It may be confidently asserted that, from July, 1792 to May, 1794 the Scarlet Pimpernel and his League were continually in France, Sir Percy himself only setting foot in England when his presence there was absolutely necessary. He would then rush up to London, for his policy of secrecy demanded his attendance at regular intervals at various fashionable functions and he refused to renounce those duties in spite of his wife's protests.

Naturally, for her, every hour spent at routs and balls was just as much a loss by its separation as time spent by him in France. Even the members of the League considered their leader was apt to push his desire for anonymity too far on occasions, and begged him to take a rest instead of thus always posting up to London in all haste in order to be seen at H.R.H.'s banquet or some other social function. But Blakeney was not to be turned from his ideas, and combined this arduous double life of adventure and social activity with that ease which characterized all his actions; indeed, he appeared to be none the worse in health for it.

Latterly, however, these visits to England became less and less frequent. He hardly ever accompanied his protégés all the way to England, hardly ever, in fact, as far as the coast; he would effect their rescue, conduct them past the city gates and then hand the party over to one of his lieutenants. He would then return straightway to the city.

And, amazing as it may seem, he only suffered capture twice during the entire period of the League's activity. He attributed this remarkable immunity to the goddess of Chance, who, as he so quaintly put it, had only one hair on her head by which she could be caught and held; and to the fact that he always managed to seize her by that hair as she flew by. The others, if consulted, would have cast their vote in favour of their leader's unsurpassed courage and ingenuity. And they would not have been far wrong. 

Blakeney was the possessor of two great assets; a positive genius for disguise and a consummate forethought which left nothing to chance. Each rescue was carefully thought out before it was undertaken and always in accordance with information previously gleaned either by his adherents or through the many spies which he had in his pay. He always had his finger on the pulse of the revolutionary leaders and was thus able to anticipate any arrests that were contemplated and formulate his plans accordingly. The daytime hours, when there was no immediate prospect of adventure, he and his band spent in amassing that fund of knowledge of current events and personalities which so often baffled their pursuers. Before undertaking a task of rescue, Blakeney would weigh carefully its chances of success; but he would abandon it if it seemed to him to be doomed to failure.

"The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel never fails," he would say, "because it never attempts the impossible."

Herein lay the secret of this remarkable man's unvarying success; though far be it from the chronicler to belittle the all-important rôle played by his followers, without whose loyal aid and devotion, his schemes would inevitably come to naught. But it was Blakeney himself, who, by his knowledge of the Terrorists and by his insight into their excitable temperament, was able to nullify their efforts to capture him and to increase the power he possessed of outwitting the officers of the revolutionary party.

The Scarlet Pimpernel succeeded owing to the simplicity of his plans which, often as not, took the agents of the revolutionary Government completely by surprise. The final details were left to the last minute as chance or occasion dictated. On the other hand, it is certain that the immediate cause of the frustration of any attempt to capture him was his supreme talent for disguise, which was the result of infinite patience and of careful study.

Some of these disguises were the invention of his own fertile imagination; others were obvious necessities demanded by the circumstances; but mostly they consisted in the subtle impersonations of actual people favourably known to the revolutionary Government. They were carried out with such consummate skill that the spies sent out to track him could never be certain whether they were in the presence of a true patriot on whom it would have been sacrilege to lay a finger, or in the presence of that mysterious person who went by the name of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Sir Percy Blakeney first assumed a disguise when he was hunted down by Chauvelin on the cliffs near Calais. Made up to look like a Jew dealer of the poorest class, he outwitted his enemy so completely on that occasion that, from that moment, he was determined to utilize his talents in that direction.

He never relied on a disguise unless it was clever enough to deceive his own friends. He never wore the same disguise more than twice in the same district, nor did he use it on two consecutive occasions so that the character was never imprinted sufficiently clearly on his enemies to give them the chance of unmasking him. Nor did he assume a personality until he had thoroughly mastered its original, until he knew that he could imitate the exact intonation of the voice, display the same gestures and reproduce the gait and habits of his prototype, often studying his man for days on end and practicing the results for nights.

