El Dorado | Page 6

swift vengeance of the revolutionaries by the
devotion of the Scarlet Pimpernel, crossed over to England and
enrolled himself tinder the banner of the heroic chief. But he had been
unable hitherto to be an active member of the League. The chief was
loath to allow him to run foolhardy risks. The St. Justs--both
Marguerite and Armand--were still very well-known in Paris.
Marguerite was not a woman easily forgotten, and her marriage with an
English "aristo" did not please those republican circles who had looked
upon her as their queen. Armand's secession from his party into the
ranks of the emigres had singled him out for special reprisals, if and
whenever he could be got hold of, and both brother and sister had an
unusually bitter enemy in their cousin Antoine St. Just--once an
aspirant to Marguerite's hand, and now a servile adherent and imitator
of Robespierre, whose ferocious cruelty he tried to emulate with a view
to ingratiating himself with the most powerful man of the day.
Nothing would have pleased Antoine St. Just more than the opportunity
of showing his zeal and his patriotism by denouncing his own kith and
kin to the Tribunal of the Terror, and the Scarlet Pimpernel, whose own
slender fingers were held on the pulse of that reckless revolution, had
no wish to sacrifice Armand's life deliberately, or even to expose it to
unnecessary dangers.
Thus it was that more than a year had gone by before Armand St.
Just--an enthusiastic member of the League of the Scarlet

Pimpernel--was able to do aught for its service. He had chafed under
the enforced restraint placed upon him by the prudence of his chief,
when, indeed, he was longing to risk his life with the comrades whom
he loved and beside the leader whom he revered.
At last, in the beginning of '94 he persuaded Blakeney to allow him to
join the next expedition to France. What the principal aim of that
expedition was the members of the League did not know as yet, but
what they did know was that perils--graver even than hitherto--would
attend them on their way.
The circumstances had become very different of late At first the
impenetrable mystery which had surrounded the personality of the chief
had been a full measure of safety, but now one tiny corner of that veil
of mystery had been lifted by two rough pairs of hands at least;
Chauvelin, ex-ambassador at the English Court, was no longer in any
doubt as to the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel, whilst Collot
d'Herbois had seen him at Boulogne, and had there been effectually
foiled by him.
Four months had gone by since that day, and the Scarlet Pimpernel was
hardly ever out of France now; the massacres in Paris and in the
provinces had multiplied with appalling rapidity, the necessity for the
selfless devotion of that small band of heroes had become daily, hourly
more pressing. They rallied round their chief with unbounded
enthusiasm, and let it be admitted at once that the sporting
instinct--inherent in these English gentlemen-- made them all the more
keen, all the more eager now that the dangers which beset their
expeditions were increased tenfold.
At a word from the beloved leader, these young men--the spoilt
darlings of society--would leave the gaieties, the pleasures, the luxuries
of London or of Bath, and, taking their lives tn their hands, they placed
them, together with their fortunes, and even their good names, at the
service of the innocent and helpless victims of merciless tyranny. The
married men--Ffoulkes, my Lord Hastings, Sir Jeremiah
Wallescourt--left wife and children at a call from the chief, at the cry of
the wretched. Armand-- unattached and enthusiastic--had the right to

demand that he should no longer be left behind.
He had only been away a little over fifteen months, and yet he found
Paris a different city from the one he had left immediately after the
terrible massacres of September. An air of grim loneliness seemed to
hang over her despite the crowds that thronged her streets; the men
whom he was wont to meet in public places fifteen months ago--friends
and political allies--were no longer to be seen; strange faces surrounded
him on every side-- sullen, glowering faces, all wearing a certain air of
horrified surprise and of vague, terrified wonder, as if life had become
one awful puzzle, the answer to which must be found in the brief
interval between the swift passages of death.
Armand St. Just, having settled his few simple belongings in the
squalid lodgings which had been assigned to him, had started out after
dark to wander somewhat aimlessly through the streets. Instinctively he
seemed to be searching for a familiar face, some one who would come
to him out of that merry past