In presenting this engaging rogue to my readers, I feel that I owe them, if not an apology, at least an explanation for this attempt at enlisting sympathy in favour of a man who has little to recommend him save his own unconscious humour. In very truth my good friend Ratichon is an unblushing liar,... Read More

It was not, Heaven help us all! a very uncommon occurrence these days: a woman almost unsexed by misery, starvation, and the abnormal excitement engendered by daily spectacles of revenge and of cruelty. They were to be met with every day, round every street corner, these harridans, more terrible far than were the men. This... Read More

From Mr. John Honeywood, clerk to Mr. Theophilus Baggs, attorney-at-law, to Mistress Mary Saunderson, of the Duke's Theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields. 1662. October the 10th at 85, Chancery Lane in the City of London. Honoured Mistress,— May it please you that I, an humble Clerk and Scrivener, do venture to address so talented a... Read More

To DORA COUNTESS OF CHESTERFIELD A TOKEN OF FRIENDSHIP AND LOVE. Emmuska Orczy "Tyrant! tyrant! tyrant!" It was Pierre who spoke, his voice was hardly raised above a murmur, but there was such an intensity of passion expressed in his face, in the fingers of his hand which closed slowly and convulsively as if they... Read More

It lacked two hours before the dawn on this sultry night early in September. The crescent moon had long ago sunk behind a bank of clouds in the west, and not a sound stirred the low-lying land around the besieged city. To the south the bivouac fires of Alva's camp had died out one by... Read More

The perfect calm of an early spring dawn lies over headland and sea—hardly a ripple stirs the blue cheek of the bay. The softness of departing night lies upon the bosom of the Mediterranean like the dew upon the heart of a flower. A silent dawn. Veils of transparent greys and purples and mauves still... Read More

To the Memory of LOUIS KOSSUTH What would you have said now—O patriot and selfless hero—had you lived to see the country which you loved so well, for whose liberty and national dignity you fought with such unswerving devotion—what would you say, could you see her now—tied to Austria's chariot wheel, the catspaw and the... Read More

And it came to pass in Rome after the kalends of September, and when Caius Julius Cæsar Caligula ruled over Imperial Rome. Arminius Quirinius, the censor, was dead. He had died by his own hand, and thus was a life of extortion and of fraud brought to an ignominious end through the force of public... Read More

Does it need one? If so it must also come from those members of the Blakeney family in whose veins runs the blood of that Sir Percy Blakeney who is known to history as the Scarlet Pimpernel—for they in a manner are responsible for the telling of this veracious chronicle. For the past eight years... Read More

There has of late years crept so much confusion into the mind of the student as well as of the general reader as to the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel with that of the Gascon Royalist plotter known to history as the Baron de Batz, that the time seems opportune for setting all doubts on... Read More

No! No! she was not going to gush!—Not even though there was nothing in the room at this moment to stand up afterward before her as dumb witness to a moment's possible weakness. Less than nothing in fact: space might have spoken and recalled that moment . . . infinite nothingness might at some future... Read More

TO THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON THE KIND FRIEND WHOSE APPRECIATION HAS CHEERED ME, THE IDEALIST WHOSE WORK HAS GUIDED ME, THE BRILLIANT INTELLECT WHOSE PRAISE HAS ENCOURAGED ME This Book is Dedicated IN TOKEN OF ADMIRATION, REGARD, AND FRIENDSHIP EMMUSKA ORCZY "D'Aumont!" "Eh? d'Aumont!" The voice, that of a man still in the prime of life, but... Read More

TO MY DEAR UNCLE AND AUNT COUNT AND COUNTESS WASS OF CZEGE IN REMEMBRANCE OF MANY HAPPY DAYS SPENT IN TRANSYLVANIA October, 1908 The man in the corner pushed aside his glass, and leant across the table. "Mysteries!" he commented. "There is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence... Read More

Master Hymn-of-Praise Busy folded his hands before him ere he spoke: "Nay! but I tell thee, woman, that the Lord hath no love for such frivolities! and alack! but 'tis a sign of the times that an English Squire should favor such evil ways." "Evil ways? The Lord love you, Master Hymn-of-Praise, and pray do... Read More

There was not even a reaction. On! ever on! in that wild, surging torrent; sowing the wind of anarchy, of terrorism, of lust of blood and hate, and reaping a hurricane of destruction and of horror. On! ever on! France, with Paris and all her children still rushes blindly, madly on; defies the powerful coalition,—Austria,... Read More

The gaffers stood round and shook their heads. When the Corporal had finished reading the Royal Proclamation, one or two of them sighed in a desultory fashion, others murmured casually, "Lordy! Lordy! to think on it! Dearie me!" The young ones neither sighed nor murmured. They looked at one another furtively, then glanced away again,... Read More

DEDICATION TO MY LITTLE SON JACK AND TO HIS SCHOOLMATES AT "RAMSBURY" BIRCHINGTON-ON-SEA Dear Boys, It was amongst you all that I wrote the last chapters of this romance. To you, therefore—to your growing manhood, your pretty, budding thoughts of chivalry and honour, which I so loved to see developing in the tender atmosphere of... Read More

"Coward! Coward! Coward!" The words rang out, clear, strident, passionate, in a crescendo of agonised humiliation. The boy, quivering with rage, had sprung to his feet, and, losing his balance, he fell forward clutching at the table, whilst with a convulsive movement of the lids, he tried in vain to suppress the tears of shame... Read More

A surging, seething, murmuring crowd of beings that are human only in name, for to the eye and ear they seem naught but savage creatures, animated by vile passions and by the lust of vengeance and of hate. The hour, some little time before sunset, and the place, the West Barricade, at the very spot... Read More