There were two characters which Blakeney enjoyed impersonating more than others: they were citizen Rateau and citizen Lenoir. 

In the Cabaret de la Liberté, a low-down haunt in the poorest quarter of Paris, the meeting-place of the scum of the city, probably the filthiest, the most loathsome and pest-infected hole in all Paris, Sir Percy Blakeney, the darling of London Society and the most fastidious of all its exquisites, lived in a top attic in the company of human and other foul rats. He took his meals of sour bread, infected cheese and sour wine in their company, laughing at their obscene jests, watching, waiting, ferreting out their many secrets.

Here one day he chanced upon a tall cadaverous-looking creature, with sunken eyes and broad, hunched-up shoulders which were perpetually shaken by a dry rasping cough that proclaimed the ravages of some mortal disease, left the man trembling with ague and brought beads of perspiration to the roots of his hair. A limp impeded his movements. Cupidity shone like a beacon out of his eyes. For three days, Sir Percy studied him attentively. In the privacy of his miserable attic he copied on his face, with the aid of grease paint, the salient features of Citizen Rateau; for three days, too, he practiced the hollow tuberculous cough and the dragging walk of the lame man.

Having achieved a satisfactory result, the next step was to be rid of his prototype, a not very difficult task, for the poor mudlark when he heard the gold jingling in the aristo's hand, and the vision of idle luxury was dangled before his eyes, was only too ready to fall in with whatever this heaven-sent creature demanded of him. The decisive moment for Blakeney would come when he would have to confront his at the Cabaret de la Liberté. But so clever was his impersonation that not one of them ever had a suspicion that he was any other than Citizen Rateau himself.

"I have found a perfect character," he wrote to his band. "Gadzooks, but when I spring it upon you fellows you will have the fright of your young lives. And a cough . . . Begad, it is a wheeze straight from the coffin. One can hear it a mile away. And please to remember, I am Citizen Rateau, at your service, from now on. And if you should want me, I am always to be found at the Cabaret de la Liberté. The Scarlet Pimpernel."

Blakeney used this disguise first when engaged on the rescue of Esther Vincent and her English lover, Jack Kennard. This particular incident was one of the happiest recollections of his amazing career and this for two reasons: firstly, because he always loved the idea of reuniting two lovers: this was a weak spot in his armor now that his own love story had been made so perfect; and secondly, because it was the first Rateau episode, the first time in fact that he made use of that impersonation which he adopted later on in the most desperate adventure of all, when he scored his final triumph by saving his own wife from death.

The plan for the rescue of Esther Vincent was an example of Sir Percy's brilliant organization. All the characteristic subtly of his nimble wit was displayed when, in the disguise of the asthmatic Rateau, he overheard at the Cabaret de la Liberté the discussion between a couple of cut-throats of an abominable project to marry the girl to one of them for the sake of her supposed fortune. He egged them on in their project and actually engaged himself to aid those ruffians in their dastardly plot, with the result that not only did he gain their confidence, but he did so to such an extent he was actually left by them in charge of the unfortunate girl, and thus was able to effect her rescue and that of her lover.

A sidelight on this adventure is shown by a short note of instructions sent to Dewhurst on the evening when he had planned the rescue of the lovers:

"You and Galveston must look after that ass Kennard, who may at the last moment spoil our plans. He will, of course, understand nothing, and may become unmanageable in which case I am afraid you must bash him on the head sufficiently to send him to sleep. My cough ­ the Rateau cough ­ will be your rallying point. It resounds in the dark. Don't forget to deal with citizen Merri and his crowd of cut-throats. Bring some stout rope with you and a lantern. We shall need both. The Scarlet Pimpernel."

