THE

SCARLET
PIMPERNEL

BY
BARONESS

ORCZY
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 hideousinstrument 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. Then, of course, the fun began.

Bibot would look at his prey as a cat looks upon the mouse, play with
him, sometimes for quite a quarter of an hour, pretend to be

hoodwinked by the disguise, by the wigs and other bits of theatrical
make-up which hid the identity of a CI-DEVANT noble marquise or count.

Oh! Bibot had a keen sense of humour, and it was well worth
hanging round that West Barricade, in order to see him catch an aristo

in the very act of trying to flee from the vengeance of the people.
Sometimes Bibot would let his prey actually out by the gates,

allowing him to think for the space of two minutes at least that he
really had escaped out of Paris, and might even manage to reach the

coast of England in safety, but Bibot would let the unfortunate wretch
walk about ten metres towards the open country, then he would send two

men after him and bring him back, stripped of his disguise.
Oh! that was extremely funny, for as often as not the

fugitive would prove to be a woman, some proud marchioness, who looked
terribly comical when she found herself in Bibot's clutches after all,

and knew that a summary trial would await her the next day and after
that, the fond embrace of Madame la Guillotine.

No wonder that on this fine afternoon in September the crowd
round Bibot's gate was eager and excited. The lust of blood grows

with its satisfaction, there is no satiety: the crowd had seen a
hundred noble heads fall beneath the guillotine to-day, it wanted to

make sure that it would see another hundred fall on the morrow.
Bibot was sitting on an overturned and empty cask close by the

gate of the barricade; a small detachment of citoyen soldiers was
under his command. The work had been very hot lately. Those cursed

aristos were becoming terrified and tried their hardest to slip out of
Paris: men, women and children, whose ancestors, even in remote ages,

had served those traitorous Bourbons, were all traitors themselves and
right food for the guillotine. Every day Bibot had had the

satisfaction of unmasking some fugitive royalists and sending them
back to be tried by the Committee of Public Safety, presided over by

that good patriot, Citoyen Foucquier-Tinville.