The Scarlet Pimpernel

by

Baroness Orczy

The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew Character Analysis

Lady Blakeney’s husband and the protagonist of The Scarlet Pimpernel. Sir Percy is a baronet in the British aristocracy and is “the richest man in England.” He is like every other Blakeney who came before him: “notoriously dull.” Just shy of thirty years old, Sir Percy is uncommonly tall and “massively built,” and he would be “usually good looking” if not for his “lazy” eyes and “perpetual inane laugh.” He is popular, however, and with his wife, Lady Blakeney, he leads British high society. Yet in his private life, Sir Percy is miserable. Lady Blakeney is highly intelligent, and she resents her shallow and “brainless” husband. Sir Percy isn’t really “stupid,” of course, and is just feigning foolishness to cover up his identity as the Scarlet Pimpernel. Disguised as the Scarlet Pimpernel, Sir Percy heroically saves nobles from the guillotine and the Reign of Terror in France. Percy’s actions as the Pimpernel reflect his deep pride in his aristocratic heritage, which is “stung to the quick” when he learns of Lady Blakeney’s involvement in the death of the Marquis de St. Cyr and his family. Despite this, Sir Percy deeply loves his wife, but he buries his love behind “a mask worn to hide the bitter wound she had dealt” his faith and love. Lady Blakeney again betrays her husband when she unwittingly helps Chauvelin identify Sir Percy as the Scarlet Pimpernel, and it isn’t until she goes to France to save him that Sir Percy believes his wife has atoned for all her sins. Lady Blakeney’s efforts in Calais prove her love and devotion to Sir Percy and the aristocracy, and he is again able to truly love her. Through the character of Sir Percy and the Scarlet Pimpernel, Orczy simultaneously argues the value of humility and reinforces her belief in the inherent goodness of the aristocracy and the superiority of the British. As Sir Percy, Orczy’s protagonist is “dull” and forgettable, but as the Scarlet Pimpernel, Sir Percy is “the bravest gentlemen in all the world.” He is selfless and heroic and undeniably the “most British Britisher.”

The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew Quotes in The Scarlet Pimpernel

The The Scarlet Pimpernel quotes below are all either spoken by The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew or refer to The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Social Class and the French Revolution Theme Icon
).
Chapter 6 Quotes

Sir Percy Blakeney had travelled a great deal abroad, before he brought home his beautiful, young French wife. The fashionable circles of the time were ready to receive them both with open arms; Sir Percy was rich, his wife was accomplished, the Prince of Wales took a very great liking to them both. Within six months they were the acknowledged leaders of fashion and of style. Sir Percy’s coats were the talk of the town, his inanities were quoted, his foolish laugh copied by the gilded youth at Almack’s or the Mall. Everyone knew that he was hopelessly stupid, but then that was scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that all the Blakeneys for generations had been notoriously dull, and that his mother had died an imbecile.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney, The Prince of Wales
Page Number: 44-5
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

She had but little real sympathy with those haughty French aristocrats, insolent in their pride of caste, of whom the Comtesse de Tournay de Basserive was so typical an example; but, republican and liberal-minded though she was from principle, she hated and loathed the methods which the young Republic had chosen for establishing itself. She had not been in Paris for some months; the horrors and bloodshed of the Reign of Terror, culminating in the September massacres, had only come across the Channel to her as a faint echo. Robespierre, Danton, Marat, she had not known in their new guise of bloody justiciaries, merciless wielders of the guillotine. Her very soul recoiled in horror from these excesses, to which she feared her brother Armand—moderate republican as he was—might become one day the holocaust.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney, Chauvelin, Armand St. Just, The Comtesse de Tournay
Related Symbols: The Guillotine
Page Number: 67-8
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

“I am sure,” said the Comtesse, pursing up her thin lips, "that if this Chauvelin wishes to do us mischief, he will find a faithful ally in Lady Blakeney.”

“Bless the woman!” ejaculated Lady Portarles; “did ever anyone see such perversity? My Lord Grenville, you have the gift of the gab—will you please explain to Madame la Comtesse that she is acting like a fool? In your position here in England, Madame,” she added, turning a wrathful and resolute face towards the Comtesse, “you cannot afford to put on the hoity-toity airs you French aristocrats are so fond of. Lady Blakeney may or may not be in sympathy with those Ruffians in France; she may or may not have had anything to do with the arrest and condemnation of St. Cyr, or whatever the man’s name is, but she is the leader of fashion in this country; Sir Percy Blakeney has more money than any half-dozen other men put together, he is hand and glove with royalty, and your trying to snub Lady Blakeney will not harm her, but will make you look a fool. Isn’t that so, my lord?”

