The Elusive Pimpernel quotes

But for the moment—a few seconds only—Paris looked round her mighty self, and thought things over!

The man-eating tiger for the space of a sigh licked his powerful jaws and pondered!

We have had a new Constitution, a new Justice, new Laws, a new Almanac!

but she do give me the creeps,” said Mistress Polly, the pretty barmaid from the Bell Inn, down by the river. “And I must say that I don’t see why we English folk should send our hard-earned pennies to those murdering ruffians over the water.

Bein’ starving so to speak, don’t make a murderer a better man if he goes on murdering,

” she added with undisputable if ungrammatical logic. “Come, let’s look at something more cheerful now.”

Yes! it was hate! and hate was of all emotions the one she most despised.

Hate? Does one hate a slimy but harmless toad or a stinging fly?

It seemed ridiculous, contemptible and pitiable to think of hate in connection with the melancholy figure of this discomfited intriguer, this fallen leader of revolutionary France.

“Believe me, Citizeness,” he said, addressing Candeille directly and with marked emphasis, “I am entirely at your command, but am I not helpless, seeing that those who have so grossly insulted you are of your own irresponsible, if charming, sex?”

Like a great dog after a nap, Sir Percy Blakeney straightened his long back and stretched it out to its full length.

“La!” he said pleasantly, “my ever engaging friend from Calais. Sir, your servant. Meseems we are ever destined to discuss amiable matters, in an amiable spirit. … A glass of punch, Monsieur … er … Chauvelin?”

… nervy hands and square jaw, the low, broad forehead and deep-set, half-veiled eyes, he knew that in this matter wherein Percy Blakeney was obviously playing with his very life, the only emotion that really swayed him at this moment was his passionate love of adventure.

The ruling passion strong in death!

Yes!

Oh! how she hated these wild adventures which took Percy away from her side.

Is not a woman who loves⁠—be it husband or child⁠—the most truly selfish, the most cruelly callous creature in the world, there, where the safety and the well-being of the loved one is in direct conflict with the safety and well-being of others.

She would right gladly have closed her eyes to every horror perpetrated in France, she would not have known what went on in Paris, she wanted her husband!

yet she watched all these people mechanically, making absurd little guesses in her weary mind as to whose passport would find favour in the eyes of the official, and whose would be found suspect and inadequate.

Suspect! a terrible word these times!

since Merlin’s terrible law decreed now that every man, woman or child, who was suspected by the Republic of being a traitor, was a traitor in fact.

if she only could get away, only could reach the shelter of that remote and sombre distance, she would hide, and wait, not blunder again, oh no! she would be prudent and wary, if only she could get away!

One woman’s struggles, against five men! It was pitiable, sublime, absolutely useless.

The man in the tent seemed to be watching her with much amusement for a moment or two, as her whole graceful body stiffened for that absurd and unequal physical contest.

Oh! she knew what all that meant! that Percy would not hesitate one single instant to throw his life into the hands of his enemies, in exchange for that of others.

Others! others! always others!

this sigh that had made her heart ache so often in England, what terrible significance it bore now!

Marguerite felt as if she could almost hear them talking it over and vowing that she should not escape, and that the Scarlet Pimpernel should soon be captured.

A gentle wind stirred the old gnarled trees on the southern ramparts, a wind that sounded like the sigh of swiftly dying hope.

What could Percy do now? His hands were tied, and he was inevitably destined to endure the awful agony of seeing the woman he loved die a terrible death beside him.

He threw the little Frenchman away from him like he would a beast which had snarled, and passed his hand across his brow.

“Lud forgive me!” he said quaintly, “I had almost lost my temper.”

Chauvelin was not slow in recovering himself. He was plucky and alert, and his hatred for this man was so great that he had actually ceased to fear him.

… be so hopelessly crushed, he would have wandered up and down this narrow room like a caged beast, eating out his heart with self-reproach and remorse, and racking his nerves and brain for an issue out of the terrible alternative which meant dishonour or death.

But this man drank and slept.

And as if in answer to Chauvelin’s puzzled musing a deep snore escaped the sleeping adventurer’s parted lips.

“I’ll not fail you …” he murmured, as he closed his eyes, and gave a final struggle to get his head at a comfortable angle, “the letter will be written in my best cali … calig. …

Lud! but I’m not so drunk as you think I am.

…”

And in the hearts of Chauvelin and his colleague there was satisfied revenge, eager, exultant triumph and that terrible nerve-tension which immediately precedes the long-expected climax.

But who can say what went on within the heart of that bold adventurer, about to be brought to the lowest depths of humiliation which it is in the power of man to endure?

What behind that smooth unruffled brow still bent laboriously over the page of writing?

Sir Percy paused a moment, pen in hand, as if in deep reflection.

“They want to see me,” he said with a laugh. “Why, demn it all⁠ ⁠… then, why not let em?⁠ ⁠…”

And with a few rapid strokes of the pen, he quickly finished the letter, adding his signature with a bold flourish, whilst the crowd, pushing, jostling, shouting and cursing the soldiers, still loudly demanded to see the Scarlet Pimpernel.