From this adventure it will be noted that Blakeney used the trick of appearing to be working with the mob, of aiding and abetting them in their nefarious schemes, so that he should have a chance of access to the unfortunate victims. He invariably trusted his powers of disguise and to his own personal magnetism which often forced some of the worst ruffians to listen to him and even to do his bidding. Over and over again these tactics enabled the League to spirit away condemned prisoners from under the very noses of the Terrorists.

The League activities were now apparently causing the revolutionary Government grave anxiety, so much so in fact that a special decree was promulgated whereby traitors belonging to the same family or classed in the same category of crime, should be tried separately so as to frustrate the wholesale evasions which were beginning to undermine the authority of the Committee of Public Safety. This decree as a matter of fact decreased temporarily the League's efficiency, for Blakeney's favourite plan had been chiefly aimed at saving whole batches of prisoners who happened to belong to one family, to unite lovers whenever possible, to see to it that no mother was separated from her son, or husband from his wife.

To combat this new difficulty he found his impersonations invaluable. He knew just how best to gain the confidence of a crowd of ruffians, men and women of the type that frequented sittings of the Revolutionary Tribunal, how to dominate them and instill his own ideas into them. He would know how to arouse their ire against an entire family that was awaiting trial and incite them into demanding immediate justice for the lot. He was pastmaster in the art of creating uproars inside the Palais de Justice during the course of a sitting, and many an unfortunate owed his or her life to the confusion attendant on one of his inflammatory harangues.

Citizen Rateau was a personage admirably suited for this work. He soon became known to the habitués of the Cabaret de la Liberté as a marvelous patriot, a good fellow ­ ready to help in any scheme that shirked the light of day. He earned for himself a name as a firm and militant upholder of the Revolution, and one whom, despite his feeble health, it was unwise to cross. He not only deceived the rabble, but also some of the most astute brains in the secret service of the revolutionary Government. For this reason Blakeney always looked upon this impersonation as one of his very best efforts and frequently referred to Citizen Rateau when recording some of the League's exploits.

"Rateau is a gem of a disguise," he writes in his journal just after the Kennard affair. "I hope that I shall be able to keep him alive for some time to come. I find that he is absolutely invaluable for a hunt after information. I must be careful not to expose him to danger so that he may continue his exceedingly useful lease of life. The Cabaret de la Liberté is a splendid retreat and the worthy landlord a safe go-between for my messages."

The other character was Lenoir. The real Lenoir was a giant of a man, a coal-heaver by trade, who lived in a small village a few kilometres from Calais. Many a time had Blakeney watched him shoveling coal from a ship in port into the carts and had been struck by the uncanny resemblance between this man and himself. Oddly enough, through the thin film of coal dust on the lids, blue eyes looked out into the world, and Lenoir's height was within a centimetre of Sir Percy's own. Paris to Calais in these days was a far cry, and it was not likely that the Committee in Paris would have heard of a humble coal-heaver in Calais. An important point also was the question of accent, for though Blakeney spoke French with an astonishing fluency, he retained just a faint trace of English intonation, but, in Paris, the patois of a man from Calais would almost sound like a foreign language.

Having procured a blank identity paper, he filled it in with the name and description of the man. He then set to work to imitate as closely as possible the gait and gestures of the coal-heaver and to copy his most salient characteristics. Satisfied that he had succeeded in this, he ventured into Paris under the guise of Lenoir. Many poor workmen from the country were wont to drift to Paris these days in search of employment, and identity papers apparently in order, the coal-heaver from Calais passed thorough the city gates without any difficulty.

This impersonation the Scarlet Pimpernel used most effectively on more than one occasion, both for the purpose of collecting information and for passing at will in and out of Paris. Sir Percy's commands to members of the League give us a good idea of the manner in which he used this Lenoir disguise.

"Be on the watch for a coal-heaver named Lenoir. At two-thirty he will be in the Palais de Justice where we shall all be needed. Lenoir is your humble servant the Scarlet Pimpernel."