Related Characters: Lady Portarles (speaker), The Comtesse de Tournay (speaker), The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney, Chauvelin, The Marquis de St. Cyr, Lord Grenville
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

"Listen to the tale, Sir Percy,” she said, and her voice now was low, sweet, infinitely tender. "Armand was all in all to me! We had no parents, and brought one another up. He was my little father, and I, his tiny mother; we loved one another so. Then one day—do you mind me, Sir Percy? The Marquis de St. Cyr had my brother Armand thrashed— thrashed by his lacqueys—that brother whom I loved better than all the world! And his offence? That he, a plebeian, had dared to love the daughter of the aristocrat; for that he was waylaid and thrashed ... thrashed like a dog within an inch of his life! Oh, how I suffered! His humiliation had eaten into my very soul! When the opportunity occurred, and I was able to take my revenge, I took it. But I only thought to bring that proud marquis to trouble and humiliation. He plotted with Austria against his own country. Chance gave me knowledge of this; I spoke of it, but I did not know—how could I guess?—they trapped and duped me. When I realised what I had done, it was too late.”

Related Characters: Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney (speaker), The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Armand St. Just, The Marquis de St. Cyr
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis:

He stood aside to allow her to pass. She sighed, a quick sigh of disappointment. His pride and her beauty had been in direct conflict, and his pride had remained the conqueror. Perhaps, after all, she had been deceived just now; what she took to be the light of love in his eyes might only have been the passion of pride or, who knows, of hatred instead of love. She stood looking at him for a moment or two longer. He was again as rigid, as impassive, as before. Pride had conquered, and he cared naught for her. The grey of dawn was gradually yielding to the rosy light of the rising sun. Birds began to twitter; Nature awakened, smiling in happy response to the warmth of this glorious October morning. Only between these two hearts there lay a strong, impassable barrier, built up of pride on both sides, which neither of them cared to be the first to demolish.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 139
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

How strange it all was! She loved him still. And now that she looked back upon the last few months of misunderstandings and of loneliness, she realised that she had never ceased to love him; that deep down in her heart she had always vaguely felt that his foolish inanities, his empty laugh, his lazy nonchalance were nothing but a mask; that the real man, strong, passionate, willful, was there still—the man she had loved, whose intensity had fascinated her, whose personality attracted her, since she always felt that behind his apparently slow wits there was a certain something, which he kept hidden from all the world, and most especially from her.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 142
Explanation and Analysis:

She felt no longer anxious about Armand. The man who had just ridden away, bent on helping her brother, inspired her with complete confidence in his strength and in his power. She marveled at herself for having ever looked upon him as an inane fool; of course, that was a mask worn to hide the bitter wound she had dealt to his faith and to his love. His passion would have overmastered him, and he would not let her see how much he still cared and how deeply he suffered.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney, Armand St. Just
Page Number: 147
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

Since she had entered this neat, orderly room, she had been taken so much by surprise, that this obvious proof of her husband’s strong business capacities did not cause her more than a passing thought of wonder. But it also strengthened her in the now certain knowledge that, with his worldly inanities, his foppish ways, and foolish talk, he was not only wearing a mask, but was playing a deliberate and studied part.

Marguerite wondered again. Why should he take all this trouble? Why should he—who was obviously a serious, earnest man—wish to appear before his fellow-men as an empty-headed nincompoop?

