The Scarlet Pimpernel: Chapter 30 Summary & Analysis

Lady Blakeney’s “aching heart stands still” at the sound of the singing. The voice comes closer, and she hears the “click” of Desgas’s gun. Suddenly, Lady Blakeney runs toward the cliff screaming. “Armand! Armand! For God’s sake fire! Your leader is near! He is coming! He is betrayed!” she yells. “Percy, my husband, for God’s sake fly!” Chauvelin can “hardly refrain from striking her” and orders his men to silence her.

The singing stops and Chauvelin orders his men to the hut. “Into it my men, and let no one escape alive,” he says. When the men reach the hut and throw the door open, they find the room deserted. The men stop, “like machines waiting for further orders.” Chauvelin turns to his men “What is the meaning of this?” he asks. The four men have escaped, the men confirm. A soldier steps forward and claims he heard the men sneak off long before the lady began to scream. “You and your men will pay with your lives for this blunder,” Chauvelin promises. “You ordered us to wait, citoyen, until the tall Englishman arrived and joined the four men in the hut. No one came,” the soldier explains.

“Hush!” Chauvelin cries “What was that?” he asks in reference to a mechanical sound in the distance. “The schooner’s boat!” one of the men shouts. Armand and the three men had snuck down to the water, boarded the dinghy and are now, presumably, safely aboard the Day Dream, which is headed out to sea. The Scarlet Pimpernel has “completely outwitted” Chauvelin, and a “superstitious shudder passes through him” as he thinks about the “potent Fate” that watches over the “daring” hero.

Chauvelin moves to enter the hut. “Bring the light in here!” he orders. In the hut, a small scrap of paper is found crumpled on the floor. Chauvelin tells one of the men to read it, and it proves to be correspondence signed by the Scarlet Pimpernel to his men. “I cannot quite reach you,” the letter reads. The Scarlet Pimpernel orders his men to escape down the cliff to the waiting dinghy and board the yacht, which will bring them safely to England. He asks that the men bring the dinghy back to him, at a creek near Calais, where he will be “as soon as possible.”

One of Chauvelin’s men knows the creek in question and offers to take them there at once. Chauvelin looks around. “Where is the Jew?” he asks. The men motion toward the dirty old man, scared and cowering on the ground. The ropes around him have come loose, but he makes no effort to move or struggle. “Bring that cowardly brute here,” Chauvelin orders. As the man comes closer, Chauvelin’s “contempt” for the man’s race keeps him at a distance.

“I suppose now, that being a Jew, you have a good memory for bargains,” Chauvelin says to the Jew. Chauvelin reminds him of their initial bargain—help him find the Scarlet Pimpernel and be awarded with gold. “Now, you did not fulfil your share of the bargain, but I am ready to fulfil mine,” Chauvelin says and orders his men to remove their belts and give the Jew “the best and soundest beating he has ever experienced.”