The Scarlet Pimpernel

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. 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.

Robespierre and Danton both had commended Bibot for his zeal and Bibot
was proud of the fact that he on his own initiative had sent at least
fifty aristos to the guillotine.

But to-day all the sergeants in command at the various barricades
had had special orders. Recently a very great number of aristos had
succeeded in escaping out of France and in reaching England safely.
There were curious rumours about these escapes; they had become very
frequent and singularly daring; the people's minds were becoming
strangely excited about it all. Sergeant Grospierre had been sent to
the guillotine for allowing a whole family of aristos to slip out of the
North Gate under his very nose.

It was asserted that these escapes were organised by a band of
Englishmen, whose daring seemed to be unparalleled, and who, from sheer
desire to meddle in what did not concern them, spent their spare time in
snatching away lawful victims destined for Madame la Guillotine. These
rumours soon grew in extravagance; there was no doubt that this band of
meddlesome Englishmen did exist; moreover, they seemed to be under
the leadership of a man whose pluck and audacity were almost fabulous.
Strange stories were afloat of how he and those aristos whom he rescued
became suddenly invisible as they reached the barricades and escaped out
of the gates by sheer supernatural agency.

No one had seen these mysterious Englishmen; as for their leader, he
was never spoken of, save with a superstitious shudder. Citoyen
Foucquier-Tinville would in the course of the day receive a scrap of
paper from some mysterious source; sometimes he would find it in the
pocket of his coat, at others it would be handed to him by someone in
the crowd, whilst he was on his way to the sitting of the Committee of
Public Safety. The paper always contained a brief notice that the band
of meddlesome Englishmen were at work, and it was always signed with a
device drawn in red—a little star-shaped flower, which we in England
call the Scarlet Pimpernel. Within a few hours of the receipt of this
impudent notice, the citoyens of the Committee of Public Safety would
hear that so many royalists and aristocrats had succeeded in reaching
the coast, and were on their way to England and safety.

The guards at the gates had been doubled, the sergeants in command had
been threatened with death, whilst liberal rewards were offered for the
capture of these daring and impudent Englishmen. There was a sum of five
thousand francs promised to the man who laid hands on the mysterious and
elusive Scarlet Pimpernel.

Everyone felt that Bibot would be that man, and Bibot allowed that
belief to take firm root in everybody's mind; and so, day after day,
people came to watch him at the West Gate, so as to be present when he
laid hands on any fugitive aristo who perhaps might be accompanied by
that mysterious Englishman.

"Bah!" he said to his trusted corporal, "Citoyen Grospierre was a fool!
Had it been me now, at that North Gate last week . . ."

Citoyen Bibot spat on the ground to express his contempt for his
comrade's stupidity.

"How did it happen, citoyen?" asked the corporal.

"Grospierre was at the gate, keeping good watch," began Bibot,
pompously, as the crowd closed in round him, listening eagerly to his
narrative. "We've all heard of this meddlesome Englishman, this accursed
Scarlet Pimpernel. He won't get through MY gate, MORBLEU! unless he
be the devil himself. But Grospierre was a fool. The market carts were
going through the gates; there was one laden with casks, and driven by
an old man, with a boy beside him. Grospierre was a bit drunk, but he
thought himself very clever; he looked into the casks—most of them, at
least—and saw they were empty, and let the cart go through."

A murmur of wrath and contempt went round the group of ill-clad
wretches, who crowded round Citoyen Bibot.

"Half an hour later," continued the sergeant, "up comes a captain of
the guard with a squad of some dozen soldiers with him. 'Has a car gone
through?' he asks of Grospierre, breathlessly. 'Yes,' says Grospierre,
'not half an hour ago.' 'And you have let them escape,' shouts the
captain furiously. 'You'll go to the guillotine for this, citoyen
sergeant! that cart held concealed the CI-DEVANT Duc de Chalis and all
his family!' 'What!' thunders Grospierre, aghast. 'Aye! and the driver
was none other than that cursed Englishman, the Scarlet Pimpernel.'"

A howl of execration greeted this tale. Citoyen Grospierre had paid for
his blunder on the guillotine, but what a fool! oh! what a fool!

Bibot was laughing so much at his own tale that it was some time before
he could continue.

"'After them, my men,' shouts the captain," he said after a while,
"'remember the reward; after them, they cannot have gone far!' And with
that he rushes through the gate followed by his dozen soldiers."

"But it was too late!" shouted the crowd, excitedly.

"They never got them!"

"Curse that Grospierre for his folly!"

"He deserved his fate!"

"Fancy not examining those casks properly!"

But these sallies seemed to amuse Citoyen Bibot exceedingly; he laughed
until his sides ached, and the tears streamed down his cheeks.

"Nay, nay!" he said at last, "those aristos weren't in the cart; the
driver was not the Scarlet Pimpernel!"