He may have wished to hide his love for a wife who held him in contempt... but surely such an object could have been gained at less sacrifice, and with far less trouble than constant incessant acting of an unnatural part.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney
Page Number: 152-3
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

The mask of the inane fop had been a good one, and the part consummately well played. No wonder that Chauvelin’s spies had failed to detect, in the apparently brainless nincompoop, the man whose reckless daring and resourceful ingenuity had baffled the keenest French spies, both in France and in England. Even last night when Chauvelin went to Lord Grenville’s dining-room to seek that daring Scarlet Pimpernel, he only saw that inane Sir Percy Blakeney fast asleep in a corner sofa.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 158
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

She looked through the tattered curtain, across at the handsome face of her husband, in whose lazy blue eyes, and behind whose inane smile, she could now so plainly see the strength, energy, and resourcefulness which had caused the Scarlet Pimpernel to be reverenced and trusted by his followers. "There are nineteen of us is ready to lay down our lives for your husband, Lady Blakeney,” Sir Andrew had said to her; and as she looked at the forehead, low, but square and broad, the eyes, blue, yet deep-set and intense, the whole aspect of the man, of indomitable energy, hiding, behind a perfectly acted comedy, his almost superhuman strength of will and marvelous ingenuity, she understood the fascination which he exercised over his followers, for had he not also cast his spells over her heart and her imagination?

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney, Chauvelin, Sir Andrew Ffoulkes
Page Number: 209
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

He certainly felt exceedingly vicious, and since he had no reasonable grounds for venting his ill-humour on the soldiers who had but too punctually obeyed his orders, he felt that the son of the despised race would prove an excellent butt. With true French contempt of the Jew, which has survived the lapse of centuries even to this day, he would not go too near him, but said with biting sarcasm, as the wretched old man was brought in full light of the moon by the two soldiers, —

“I suppose now, that being a Jew, you have a good memory for bargains?”

Related Characters: Chauvelin (speaker), The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 254
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 31 Quotes

“Dressed as the dirty old Jew," he said gaily, “I knew I should not be recognised. I had met Reuben Goldstein in Calais earlier in the evening. For a few gold pieces he supplied me with this rig-out, and undertook to bury himself out of sight of everybody, whilst he lent me his cart and nag.”

“But if Chauvelin had discovered you,” she gasped excitedly, “your disguise was good ... but he is so sharp.”

“Odd’s fish!” he rejoined quietly, “then certainly the game would have been up. I could but take the risk. I know human nature pretty well by now,” he added, with a note of sadness in his cheery, young voice, “and I know these Frenchmen out and out. They so loathe a Jew, that they never come nearer than a couple of yards of him, and begad! I fancy that I contrived to make myself look about as loathsome an object as it is possible to conceive.”

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew (speaker), Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney (speaker), Chauvelin, Reuben Goldstein
Page Number: 264
Explanation and Analysis:

All his fatigue was forgotten; his shoulders must have been very sore, for the soldiers had hit hard, but the man’s muscles seemed made of steel, and his energy was almost supernatural. It was a weary tramp, half a league along the stony side of the cliffs, but never for a moment did his courage give way or his muscles yield to fatigue. On he tramped, with firm footstep, his vigorous arms encircling the precious burden, and... no doubt, as she lay, quiet and happy, at times lulled to momentary drowsiness, at others watching, through the slowly gathering morning light, the pleasant face with the lazy, drooping blue eyes, ever cheerful, ever illumined with a good-humoured smile, she whispered many things, which helped to shorten the weary road, and acted as a soothing balsam to his aching sinews.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 268
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew Quotes in The Scarlet Pimpernel

The The Scarlet Pimpernel quotes below are all either spoken by The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew or refer to The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Social Class and the French Revolution Theme Icon
).
Chapter 6 Quotes

Sir Percy Blakeney had travelled a great deal abroad, before he brought home his beautiful, young French wife. The fashionable circles of the time were ready to receive them both with open arms; Sir Percy was rich, his wife was accomplished, the Prince of Wales took a very great liking to them both. Within six months they were the acknowledged leaders of fashion and of style. Sir Percy’s coats were the talk of the town, his inanities were quoted, his foolish laugh copied by the gilded youth at Almack’s or the Mall. Everyone knew that he was hopelessly stupid, but then that was scarcely to be wondered at, seeing that all the Blakeneys for generations had been notoriously dull, and that his mother had died an imbecile.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney, The Prince of Wales
Page Number: 44-5
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

She had but little real sympathy with those haughty French aristocrats, insolent in their pride of caste, of whom the Comtesse de Tournay de Basserive was so typical an example; but, republican and liberal-minded though she was from principle, she hated and loathed the methods which the young Republic had chosen for establishing itself. She had not been in Paris for some months; the horrors and bloodshed of the Reign of Terror, culminating in the September massacres, had only come across the Channel to her as a faint echo. Robespierre, Danton, Marat, she had not known in their new guise of bloody justiciaries, merciless wielders of the guillotine. Her very soul recoiled in horror from these excesses, to which she feared her brother Armand—moderate republican as he was—might become one day the holocaust.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney, Chauvelin, Armand St. Just, The Comtesse de Tournay
Related Symbols: The Guillotine
Page Number: 67-8
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

“I am sure,” said the Comtesse, pursing up her thin lips, "that if this Chauvelin wishes to do us mischief, he will find a faithful ally in Lady Blakeney.”

