El Dorado, Baroness Orczy [read the beginning after the end novel .TXT] 📗

El Dorado

By Baroness Orczy.

Table of Contents Titlepage Imprint Foreword El Dorado Part I I: In the Théâtre National II: Widely Divergent Aims III: The Demon Chance IV: Mademoiselle Lange V: The Temple Prison VI: The Committee’s Agent VII: The Most Precious Life in Europe VIII: Arcades Ambo IX: What Love Can Do X: Shadows XI: The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel XII: What Love Is XIII: Then Everything Was Dark XIV: The Chief XV: The Gate of La Villette XVI: The Weary Search XVII: Chauvelin XVIII: The Removal XIX: It Is About the Dauphin XX: The Certificate of Safety XXI: Back to Paris XXII: Of That There Could Be No Question XXIII: The Overwhelming Odds Part II XXIV: The News XXV: Paris Once More XXVI: The Bitterest Foe XXVII: In the Conciergerie XXVIII: The Caged Lion XXIX: For the Sake of That Helpless Innocent XXX: Afterwards XXXI: An Interlude XXXII: Sisters XXXIII: Little Mother XXXIV: The Letter Part III XXXV: The Last Phase XXXVI: Submission XXXVII: Chauvelin’s Advice XXXVIII: Capitulation XXXIX: Kill Him! XL: God Help Us All XLI: When Hope Was Dead XLII: The Guardhouse of the Rue Ste. Anne XLIII: The Dreary Journey XLIV: The Halt at Crècy XLV: The Forest of Boulogne XLVI: Others in the Park XLVII: The Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre XLVIII: The Waning Moon XLIX: The Land of Eldorado Colophon Uncopyright Imprint

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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, Hébert 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