The Elusive Pimpernel | Page 8

placed
before him:
"We seek him here, and we seek him there, Those Frenchies seek him
everywhere! Is he in heaven, is he in hell, That demmed elusive
Pimpernel?"
It was a mere flash! One of memory's swiftly effaced pictures, when
she shows us for the fraction of a second, indelible pictures from out
our past. Chauvelin, in that same second, while his own eyes were
closed and Robespierre's fixed upon him, also saw the lonely cliffs of
Calais, heard the same voice singing: "God save the King!" the volley
of musketry, the despairing cries of Marguerite Blakeney; and once
again he felt the keen and bitter pang of complete humiliation and
defeat.
Chapter III

: Ex-Ambassador Chauvelin

Robespierre had quietly waited the while. He was in no hurry: being a
night-bird of very pronounced tastes, he was quite ready to sit here
until the small hours of the morning watching Citizen Chauvelin
mentally writhing in the throes of recollections of the past few months.
There was nothing that delighted the sea-green Incorruptible quite so
much as the aspect of a man struggling with a hopeless situation and
feeling a net of intrigue drawing gradually tighter and tighter around
him.
Even now, when he saw Chauvelin's smooth forehead wrinkled into an
anxious frown, and his thin hand nervously clutched upon the table,
Robespierre heaved a pleasurable sigh, leaned back in his chair, and
said with an amiable smile:
"You do agree with me, then, Citizen, that the situation has become
intolerable?"
Then as Chauvelin did not reply, he continued, speaking more sharply:
"And how terribly galling it all is, when we could have had that man
under the guillotine by now, if you had not blundered so terribly last
year."
His voice had become hard and trenchant like that knife to which he
was so ready to make constant allusion. But Chauvelin still remained
silent. There was really nothing that he could say.
"Citizen Chauvelin, how you must hate that man!" exclaimed
Robespierre at last.
Then only did Chauvelin break the silence which up to now he had
appeared to have forced himself to keep.
"I do!" he said with unmistakable fervour.

"Then why do you not make an effort to retrieve the blunders of last
year?" queried Robespierre blandly. "The Republic has been unusually
patient and long-suffering with you, Citizen Chauvelin. She has taken
your many services and well-known patriotism into consideration. But
you know," he added significantly, "that she has no use for worthless
tools."
Then as Chauvelin seemed to have relapsed into sullen silence, he
continued with his original ill-omened blandness:
"Ma foi! Citizen Chauvelin, were I standing in your buckled shoes, I
would not lose another hour in trying to avenge mine own
humiliation!"
"Have I ever had a chance?" burst out Chauvelin with ill-suppressed
vehemence. "What can I do single-handed? Since war has been
declared I cannot go to England unless the Government will find some
official reason for my doing so. There is much grumbling and wrath
over here, and when that damned Scarlet Pimpernel League has been at
work, when a score or so of valuable prizes have been snatched from
under the very knife of the guillotine, then, there is much gnashing of
teeth and useless cursings, but nothing serious or definite is done to
smother those accursed English flies which come buzzing about our
ears."
"Nay! you forget, Citizen Chauvelin," retorted Robespierre, "that we of
the Committee of Public Safety are far more helpless than you. You
know the language of these people, we don't. You know their manners
and customs, their ways of thought, the methods they are likely to
employ: we know none of these things. You have seen and spoken to
men in England who are members of that damned League. You have
seen the man who is its leader. We have not."
He leant forward on the table and looked more searchingly at the thin,
pallid face before him.
"If you named that leader to me now, if you described him, we could go
to work more easily. You could name him, and you would, Citizen

Chauvelin."
"I cannot," retorted Chauvelin doggedly.
"Ah! but I think you could. But there! I do not blame your silence. You
would wish to reap the reward of your own victory, to be the
instrument of your own revenge. Passions! I think it natural! But in the
name of your own safety, Citizen, do not be too greedy with your secret.
If the man is known to you, find him again, find him, lure him to
France! We want him--the people want him! And if the people do not
get what they want, they will turn on those who have withheld their
prey."
"I understand, Citizen, that your own safety and that of