The Scarlet Pimpernel

Paris, 1792. The French Revolution has become a bloodbath. Every day, aristocrats — men, women, even children — are loaded into carts and taken to the guillotine. The mob cheers. Citizen-soldiers guard the city gates and search every wagon that leaves. France has become a cage.

But a mysterious Englishman is rescuing condemned nobles. He smuggles them out of Paris and across the Channel to safety in England. No one knows his name or his face. He signs his messages with the drawing of a small red flower — a scarlet pimpernel. He has a band of nineteen loyal English friends who help him. France calls him the most dangerous man in Europe. England calls him a hero.

In London, the most beautiful woman of the age is Marguerite Blakeney — French-born, brilliant, witty. A year ago she married Sir Percy Blakeney, the richest baronet in England. Percy is tall, handsome, fashionably dressed, and (everyone says) the laziest, stupidest man in London. Marguerite cannot understand why she married him. He bores her. He no longer speaks to her with love.

A French agent named Chauvelin arrives in England with a mission: unmask the Scarlet Pimpernel and send him to the guillotine. Chauvelin discovers that Marguerite's brother, Armand St. Just, is connected to the Pimpernel's league. He blackmails Marguerite: help me find the Pimpernel, or your brother dies.

Trapped, Marguerite betrays a single clue — a name, a time. Only afterward does she discover the truth that destroys her: the Scarlet Pimpernel is her own husband. The bored fool Percy was a mask. The hero she admired and the husband she had stopped loving are the same man — and she has just sent him to his death.

She races across the Channel to France to warn him. Chauvelin's soldiers are already there. In a hut on the coast, hidden hostages wait for rescue. The Pimpernel walks into the trap to save them, with Marguerite trying to reach him first. The story ends with cleverness defeating cruelty, and with a husband and wife finally seeing each other clearly.