“Bless the woman!” ejaculated Lady Portarles; “did ever anyone see such perversity? My Lord Grenville, you have the gift of the gab—will you please explain to Madame la Comtesse that she is acting like a fool? In your position here in England, Madame,” she added, turning a wrathful and resolute face towards the Comtesse, “you cannot afford to put on the hoity-toity airs you French aristocrats are so fond of. Lady Blakeney may or may not be in sympathy with those Ruffians in France; she may or may not have had anything to do with the arrest and condemnation of St. Cyr, or whatever the man’s name is, but she is the leader of fashion in this country; Sir Percy Blakeney has more money than any half-dozen other men put together, he is hand and glove with royalty, and your trying to snub Lady Blakeney will not harm her, but will make you look a fool. Isn’t that so, my lord?”

Related Characters: Lady Portarles (speaker), The Comtesse de Tournay (speaker), The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney, Chauvelin, The Marquis de St. Cyr, Lord Grenville
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

"Listen to the tale, Sir Percy,” she said, and her voice now was low, sweet, infinitely tender. "Armand was all in all to me! We had no parents, and brought one another up. He was my little father, and I, his tiny mother; we loved one another so. Then one day—do you mind me, Sir Percy? The Marquis de St. Cyr had my brother Armand thrashed— thrashed by his lacqueys—that brother whom I loved better than all the world! And his offence? That he, a plebeian, had dared to love the daughter of the aristocrat; for that he was waylaid and thrashed ... thrashed like a dog within an inch of his life! Oh, how I suffered! His humiliation had eaten into my very soul! When the opportunity occurred, and I was able to take my revenge, I took it. But I only thought to bring that proud marquis to trouble and humiliation. He plotted with Austria against his own country. Chance gave me knowledge of this; I spoke of it, but I did not know—how could I guess?—they trapped and duped me. When I realised what I had done, it was too late.”

Related Characters: Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney (speaker), The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Armand St. Just, The Marquis de St. Cyr
Page Number: 135
Explanation and Analysis:

He stood aside to allow her to pass. She sighed, a quick sigh of disappointment. His pride and her beauty had been in direct conflict, and his pride had remained the conqueror. Perhaps, after all, she had been deceived just now; what she took to be the light of love in his eyes might only have been the passion of pride or, who knows, of hatred instead of love. She stood looking at him for a moment or two longer. He was again as rigid, as impassive, as before. Pride had conquered, and he cared naught for her. The grey of dawn was gradually yielding to the rosy light of the rising sun. Birds began to twitter; Nature awakened, smiling in happy response to the warmth of this glorious October morning. Only between these two hearts there lay a strong, impassable barrier, built up of pride on both sides, which neither of them cared to be the first to demolish.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 139
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

How strange it all was! She loved him still. And now that she looked back upon the last few months of misunderstandings and of loneliness, she realised that she had never ceased to love him; that deep down in her heart she had always vaguely felt that his foolish inanities, his empty laugh, his lazy nonchalance were nothing but a mask; that the real man, strong, passionate, willful, was there still—the man she had loved, whose intensity had fascinated her, whose personality attracted her, since she always felt that behind his apparently slow wits there was a certain something, which he kept hidden from all the world, and most especially from her.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 142
Explanation and Analysis:

She felt no longer anxious about Armand. The man who had just ridden away, bent on helping her brother, inspired her with complete confidence in his strength and in his power. She marveled at herself for having ever looked upon him as an inane fool; of course, that was a mask worn to hide the bitter wound she had dealt to his faith and to his love. His passion would have overmastered him, and he would not let her see how much he still cared and how deeply he suffered.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney, Armand St. Just
Page Number: 147
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 18 Quotes

Since she had entered this neat, orderly room, she had been taken so much by surprise, that this obvious proof of her husband’s strong business capacities did not cause her more than a passing thought of wonder. But it also strengthened her in the now certain knowledge that, with his worldly inanities, his foppish ways, and foolish talk, he was not only wearing a mask, but was playing a deliberate and studied part.

