The Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel

CHAPTER VIII - THE CHIEF'S WAY (Part Nine)

Paul Notara, the village schoolmaster, who had not age-old traditions of dignity and caste to keep up, put up a strenuous fight when in the afternoon of that same day three of his own friends, together with a couple of men wearing the uniform of the Garde Nationale, invaded his little home and demanded possession of his person. Two of the men from the village, who had tricolour badges on their arms, and carried bayonets which they did not know how to use, laid hands on him, and he knocked them down. He fought like a lion and like a lion was powerful, but in the end he was brought to the ground by the men in uniform: his arms were strapped together behind his back, and he was flung somewhat roughly into the bottom of a covered cart. His friends from the village had no feelings of tenderness for him just then. To keep him from kicking, which he persistently did, they put their feet on him, and as he was still showing fight one of the men in uniform gave him a crack on the head which eventually calmed him, and partly deprived him of consciousness.

It was half-past four in the afternoon when the driver of the cart finally pulled up outside the Holmes' house. Here he and the two other valiant gendarmes had made sure to find their comrades and also the black-coated man from Paris. But instead of these familiar faces, they saw before them the captain of the Garde Nationale who, taking no notice of them or of the prisoner, at once spoke some sort of gibberish to the two men in uniform who had jumped down lightly from the cart. Before they had time to recover from their surprise they were seized and pushed and dragged into the house. In the struggle they quite forgot to use their bayonets: they were bewildered, helpless, and as the interior of the house was very gloomy, they could not even see exactly what was happening, nor whither they were being led. But after a moment or so they were conscious that they were being unceremoniously dragged down some stairs, thrust into a room which smelt of wine and which was very nearly pitch dark. They were thrown rather violently forward and this caused them to stumble and fall on their knees. Whilst they struggled to their feet they heard the door slammed behind them, and a key turned in the lock: then loud and merry laughter, retreating footsteps and nothing more.

A wan, grey light was peeping in shyly through a grated window high up in the wall. Gradually the eyes of these valiant gendarmes because accustomed to the gloom. They saw that they were shut into what looked like a cellar, and that in a distant corner of the place there was a litter of straw. On this litter reclined their three comrades. They were fast asleep, and the sound of their stertorous breathing broke what otherwise would have been an unpleasant silence. The smell of sour wine was very insistent, and there were three empty mugs lying on the floor, all of which went to prove that these other three valiant gendarmes had been prisoners here for some time and had employed that time pleasantly for themselves. The three new-comers therefore felt it incumbent upon them to follow so good an example, and we may take it that in a very short while they, too, after copious libations of sour wine, had found a rest on the litter of straw, and mingled their melodious snores with those of their companions.

On the floor above, on the other hand, events and incidents were of an entirely different nature. Paul Notara, still rather dazed from the crack on the head which he had received, and the airless drive beneath the feet of the gendarmes, allowed himself to be dragged out of the cart quietly enough. He was then conveyed into a sparsely furnished room, where he was left to meditate in quietude on the strange events of which he had been the unwilling hero. In an adjoining room the two men who wore the uniform of the Garde Nationale, and who had helped to bring Notara hither were plying their captain with questions. They were speaking English: a strange enough proceeding on the part of men who wore the uniforms of the newly created French Republic.

"I suppose he put up a fight?" the captain was asking.

"Like the very devil," one of the men replied.