"I shall require eight of you to be at the Conciergerie at ten to-night. The Committee have decided to transfer a dozen prisoners from there to the Abbaye. We should be able to accomplish their rescue during the journey. I shall use the Lenoir disguise. You will dress as Republican soldiers: I happen to know that extra guards have been drafted to the prison. Stowmarries had better take charge as your officer as he speaks the best French. All you have to do is accompany the prisoners until I give the sea-mew call. Then fall upon the guard. We will then act as best we can. The Scarlet pimpernel."

An extract from Ffoulkes' journal completes the picture:

"Percy is great as Lenoir: his impersonation of the coal-heaver is, in my opinion, far finer than that of Rateau. It is astonishing to see a mob of ragamuffins listening to him while he harangues them in words which have a certain meaning for us and help us to pull off a rescue. He had been a member of one of the workmen's clubs ­ a club the membership of which seems to me to consist for the most part of the lowest scum of the city. The way in which he moves freely in their company and is accepted as one of them is truly amazing. Never yet have I seen him betray himself by word or action: they all trust him. Lenoir has gained an ascendancy over the members of the Club and he can make them do just what he likes, and, moreover, he provides an excellent rallying point; when we are scattered about in a crowd, he is so easily recognizable that we can effect a rapid concentration round him as soon as he gives us the signal. This is to us an advantage as we found the Rateau cough difficult to trace in a crowd."

The Law of Suspect having been promulgated, a new hitch occurred to stop the work of mercy and a new danger was added to its accomplishment. Firstly, since every denunciation in the future was to be anonymous, it would be impossible to foresee whence it would be likely to come. Entirely innocent people might be in comparative safety one minute and be arraigned before the tribunal the next. The whole thing now became a matter of speculation as to who the future victim might be and who the enemy most likely to denounce them. Obviously the League's tactics would have to be altered to suit these new conditions.

The element of pure chance, it was true, remained their ablest ally and, since the passing of the Law, had to be relied upon more than ever; but risks and dangers had become greater, too. Chance would have to be reinforced with cunning. In order to meet these altered conditions, Blakeney assumed a new personality with the object of forestalling as far as possible the anonymous denunciations. 

At the angle of the Quai des Augustins with the rue Dauphine, immediately facing the Pont Neuf, a Public Letter Writer was seen one day to install his booth. He was a funny old scarecrow, more like a great gaunt bird than a human being. He wore spectacles on his nose and a long very sparse and very lanky fringe of beard fell from his cheeks and chin and down to his chest. He was wrapped from head to foot in a caped coat which had once been green in colour, but was now of many hues with age. He wore this coat 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 propped up by a bundle of newspapers since none of the four legs was completely whole. On the table he had a neckless bottle filled with ink, a few sheets of paper and a couple of quill pens. He was wont to arrive about ten o'clock in the morning and generally left at five or so in the evening. For five sous he would write a love letter, or indite a business correspondence. He was a placid, silent old man, with nothing reactionary or anti-revolutionary about him, and the general verdict on him was that he could always be trusted to keep a secret.

But, somehow or other, amongst a privileged few, the rumour got about that the old scarecrow knew something of the whereabouts of the English milor ­ of him who was called the Scarlet Pimpernel!

Sir Percy Blakeney was justifiably satisfied with this disguise, for it enabled him to hear much gossip that was very useful whilst many a frightened secret was whispered into his ear. More than once he was asked by some ruffian eager for blood money to write out a denunciation; sometimes he was accosted by a poor girl whose parents or lover had been arrested; at others he would glean scraps of information which would put him on the track of some unfortunate victim. It was while he plied this trade that he learned about Agnes de Lucinnes and Arnould Fabrice; in this way, too, he found out about Chauvelin's dastardly plot to send Fernand Malzieu to the guillotine.

Blakeney wrote a round robin to the members of the League considering his new impersonation. It runs thus:

"Whenever you may require my presence or my help, or wish to have a word with me, come to the Quai des Augustins. There near the corner of the street you will see most mornings a Public Letter Writer named Lepine. Ask him to indite some letter for you and then convey your information. I am Lepine. The Scarlet Pimpernel."