Marguerite wondered again. Why should he take all this trouble? Why should he—who was obviously a serious, earnest man—wish to appear before his fellow-men as an empty-headed nincompoop?

He may have wished to hide his love for a wife who held him in contempt... but surely such an object could have been gained at less sacrifice, and with far less trouble than constant incessant acting of an unnatural part.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney
Page Number: 152-3
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

The mask of the inane fop had been a good one, and the part consummately well played. No wonder that Chauvelin’s spies had failed to detect, in the apparently brainless nincompoop, the man whose reckless daring and resourceful ingenuity had baffled the keenest French spies, both in France and in England. Even last night when Chauvelin went to Lord Grenville’s dining-room to seek that daring Scarlet Pimpernel, he only saw that inane Sir Percy Blakeney fast asleep in a corner sofa.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 158
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

She looked through the tattered curtain, across at the handsome face of her husband, in whose lazy blue eyes, and behind whose inane smile, she could now so plainly see the strength, energy, and resourcefulness which had caused the Scarlet Pimpernel to be reverenced and trusted by his followers. "There are nineteen of us is ready to lay down our lives for your husband, Lady Blakeney,” Sir Andrew had said to her; and as she looked at the forehead, low, but square and broad, the eyes, blue, yet deep-set and intense, the whole aspect of the man, of indomitable energy, hiding, behind a perfectly acted comedy, his almost superhuman strength of will and marvelous ingenuity, she understood the fascination which he exercised over his followers, for had he not also cast his spells over her heart and her imagination?

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney, Chauvelin, Sir Andrew Ffoulkes
Page Number: 209
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 30 Quotes

He certainly felt exceedingly vicious, and since he had no reasonable grounds for venting his ill-humour on the soldiers who had but too punctually obeyed his orders, he felt that the son of the despised race would prove an excellent butt. With true French contempt of the Jew, which has survived the lapse of centuries even to this day, he would not go too near him, but said with biting sarcasm, as the wretched old man was brought in full light of the moon by the two soldiers, —

“I suppose now, that being a Jew, you have a good memory for bargains?”

Related Characters: Chauvelin (speaker), The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 254
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 31 Quotes

“Dressed as the dirty old Jew," he said gaily, “I knew I should not be recognised. I had met Reuben Goldstein in Calais earlier in the evening. For a few gold pieces he supplied me with this rig-out, and undertook to bury himself out of sight of everybody, whilst he lent me his cart and nag.”

“But if Chauvelin had discovered you,” she gasped excitedly, “your disguise was good ... but he is so sharp.”

“Odd’s fish!” he rejoined quietly, “then certainly the game would have been up. I could but take the risk. I know human nature pretty well by now,” he added, with a note of sadness in his cheery, young voice, “and I know these Frenchmen out and out. They so loathe a Jew, that they never come nearer than a couple of yards of him, and begad! I fancy that I contrived to make myself look about as loathsome an object as it is possible to conceive.”

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew (speaker), Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney (speaker), Chauvelin, Reuben Goldstein
Page Number: 264
Explanation and Analysis:

All his fatigue was forgotten; his shoulders must have been very sore, for the soldiers had hit hard, but the man’s muscles seemed made of steel, and his energy was almost supernatural. It was a weary tramp, half a league along the stony side of the cliffs, but never for a moment did his courage give way or his muscles yield to fatigue. On he tramped, with firm footstep, his vigorous arms encircling the precious burden, and... no doubt, as she lay, quiet and happy, at times lulled to momentary drowsiness, at others watching, through the slowly gathering morning light, the pleasant face with the lazy, drooping blue eyes, ever cheerful, ever illumined with a good-humoured smile, she whispered many things, which helped to shorten the weary road, and acted as a soothing balsam to his aching sinews.

Related Characters: The Scarlet Pimpernel / Sir Percy Blakeney, Bart. / The Hag / The Jew, Marguerite St. Just / Lady Blakeney
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 268
Explanation and Analysis: