her old NOBLESSE. Their ancestors
had oppressed the people, had crushed them under the scarlet heels of
their dainty buckled shoes, and now the people had become the rulers
of France and crushed their former masters--not beneath their heel, for
they went shoeless mostly in these days--but a more effectual weight,
the knife of the guillotine.

And daily, hourly, the hideous instrument of torture claimed its many
victims--old men, young women, tiny children until the day when it would
finally demand the head of a King and of a beautiful young Queen.

But this was as it should be: were not the people now the rulers of
France? Every aristocrat was a traitor, as his ancestors had been before
him: for two hundred years now the people had sweated, and toiled,
and starved, to keep a lustful court in lavish extravagance; now the
descendants of those who had helped to make those courts brilliant
had to hide for their lives--to fly, if they wished to avoid the tardy
vengeance of the people.

And they did try to hide, and tried to fly: that was just the fun of
the whole thing. Every afternoon before the gates closed and the market
carts went out in procession by the various barricades, some fool of
an aristo endeavoured to evade the clutches of the Committee of Public
Safety. In various disguises, under various pretexts, they tried to slip
through the barriers, which were so well guarded by citizen soldiers
of the Republic. Men in women's clothes, women in male attire, children
disguised in beggars' rags: there were some of all sorts: CI-DEVANT
counts, marquises, even dukes, who wanted to fly from France, reach
England or some other equally accursed country, and there try to rouse
foreign feelings against the glorious Revolution, or to raise an army
in order to liberate the wretched prisoners in the Temple, who had once
called themselves sovereigns of France.

But they were nearly always caught at the barricades, Sergeant Bibot
especially at the West Gate had a wonderful nose for scenting an aristo
in the most perfect disguise.