The Scarlet Pimpernel, Baroness Orczy [best big ereader .txt] 📗

‘Has a cart gone through?’ he asks of Grospierre, breathlessly. ‘Yes,’ says Grospierre, ‘not half an hour ago.’ ‘And you have let them escape,’ shouts the captain furiously. ‘You’ll go to the guillotine for this, citoyen sergeant! that cart held concealed the ci-devant Duc de Chalis and all his family!’ ‘What!’ thunders Grospierre, aghast. ‘Aye! and the driver was none other than that cursed Englishman, the Scarlet Pimpernel.’ ”

A howl of execration greeted this tale. Citoyen Grospierre had paid for his blunder on the guillotine, but what a fool! oh! what a fool!

Bibot was laughing so much at his own tale that it was some time before he could continue.

“ ’After them, my men,’ shouts the captain,” he said after a while, “ ’remember the reward; after them, they cannot have gone far!’ And with that he rushes through the gate followed by his dozen soldiers.”

“But it was too late!” shouted the crowd, excitedly.

“They never got them!”

“Curse that Grospierre for his folly!”

“He deserved his fate!”

“Fancy not examining those casks properly!”

But these sallies seemed to amuse Citoyen Bibot exceedingly; he laughed until his sides ached, and the tears streamed down his cheeks.

“Nay, nay!” he said at last, “those aristos weren’t in the cart; the driver was not the Scarlet Pimpernel!”

“What?”

“No! The captain of the guard was that damned Englishman in disguise, and everyone of his soldiers aristos!”

The crowd this time said nothing: the story certainly savoured of the supernatural, and though the Republic had abolished God, it had not quite succeeded in killing the fear of the supernatural in the hearts of the people. Truly that Englishman must be the devil himself.

The sun was sinking low down in the west. Bibot prepared himself to close the gates.

“En avant the carts,” he said.

Some dozen covered carts were drawn up in a row, ready to leave town, in order to fetch the produce from the country close by, for market the next morning. They were mostly well known to Bibot, as they went through his gate twice every day on their way to and from the town. He spoke to one or two of their drivers⁠—mostly women⁠—and was at great pains to examine the inside of the carts.

“You never know,” he would say, “and I’m not going to be caught like that fool Grospierre.”

The women who drove the carts usually spent their day on the Place de la Grève, beneath the platform of the guillotine, knitting and gossiping, whilst they watched the rows of tumbrils arriving with the victims the Reign of Terror claimed every day. It was great fun to see the aristos arriving for the reception of Madame la Guillotine, and the places close by the platform were very much sought after. Bibot, during the day, had been on duty on the Place. He recognized most of the old hats, tricoteuses, as they were called, who sat there and knitted, whilst head after head fell beneath the knife, and they themselves got quite bespattered with the blood of those cursed aristos.

“Hé! la mère!” said Bibot to one of these horrible hags, “what have you got there?”

He had seen her earlier in the day, with her knitting and the whip of her cart close beside her. Now she had fastened a row of curly locks to the whip handle, all colours, from gold to silver, fair to dark, and she stroked them with her huge, bony fingers as she laughed at Bibot.

“I made friends with Madame Guillotine’s lover,” she said with a coarse laugh, “he cut these off for me from the heads as they rolled down. He has promised me some more tomorrow, but I don’t know if I shall be at my usual place.”

“Ah! how is that, la mère?” asked Bibot, who, hardened soldier that he was, could not help shuddering at the awful loathsomeness of this semblance of a woman, with her ghastly trophy on the handle of her whip.

“My grandson has got the smallpox,” she said with a jerk of her thumb towards the inside of her cart, “some say it’s the plague! If it is, I shan’t be allowed to come into Paris tomorrow.”

At the first mention of the word smallpox, Bibot had stepped hastily backwards, and when the old hag spoke of the plague, he retreated from her as fast as he could.

“Curse you!” he muttered, whilst the whole crowd hastily avoided the cart, leaving it standing all alone in the midst of the place.

The old hag laughed.

“Curse you, citoyen, for being a coward,” she said. “Bah! what a man to be afraid of sickness.”

“Morbleu! the plague!”

Everyone was awestruck and silent, filled with horror for the loathsome malady, the one thing which still had the power to arouse terror and disgust in these savage, brutalised creatures.

“Get out with you and with your plague-stricken brood!” shouted Bibot, hoarsely.

And with another rough laugh and coarse jest, the old hag whipped up her lean nag and drove her cart out of the gate.

This incident had spoilt the afternoon. The people were terrified of these two horrible curses, the two maladies which nothing could cure, and which were the precursors of an awful and lonely death. They hung about the barricades, silent and sullen for a while, eyeing one another suspiciously, avoiding each other as if by instinct, lest the plague lurked already in their midst. Presently, as in the case of Grospierre, a captain of the guard appeared suddenly. But he was known to Bibot, and there was no fear of his turning out to be a sly Englishman in disguise.

“A cart⁠ ⁠…” he shouted breathlessly, even before he had reached the gates.

“What cart?” asked Bibot, roughly.

“Driven by an old hag.⁠ ⁠… A covered cart⁠ ⁠…”

“There were a dozen⁠ ⁠…”

“An old hag who said her son had the plague?”

“Yes⁠ ⁠…”

“You have not let them go?”

“Morbleu!” said Bibot, whose purple cheeks had suddenly become white with fear.

“The cart contained the ci-devant Comtesse de Tourney and her two children, all of them traitors and condemned