An interesting fragment was found amongst Sir Percy's papers ­ a faded piece of paper signed with the name Madeleine. This pathetic letter turned out to be one which Blakeney wrote at the dictation of a poor girl at the time when he was acting the part of Public Letter Writer. It is a noteworthy document since from it the authenticity of this disguise is established, and it also fixes definitely the date of the rescue of Agnes de Luciennes.

"Paris, le 3 mars, 1793.

"Ma très chère Agnes. Ce bon Lepine écrit cette lettre pour moi. Tu m'excuseras mais je n'ai jamais appris à écrire, tu le sait bien. Chérie prends bien garde. J'ai tellement peur qu'Arnould soit en danger. Il y a, à Paris, en ce moment, celui qu'on appelle le 'Mouron Rouge.' Il te sauvra ainsi qu'Arnould. Je n'ose pas dire davantage. Aies courage et tout finira heureusement. Ton amie sincère,

"Madeleine."

("Paris, 3 March 1793.

"My very dear Agnes. The good Lepine writes this letter for me. You will forgive me, but I have never learned to write, as you know well. Dearest, take care. I am so afraid that Arnould is in danger. There is, in Paris, at this moment, someone called the 'Scarlet Pimpernel.' He will save you as well as Arnould. I dare not say more. Have courage and all will finish happily. Your sincere friend,

"Madeleine.")

There is a postscript to this letter, added by Blakeney.

"Le mouron rouge s'occupe d'Arnould. Vous aurez bientôt de ses nouvelles."

("The Scarlet Pimpernel is busy with Arnould. You will soon have news of him.")

Another instance of his impersonations of real living people occurred when Marat was murdered in his bath by Charlotte Corday. Marat's servant, Paul Molé, was in the next room when the girl stabbed his master. As a matter of fact, Paul Molé at the moment was none other than the Scarlet Pimpernel in disguise. He had made a study of the real Paul Molé until he had become a perfect replica of the man. He had purchased for a consideration Molé's identity papers, and induced Marat's housekeeper, Jeannette Maréchal, to introduce him into the household. He soon gained the confidence of his employer. 

"I am in Marat's house, disguised as his servent, Paul Molé. Follow me to-morrow and keep a constant watch on the house which you see me enter. Let Stowmarries, Wallescourt and Galveston take it in turns to keep vigil. You yourself return and keep watch on Marat's house until you hear from me again. The Scarlet Pimpernel."

It appears that on this occasion he was trying to come to the bottom of a particularly brutal conspiracy. A girl, Marguerite Lannoy by name, had sought him out and begged him to find her son for her. The boy had been kidnapped from his house some months previously. It was a poignant story that the girl unfolded; she had been Marat's mistress in the days when he had been an unknown and struggling lawyer. After the outbreak of the revolution, Marat had gained for himself a position of some importance in the eyes of its leaders and the paper which he edited, L'ami du Peuple, became the mouthpiece of all those who considered themselves most advanced in their views and pursued a policy of no compromise.

To revenge himself upon his former mistress for some imagined wrong, he had her boy kidnapped and hidden away. Marat refused to disclose the child's hiding-place to the distracted mother and caused the wretched woman to be kicked out of his lodgings when she came to plead with him.

"I am on the track of the Lannoy boy," Blakeney writes to his followers, "Marat's ring is the crux of the situation and also the open sesame. The child is with the Lerridans, owners of a brothel in the Chemin des Pantins and they will give access to the boy only to the wearer of this ring. I must gain possession of it somehow or other. Tell Dewhurst to be outside Marat's house at eleven o'clock to-night. He had better dress as an honest patriot. I shall want his help inside later on. The Scarlet Pimpernel."

Then followed the murder of Marat. The false Paul Molé had helped his master to undress and had put him into the bath. He left the house for a few moments to talk to Dewhurst. During his absence Charlotte Corday found her way into the apartment, and when Blakeney returned Marat was dead and the house invaded by an excited crowd. In the general confusion, he contrived to get the ring off the dead man's finger and to pass it on to Dewhurst. Among the crowd who thronged the squalid apartment was the real Paul Molé, and when Chauvelin came on the scene a real comedy of errors ensued, for Chauvelin found himself confronted now with a man whom he recognized as the Scarlet Pimpernel, only to find himself at grips with the real Paul Molé. In the bustle which followed Chauvelin's cry for help, the elusive adventurer quietly slipped away while the wretched Molé was incarcerated at the Abbaye prison.

"They have now guessed that we are after the child. The Lerridans have been visited by Chauvelin who thinks that I am safely inside the Abbaye prison. They will never dare to do to anything to Molé, but if they do I shall have to look after him later on. Meanwhile here is the plan of action. The Lerridans have asked for a special guard for the night. We will provide it. Ten of you be at my lodgings at the rue St. Anne within half an hour of receiving this, dressed as men of the Sûreté. The Scarlet Pimpernel."

It is easy to conjecture from the letter how the Lannoy child was rescued from a life of shame and misery to which it had been condemned. The real Paul Molé had perforce to be set at liberty; one may be sure that he was richer by the adventure!

Many were the disguises assumed by Sir Percy Blakeney. Some of them are duly authenticated either from his own writings or from Sir Andrew Ffoulkes' journal. There has been discovered, however, an even more reliable source, namely the papers of Armand Chauvelin himself. These papers form part of a bundle of manuscript which ultimately were published under the title of Mémoires d'un ambassadeur républicain, but the extracts relating to the Scarlet Pimpernel were not included in the published memoirs. They were written in English and obviously Chauvelin did not intend them to be made public. They relate to various attempts to capture the Scarlet Pimpernel and consist of data which he had laboriously collected as to Blakeney's whereabouts, his various disguises and methods, all neatly tabulated.

"March 25. George Gradlin, a cobbler. He escaped from La Force.

"March 29. I am suspicious of Bertin, a man who has suddenly appeared at the 'Rat Noir.' He seems inoffensive, yet I wonder.

"March 30. Bertin needs watching. I am afraid that it is Blakeney again.

"March 30 (the same evening). I am sure that it is he.

"April 5. I recognized him as the news vendor Jaccard. He is after the Mont-Choisi crowd who were convicted yesterday.

"April 6. Jaccard has disappeared, and so have the Mont-Choisi!

"April 10. The activities of that accursed League surpass all bounds. And their luck seems to be phenomenal. My spies report the presence of one or other of them at Limours, at Nantes and at Lyons. The Scarlet Pimpernel has effectively tricked that fool Laporte. At last the Committee has asked for my aid. We shall see this time.

"April 20. Someone has blundered. My trap has failed to catch the quarry and he eluded my vigilance. But he managed to rescue the Levasseures none the less. Mayet is a fool.

"April 30. Blakeney has become brazen. I find that he impersonated Mayet at Limours last week and thus hoodwinked the lot of them. Now he has impersonated my humble self at Nantes and tricked that dolt Carrier."

"Note ­ He uses these impersonations only in the remote districts where the citizen deputies are unknown to the inhabitants except by name. And he adopts the disguise only when the said man is announced to be in the vicinity. The Pimpernel is clever, but I have a little plan to catch him out this time."

Soon Blakeney found that it would be a real necessity for him to have regular headquarters in Paris itself. Lavish bribes judiciously distributed had already secured for him the goodwill of several landlords of unpretentious wayside inns between the capital and the coast, where relays could always be counted on for conveying the League's protégés northwards. Blakeney at this time also turned his attention to Belgium, whither many fugitives had a longing to go, chiefly because several members of the Bourbon Royal Family had already found refuge there. It is to be observed that the Belgian frontier was not quite so difficult to negotiate as the severely guarded northern coast.

One of the League's most favoured rallying points was a small tavern which lay perdu, immediately behind the cemetery of Père Lachaise. The cemetery itself with its alleys of awe-inspiring monuments, a vast city of the dead, overhung by age-old cedars, was one of the most lonely, shunned spots in Paris.

Members of the League not actually engaged inside the city had their headquarters at the inn whose landlord, disgruntled and wretchedly poor, had been amenable to Blakeney's open purse. From this point of vantage which faced the open country, arrangements could be made for the purveyance of chaise or horses, or for receiving definite orders from the chief. The inn lay outside the city gates. The rallying cry from the leader to his followers was invariably the call of the sea-mew repeated three times at stated intervals.

In addition to this, Sir Percy had rented more than one squalid abode in the poorer quarters of Paris where he could find a resting-place in the intervals of activity. Money, as usual, made those retreats secure from denunciation. There was a woman named Brogart who kept a lodging-house of evil reputation in the rue de l'Ancienne Comédie. She was some kind of relation to the man of the same name, the landlord of the "Chat Gris" at Calais, the scene of one of Blakeney's most thrilling adventures. It was through him that the woman, Brogart, heard of the existence of a fool Englishman who paid lavishly for everything he had, asked no questions and was content with any accommodation however squalid.

Her house became a sure refuge for Blakeney and the members of the League. It was a roof over their heads when they needed one, and a convenient meeting-place. It was in itself so wretched and unclean and was situated in such a poor quarter of the city that it was not troubled very often, if ever, with visitations from the soldiery. Thus it became a storage place for their various disguises; a store-house for provisions; a first resting-place for refugee prisoners who needed courage and a respite before undertaking the journey to the coast.

Another rallying point was at Number 37 rue St. Anne. The ground floor was ostensibly the workshop of a violin-maker, another of Blakeney's most successful impersonations. It backed on another house in the rue Jolivet and Blakeney was able to contrive a means of access from one house to another with extraordinarily good results. Many a time when, disguised as Lenoir, the coal-heaver, he found himself closely pressed by Government sleuths, he would step into the entrance of the rue Jolivet, effect a quick change and re-emerge in the rue St. Anne as the simple, innocent violin-maker.

In all Sir Percy had rented some ten different lodgings in Paris, each one as filthy and tumble-down as the other; some of them were so bedraggled that they barely gave protection against the elements, and all of them were so squalid that it is a marvel how a man of such fastidious tastes could ever bring himself to enter them.

The only apartment which had some measure of comfort in it was the one wherein he installed his wife whilst she stayed in Paris. It was a small house, tucked away in a tiny garden on the outskirts of the Bois and remote from the constant turmoil of the city. Marguerite lived alone there for some time, only seeing her husband very occasionally; she kept no servent and did her own marketing, her own cooking and cleaning. She went about as little as she could and dressed in the shabbiest and poorest of clothes. It was to this house that Blakeney would often bring those unfortunates whom he had succeeded in bringing to safety. Marguerite would have wine and food ready for them and she it was who with her own hands administered to their wants. Rarely, too rarely alas! Blakeney was able to snatch here a few moments of rest and happiness in the company of his wife.

About this time it is fairly clear that Marguerite returned to England; the reign of Terror was then at its height in France, and roughly speaking, no one was safe from those anonymous denunciations which brought so many innocents to the guillotine. It is practically impossible to follow Sir Percy and his League through their many adventures during the next two strenuous years. Documents are non-existent, records of any authenticity very few. It is only possible to judge by the results, and while 2,625 victims perished on the guillotine during those two years, there are authentic records of over that number of refugees in England who owed their lives directly to the Scarlet Pimpernel.

But it is equally certain that during these same strenuous years Sir Percy must have spent a few days in England from time to time. His presence in London was necessary, for no other reason than the preservation of his anonymity. Marguerite's entreaties must have been a powerful force to bring him now and again to her side. It is not to be supposed that she wished him to give up the League, for she knew he would never do so, but she used all her charms and fascination to lure him to Richmond whenever she could.

