The Scarlet Pimpernel. Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

The Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy


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       Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy

      The Scarlet Pimpernel

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4057664092854

       CHAPTER I — PARIS: SEPTEMBER, 1792

       CHAPTER II — DOVER: THE FISHERMAN'S REST

       CHAPTER III — THE REFUGEES

       CHAPTER IV — THE LEAGUE OF THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL

       CHAPTER V — MARGUERITE

       CHAPTER VI — AN EXQUISITE OF '92

       CHAPTER VII — THE SECRET ORCHARD

       CHAPTER VIII — THE ACCREDITED AGENT

       CHAPTER IX — THE OUTRAGE

       CHAPTER X — IN THE OPERA BOX

       CHAPTER XI — LORD GRENVILLE'S BALL

       CHAPTER XII — THE SCRAP OF PAPER

       CHAPTER XIII — EITHER—OR?

       CHAPTER XIV — ONE O'CLOCK PRECISELY!

       CHAPTER XV — DOUBT

       CHAPTER XVI — RICHMOND

       CHAPTER XVII — FAREWELL

       CHAPTER XVIII — THE MYSTERIOUS DEVICE

       CHAPTER XIX — THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL

       CHAPTER XX — THE FRIEND

       CHAPTER XXI — SUSPENSE

       CHAPTER XXII — CALAIS

       CHAPTER XXIII — HOPE

       CHAPTER XXIV — THE DEATH-TRAP

       CHAPTER XXV — THE EAGLE AND THE FOX

       CHAPTER XXVI — THE JEW

       CHAPTER XXVII — ON THE TRACK

       CHAPTER XXVIII — THE PÈRE BLANCHARD'S HUT

       CHAPTER XXIX — TRAPPED

       CHAPTER XXX — THE SCHOONER

       CHAPTER XXXI — THE ESCAPE

       Table of Contents

      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 Grève 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 beneath 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, even 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


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