The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy (best historical biographies .txt) 📗

them going out by the front door, and their footsteps disappearing toward Calais. We found their discarded uniforms lying in the coffee-room. They must have entered Calais by daylight, when the gates were opened⁠—just like other peaceable citizens. No doubt they had forged passports, just as they had stolen uniforms.

Our maid-of-all-work released us from our terrible position in the course of the morning, and we released the soldiers of the 9th Regiment of the Line, whom we found bound and gagged, some of them wounded, in the outhouse.

That same afternoon we were arrested, and here we are, ready to die if we must, but I swear that I have told you the truth, and I ask you, in the name of justice, if we have done anything wrong, and if we did not act like loyal and true citizens, even though we were pitted against an emissary of the devil?

The Old Scarecrow I

Nobody in the quartier could quite recollect when it was that the new Public Letter-Writer first set up in business at the angle formed by the Quai des Augustins and the Rue Dauphine, immediately facing the Pont Neuf; but there he certainly was on the 28th day of February, 1793, when Agnès, with eyes swollen with tears, a market basket on her arm, and a look of dreary despair on her young face, turned that selfsame angle on her way to the Pont Neuf, and nearly fell over the rickety construction which sheltered him and his stock-in-trade.

“Oh, mon Dieu! citizen Lépine, I had no idea you were here,” she exclaimed as soon as she had recovered her balance.

“Nor I, citizeness, that I should have the pleasure of seeing you this morning,” he retorted.

“But you were always at the other corner of the Pont Neuf,” she argued.

“So I was,” he replied, “so I was. But I thought I would like a change. The Faubourg St. Michel appealed to me; most of my clients came to me from this side of the river⁠—all those on the other side seem to know how to read and write.”

“I was just going over to see you,” she remarked.

“You, citizeness,” he exclaimed in unfeigned surprise, “what should procure a poor public writer the honour of⁠—”

“Hush, in God’s name!” broke in the young girl quickly as she cast a rapid, furtive glance up and down the quai and the narrow streets which converged at this angle.

She was dressed in the humblest and poorest of clothes, her skimpy shawl round her shoulders could scarce protect her against the cold of this cruel winter’s morning; her hair was entirely hidden beneath a frilled and starched cap, and her feet were encased in coarse worsted stockings and sabots, but her hands were delicate and fine, and her face had that nobility of feature and look of patient resignation in the midst of overwhelming sorrow which proclaimed a lofty refinement both of soul and of mind.

The old Letter-Writer was surveying the pathetic young figure before him through his huge horn-rimmed spectacles, and she smiled on him through her fast-gathering tears. He used to have his pitch at the angle of the Pont Neuf, and whenever Agnès had walked past it, she had nodded to him and bidden him “Good morrow!” He had at times done little commissions for her and gone on errands when she needed a messenger; today, in the midst of her despair, she had suddenly thought of him and that rumour credited him with certain knowledge which she would give her all to possess.

She had sallied forth this morning with the express purpose of speaking with him; but now suddenly she felt afraid, and stood looking at him for a moment or two, hesitating, wondering if she dared tell him⁠—one never knew these days into what terrible pitfall an ill-considered word might lead one.

A scarecrow he was, that old Public Letter-Writer, more like a great, gaunt bird than a human being, with those spectacles of his, and his long, very sparse and very lanky fringe of a beard which fell from his cheeks and chin and down his chest for all the world like a crumpled grey bib. He was wrapped from head to foot in a caped coat which had once been green in colour, but was now of many hues not usually seen in rainbows. He wore his coat all buttoned down the front, like a dressing-gown, and below the hem there peeped out a pair of very large feet encased in boots which had never been a pair. He sat upon a rickety, straw-bottomed chair under an improvised awning which was made up of four poles and a bit of sacking. He had a table in front of him⁠—a table partially and very insecurely propped up by a bundle of old papers and books, since no two of its four legs were completely whole⁠—and on the table there was a neckless bottle half-filled with ink, a few sheets of paper and a couple of quill pens.

The young girl’s hesitation had indeed not lasted more than a few seconds.

Furtively, like a young creature terrified of lurking enemies, she once more glanced to right and left of her and down the two streets and the river bank, for Paris was full of spies these days⁠—human bloodhounds ready for a few sous to sell their fellow-creatures’ lives. It was middle morning now, and a few passersby were hurrying along wrapped to the nose in mufflers, for the weather was bitterly cold.

Agnès waited until there was no one in sight, then she leaned forward over the table and whispered under her breath:

“They say, citizen, that you alone in Paris know the whereabouts of the English milor’⁠—of him who is called the Scarlet Pimpernel.⁠ ⁠…”

“Hush-sh-sh!” said the old man quickly, for just at that moment two men had gone by, in ragged coats and torn breeches, who had leered at Agnès and her neat cap and skirt as they passed.