He must have listened to her entreaties with a patient ear, but he was never really happy away from his activities in France. He was restive and fretted at his enforced idleness, in spite of her efforts to distract him. He frequented the fashionable routs where his presence was hailed with joy. But though he was a gallant and amusing as ever, he was bored; his taste for society life had been spoilt by the exciting savour of adventure.

There are one or two letters written by Sir Percy to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes which give quite a fair idea of what his feelings were during those periods spent in London. One can feel the longing to be away and up and doing, to revel in the excitement of the chase, with himself as the quarry.

"Dear Ffoulkes," he wrote on one occasion, "God grant you every success and watch over your safety. I am in a constant worry about you all and hope that you manage to keep your suborned crowd in order and that you have a plentiful supply of money. I intend to return to you all within a few days.

"Begad, I shall never be able to return to the old life again. You have no idea how boring London is after the thrills of Paris. Suzanne is beside herself with pride and rage: pride that you are in charge of the League: rage that you are kept away from her side.

"I think that it is about time that you should return to her."

Owing partly to the fact that Bath had lately become more fashionable than ever through the predilection of the Prince of Wales for the famous watering-place, and partly owning to Marguerite's desire to be near Suzanne Ffoulkes whilst their respective husbands were absent in Paris, the Blakeney's took a house there in the Crescent. Thither thereafter did Lord Anthony Dewhurst conduct the latest arrivals from France, protégés of the Scarlet Pimpernel, amongst whom there happened to be an old friend of Marguerite's, one of the habitués of the salon in the rue Richlieu.

From a chance word dropped by this friend, Sir Percy learned that wild plots were being hatched in the underground cellars where Royalists foregathered, plots to rescue Marie Antoinette from the Conciergerie and of all sorts of mad plans which would inevitably bring ruin and death to the foolhardy plotters. 

"My dear Ffoulkes," he wrote on September 10th, 1793, "the de Cluny's tell me there is a plot on foot to rescue the Queen and the Dauphin. I hear that the instigator is Paul Déroulède. I do hope that this is just a silly rumour, but I require you to make discreet enquiries as to the truth or falsity of this supposed plot. I like Déroulède. He is honest and loyal and, as you know, he was a close friend of Marguerite's. I should hate him to be embroiled in some of these mad schemes. I beg of you, in all haste, to give me as accurate information as you can on the subject. I am already prepared to come to Paris and only await your news to fix the day of departure. Ever yours. The Scarlet Pimpernel."

The urge was upon Sir Percy; no restraining hand was sufficiently powerful to hold him back. Something lay before him which had to be done now, which represented the heavy price to be paid for those mad and happy adventures, which were as the breath of life to the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Marguerite could no longer hold him, her tears and supplications were all in vain; destiny demanded that he should go. He had chosen his path in life, and that choice was now his master. What he had done once, twenty times, a hundred times, that must he do again, all the while that the weak and innocent called to him from across the seas, all the while defenseless women suffered and children were orphaned. The call of honour was louder than that of love.

Marguerite must have suffered terribly at times ­ at others she was supremely happy ­ the measure of her life was made up of bitter dregs and sparkling wine. And gradually that enthusiasm which surrounded her husband's personality and dominated his every action, entered, too, into her soul. The impulses of his vitality were so compelling that she allowed herself to be carried away on the tide of his desires: she swallowed her tears and learned to say "Good-bye" when she longed to say "Remain."

When he finally went away on this 15th day of September, neither he nor his devoted wife could guess that the greatest trial of strength and endurance and the most acute crisis in his whole career in revolutionary France, awaited Sir Percy at the hands of his most bitter enemy, citizen Armand Chauvelin.

"September 15. I arrived in Paris at my lodgings at the rue St. Anne yesterday evening. Keep an eye on old Déroulède. I have great hopes of a great game with our old friend Monsieur Chambertin! The Scarlet Pimpernel."