The Scarlet Pimpernel: Chapter 14 Summary & Analysis

Alone, Lady Blakeney thinks about her predicament. She will tell Chauvelin what she has discovered, save Armand, and “let that cunning Scarlet Pimpernel extricate himself after that.” Soon, Chauvelin slips quietly into the room. “You have news for me?” he asks. Lady Blakeney quickly recaps her meeting with Sir Andrew, the mysterious paper he burned, and the few words she was able to decipher. “Then I have plenty of time,” Chauvelin says looking at the clock.

“I think,” says Chauvelin, “that I may safely expect to find the person I seek in the dining-room, fair lady.” Lady Blakeney agrees, but there are sure to be many people in the dining-room—it is, after all, a ball. Of course, says Chauvelin, but he has also learned (through Sir Andrew’s letters) that the Scarlet Pimpernel will be leaving for France tomorrow and is headed to an inn called “Le Chat Gris.” He will continue to the coast, to an unknown place called Père Blanchard’s hut. Chauvelin will go to the dining-room at “precisely one o’clock,” note who is there, and then follow him to Calais, trapping the Scarlet Pimpernel on French soil, where he will be vulnerable to Madame la Guillotine.

Chauvelin promises to send Armand’s “imprudent letter” to Lady Blakeney tomorrow by carrier, and heads directly to the dining-room. He arrives a few moments before one o’clock, and the empty room is “a ghostlike replica” of the ball upstairs. He walks about the deserted room, trying to appear casual, and notices Sir Percy sleeping soundly on a sofa in a dark corner. He watches Sir Percy sleep— “his mouth open, his eyes shut, the sweet sounds of peaceful slumbers proceeding from his nostrils”—and decides that he won’t interfere with his plan. Chauvelin finds a nearby couch obscured by the dark and sits down. He stretches out, closes his eyes, “and…waits.”