El Dorado: An Adventure of the Scarlet Pimpernel




FOREWORD

There has of late years crept so much confusion into the mind of the student as well as of the general reader as to the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel with that of the Gascon Royalist plotter known to history as the Baron de Batz, that the time seems opportune for setting all doubts on that subject at rest.

The identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel is in no way whatever connected with that of the Baron de Batz, and even superficial reflection will soon bring the mind to the conclusion that great fundamental differences existed in these two men, in their personality, in their character, and, above all, in their aims.

According to one or two enthusiastic historians, the Baron de Batz was the chief agent in a vast network of conspiracy, entirely supported by foreign money—both English and Austrian—and which had for its object the overthrow of the Republican Government and the restoration of the monarchy in France.

In order to attain this political goal, it is averred that he set himself the task of pitting the members of the revolutionary Government one against the other, and bringing hatred and dissensions amongst them, until the cry of “Traitor!” resounded from one end of the Assembly of the Convention to the other, and the Assembly itself became as one vast den of wild beasts wherein wolves and hyenas devoured one another and, still unsatiated, licked their streaming jaws hungering for more prey.

Those same enthusiastic historians, who have a firm belief in the so-called “Foreign Conspiracy,” ascribe every important event of the Great Revolution—be that event the downfall of the Girondins, the escape of the Dauphin from the Temple, or the death of Robespierre—to the intrigues of Baron de Batz. He it was, so they say, who egged the Jacobins on against the Mountain, Robespierre against Danton, Hebert against Robespierre. He it was who instigated the massacres of September, the atrocities of Nantes, the horrors of Thermidor, the sacrileges, the noyades: all with the view of causing every section of the National Assembly to vie with the other in excesses and in cruelty, until the makers of the Revolution, satiated with their own lust, turned on one another, and Sardanapalus-like buried themselves and their orgies in the vast hecatomb of a self-consumed anarchy.

Whether the power thus ascribed to Baron de Batz by his historians is real or imaginary it is not the purpose of this preface to investigate. Its sole object is to point out the difference between the career of this plotter and that of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

The Baron de Batz himself was an adventurer without substance, save that which he derived from abroad. He was one of those men who have nothing to lose and everything to gain by throwing themselves headlong in the seething cauldron of internal politics.

Though he made several attempts at rescuing King Louis first, and then the Queen and Royal Family from prison and from death, he never succeeded, as we know, in any of these undertakings, and he never once so much as attempted the rescue of other equally innocent, if not quite so distinguished, victims of the most bloodthirsty revolution that has ever shaken the foundations of the civilised world.

Nay more; when on the 29th Prairial those unfortunate men and women were condemned and executed for alleged complicity in the so-called “Foreign Conspiracy,” de Batz, who is universally admitted to have been the head and prime-mover of that conspiracy—if, indeed, conspiracy there was—never made either the slightest attempt to rescue his confederates from the guillotine, or at least the offer to perish by their side if he could not succeed in saving them.

And when we remember that the martyrs of the 29th Prairial included women like Grandmaison, the devoted friend of de Batz, the beautiful Emilie de St. Amaranthe, little Cecile Renault—a mere child not sixteen years of age—also men like Michonis and Roussell, faithful servants of de Batz, the Baron de Lezardiere, and the Comte de St. Maurice, his friends, we no longer can have the slightest doubt that the Gascon plotter and the English gentleman are indeed two very different persons.

The latter’s aims were absolutely non-political. He never intrigued for the restoration of the monarchy, or even for the overthrow of that Republic which he loathed.

His only concern was the rescue of the innocent, the stretching out of a saving hand to those unfortunate creatures who had fallen into the nets spread out for them by their fellow-men; by those who—godless, lawless, penniless themselves—had sworn to exterminate all those who clung to their belongings, to their religion, and to their beliefs.

The Scarlet Pimpernel did not take it upon himself to punish the guilty; his care was solely of the helpless and of the innocent.

For this aim he risked his life every time that he set foot on French soil, for it he sacrificed his fortune, and even his personal happiness, and to it he devoted his entire existence.

Moreover, whereas the French plotter is said to have had confederates even in the Assembly of the Convention, confederates who were sufficiently influential and powerful to secure his own immunity, the Englishman when he was bent on his errands of mercy had the whole of France against him.

The Baron de Batz was a man who never justified either his own ambitions or even his existence; the Scarlet Pimpernel was a personality of whom an entire nation might justly be proud.






CONTENTS


FOREWORD


PART I.

CHAPTER I. IN THE THEATRE NATIONAL

CHAPTER II. WIDELY DIVERGENT AIMS

CHAPTER III. THE DEMON CHANCE

CHAPTER IV. MADEMOISELLE LANGE

CHAPTER V. THE TEMPLE PRISON

CHAPTER VI. THE COMMITTEE’S AGENT

CHAPTER VII. THE MOST PRECIOUS LIFE IN EUROPE

CHAPTER VIII. ARCADES AMBO

CHAPTER IX. WHAT LOVE CAN DO

CHAPTER X. SHADOWS

CHAPTER XI. THE LEAGUE OF THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL

CHAPTER XII. WHAT LOVE IS

CHAPTER XIII. THEN EVERYTHING WAS DARK

CHAPTER XIV. THE CHIEF

CHAPTER XV. THE GATE OF LA VILLETTE

CHAPTER XVI. THE WEARY SEARCH

CHAPTER XVII. CHAUVELIN

CHAPTER XVIII. THE REMOVAL

CHAPTER XIX. IT IS ABOUT THE DAUPHIN

CHAPTER XX. THE CERTIFICATE OF SAFETY

CHAPTER XXI. BACK TO PARIS

CHAPTER XXII. OF THAT THERE COULD BE NO QUESTION

CHAPTER XXIII. THE OVERWHELMING ODDS


PART II.

CHAPTER XXIV. THE NEWS

CHAPTER XXV. PARIS ONCE MORE

CHAPTER XXVI. THE BITTEREST FOE

CHAPTER XXVII. IN THE CONCIERGERIE

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE CAGED LION

CHAPTER XXIX. FOR THE SAKE OF THAT HELPLESS INNOCENT

CHAPTER XXX. AFTERWARDS

CHAPTER XXXI. AN INTERLUDE

CHAPTER XXXII. SISTERS

CHAPTER XXXIII. LITTLE MOTHER

CHAPTER XXXIV. THE LETTER


PART III.

CHAPTER XXXV. THE LAST PHASE

CHAPTER XXXVI. SUBMISSION

CHAPTER XXXVII. CHAUVELIN’S ADVICE

CHAPTER XXXVIII. CAPITULATION

CHAPTER XXXIX. KILL HIM!

CHAPTER XL. GOD HELP US ALL

CHAPTER XLI. WHEN HOPE WAS DEAD

CHAPTER XLII. THE GUARD-HOUSE OF THE RUE STE. ANNE

CHAPTER XLIII. THE DREARY JOURNEY

CHAPTER XLIV. THE HALT AT CRECY

CHAPTER XLV. THE FOREST OF BOULOGNE

CHAPTER XLVI. OTHERS IN THE PARK

CHAPTER XLVII. THE CHAPEL OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE

CHAPTER XLVIII. THE WANING MOON




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