The Elusive Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy (most interesting books to read txt) 📕

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ELUSIVE PIMPERNEL *** Produced by J.C. Byers, L.M. Shaf, and David Widger

THE ELUSIVE PIMPERNEL

By Baroness Orczy

CONTENTS

Chapter I:   Paris: 1793

Chapter II:   A Retrospect

Chapter III:   Ex-Ambassador Chauvelin

Chapter IV:   The Richmond Gala

Chapter V:   Sir Percy and His Lady

Chapter VI:   For the Poor of Paris

Chapter VII:   Premonition

Chapter VIII:   The Invitation

Chapter IX:   Demoiselle Candeille

Chapter X:   Lady Blakeney's Rout

Chapter XI:   The Challenge

Chapter XII:   Time—Place—Conditions

Chapter XIII:   Reflections

Chapter XIV:   The Ruling Passion

Chapter XV:   Farewell

Chapter XVI:   The Passport

Chapter XVII:   Boulogne

Chapter XVIII:   No. 6

Chapter XIX:   The Strength of the Weak

Chapter XX:   Triumph

Chapter XXI:   Suspense

Chapter XXII:   Not Death

Chapter XXIII:    The Hostage

Chapter XXIV:   Colleagues

Chapter XXV:   The Unexpected

Chapter XXVI:   The Terms of the Bargain

Chapter XXVII:   The Decision

Chapter XXVIII:   The Midnight Watch

Chapter XXIX:   The National Fete

Chapter XXX:   The Procession

Chapter XXXI:   Final Dispositions

Chapter XXXII:   The Letter

Chapter XXXIII:     The English Spy

Chapter XXXIV:   The Angelus

Chapter XXXV:   Marguerite

Chapter I: Paris: 1793

There was not even a reaction.

On! ever on! in that wild, surging torrent; sowing the wind of anarchy, of terrorism, of lust of blood and hate, and reaping a hurricane of destruction and of horror.

On! ever on! France, with Paris and all her children still rushes blindly, madly on; defies the powerful coalition,—Austria, England, Spain, Prussia, all joined together to stem the flow of carnage,—defies the Universe and defies God!

Paris this September 1793!—or shall we call it Vendemiaire, Year I. of the Republic?—call it what we will! Paris! a city of bloodshed, of humanity in its lowest, most degraded aspect. France herself a gigantic self-devouring monster, her fairest cities destroyed, Lyons razed to the ground, Toulon, Marseilles, masses of blackened ruins, her bravest sons turned to lustful brutes or to abject cowards seeking safety at the cost of any humiliation.

That is thy reward, oh mighty, holy Revolution! apotheosis of equality and fraternity! grand rival of decadent Christianity.

Five weeks now since Marat, the bloodthirsty Friend of the People, succumbed beneath the sheath-knife of a virgin patriot, a month since his murderess walked proudly, even enthusiastically, to the guillotine! There has been no reaction—only a great sigh!... Not of content or satisfied lust, but a sigh such as the man-eating tiger might heave after his first taste of long-coveted blood.

A sigh for more!

A king on the scaffold; a queen degraded and abased, awaiting death, which lingers on the threshold of her infamous prison; eight hundred scions of ancient houses that have made the history of France; brave generals, Custine, Blanchelande, Houchard, Beauharnais; worthy patriots, noble-hearted women, misguided enthusiasts, all by the score and by the hundred, up the few wooden steps which lead to the guillotine.

An achievement of truth!

And still that sigh for more!

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!

Something new!—something wonderful!

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

What next?

Why, obviously!—How comes it that great, intellectual, aesthetic Paris never thought of such a wonderful thing before?

A new religion!

Christianity is old and obsolete, priests are aristocrats, wealthy oppressors of the People, the Church but another form of wanton tyranny.

Let us by all means have a new religion.

Already something has been done to destroy the old! To destroy! always to destroy! Churches have been ransacked, altars spoliated, tombs desecrated, priests and curates murdered; but that is not enough.

There must be a new religion; and to attain that there must be a new God.

“Man is a born idol-worshipper.”

Very well then! let the People have a new religion and a new God.

Stay!—Not a God this time!—for God means Majesty, Power, Kingship! everything in fact which the mighty hand of the people of France has struggled and fought to destroy.

Not a God, but a goddess.

A goddess! an idol! a toy! since even the man-eating tiger must play sometimes.

Paris wanted a new religion, and a new toy, and grave men, ardent patriots, mad enthusiasts, sat in the Assembly of the Convention and seriously discussed the means of providing her with both these things which she asked for.

Chaumette, I think it was, who first solved the difficulty:—Procureur Chaumette, head of the Paris Municipality, he who had ordered that the cart which bore the dethroned queen to the squalid prison of the Conciergerie should be led slowly past her own late palace of the Tuileries, and should be stopped there just long enough for her to see and to feel in one grand mental