The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel

CHAPTER III - THE STRANGER FROM PARIS

I

What had happened was this:

On the night of the 16th Nivôse a band of those English adventurers who were known throughout the country as the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel had made an armed attack on the local commissariat at Limours. They had presented pistols at the heads of the police officers, had gagged and pinioned them, whilst the rest of their gang had ransacked the commissariat, and duly found the half-dozen aristos who had been apprehended that very day on a charge of counter-revolutionary sentiments openly expressed, and were to have been transferred to Paris the next day for trial and, presumably, summary condemnation and execution. They were women for the most part, these aristos, and there were a couple of children amongst them. Anyway, those English spies got clear away with them, vanished into the night after their coup, like so many spooks carrying their living booty upon their saddlebows.

How they ever managed to elude the night patrols on the main roads, or, in fact, what became of them at all after their daring raid, remained a baffling mystery. But the feelings of the population of Limours were positively outraged by this impudent act of aggression. Hitherto the Scarlet Pimpernel, well known in Paris and in the great cities as the most virulent and most active enemy of the Republic, the most able and most daring of the thousands of English spies who infested the country, was at Limours nothing but a name: that of a man endowed with supernatural attributes, in whom only the superstitious and the ignorant believed; but, in truth, just a legend which caused the sophisticated and wise to smile with lofty incredulity.

"Let that elusive personage but show his face in Limours," those wiseacres would say, "and we would very soon show him that we are not so easily hoodwinked as all those clever people in Paris, or Nantes, or Boulogne."

Thus the raid on the commissariat came as a veritable thunderclap, scarce to be believed.

Citizen Campon, the chief commissary of police, sent urgent messages to Paris: "What am I to do?" and "I am at my wit's ends," alternated with "In the name of--er--everything, send me help." In fact, the poor man was in despair. He felt that "suspension" was in the air and talk of "dereliction of duty." Between this and a positive accusation of treason was but a very short step these days. Heaven and a wayward fate alone knew when the unfortunate commissary would be made to take it. Fortunately for him, he happened to have a friend in Paris who had at one time been a man of considerable influence on the Committee of Public Safety. This man had of late somewhat fallen from this high estate, but he was still credited with being on intimate terms with Maximilien Robespierre and one or two of the more prominent orators in the Convention. His name was Chauvelin, and it was to him that Campon turned in his distress.

Citizen Chauvelin's advice (sent to his friend in Limours by special courier) may be summarized thus:

My good friend:

I know that cursed Scarlet Pimpernel and his ways to my cost. The more impossible or perilous the adventure, the more certain is he to embark upon it. Judging from his recent coup, he appears to have confederates in Limours. At any rate, he is, I imagine, still in touch with your township. My advice to you is this: secure a pack of aristos, the more innocent, the more pathetic, the better, two or three women, young, if possible, a batch of children. Give it out that you have them incarcerated in any house or place you choose to name, and that you propose to send the whole pack to Paris, or elsewhere, for trial on any given day. Then you may take what precautions you choose and calmly await events. As sure as I am sitting here writing this with mine own hand, as certain as is my hatred for that abominable English intriguer, he will make an attempt to get those aristos out of your clutches. Then 'tis for you to see that he fails, and that you catch him in the attempt.